The only movement she saw was the large screen television playing silently to an audience of vacant chairs. And behind the counter? No movement there either, only two heads slumped over until the one nearest slowly begins to turn.
The guard, prompted by the doors banging open, and perhaps having glimpsed a wheelchair approaching at high speed, and perhaps having heard the echoes of following footfalls, ever so slowly turns his head toward them as she struggles to scream out a warning.
“Help! Help us! Guns! Coming!”
First the guard who had turned her way stands, then the other stands. Their uniforms are identical, symbols of order and harmony and safety, but they react much too slowly. They are young and have that terrible look of innocence on their faces that demands proof they are not being tricked by elders. When no guns appear she screams at them again.
“Guns! Can’t you hear? Guns!”
She steers the wheelchair to circle the reception island, to put the island between them and the doorway. She can hear the doors open ing. She can see, above the counter, that one guard bends slightly while looking at the doorway, and the other guard simply stands there, alternately glancing to her and to the doorway, looking like a boy who has done something wrong and is about to be caught.
She feels movement beneath her and sees Steve’s left hand lift for ward, his hand holding his gun. His gun!
She stabs her foot to the floor to turn the chair fully around so Steve can point the gun at their pursuers.
The counter blocks her view of the doorway. She cannot see Max and Dino but sees the guard who had bent over stand back up and look toward the footsteps and aim a pistol.
But the guard moves too slowly and a shot drives him against his partner who stumbles behind him and gives off a whimper.
Dull thud of a shot. Silencers! And now another shot that hits the other guard before the first disappears behind the counter. Both guards down and all she can see is the counter and all she can hear is a man’s voice whispering harshly.
Dino’s voice. “Never mind! Just get the fuck down here! Guards are out! Get the keys and lock up the front! We’ll go out the back!” Then it is quiet.
Dino and Max are hidden on the far side of the reception island. They want them alive. They still want them alive! Not telling what they know has saved them. But for how long?
When she hears rustling from both sides, she realizes they are cir cling the reception island. They come upon them so quickly there is no time to react.
A shot from one side of the island. Steve grunts and his arm whips across her, this followed by the muted thud of another shot from the other side of the island. Steve’s gun skitters across the tile floor and onto the carpeted area where the television with the volume turned down plays to empty chairs. She looks down and sees Steve’s bleeding left arm. His good arm!
Max and Dino appear before them. But it is not Max and Dino. These are monsters with noses and hair and ears flattened and dark as if seared off in a terrible fire.
No, not a fire. They are wearing masks! They are wearing women’s stockings for masks! The cameras! They are aware of the cameras and they are wearing masks!
They both carry silenced pistols with long barrels. One of them looks over the counter, as if looking down into hell, then carefully lifts his gun over the counter, casually takes aim and fires another shot.
The other comes toward them, kicking out violently, hitting her leg so that she screams. But she forces the scream to end despite the pain. They are wearing masks. They do not want to be seen. They do not speak. Except for whispers when they were behind the counter, they do not want to be heard. But if someone else speaks, if she speaks …
“I’ll tell!” she manages to get out. “Listen, Max, I’ll tell now because …”
But this is all she can get out before he hits her across the face with his gun.
Everything happens very fast then, a nightmare rushing to its con clusion. She hears the muted thud of another shot from one of their guns and opens one eye to see a man in a gray housekeeping staff uni form fall back against a Staff-Only doorway next to the elevators. She is aware of Steve struggling beneath her, trying to get up and trying to talk. She is aware that he has been hit. She can tell by the way his attempts at speech come out in moans of anger and frustration. She is aware of being lifted from Steve’s lap and being put into another wheelchair. She is aware of a tearing sound and tape being put on her arms and legs. She is aware of being taped to the wheelchair, then being wheeled rapidly and seeing through one barely open eye that Steve is being wheeled ahead of her.
A voice says, “She was gonna talk. Maybe you should’ve let her.”
