“Out of ammo,” she says.
“Pull down the seat. Should be a few clips in my duffel bag.” It has been a while since our last shots, so our pursuers are closing in. Trying to give them a harder target to hit, I swerve the car back and forth while trying to avoid the traffic. It may be very light for this time of day, but we still can’t afford to get into an accident. I may be possessed by a demon, but I’m still a mortal. Bullet wounds are still fatal.
She nods, pulls out the bag, and starts looking for the bullets.
“I need you to take the wheel.” I look over at Sara. One of us in the car isn’t pulling our weight, and we have to change that. Considering Nancy has the gun, and I have my powers, Sara is the odd one out. I feel bad for her, but there is no other way.
“I can’t do that, I never learned how to drive a stick.” I glance over and notice the tears flowing down her rosy cheeks.
“I can’t take care of our friends and drive at the same time. The highway is fairly straight, just keep the pedal floored and you don’t have to worry about the stick.” I kick the seat release back to get out of her way faster. This move needs to be near flawless to keep our rapidly decreasing lead. I’ve got to remember to put this on the list of things to work with her when I get the chance.
She nods and takes the wheel, putting her foot on the gas pedal as I slide back out of the seat. I’m almost in the back when she swerves the car and throws me into the door.
“Sorry!” she says, swerving hard the other way. Driving was never her high point, but we don’t have any other options.
Nancy suddenly screams. She’s hit. The stormtroopers managed to get lucky in Return of the Jedi too.
I look over at her. Blood is starting to collect on her shirt, right below her breast. Unless she got lucky and the bullet deflected off of a rib, we’re going to have to get her to a hospital fast.
I pull an old shirt out of my bag along with a few Vicodin I have stashed. I fold up the shirt and place it on the wound with a bit of pressure. “Hold that as hard as you can and take these.”
She nods and tries to hand me the gun. I look over at her and smile. “You keep that, Daddy always gave me the good toys.” The only thing I hope is that my toys are enough. If I am on solid ground I am able to stop bullets. In a car is a different story. Our only chance is if I can throw off the driver.
I look out the remnants of my back window. The thugs in the passenger seats must be reloading, because the bullets have stopped. This is the best chance I’m going to get.
I work my upper body through the window and point my hands at the car to my right. Lifting metal is usually easy for me as long as it doesn’t weigh a few of tons. I have no idea if I have enough power to make this work. If they used metal frames, like they used to, this trick would be much easier. Instead I have to focus harder to get through the fiberglass hood to work my push on the engine. The axle would be a better option, but I can’t seem to make it out.
Within moments I notice the front end of the Camaro shimmy.
Unless the driver is doing it, I got them.
I throw my hands to the right and watch the car drive into the median. Within seconds it explodes, sending a plume of flame three stories high. That was pretty impressive, if I say so myself. Now I get to see if I can do it again.
The other car speeds up, getting on the passenger side of the car. I point my hands at the car and try to focus on the engine again. There is a clear shot to the axle this time, but I figure that it will be able to push the car from this angle.
I catch a glimpse of metal on the passenger side of the car in time to duck back into the car before he starts shooting at us. I pull myself up, being careful not to put any extra pressure on Nancy’s chest. The last thing she needs is my two hundred pound frame laying on top of her.
To think about it, if my two hundred pound frame was laying on top of her to begin with, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.
I reach over and roll down the window. I could try to push the car with it up, but I’ve never tried using it through glass. All things considered, this isn’t the way I want to test it. I reach my hands out above the safety glass and start to concentrate on the engine. The driver looks over at us then turns the wheel, smashing his car into mine. The impact sends me on on top of Nancy, who rewards me by screaming into my ear.
I grab the gun and smash the window for a clear shot. The glass wasn’t going to provide us with enough cover to worry about and it was forcing me to have my arms at a really weird angle, so it had to go. The car is pretty much shot at this point, anyways.
I reach my hand forward and start to focus again. It starts to shimmy a little, but I don’t have enough grip on it to make a push. If I try to do it too soon, and it fails, I have to start the whole process all over again. That isn’t something that these guys are going to let me do. I only get one shot at this, so I need to make it count.
I notice the passenger lining up another shot so I have to make this quick. I push my hands forward, but the car holds steady.
Time’s up.
I close my eyes, waiting for the inevitable kill shot. The sound of a gunshot in my ear causes them to ring loudly.
In the Camaro, the driver’s head slumps over to the side, spraying blood onto the passenger. The car swerves sharply off of the side of the road and into the woods. I look over at Nancy in amazement, the gun still smoking in her hands.
“Looked like your magic needed a little help,” she says.
I nod and sit back in the seat. “You get your wish,” I said tapping Sara on the head.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m finally gonna get rid of this ole clunker.”
-5-
Sara does the smart thing by staying on the highway until we get deep into Nal’s territory. We can’t risk stopping anywhere close to the north side of town. There’s no way for us to know how far Duncan’s reach is at this point in the game.
She pulls into the emergency room entrance and brings the car to a stop. Lucky for us, she has that part of the equation down. She honks the horn while I get out of the car to open Nancy’s door.
