by JR Carroll
With bullets flying all around him, Jimmy tumbled backwards, down the stairs. The gun was still in his hand. Instinctively, but to no good effect, he fired it two more times into the ceiling as he fell.
His back hit the staircase with a force that sent shockwaves of pain throughout his body. Then he rolled down the stairs, hitting his head, kneecaps, hips, elbows, hands—everything—on each hardwood step and on the curved, cast-iron banister as he tumbled to the bottom.
All he saw was a spinning world, interspersed with starbursts of white light that flashed through his brain.
The .45 skittered from his grip. It slid across the timber floor and bounced off the edge of the upside-down table.
Lying at the foot of the staircase, Jimmy was a tangled mess of arms and legs. There was still mayhem going on upstairs, but that wasn’t part of his world any more.
He had to get to his feet. But every part of him hurt, even if he didn’t move. When he did, it was off the Richter scale.
He wondered how many broken bones he had.
The back of his head hurt so bad, he was sure he’d cracked his skull. He gritted his teeth, galvanising for the supreme effort. Stay here and you die.
He rolled over, got to one knee. Then he hauled himself halfway up.
Bolts of pain shot through him, from head to foot.
As he staggered towards the .45, he saw, through the mist of his wet eyes, Christo enter the house. He had a hand on his neck, where Jimmy had hit him. He immediately saw Jimmy; spotted the gun he was after.
They locked eyes.
Christo sized up his position. They were three paces apart; the gun was closer to Christo than it was to Jimmy. Christo made his move, stepping past the table and grabbing the gun.
Jimmy took a run at him, ignoring the various agonies that racked his body. The second he made contact with Christo, Jimmy knew he was a cooked goose.
The gun went off, three times, rapid fire, into Jimmy’s chest.
He remained on his feet, forcing his weight onto Christo, pushing the younger man back towards the doorway. In reality Jimmy was being supported by him, and he clung to his body, trying to drag him down.
But he lost his grip and dropped next to the table, flat on his stomach. The smoking gun was still in Christo’s hand. Christo noticed it was blood-spattered.
A smile curled his lips on one side of his face. He turned towards the staircase. Upstairs, one hell of a dust-up was going on.
But then he realised something was very wrong. There was a knife in his stomach, buried to the hilt. He hadn’t felt it at all.
Puzzled, Christo touched the curved, bone handle. How the fuck …? Blood streamed down from the wound, running down over his jeans onto the floor. He staggered towards the staircase. Dimly, in his confused mind, he thought if he could make it to the top, someone would help him.
He held onto the gun and grabbed the knife handle with his left hand. He needed to get it out, stem the flow of blood somehow. Once he’d stopped the bleeding, he would be OK.
But soon as he exerted pressure on the handle, attempting to withdraw it, he felt a pain so horrendous he could not bear it, even for a fraction of one second. He screamed.
Christo couldn’t know that the blade was serrated, that it could not be withdrawn from his flesh without inflicting massive tissue damage and internal trauma, enough to kill him from the shock alone. His heart would simply give up the ghost.
At the foot of the staircase, he went down on one knee. His heart raced erratically—he could feel it pumping at a million miles an hour.
His dark blood pooled on the floor.
Jesus Christ. Bastard’s done me in.
He tried withdrawing the blade one more time, but with the same result.
Christo was discovering that when you reach the end of the road, you do not entertain false hopes. You know you are beyond help. You just do.
Now he was beginning to feel weak and woozy, as the strength drained out of him. His eyesight was clouding over. He put a hand on the banister to keep from collapsing.
Christo was transfixed by the ever-widening pool of blood on the floor.
He felt so weak he just had to lie down. Like he was about to faint. His eyes were closing. But he knew that if he succumbed, if he went under, he would not wake up again.
So he fought against unconsciousness, trying to delay the inevitable with what remained of his strength and willpower.
The pistol slipped from his fingers. Half a minute later, he sank face-down onto the floor, smack in the middle of the blood pool.
In that position he bled out. The heart, having nothing left to pump, stopped beating; the fuzzy brain soon got the message, and shut down operations.
It was over. Christo’s last, fleeting sensation was being sucked into a black, black hole, swept up and carried off like a speck of dust in a high wind.
36
Tim had no idea who had come charging into the room. All he saw was a man in a black beanie with a gun, yelling at him to get down.
