Condemned: A Thriller

by McBride, Michael

  “That don’t mean shit now.”

  “We spent every day together. Went everywhere together. Did everything together. We’ve always believed in the same things.”

  “Look at it this way…Things are about to change because of you. The entire world will know what’s happened here in Detroit. Blacks and whites will come together in their hatred for a man who killed their white daughters and black sons. These old ruins…this urban blight…will finally be razed and give this city a chance to rise from its ashes. The Detroit Police Department can stop being the butt of every joke and the detective who solved the case will finally have the opportunity to tell the story of his wife’s death. On the cover of every newspaper and in front of cameras from every network.”

  “All of your evidence is circumstantial. None of it will hold up to any kind of scrutiny.”

  “What about the bite marks on the necks of the victims? I have a feeling they’ll be a perfect match for your dentition, thanks to a mold made from an apple I fished out of your garbage.”

  “Vampires,” I whispered.

  “Can you think of a better way to get every news crew in the country out here for the grand finale?” His expression softened. When he spoke, he looked almost sympathetic. “And this is the gun I offered to let you borrow.”

  He held the gun in his gloved hand. I clearly remembered handling it and passing it back to him, covering it with my fingerprints in the process. The same gun I had no doubt he’d used to kill the men surrounding me on the floor.

  I finally understood his endgame.

  His story only worked if I was dead.

  My best friend in the world intended to kill me.

  “After everything we’ve been through…how could you hate me so much?”

  “You were wrong when you said this was about you and me. It’s bigger than both of us. This is about everything we’ve been trying our whole lives to achieve. It’s about this city. Our city. About changing its destiny. About giving it a future.”

  “You do this and you’ll become the living embodiment of everything you despise about this city.”

  “Too late.” He pressed the barrel of the pistol to my temple and tightened his finger on the trigger. “I already have.”

  THIRTY

  “Drop your weapon!”

  I glanced toward the sound of the voice and saw a silhouette advancing through the open doorway in a shooter’s stance. It was small. Childlike.

  Aragon.

  “You going to shoot me?” Dray said.

  “If I have to.”

  “You really think you can? After everything we’ve been through?”

  “Lower your gun.”

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  “It doesn’t have to go down like this. You’re in control. Put down your gun and we all walk out of here.”

  “There’s nothing out there for me. This ends here.”

  “What, Aundray? What ends here?”

  “This. Everything. Don’t you get it?”

  “No.” She sidled around to my left, her pistol trained on Dray the whole time. She wanted him to focus on her. Or maybe she was just looking for a better shot. “Why don’t you explain it to me? Help me understand.”

  “I know what you’re doing, Marcela.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Trying to get inside my head. It won’t work, though. Only one way this can end.”

  “Don’t do this, Dray,” I whispered.

  “You think I don’t know how you feel?” Aragon sidestepped into my peripheral vision. Dray’s eyes ticked toward her, then back to mine. His whole body tensed. “I’m out there with you. Day after day. Risking my life for a city hell-bent on its own destruction. You don’t think it eats me how the only ones who have any rights are the criminals? How our hands are tied to the point that we can’t even do our jobs? People cry police brutality clear up until the crime reaches their front porches, then it’s all ‘Where the hell you been? Why didn’t you do your job?’”

  Dray looked at her again. I’d have to turn my body to make a grab for the gun, while he could finish me off with a few pounds of pressure on the trigger. His eyes found mine again and I saw his recognition of what I was contemplating inside them.

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  “Aundray.”

  Again, he glanced over at her as she swung around to my right. She had a clear shot at him for the most fleeting of moments. He pulled me between them and watched her over my shoulder. I sensed her moving behind me, heard the crackle of her footsteps, her voice.

  “What about us, huh? We put ourselves in harm’s way, and for what? For a lousy pension that vanishes when the city goes belly up? For the respect of people who’d rather see us get shot than pull the trigger in our own defense? They’d sooner watch snippets of our funerals on the news than give us a chance to explain how things really work on the streets. They sit in their homes with this smug sense of security that none of the shit they see on TV will ever happen to them. And who gives them that sense of security? The same people they vilify every time they open their mouths. The same people they make sure don’t get paid jack and wonder why the job attracts thugs no better than the hoods they’re up against. And we sit there and we take it. Every last bit of it. Because we’re the law, Aundray. Because we’re the good guys.”

  She stepped over a body in my peripheral vision as she continued to search for her shot. She’d had it once and hadn’t taken it. She couldn’t pass up the next one or whatever slim advantage she held would be lost.

  “Stay where you are,” Dray said.

  “And then one day the very thing we try to leave at work somehow finds its way to our door. These horrors we face every day. They find their way in when we’re not looking. And we know…we know we could have taken care of the problem long before it entered our lives, but we’re prevented from doing so. We can’t touch evil, but it can touch us. These people we risk our lives for? They protect this evil with their liberal bullshit. They sit up there in their mansions in Gross Pointe and Bloomfield Hills and look down their noses at us. They don’t know what it’s like out here on the streets, and they don’t want to either.”

  Dray twisted me to the side to again keep me between them. His breath was coming hard and fast. His pistol shook in his hand and he continually sought a better grip on it.