It doesn’t take long for two nurses to come out with both a bed and a wheelchair. I guess they didn’t know what they were dealing with. Once they see Nancy, the one pushing the wheelchair rolls it out of the way and helps the other get Nancy into place.
“Gunshot wound,” I say knowing they were about to ask. They nod and push the bed into the EMT entrance leaving us to take the other door into the sick ward.
I hate hospitals. My wife said it was a guy thing, but I know plenty of guys who spent every available opportunity in one. Not the guys who you would expect either. It’s amazing that one guy can bungee jump, jarring his body into positions that it was never meant to be in, and come into work the following Monday without a single problem. But, another can throw out his back by kicking back in his recliner as he prepares for his normal weekend Netflix marathon.
I fall squarely in the first camp, although I try to avoid the scary shit. I always felt that if I rushed off to a doctor every time I so much as stubbed my toe, I would spend every waking moment in a hospital. Given how much they like to charge an hour just to have their assistants take your blood pressure, that wasn’t ever going to be something I could afford. Instead, I learned to survive on a steady diet of Ibuprofen and a large dose of ‘deal with it.’
I walk up to the nurses’ station and ask them to keep me informed about her condition. I know they won’t let me stay with her for now, because they still believe they need to follow the old HIPAA guidelines that should have went out the door the second the Rising hit. There were already sixty percent fewer people in the world to tell your health problems to and even fewer legitimate employers asking things they shouldn’t be. But, whatever, Nancy is in good hands now.
“You think they can patch her up?” Sara sits down, grabbing an old dusty copy of Women’s World off the ta
ble next to her.
“She’ll be fine, might need to fix her boob job though.” Getting shot in the chest does that when you sport a pair of double e’s. I sit down in a chair facing Sara. I would normally sit next to her, but I don’t want to watch the flow of patients any more than I have to. I cause so many nasty injuries that I try to avoid looking at them when I can.
“How long have you known Nancy?” She pokes her eyes just over the magazine at me. This isn’t a game I want to play, but something tells me it’s going to happen anyways.
“Three years. I started working for Nal a few months before. Civilization was just starting to get back to the new normal. He was having trust issues with some guys on the outer side of his territory, so he had me go out and make an example out of them.” He made me take their replacements out with me, just so they knew what was coming if they tried the same shit. That should have been their first sign to run. They must be doing OK, though. Nal hasn’t mentioned them since.
I grab a cup of coffee and sit back down. “Nancy was one of the first girls to work for Nal. She’s in charge of making sure the girls knew what’s expected.” I take a sip of my drink. “Hurting the girls is firmly in the list of shit I’m not willing to do for him.” Ever.
I can’t say that I haven’t hurt a few over the years, but that is more a byproduct of sharing a body with a demon than anything I’ve done on my own. I have no control in those times, so I don’t count them.
“Does the killing ever bother you?”
“Not really. Nal and I have a decent working arrangement. I only kill the guys who really deserve it. Normally just the pieces of shit that would have rotted in prison before the Rising.” Not saying he didn’t try to expand my horizons, but I think he knew better than to push the issue.
“Isn’t he the type of guy you would normally kill, though?” She sits up on the edge of her chair and looks me in the eyes. “I mean, isn’t he one of those guys who would have been in prison before?”
“He is, and he isn’t. Nal is different than the rest of his kind. He actually has respect for human life. The human life that doesn’t try to fuck him over, anyways. If Nancy ever needed anything, Nal would be the first to make sure she was taken care of.” He is like that with everyone who worked for him.
She must be content with my answers because goes back to reading her magazine. Taking the opportunity, I kick op on a neighboring chair and close my eyes for a few moments of shut-eye.
That’s about all I get before being woke up by two ambulance drivers rushing a patient inside, shouting about a half dozen codes, and calling for three different medicines that I’ve never heard of. And morphine. I know all about morphine.
I stand up as the smell of burnt hair hits my nose. I look around for the source of the smell, but I can’t seem to place it. “You smell that?”
She nods, not even bothering to lift her nose out of the magazine.
“I’m going to step outside to clear my head for a few.”
I shake my head and make for the door. I am greeted with the putrid smell of old cigarettes when it slides open. If my dislike of doctor bills was reason number one for hating hospitals, the smell of cigarette smoke is a close second. They have signs put up all over the place directed to the smoking areas, but they never seem to enforce it unless someone gets loud. Even then, it only lasts until they need another one.
Besides the smell, the air outside nice and cool. Though I’ll be firmly in the bitching about it camp in a few weeks when summer finally sets in. Late spring is probably my favorite time of year. It is too early to need to cut the grass every week, but too late to have to wake up early to warm up the car in the morning.
There aren’t a lot of cars around in the parking lot. I haven’t had to spend any time in a hospital since the Rising, but it still strikes me as odd. Before, you would have been lucky to find a parking spot closer than a quarter mile away. Now you could probably just park at the bottom of the circle and as long as an ambulance could fit, they wouldn’t give two shakes.
