Galaxia

by Kevin McLaughlin

  Bronson chided himself for doing it, but maintained a laser-focused stare on her ass during her entire walk, his eyes still focused on the height of the door where her ass had been before the door closed and it disappeared.

  Looking at cute young asses is what got you into this spot in the first place, he reminded himself.

  Thoughts of the sweet young ass his eyes had followed on that fateful night in Orlando, of how that had led to the rape and slaughter of his wife and daughter, and of his own immediate and swift revenge on the men responsible and the mess that followed eventually brought him out of the lingering stare in sync with the door opening again.

  A broad-shouldered Sergeant entered, strode directly to the single chair at the end of the room and sat in it. Although it wouldn’t be accurate to describe what he did as sitting. It was more that he dominated the chair, his large frame easily filling the space on the other side of the table as if he might still be standing over it. His head rotating ever so slowly, his eyes met each candidate’s individually, their beady stare penetrating into each one for no less than a minute each.

  Bronson couldn’t help seeing the parallel to the way he surveyed the room and the candidates to the way that Arnold Schwarzenegger as the original 1980s Terminator scanned an area looking for his prey.

  When he got to Bronson, he felt the man’s eyes bore straight into him, making him feel like he could see the mistake, the foolish single act of infidelity that eventually led to this day, this fate. Of course, the sergeant would have his entire history in a folder somewhere, would have read the entire sordid story of this police officer’s fall. Bronson Grace’s Fall from Grace, as one of the many articles about him had put it while outlining the story of an eighteen year police officer whose record was decorated with a Medal of Honor had been stripped of his shield and was festering in a jail cell waiting for his trial after engaging in an act of brutal vigilante revenge. But, Bronson knew, even without having those files, DeBakey’s stare would have cut right through to it. When he was being eyed by the large man’s penetrating glare, it was as if he was under microscopic scrutiny, that there was nothing DeBakey couldn’t know about him just from looking.

  When his one on one silent surveillance ended, Sergeant DeBakey sat quietly for several moments longer, casting a look over the group that immediately took them all in, as if they were a single entity. None of the six men seated across the long table from him even dared to clear their throats in the uncomfortable silence.

  Without further movement or gesture, DeBakey stood up, uttered his quick statement about how many might be left standing, wished them luck, then turned and stalked out of the room.

  Bronson heard him bark a short quick order as the door was closing behind him.

  “Begin!”

  And begin it did.

  A second-long low buzz filled the room. Then the wall Bronson thought was a white-board disappeared, dropping into the floor in a split second at the same time as the air above Bronson’s head cracked and snapped, and, then, a split second later he heard multiple gunshots ring out — though the rifles firing were obviously muffled by the sound of the multiple blasts still exploded in painfully loud echoes through the room.

  Bronson knew the shots weren’t meant to be direct hits - otherwise, by the time everyone heard them, they would have already been shot.

  No, the shots had gone high, aimed, most likely from mounted semi-automatic rifles aimed directly over their heads. The first shot, at least, was meant to instill shock and fright into the group, designed to put everybody off guard for the next round of attack.

  “Cripes!” the guy to the far left yelled out just as the bald guy to Bronson’s immediate left jumped to his feet. Bronson saw, out of the corner of his eye, the man farthest to the right leap up in the same manner. The others had remained seated and began the process of slipping off their seats and down onto the floor.

  “Down!” Bronson called, pushing the seat he was on back out of the way with a quick flick of his right leg as he sank into a crouching position. As he descended, he grabbed the pant leg of the white jump suit of the guy beside him with his left hand and pulled the man down just as the second round of shots fired.

  The guy on the far right wasn’t so lucky. Bronson saw his neck snap back as he took a round to the head then crumpled to the floor.

  “Fuck!” someone to Bronson’s right shouted.