They go back the way they came, back through the same double doors, this time waiting for the doors to open inward before being pushed through and into the connecting hallway. A distant voice echoes in the connecting hallway, apparently the sound of a television turned up loud. Then there is another voice. An angry horrifying voice that drowns out all the other sounds.
“Yeah, she’ll fuckin’ talk all right! But not here! Not in this fuck in’ place! She talks here, she gives us shit ‘cause she thinks we’ll leave ‘em! Not here in this hell hole! This is fuckin’ war now!”
Jan was gone, removed from him. They had taken away the only part of him worth anything, the part of him necessary for life, the part of him that made life worth the struggle.
When he opened his eyes he saw a hallway moving toward him so rapidly he had a sensation of falling. The hallway was a vertical shaft and he was falling through it. As he fell, a voice shouted, then loud music came down the hallway. There was someone in the hallway now, and if someone was standing there, then this was not a dream of falling.
The woman stood perfectly still as he sped in her direction, pro pelled from behind. At first he thought the woman standing in the hallway might be Jan. But this woman’s hair was darker than Jan’s, and when he got closer he recognized her uniform.
She stood in front of a nurses’ station centered in a widening of the hallway. Her arms were down and he could see her hands outstretched behind her on the vertical front of the counter surrounding the nurses’ station. At first he thought she had an angry look on her face, a wid ening of the eyes, tenseness in the muscles of her neck. A nurse angry because one of the nursing home residents has turned up the volume on a television set. But as he got closer he could see that the look on the nurse’s face was not one of anger, but one of intense fear.
As if triggered by the fear so obvious in the face of the nurse, he became aware of the pain on the left side of his face, and of the pain in his left arm. And feeling this pain, he suddenly knew the recent past.
He and Jan in the wheelchair trying to escape, entering the lobby and screaming for help, although now he could not remember if he had screamed at the guards to get their guns, or if Jan had screamed at them. And then the guards moving slowly, hesitating, one of them reaching somewhere beneath the counter. Whether the guard who had bent for something had retrieved a gun or not mattered little. The two men were upon the guards before they could react, killing both within the confines of their island in the center of the lobby. After that came the shot to his arm, then a violent blow that sent Jan tum bling off the side of the wheelchair. The violent blow just after Jan had called one of the men by name. Max … Max Lamberti. After that, there was the blow to the side of his face that knocked him out.
Shortly after realizing he was being wheeled rapidly down the hall way in his wheelchair, shortly after reconstructing the recent past, he saw movement, something dark and tubular to the right of his head.
There was a muffled explosion at his ear. This followed by a scream. When he opened his eyes that had shut in response to the ex plosion, he saw a discharge of blood on the nurse’s uniform. The nurse clasped her chest, rebounding off the counter and falling forward.
The smell of gunpowder and another scream as his wheelchair swerved around the nurses’ station. But t
his scream was not that of the nurse, and as he turned he realized Jan was in another wheelchair. Jan’s face was bleeding, both he and Jan were being pushed by the two men in stockinged faces, and the men had shot the nurse without hesi tation even though she posed no threat to them except that she had seen them.
When he tried to move his left arm—his good arm—to swing back and strike out at the one pushing his wheelchair, intense pain shot through his shoulder. He had been shot in his good arm! His gun was gone and he had been shot! Although he was able to grip and re-grip his left hand, try as he might, he could not raise his arm.
He was also unable to move his left leg, and when he looked down he saw that the wheelchair footrests were down and in place and that both his ankles were taped to the footrests with duct tape. When he glanced back at Jan he could see her ankles and her wrists were taped to her wheelchair. And now, when he looked back to his arms, he saw both his forearms taped to the arms of the wheelchair. He had been unable to lift his left arm, not because of the wound but because of the tape. And he had been unable to lift his right arm, not because of its weakness from the stroke, but because the arm was bound to the arm of the chair.
