The Killing Hour

by Paul Cleave

  Killing out here where nobody can see him is the perfect way to end all of this, but it’s also a cheap way. His mind races for another solution, a solution that equals gain, a solution that isn’t so cheap or slippery, and if it weren’t for the Goddamn pain and medication that’s twisting his thoughts every which way, he’d be able to figure it out. He’s lucky that he at least recognizes the fact he’s not himself. Hell, he hasn’t even thought of that stupid dog in ten years. He hasn’t been right since that son of a bitch stabbed him the other night.

  He’s aware he’s just stood on a hedgehog, but it wasn’t really his fault.

  Not really, not when it’s so dark out here.

  He starts to laugh. Stupid hedgehog. Stupid thing deserved to die.

  He’s angry. He can’t help it. The hedgehog was innocent, but maybe it died happy, so he starts to laugh again. He laughs and starts to think of the two dead women. He thinks back to Monday morning and things were going fine, so fine, and the night was nicer than this, there was no rain and plenty of night, plenty that couldn’t go wrong, but seemed to anyway, and Monday came before the drugs could take away the pain of it all. Two pills a day became two an hour, then he started to lose track, then he broke into his wife’s morphine supply, which is something he swore he’d never do. He also found some stuff a buddy of his gave him years ago, stuff they used to refer to as “the good shit” back in the day. So there’s that, the morphine, and whatever the hell else he’s been able to get his hands on. They’re damaging his mind, no doubt there. He pictures his mind working like a washing machine, the thoughts tumbling, no, spinning-it’s the dryer that tumbles-and then Charlie Feldman came along and ruined everything. Things will work out in the end. That’s not true of everything, but it will be true of this. He’s proving that. Right now things couldn’t really be any better. It would be better if he could remember what star sign he is and this bothers him more than anything else. His stomach hurts too. Cancer?

  No. Gemini.

  You are in control, he tells himself, you are in control, buddy, so now what? He counts one policeman here who needs to die so maybe he ought to start there because there’s no use for the policeman. In fact the exact opposite is true because there are several uses for a dead policeman. He looks at Charlie and he looks at the woman and he smiles his smile of relief. Everything’s under control, everything’s going to work out fine, but he should never have doubted that, and he never will doubt it again, and his stomach is throbbing, and he can feel the duct tape across his skin and the duct tape is gray, but it’s red too because of the blood. Thinking about things he shouldn’t doubt lead to him thinking of things he should do-which immediately makes him think of all the drugs he’s taking. Some would say it’s a miracle he’s even functioning. He doesn’t believe in miracles.

  He tightens his grip on the shotgun. He uses it to push the woman toward Feldman. He doesn’t know the brand of the shotgun and doesn’t care. It could be Russian or American, but they all do the same thing at this range. He doesn’t pull the trigger because he wants to gain something, though he doesn’t know what it is, even though a few minutes ago he did. It came back to him when he read the piece of paper in his pocket. On that paper is the reason he’s doing all of this. He wrote it down when he figured out his thoughts aren’t what they ought to be. He wrote it on Monday afternoon. He wants to get it out and read it, but the rain will soak it. He needs to think. He needs to remember. Having ink running down his fingers won’t help at all.

  He covers the three people with the shotgun and the policeman doesn’t look that healthy. Perhaps the painkillers Cyris has been taking would help the policeman, but Cyris only wants to help himself, and there’s not enough to go around. He keeps trying to tell himself to think things through, to think things through, to think about a gain, a goal, and a small voice in his mind tells him to look at the note, but then it comes to him anyway-he’s doing this for the money. Isn’t that why people do anything? Love and money. Well, he sure loves getting paid.

  He needs to focus on that right now.

  “For the money,” he shouts, and he thinks that if he keeps saying it out loud more often, it’ll stick with him. That, or he should stop taking the drugs. He should write that one down too.