  Bronson glanced back to the wall behind him at the vertical pair of bullet holes immediately behind him. There was about a twelve-inch vertical gap between each one. As he looked, a third hole simultaneously appeared, again a foot below it, followed, quickly, by the blast of the rifles.

  The gunshots were tracking down. And, according to his best quick guess, they were about five seconds apart each.

  “The next one’s coming low,” Bronson shouted. “Below the table.” He then flattened himself on the floor an instant before the next round came. The two guys to his immediate left also pressed themselves low to the floor. The man next to the one on the far right who had been taken out in the second round of gunfire did the opposite and went high, diving onto the tabletop.

  The guy to Bronson’s immediate right didn’t move in time and let out a low grunt as the bullet went into the top of his left shoulder. His legs and arms gave out underneath him and he screamed out in pain as he laid flat on the floor.

  Bronson knew there was no ducking under the next round, that it would be coming just a couple of inches above floor level, so he pushed up to a crouched position, planning on leaping onto the top of the table. The two guys to his left were a split second quicker, had just done what he’d planned and there wasn’t any space. He glanced back at the parallel lines of bullet holes in the wall as he stood, then threw himself up against the wall in the vertical gap between the two parallel lines of bullet holes.

  The fourth round came when and where expected. Bronson and the three guys sprawled on the tabletop were all fine. The guy on the floor, however, was hit again, and this time his screaming stopped.

  The white polished wall that had dropped just before the gunfire started rolled back up, sealing the entire length of that wall closed again, and a low buzz, a long, full second one like the once that had been a prelude to the gunfire, echoed through the room.

  “Cripes,” the guy on the table on the far left muttered.

  The man to Bronson’s left, the bald guy he had pulled down out of the path of the second bullet round hopped down off the table and thrust his hand out. “Thanks,”

  Bronson took the proffered hand, pumped it once quickly before letting go. “Welcome.”

  “I’m Rex,”

  “Bronson.”

  “Is it over?” Rex asked.

  “Not likely,” the man on the far right, the first to have jumped onto the table, said as he hopped back onto the floor. His steel blue eyes surveyed the other three men. “There’ll be more.”

  “So what do you figure is next?” Rex asked as the man quickly surveyed the two dead bodies on the floor on either side of him.

  “The first round tested quick reflexes. The second is most likely something different.”

  “You’ve been through this before?” Bronson asked.

  “I used to design tests something like this for these special assignments,” the man said. “The name’s Tim.”

  “Okay then, Tim,” Bronson said. “What’s the next round?”

  “I’m guessing we’re in it,” Tim said. “Coming in here, we’re all dressed exactly the same; we weren’t given a chance to speak a single word to one another, and we just watched one third of our group get cut down. It’s shocking, but none of us knew each other. This round is all psych. We get to learn a little about each other; at the very least each other’s names and other bits. Then, when the next attack comes, it’s that much more difficult on those who are left. Survival guilt.”

  Bronson thought about the survival guilt that had plagued most of his waking mind ever since Pat
ricia and Sophie were taken from him. He had slipped away after his wife and daughter were asleep to rendezvous with the cocktail waitress at the hotel bar at the resort where he and his family were staying. He had never done anything like that before, but there’d been something about the way the two had flirted repeatedly during dinner, and a dark, never-before-experienced desire had burned in his loins after, when he’d been returning from the men’s room, she met him in the short dark hallway, ground her tight little ass against his groin and said she got off at two in the morning if he wanted to meet for some hot action. It had been while he was out fucking Maria when their room had been broken into, Bronson’s wife Patricia and fifteen-year-old daughter Sophie had been raped and slaughtered while everything except Bronson’s wallet had been stolen.

  As he had laid in his prison cell, every time he closed his eyes Bronson kept seeing his wife’s peaceful sleeping face as he had seen it before slipping away with the waitress Maria. “I’m so sorry, Patricia,” he would whisper over and over until he finally fell asleep. And every day when he woke, his first thought was to go and check on his daughter, the desire to watch her sleeping like he’d had every single morning of her life when Sophie was a young child.