As the wheelchair rolled quickly down the hallway, he twisted back and forth, making the chair wobble, and at the same time mak ing his forearms pivot, twisting the duct tape. As he did this, a low growl came from deep inside, an intense anger from nowhere and everywhere. And with this anger came a feeling that his past, Jan’s past, all the pasts of all civilized human beings was tied up in a single knot of anger that could explode and blow all the bastards he’d ever known to hell!
All the bastards he’d ever known!
Every goddamn bastard who ever leveled a gun at him!
Every goddamn bastard who ever threatened an innocent!
Every goddamn bastard who ever walked into a store and, for a few bucks from the till, shot a young woman. A girl really. Just out of school. A degree in Pharmacy. Cleveland. A girl he was to marry. A girl named Sue. A girl with the same name as So-long Sue.
Once past the nurses’ station, he saw So-long Sue halfway down the hallway. She emerged from behind one of the tall stainless steel food carts parked on the left. The television that had been turned up earlier was turned down and there was Sue caterpillar-walking out from behind the food cart, glancing quickly at him, then disappearing into a resident room.
Sue! The name dug into his soul. He had lost Sue. He had not been there years earlier when another man with a gun entered the drugstore, demanded money and …
He had not been there! But he was here! They were taking Jan! They were going to kill Jan! He was here! But he could do nothing!
He twisted more violently in the chair, causing it to rock back and forth. He stared at the tape on his right forearm, watching it twist and stretch. His bad arm since his stroke. The stroke that had taken away so much. The bastard stroke he had fought all these months. No! Not a bad arm! Not a bad arm at all, just a fucked-up signal!
He stared at his arm and at the tape twisting back and forth. He clenched and unclenched the fist of his bad hand. Yes! It was a bad hand all right. Bad to the fucking bone!
Ahead. Ahead he could see a head! Crazy words mixing it up in his noggin. Couple of crazies, Marjorie used to say.
Gray hair. Crazy smile. Sue. Sue standing inside the doorway she had caterpillar-walked into moments earlier, and now if he doesn’t do something they’ll shoot her, too.
When he lunged to the side, flinging out his right elbow and pushing the weight of his upper body against it, the tape at his wrist busted and at the same time he saw Sue casually step into the hall way, face them, close her eyes in a swoon, and faint dead away directly across their path, her outstretched arms crashing against the food cart parked there.
His wheelchair stopped so suddenly he nearly fell forward out of it. But the tape on his wounded left arm had not been broken and he was held in the chair, the arm feeling as though it had been torn in two.
The footrests on his chair pressed into Sue’s prone body as the man who had been pushing the chair ran forward, tucked his pistol into his belt and bent to clear Sue out of the way. The bastard grabbed Sue by the ankles and pulled her toward the room she had come out of. But Sue’s hands firmly gripped the rungs on the lower shelf of the tall food cart.
Sue’s eyes were open, her mouth held in a tight grimace as she hung onto the cart with all her strength.
Now was the time, the only time, the chosen time, the time granted. Such a short time, he thought, as the food cart, with Sue hanging onto it, began to roll into the center of the hallway, opening a path.
The man’s attention was on Sue and his gun was tucked into his belt. Steve knew there was another man and that one of the men was Max Lamberti. But what did it matter who these men were? What mattered was that this was the only opportunity given and he had to take it.
He concentrated, trying to send signals to his right hand. Damn it! If you can’t get anything from the left side of this fucking head, then take instructions from the right side!
The hand moved. He could see it. Arm down. Lower. Cool touch of the wheelchair’s push rim. Grip. Grip, goddamn it!
He gripped, harder than he had gripped anything in his life. He pushed, harder than he had ever pushed in his life. The chair lunged toward the man pulling Sue across the hallway, catching the bastard at the back of one knee and sending him over.
A man’s voice from behind. “Max!”
A scream from Jan. “Steve!”
He turned. Arm up, swinging out, making contact with the other arm that was coming down, gun in hand.