I walk down the sidewalk and pull out my phone. I try to call Nal but I get his voice mail, so I tell him about my trip up north and how I got Nancy out of there. I also let him know where she is so he can stop in and visit. Before I can put the phone back in my pocket it rings.
Sara.
“They have Nancy all stitched up and in a room now.”
“I’ll be right there.” I the phone in my pocket and make my way back inside the hospital.
I walk in the door and see Sara waiting by the counter for me. Nurse gives me directions to the room and opens the door for us.
Walking down the hallway, I can’t help but to peek in at the patients in their rooms. Call it a bad habit. Sometimes you can’t avoid looking at a train wreck sometimes. It was easy to turn my back to it in the lobby, but human nature takes over in here.
When we get to the room, Nancy is awake leaning back with her left arm in a sling and her chest bandaged up pretty tight. They must have wrapped it pretty recently since I don’t see blood seeping through the gauze.
“How you holding up?” I take a seat on the doctor’s stool next to the bed. I’ve had an infatuation with these stools since I was a kid. It is stupid when I think about it, but I still find myself wanting to spin around.
“With the Morphine, pretty damn good.” She smiles. The one thing I love about that girl is her ability to be cheerful, even when life decides to take a shit on her. I would be moping around trying to milk them for attention right about now.
“Sorry to rush this, but who was that guy I tried to run over earlier?” I hate to get down to business, but the longer it takes to get Duncan out of the picture, the harder it is going to be to do so. Good news is that the Morphine should help loosen her up.
“His name is Shawn. Duncan put him in charge of making sure we were doing our jobs.”
“Duncan isn’t the trusting type, I see.”
“Probably was a good thing. Half of the girls took off the first chance they had. The only ones that are left are the ones that knew Nal would send you to get us.” Looks like Nal has new people all around. It’s been a while since he went on a hiring spree without me, not that I’m complaining. That just means things are going good.
“Well, that wasn’t his initial plan. He lost contact with Jason and Mark a few weeks ago. He suspected that someone new came in town. I was up there to check. When I saw Shawn watching you and Lucy, I knew something was up.”
“Are you going to save the other girls? They are in the motel I was telling you to go to.” I wish she would have said that before, wouldn’t have had to pull the heroics on the highway. And my Caddie might still be in one piece.
“You know me.” And she does. I have to get them first. Duncan is going to have to die a few days behind schedule.
We spend the next few hours going over the logistics of the mission. Duncan has a half dozen men stationed at the motel. They apparently took over the whole operation up north. Women. Drugs. Food. All under their control now.
“How soon are you leaving?” She asks, having trouble keeping her eyes open.
“Now,” I stand up and kiss her on the forehead. “Get some rest. Nal is sending someone over to take care of you from here.” I start to walk out of the room, but stop at the door and turn around, “Thanks for the save earlier, in the car.”
“Guess we are finally even for once.” She smiles before she closes her eyes.
As we turn to leave, I notice a group of guys hanging out in the middle of the hallway. It wouldn’t draw my attention, but they happen to be blocking the exit. It takes a second longer than it should for me to register who the one is.
“Well, well. There’s the asshole right there.” Shawn points directly at me.
Sara and I do the first thing that comes to our minds.
We run.
-6-
Running through the hallways, I notice they are sparkling clean and a lot less crowded than they woul
d have been a few years ago. I have to remember to thank the big guy for that, if I ever manage to meet him.
Something tells me that I won’t get that chance.
I can feel Eunie stirring in my chest. Sometimes I think the fucker has a hard-on for blowing shit up. He could have taken over in the car, but nope. If I die, he has to find another host and they are getting harder to come by. Self-preservation is apparently an attractive trait in demon kind. I guess he never learned how to drive.
We come up to a split in the hallway, making one turn, and then another. Eventually, we duck off into a stairwell somewhere close to ICU. Fitting that I chose here to make my stand.
“Run down the hall to the emergency exit to the left.” I point at the convenient fire escape sign posted in front of us. “Shit is about to get nasty here and I can’t promise your safety if you are anywhere near me.”
“But they’ll kill you,” she wraps her arms around me tightly and looks me in the eyes.
“I’ll be fine. I have a few tricks up my sleeve.” I bend over and give her kiss. Nothing like facing death to make a person forget about some silly stripper panties.
“Go!” I push her down the hallway and turn around to face Shawn and his friends. Shawn is a lot bigger in person than he looked behind the mailbox. It wouldn’t be a huge problem, but his two goons are even bigger than he is. I picked one hell of a day to play that small kid on the playground.
“You fellas look lost. Not every day someone follows us on our mid evening jog through the hospital.”
“Ahh, a smart ass.” Shawn cracks his knuckles. “Why did you do that to Randy?”
“Can’t say I’ve met Randy. Was he that nasty fucker that smelled like burnt hair earlier?”
That comment must have crossed a line, because the two goons charge up to tackle me. I do some matador shit and manage to dodge both of them. It’s a damn shame I didn’t notice Shawn lagging behind. He crashes into my back and takes me to the floor.
Demontouched: The Demontouched Saga (Book 1) Page 3