  The guy on the far left, the one Bronson had assigned the nickname of Cripes in his head, broke off from the group and ran to the door they had entered through.

  “It’s locked!” he shouted, then ran down to the other side of the room and tried the door that the pretty young assistant and Sergeant DeBakey had both used last. “This one’s locked, too.”

  “Captain Obvious,” Rex muttered, and Bronson shared a quick, knowing look with him.

  “What about the window?” Bronson asked Tim. “Re-enforced glass?”

  “Most likely,” Tim said, and seemed about to say something more when a quick short buzz interrupted him, then a panel in the wall across from the window popped open and a four-foot-wide drawer slowly slid out as if on a quiet hydraulic. The drawer was deep, filled with a black foam cushion and appeared to hold six handguns, arrayed in the foam in the same semi-circle their chairs had been in.

  “Guns,” Cripes said. Having just tried the door on the far side of the room, he was closest to the drawer. He reached in, grabbing for the closet gun to where he stood. “Shit!” he yelled out, bringing his hand back as if he had been shocked. “Don’t touch ‘em. They’re electrified.”

  Rex walked over to the open drawer and looked in, seeming to contemplate the layout.

  “Don’t,” Cripes said, massaging his right hand with his left. “They’re booby-trapped.”

  Rex looked back at Bronson and Tim then reached in, wrapping his hand around the pistol grip and pulled it out of the foam. “Six shooter,” he said, holding up the Smith and Wesson Model 36 revolver.

  “What the hell?” Cripes said, as Bronson stepped forward and surveyed the spread of guns, noticing that Rex had successfully pulled out the gun corresponding with the seat he’d be in. Bronson reached for the third gun from left, matching the location of the chair he’d been in.

  Tim stepped up beside Bronson, pointed at the gun on the far left and said to Cripes. “You want that one.”

  Cripes hesitated, watching Tim pick up the same gun he had tried to pick up, but for which he had been shocked. “I’ll be damned,” Cripes said, seeming to finally understand what was going on. He reached to the far side of the drawer and picked up the gun on the far left side. There was no corresponding shock this time.

  The four men stood with the guns in their hands and silently fondled them, each seeming to exude a relieved sense of power. Bronson guessed, based on the way the others held their weapons, that they had some experience handling firearms. He figured Tim was military, based on his knowledge of this type of test, and hadn’t decided if Rex and Cripes were ex-cops, like himself, or military.

  “So we’re armed,” Rex said, looking at Tim. “What are we supposed to do? Shoot each other?”

  “It could come to that,” Tim said, and Bronson thought back to the concept of two men left standing. Is that what they wanted? For the men to decide, at a certain point, to take one another out? Would it be just the last one or two men left standing who ended up passing the test?

  “Except,” Rex muttered, popping the cylinder open and showing the others the chambers, most of which were clear. “There’s only one bullet.”

  As Bronson thumbed the cylinder release on his own revolver to confirm the same was true with his own weapon, the long buzz sounded again.

  Following the buzz, a low hissing sounded, coming from multiple locations in the room.

  Cripes pointed towards the closest corner, at the thick white steam coming out. Jets of a cloudy mist were shooting into the room from all four of the corners.

  “Gas,” Bronson said, and immediately tucked his chin down to his chest while lifting the front of his jump suit over his nose and mouth.

  Rex walked over to the door they had entered, pointing his gun at the spot he figured was where the locking latch might be. “I don’t know,” he muttered. “I’ve only got one shot.”

  Tim slipped over to stand in front of the window, peering out.

  “We’re about fifty stories up,” he said, looking down. “But there seems to be a ledge. Maybe six inches wide.”

  Bronson felt his eyes starting to burn from the substance filling the room. It was odorless, and the stinging reminded him of the effects of tear gas. But there were many other odorless highly toxic nerve agents these white clouds could be.