  The cop, Feldman, his bitch wife-they’re all staring up at him. The bitch wife is a surprise. He learned about her when he went through Feldman’s house, but he wasn’t expecting her to be helping him. When he arrived at Feldman’s tonight, he was in time to see the man arrested. Before he could start following the guy, another car pulled out from the curb and began following them first. So he followed the follower. It turned out to be the same woman in the photos in Feldman’s house.

  They’re waiting for him to say something else, and he guesses his comment is out of context for them. He should have shouted You fucked up my plans. Actually, that’s not bad. He opens his mouth to say that and cold air rushes down his throat and for a few seconds his mind starts to focus. He has to concentrate now so he can form the words, but maybe he ought to just shoot everybody instead.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Cold rain. Cold wind. One psycho with a gun. Then another psycho with a gun.

  Is there something here I’m missing?

  “You fucked up my plans!” Cyris shouts, which at least makes more sense than his For the money comment a few seconds earlier.

  I don’t answer him. Nor does Jo. I don’t even look at Landry to see what he’s doing. Probably not getting ready to apologize, I imagine.

  “You remember me, part. . partner?” Cyris asks, moving his aim from Jo to me.

  I remember everything while saying nothing.

  “What a show,” he says. “I would clap, but my hands are blue.”

  He looks at the man I’m carrying and all I can think about are his blue hands. He must mean they’re cold. I guess.

  “Caught yourself a pig?” he asks.

  Landry starts to moan.

  “Put. . down, put him down, down, down,” Cyris says.

  I get the point, but I spend a few seconds wondering if I could use Landry as a shield and just run straight at Cyris. I was somewhat successful the other night. Might be the same tonight. Mind reading must be one of his new abilities, because he says “Don’t even think about it.” Then he points the shotgun at Jo.

  I crouch and hoist Landry over my head so he lands in front of me, my lower back protesting at the effort. I don’t really try to be gentle, but I make sure he doesn’t land on his head. He might come in useful. I’ve gone from thinking I was going to die, to surviving, to thinking I’m going to die again. If I had to sum it up, I’d say it’s a pretty shitty feeling.

  I stand up, but don’t back away. Instead I slowly move toward Jo. Cyris doesn’t ask me to stop. He seems to be enjoying himself. Why wouldn’t he? I’m the only guy out here tonight who hasn’t actually been armed.

  When I’m next to Jo he scampers over to the cop and kneels next to him.

  “Funny, isn’t it?” he says to Landry. “Funny hah, hah, funny you brought him out here into the summer, funny because you forgot me, forgot all about me.”

  “Cyris,” Landry says, and it’s all he can manage, but he says it with a gravelly voice and with conviction, like it’s an accusation.

  Jo looks over at me and I can see a whole bunch of things in her eyes. Confusion, sure, there’s plenty of that, and regret too. Regret for not believing me. Sure, she came along for the ride because I dragged her, sure she met me halfway in the Real World of what’s real and what’s make believe, but if she had committed to me, if she had just taken my hand and helped, then things could be different right now. Could be better. Could be worse. I don’t know. Just different. So there’s the confusion and regret, but there’s also regret for hitting Landry so hard because around now he could have been helping us. I feel like she’s just forgiven me, but it will last only until she dies alongside me, which, I figure, will be in only a few seconds. I hope
she can forgive me for that too. She aims the flashlight at Landry’s eyes. They’re red. He doesn’t look well at all.

  Cyris laughs again, then raises his gun, tracks the barrel up and down Landry’s body, and hovers it over his leg. He narrows the distance, resting the barrel on Landry’s right ankle.

  “Pick a limb, pick one, a limb, a limb.”

  Landry tries to pull his leg away, but Cyris stands on his foot, then repositions the gun so it touches the policeman’s head. Landry stops moving. The rain is pouring heavily down in our little neck of the woods and small droplets of mud splash onto Landry’s face. They look like chocolate tears. Cyris moves the gun a few inches away from Landry’s head and fires it into the ground.