He was turned in the chair when the blow came down. His right arm held high to meet the blow acted as a lever and he went over. But so did the man who had tried to hit him from behind. The upturned wheelchair entangled the man’s legs and his follow-through had done the rest.
Something solid and thick hit the tile floor a moment before his shoulder hit the floor. The gun! The gun down and bouncing away! He tried to kick out at it, but the capsized wheelchair was still taped to him at the ankles. Then the right arm that did not seem to be long to him—had not belonged to him for months—lunged out and trapped the gun between the chair and Sue’s body. In another instant he curled up, going into a fetal position that put his right hand nearer the gun. In this new position he could not see the gun, but he could feel it. He could feel it!
Metal warmed by a killer’s hand. Killer’s blood pumping through killer’s muscles and killer’s brain cells.
He had succeeded in knocking over Max Lamberti with his wheel chair, had succeeded in disarming the man who had tried to hit him. But Max recovered quickly, crawling to him and gripping his neck, pulling at him just as Steve got hold of the gun that had fallen.
The face, though covered by stocking mesh, was obviously that of Max Lamberti. Max spit “Fucker!” at him. Steve twisted his body and came around with the gun, praying to God his finger was on the trigger and praying to God he could squeeze the trigger hard enough to …
He shot Max in the gut. Max arched from him and fell across Sue, holding onto his gut with both hands. There were screams. Jan and Sue screaming. But Jan’s screams making sense.
“The other!”
Steve twisted, the chair flopping with him, and was about to fire in the general direction of running footsteps. But he waited a fraction of a second, long enough to aim, long enough to home in on the other killer and do damage. He hit a shoulder and heard a grunt.
The injured killer continued running down the hallway, right shoulder slumped, gun transferred to his left hand. But then the killer stopped, turned, stooped, and fired three rounds.
One bullet ricocheted on the floor and hit the downed Max in the leg, making him grunt and pushing his body against Sue who had her eyes open wide and actually seemed to be smiling.
The killer running down the hallway ducked toward a doorway, about to lunge inside for cover. But something stopped hi
m.
An old man appeared in the doorway and faced the killer. The old man wore a white shirt, but was naked from the waist down. The old man was skeletal, his skin luminescent in the bright overhead lights. The old man had dark eyebrows and his head seemed huge for his body like a concentration camp visage from a black and white film. The old man smiled at the killer and held out a hand.
For a second the killer paused, aiming his gun at the old man. Then the killer turned and looked back down the hallway where Steve aimed at him, then he looked back to the old man just in time to see the old man smiling a toothless smile as he reached out, placing his hand on the killer’s shoulder.
The killer shoved the old man back into the room from which he’d emerged, turned once more to look down the hall, then ran.
Time. Short segments of time that affect the entire future. The future of one or two people, or perhaps even the future of hundreds or thousands. The ointment ruined by the fly in it. The secret com ing back to kill Marjorie and her son, trying to kill Jan, killing the guards and the nurse. A secret like that better off abandoned, better off dead.
The signals to Steve’s right hand crashed about for a moment, but finally the hand swung over and obeyed, using Sue’s body as a firing platform.
“I’m going to shoot,” he heard himself say in a quiet voice.
“Go right ahead,” said Sue.
A brain bullet was out of the question. He leveled the gun at the killer’s back and, just before the killer rounded the corner at the end of the hallway, a signal—squeezed from his very soul, squeezed from the moment he found out his fiancee in Cleveland had been murdered, squeezed from the moment he found out Jan had been kidnapped— made it to the hand and the hand clenched tight and the finger on the trigger squeezed and the gun fired, sending the killer into a headlong skid that crashed his skull against the far wall.
A smiling face. So-long Sue. A smiling face and a tangle of arms and legs amid upturned wheelchairs and duct tape.
Jan’s wheelchair had tipped away from him and he could not see her face. He dropped the gun and pulled himself along to her up ended chair.
Final Stroke Page 43