  “Stand back!” Cripes called out. “I’m going to shoot the window.”

  Tim stepped back and Cripes fired his weapon. The blast was louder than the previously fired rifle shots, which had, at least, been suppressed.

  The window spider-webbed from the spot the bullet entered, but the glass held.

  “Dammit!” Cripes yelled.

  Tim lifted his gun, aimed and fired. The blast echoed through the room and the bullet lodged in a spot just a couple of inches to the right of the spot Cripes had shot. A second series of cracks snaked out from that spot.

  Bronson lifted his own weapon, took aim at the window . . .

  . . . and was greeted with the vision of the waitress, Maria, at the end of the last pistol he had fired.

  She’d been in on the whole thing; the tryst had been part of ensuring he was out of the hotel room so that her partners in crime could rob the place without him being there. Only, this time, they’d gone further, had decided to rape and slash the throats of the two female victims. Bronson had tracked them down within six hours of finding his beloved family murdered, and he killed the two men in cold blood. He’d been surprised to find Maria there, and paused, just a moment, to listen to her beg for her life, crying out that they weren’t supposed to kill, only to rob.

  She didn’t even know about the rape, Bronson recalled her saying, just before he pulled the trigger that committed a bullet into the middle of the hot young waitress’ forehead a half inch below her pretty black bangs. The same forehead he had gently kissed less just hours earlier.

  A loud coughing fit from behind him immediately snapped Bronson out of the memory of shooting Maria. He chastised himself yet again as he double-checked his aim and pulled the trigger.

  The third time was the charm. The bullet punched through the glass, finishing off the job that the first two shots had started. Rex stepped forward, holding one of the vinyl and metal chairs they’d been sitting on closed and sweeping it through the pane, breaking off the remaining pieces of glass left on the sides and lower edge.

  The open window might introduce enough of a fresh airflow to keep the gas that had been pumping into the room from overcoming them, but it seemed as if the jets pushed the substances out even faster after the glass had been shattered.

  Tim was the first one out the window. Bronson watched him step out and onto the ledge below while reaching above to grasp what must have been a small outcropping somewhere above the window.
The wind rippled at his jump suit as he moved to his right.

  “There’s a ladder leading to the roof,” Tim shouted before disappearing beyond the window.

  Bronson, who was the next closest to the window, slipped the pistol into the front pocket of his jumpsuit and stepped out, feeling bits of glass on the ledge crunching beneath the military issued boot he was wearing. He did his best not to look down, trying to block the life-long fear of heights from his mind as he reached up for the tiny decorative brick outcropping directly above the window. There was just enough space there to get about a quarter inch of his fingers into.

  His eyes were still watering from the burning of the gas which he figured must have been tear gas, or some similar lachrymatory agent. Though he was clinging on a skyscraper ledge by the tips of his fingers, it felt good to be sucking in the cold fresh air.

  Bronson shuffled to his right, relieved to see the metal ladder bolted to the side of the building was less than a dozen feet away while at the same time feeling as if it were an airport runway distance he needed to navigate.

  He heard someone else step onto the ledge, coughing and hacking as they moved out into the fresh air. He didn’t look back, kept shuffling slowly across, each inch that he moved closed to the ladder a momentous achievement. In his peripheral vision, Tim had disappeared so far up the ladder that he was no longer visible. That brought Bronson a renewed sense of disorientation. Enough that he had to pause and take a deep breath before moving on.

  As he started to slide forward again, a sudden blast of wind pulled at Bronson. It felt as if someone had wrapped an arm around him from behind and pulled back.

  He lost the grip that the tips of his fingers had on the brickwork above and his right foot slipped off the ledge. He pitched to the side, letting out a yelp of surprise. Desperate, he tried to use the momentum of his fall and pushed off with his left foot, shooting as far to his right as he could as he descended.

  Half a story down, the trajectory he’d sent himself on paid off, and he was close enough to grasp the rungs of the metal ladder.