  None of us are expecting the shot, except Cyris, so Cyris is the only one who doesn’t jump. The mouth of the cave seems to swallow a lot of it, but the sound is still enough to feel like my ears are going to start bleeding. Landry starts rolling around, the handcuffs making it difficult for him to push his hands against his ears. He can manage to cover only one ear. The other he pushes into the ground, but to his credit he doesn’t make any sound.

  But that’s all about to change. Cyris pumps the shotgun and pushes the barrel into Landry’s leg right behind the kneecap.

  “Wait,” I shout out, which is stupid because I don’t owe Landry anything, but at the same time I can’t stand here and watch him get taken apart.

  Cyris doesn’t wait. This time when he pulls the trigger, Landry starts screaming right away. The gunshot and his pain echo around us, the gunshot is high-pitched and slowly starts to fade, but the screaming doesn’t. The screaming sounds like it could go on forever. Landry tries to sit up, tries bringing his knee into his belly so he can curl his arms around his leg, but the leg won’t bend because the knee joint is a pile of raw nerves and slivers of bone. I can’t help it, but I stagger back, crouch over, and start to gag. Jo is doing the same thing.

  Landry’s concussion has become the least of his worries.

  His fate is the least of ours.

  Cyris says something, but I can’t hear. The rain steals away his words and my ears are ringing from the gunshot and, aside from that, Landry is still screaming, still pushing his hands against his wounded leg. I feel bad for him. Bad that he’s seen so much in his life and has now become victim to it. He’s become victim to his own anger, but it’s his anger that brought us all out here, so sure, I feel sorry for the guy-but I hate him even more than I feel sorry for him. His screams grate at my eardrums. I wish Cyris would just finish him off. He’s going to-there’s no way any of us is getting out of here alive-so the best we can hope for is a quick death. If anybody wants to be heard over Landry’s screams, they’re going to need to yell at the top of their lungs.

  Cyris seems to realize this and he walks over. I stop gagging. So does Jo.

  “Who’s next? Which one of you isn’t really real? Huh? I want to know.”

  God, he’s crazier than I thought. “Leave her out of it,” I shout.

  “Why? She’s the meat and potatoes,” Cyris says.

  He moves toward Landry, walking backward so he can keep his eyes on us.

  I look at Jo and she looks back. “I’m sorry,” I say. It doesn’t seem enough to offer her, but it’s all I have. I reach out for her hand. She takes it. Her hand is cold and it’s the first time we’ve held hands in a long time, not just six months, but longer than that.

  “I figured you would be,” she says. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry too. It doesn’t help, though, does it?”

  Cyris returns his attention to the detective. I take the flashlight from Jo and point it into the cave. We could attempt an escape through there, but soon the batteries would die and we would become lost, navigating our way through the darkness either deeper into the earth or simply in circles around it. Behind us is only a bank of rocks and then the river stretching away. Ahead of us one lunatic looking down at another lunatic. Further to the right is the same path we followed, but there’s no way we could run through there keeping ahead of the shotgun.

  It’s the river or nothing.

  Though it’s not really nothing. It’s the river, or get shot where we’re standing.

  Hell, chances are we get shot going for the river anyway. But it’s something.

  Landry’s movements have slowed down, and finally, thank God, his screams die off. He’s lying on his side, attempting to hold his wounded knee with blood-covered hands. He holds his palms against it, trying to push everything back together, trying to help it heal with a grim determination that is about two surgeons and a lot of medical instruments short of being any good. He looks over at us and in his agony I can see him pleading for help. I can’t help him. He has dug his own grave and I hate him for putting us in there with him. His face and clothes are saturated in blood. There’s so much the rain can’t even start to move it.

  Cyris points the shotgun at him and at the same time starts grinding his heel into the wounded knee. Landry’s eyes roll back in his head, but he keeps thrashing around, unable to pass out. I’m too afraid to move, too scared to take my eyes from this grisly display, too much of a coward to try and help. Jo’s grip on my hand tightens.