  “And while you’re out there, protecting them, something happens to your wife—”

  “You don’t get to talk about Janae!”

  “You think this is what she would have wanted? For you to throw away your career? Your life?”

  “I should have been there. This never should have happened. I should have been there! But instead I…instead I…”

  “Was with me.”

  The way she said it, I knew. I knew. I should have seen it.

  I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, Dray was staring right at me. I saw the shame and the rage. And the hurt. He thrust his bottom lip out. Flared his nostrils. Screwed the barrel so hard into my temple that it broke the skin and blood trickled down my cheek. His last chance at understanding from his best friend, and I’d condemned him without a word.

  “Blame me, Aundray. You’re not the only one—”

  “Shut up.”

  It wasn’t just the rape that had caused Janae to kill herself. It was the fact that while she was being raped, her husband was in the arms of another woman. A woman she knew, who’d been in her house, who she’d treated like part of her extended family. And to add insult to injury, Dray hadn’t even been able to flog himself with her death because in the eyes of the world she hadn’t mattered. Not to the media, and not to him. He didn’t even have the right to the guilt. She was just another dead black woman in a city where that hardly qualified as news.

  And this…this was his penance.

  “Put down the gun, Aundray. Let me help you.”

  “You’ve helped enough.”

  She stifled a sob.


  “Dray…” I whispered. “Look at me. You know me. We can fix this. People will understand.”

  Again, Aragon appeared from the corner of my eye. I could see it in her posture…this time she wouldn’t hesitate.

  “Don’t do this, damn it!” I shouted. “It doesn’t have to end this way!”

  “There was never any other way it could end.”

  I felt him tense, felt the pressure abate from my temple. Saw it in his eyes as he turned and swung his pistol toward Aragon. I shoved him in the chest, threw myself backward.

  A rush of heat passed between us. Warmth spattered my face. I couldn’t close my eyes fast enough. I tasted blood in my mouth, but miraculously felt no pain.

  The deafening report of gunfire.

  Another right on top of it.

  I heard the thud of a body hitting the floor, then nothing over the ringing in my ears. I smeared the blood out of my eyes in time to see Dray topple to the ground on his side. Glanced to my left. Aragon. On her back, her hand pressed against the side of her neck in an effort to stem the flow of arterial blood gushing from between her trembling fingers.

  I scurried to her side, pressed my hands over hers. The warmth rushed from her so fast there was nothing I could do to slow it, let alone stop it.

  She made a choking sound and sputtered blood onto her chin. Stared up at me, into my eyes. I saw the terror and the pain, and the flash of comprehension when she realized she was going to die.

  “Help me!” I screamed.

  Her blood was slick on my hands. The entrance wound was so large I could barely keep my palm over it. She grabbed my wrist with her free hand and squeezed it. Looked desperately into my eyes, even as the light faded from hers.

  “No, no.” I rocked back. “Somebody help me!”

  The grip on my wrist went slack. Her arm fell to her side.

  I climbed to my feet and stood dumbly over her body, my arms held out to my sides, dripping with blood.

  Shouting from behind me. A deep male voice beneath the residual ringing in my ears.

  I could only stare at Aragon’s body in the blue light, unable to make sense of what had transpired. Blood pooled beneath her as though backing up from a clogged drain.

  More shouting.

  I turned to find Dray holding his shoulder with one hand and pointing his gun at me with the other. His jacket glistened with the sheer volume of blood soaking through the fabric. Training the gun on me seemed to sap every last ounce of his strength. He had to transfer it to his other hand, leaving his injured arm to dangle at his side, blood trickling from his fingertips.

  A siren wailed in the distance.

  Faint.

  Faraway.

  I stared at my best friend. His badge glinted from his chest. It was dark with blood, just like the light blue button-down underneath it. He’d dressed in preparation of slipping off the hooded sweatshirt and waiting for backup to arrive, in the guise of the detective instead of the killer. The exact same thing he’d done that first night in the Eastown, when he’d watched me discover the body of Lindsay DeWitt from the catwalk.

  I glanced back at Aragon, at her pistol resting on the ground at the edge of the pool of blood.

  When I looked back, Dray’s eyes were fixed on mine, and yet somehow faraway at the same time. His gun was aimed at the center of my chest.

  The sirens grew incrementally louder.

  I stood there as though paralyzed, my arms still held out to my sides, a dead woman’s blood constricting as it dried on my skin.

  “You were my best friend,” I said.

  A flash of discharge leapt from his pistol. Searing pain in my chest. A sharp blow to my sternum and I left my feet.

  The world went dark when the back of my head struck the ground.

  THIRTY -ONE

  Sploosh.

  Spish. Spish.

  Spish-spish-spish.

  Clang. Clang-clang-skritch.

  I opened my eyes and saw an empty gas tank bound across the concrete.

  The fumes were so thick I could positively taste them, feel them coalescing and dripping down the back of my throat.

  My hair was wet. So was my face, my shirt, the skin beneath my bulletproof vest, the thought of which awakened the ferocious pain in the center of my chest and a sense of sheer panic.