  I step back, taking Jo with me.

  Cyris looks over and yells something. It’s indistinguishable over the loud rain, so heavy now it almost feels like hail. He points the gun at us, his mind-reading skills on full display here. Though it’s not that great a trick because trying to run is the only option worth looking at. He steps over Landry toward us. We back away, getting closer to the river. We’re going to have to jump for it. We’re going to have to climb into the freezing cold water and do whatever we can to avoid rocks and drowning and pneumonia and gunshots. I don’t know if Jo has come up with the same plan. I know she hates water and I know she can’t swim. I also know she isn’t bulletproof. What she needs to do is choose one plan over the other, and really it can be simplified down to two choices: dying right now, or perhaps dying on our way into the water, or perhaps dying a minute or two down the line. Living is turning out to be a hell of a lot of work and the alternative is starting to look tempting. Giving up would sure be easier.

  Cyris is grinning because that’s what guys like him do. The gun sways slightly as the wind pushes at him. The shotgun means he doesn’t need to be accurate-he can fire in our general direction and still nail us. I can’t see any way that he won’t pull the trigger before we’re in the water. I look down at Landry. He’s starting to move, but barely. But he’s looking up at me. The look on his face has changed. He’s no longer wearing the look of a man who is desperate for help. In fact it’s the opposite. He’s wearing the face of a man who’s angry. His jaw is clenched. He stares at me, and then he nods. A single nod that conveys his apology and an instruction. Like Cyris, he knows what I’m planning.

  I nod back at him, knowing what it is he’s about to do.

  He’s about to try and repent.

  Cyris pumps the shotgun and we get ready to jump.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Well, fuck it. So this is the way it’s going to be. The cancer. . Christ, none of it even matters in the end. Coffin shopping and picking out a suit-it’s no longer his problem. This is the moment of truth. The moment where he gets to meet his maker and ask him the big question-what the fuck?

  The pain in Landry’s leg is so raw, so intense, that at this point he’s actually welcoming death. Can’t be worse than this. His throat is burning from all the screaming, it feels like he’s swallowed gasoline with a Zippo chaser. The gunfire has left a high-pitched whine in his ears, which has eaten through to the core of his brain and is now eating its way back out. He can feel his heart slowing down. He’s losing it.

  He doesn’t want to die. He’s made the biggest mistake of his life by coming out here tonight, and he’s going to pay for it in the biggest way possible. There is no going back. No do-overs. This is far from the justice he pictured hours ago, but in a way it’s jus
tice nonetheless. He came out here with the thought that he was doing humanity a service. All he was doing was making a mockery of everything he believed in.

  What a mistake.

  How can he have been so stupid?

  The cancer? The pills?

  No. That’s just a bullshit excuse. It was the anger. That’s what made him stupid. He’s angry at the city because the Christchurch he grew up in isn’t the same Christchurch he’s been living in for the last five or ten years, and it’s certainly a far cry from the Christchurch he’s going to die in. So yeah, he’s angry-he’s angry because he has to see the depravity others don’t have to see. He got to see the dirty mechanics of the world, and now he’s gotten caught up in the gears.

  He has wasted the last week of his life. He’s spent it dying when he should have focused on living. Of course none of that matters now, not out here, not in this shithole of a forest where years ago one of God’s assholes brought a woman out here to die, only to do it again a few years later.

  His eyes are filling with blood. At least that’s what he thinks is happening. Maybe it’s the blow to the head he took earlier. Maybe the fall. There are shapes moving in front of him, and these shapes turn as red as the landscape he sees them moving across. Everything is wet. The gunshot wound isn’t enough to kill him, but the blood loss is. Trained paramedics couldn’t save him now. There’s no hope. Not for him. Maybe for Feldman and the girl.