  I could hardly breathe. I gasped and felt droplets of blood splatter onto my face. I reached underneath the collar of the vest and yanked it downward. The bullet had passed all the way through the cheap Kevlar, far enough to embed itself in my pectoral muscle like the tip of a drill bit now encapsulated within the singed flesh of my punctured lung. The blood diffused into the gasoline Dray had doused all over me.

  I rolled over and saw Aragon beside me, puddles of gasoline in her mouth and over her closed eyes. Her clothes were drenched. Her gun rested beside her outstretched hand, as though reaching for it.

  The sirens were louder now. The police cars couldn’t have been more than a few blocks away. Their red and blue lights pierced the seams around the roof and walls in seemingly palpable columns. The entire floor appeared black where the gas had diluted the sheer volume of spilled blood.

  I saw a silhouette across the room, near the doorway to the arcade. Dray shook the tank of gasoline as he walked, dousing the bodies of the men who’d been dead when I arrived.

  My eyes burned so badly I was forced to close them. It was all I could do not to retch and vomit up the gasoline eating through my esophagus. If I did, he’d know I was still alive and finish me off. When I opened them again, they were filled with tears. Through the watery haze I watched him cast the tank aside. It struck the ground with a resounding clang that echoed throughout the depot before giving way to the approaching sirens.

  Dray sobbed and drew his weapon. Aimed it at the ground a dozen feet in front of him.

  I realized what he was going to do and rolled in the opposite direction.

  The report was deafening.

  A flash of light from the corner of my eye, then nothing but flames. They grew taller as they raced outward from the point of impact, blue near the ground like floodwaters. Orange and gold flames lapped at the thick black smoke of their own creation.

  I struggled to my feet and staggered away from the advancing blaze, fully aware of the consequences if it reached me.

  I caught one last glimpse of Dray, framed in the doorway, before the smoke and flames eclipsed him.

  The heat was unbearable.

  I glanced over my shoulder as the fire washed over Aragon and heard a feral, animalian sound erupt from my chest.

  A shrill cacophony of sirens. The swirling lights stabbed through the smoke.

  Warmth on the backs of my legs. Then, searing pain.

  I focused on the doorway ahead of me and ran for everything I was worth, even as the flames crawled up toward my shoulders. They caught in my hair and I could smell myself burning. I crossed the threshold in an aura of light that consumed me as it expanded.

  Stumbled down the ramp. Tripped. Hit the concrete and tumbled into the water. Inhaled it.

  I struggled to remain conscious. My singed skin stung as though immersed in acid.

  The bottom was slick with slime and sharp with broken bottles and fragments of concrete that cut my palms and pressed painfully into my knees. Still, I crawled away from the intensifying heat behind me.

  I peeked back over my shoulder to see the entire entryway to the concourse filled with flames. Fiery debris rained from the ceiling and struck the ground with expulsions of embers. A stream of gasoline trickled down the ramp, golden with fire. Smoke rolled across the roof overhead, seeking release through the wall vents and up the barricaded stairwells.

  The sirens grew louder. I couldn’t gauge their distance over the roar of the flames and the cracking sounds of their advance through the wooden structure. Chunks of burning timber bounded down the ramp and splashed into the stagnant water, urging me to crawl again.

  An explosion shook the
ground. The entire tunnel lit up. Fingers of flame reached down through the ceiling. A shimmering skein of gasoline spread across the water, leading the fire toward me.

  I climbed to my feet as the flames washed over my ankles and staggered as fast as I could. Sirens called to me from the tops of the stairwells, where the tracks had once been.

  If the smoke could get out, then so could I.

  A resounding boom and the earth dropped out from beneath me.

  Before I knew I was falling I had water in my mouth. My chin bounced from the ground and I tasted blood.

  Massive sections of concrete fell from the ceiling and struck the ground all around me. Lengths of rusted rebar, conduits, and the remains of lighting fixtures protruded from the ceiling and stood from the heaps in the water. Cement dust filled the air. Dirt cascaded through the cracks above me, reminding me that I was running out of time.

  When I finally found my feet again, the fire was once more climbing up my legs. Behind me, the entire archway through which passengers once passed by the thousands was gone. In its stead were an avalanche of rubble and a section of the fallen ceiling.

  I swatted out the flames on my shirt and ran for the point where I saw the majority of the smoke funneling up through one of the sealed stairwells maybe fifty feet ahead and to my left.

  A fissure spread across the ceiling with a sound like thunder and again dropped debris all around me.

  The walls of the tunnel flickered, and then I was sealed off from the majority of the blaze, save for the diminutive flames that faded from yellow to blue as they burned off the fuel.

  A gust of wind from behind me, and then I was overcome by a cloud of dust and smoke.

  The entire station must have collapsed onto the concourse and the tracks.

  I fixed my destination in my mind and closed my eyes. Coughed. Retched. Felt the smoke fill my lungs, strip the mucus from my throat.

  My right foot snagged and I fell forward. Barely got my hands out in front of me before I struck a slope of jagged concrete and stone.

  I heard the wail of sirens and the scream of air rushing past me toward freedom.