Without a moment’s hesitation he pulled Amy, who was sitting on the edge of the bed, still dazed and in shock, down to the floor. Then he jumped all over Cornstalk—who had apparently been shot—trying to bring him down.
It wasn’t easy.
The room filled with gunfire: from the doorway, and from Cornstalk, who’d somehow produced a handgun, which he fired from under his armpit.
Tim ducked down, releasing his hold. The reek of burning cordite enveloped him, stung his eyes.
Put your head up, you get it shot off.
Then, from the corner of his eye, Tim saw Stav wrench a lamp from the bedside and throw it at the man in the doorway.
Do something, or we all die.
The Canadian was reaching for the sawn-off shotgun in his belt, and Tim had to stop him.
He launched himself at Stav, knocking the wind out of him and sending him off balance. But the shotgun was already in his hand and he was bringing it up to fire.
Tim grabbed the weapon.
Bang.
It went off in his hand, blasting a crater the size of a dinner plate in the ceiling. Bits of plasterboard showered over them.
He plunged his right fist into Stav’s body, trying to distract him, get him into a fistfight rather than persist with the gun.
Bang.
The second barrel discharged; there was a matching hole alongside the first one.
Tim’s fingers burned with the heat. The two blasts had temporarily deafened him, and brought about a high-pitched ringing in his ears. In this bubble of silence and ear-ringing he grappled with Stav, hitting him with a barrage of mostly ineffective punches to the body.
Stav realised the weapon had expended both its cartridges. He had extra shells in his pockets, but no way of getting to them and loading up with this bastard all over him.
He dumped the shotgun and swung a mighty left-handed blow at Tim’s face.
Tim got it flush on the cheekbone. The force of it made his head rattle. He was discovering that Stav was a good fighter, and a dirty one. He brought his knee up into Tim’s groin; then he hit him in the throat with the leading edge of his knuckles, not the whole fist.
Tim gagged and lost momentum long enough for Stav to rain punches on him. Tim covered his head and leaned into his opponent, the way he’d been taught to all those years ago in the boxing gym.
The two men wrestled in the cramped space beside the bed, neither one gaining an advantage. Tim tried to spin him around, so Stav had his back to the doorway, and maybe push him down the stairs. But Stav was awake-up, and he was strong. They were locked in a stalemate.
Tim suddenly unleashed a ferocious headbutt that completely took the Canadian by surprise. Blood spurted from his nose—again. Instinctively, he put a hand to his face, just for an instant.
It was long enough.
Tim caught him with a hard right in the solar plexus. Stav let out a gasp, staggered back through the doorway. Tim hit him again,
this time on his damaged nose. It was bent in three directions now.
At the edge of the staircase Stav grabbed Tim in a bear hug. They both tumbled downwards, bouncing from one banister to the other.
Stav got his hands around Tim’s throat, applied extreme pressure. Tim used both hands to try to release the chokehold, but no go. He had to find another way to loosen that grip—and soon.
He rammed the heel of his right hand onto Stav’s smashed nose. Stav’s response was to roar with pain. Then, while Stav was momentarily off-guard, Tim drove his fingers into his eyes.
Stav went apeshit.
He let go of Tim’s throat, flailed his arms about, and finally grabbed hold of Tim’s wrist.
Stav used body weight to force Tim off him; then he swung a right haymaker that caught Tim completely by surprise and sent him crashing down the stairs, all the way to the bottom.
There, he sprawled over Christo’s dead body. He noticed another body near the doorway, the man with the beanie who’d try to rescue them—and paid for it.
The man was face down. Tim couldn’t tell who he was.
Meantime Stav, seemingly unaffected by his injuries, came after him, a truly frightening vision with mad eyes set in a blood-soaked face, leaping over Christo’s corpse.
Before Tim could drag himself up, Stav unleashed a torrent of vicious kicks on every part of Tim’s body. Tim rolled over, curled up; covered his head with his arms.
Tim realised he would be kicked to pieces if he just lay there, taking it.
He reached out blindly, grabbed a hold of Stav’s ankle, raised it as far as he could. Stav couldn’t continue kicking with one foot in the air.
Still gripping Stav’s ankle, Tim hauled himself to his knees, shoved Stav back so that he toppled over Christo—who was proving to be a pest even when dead—and hit his head on the base of the hardwood staircase. It made a hollow, echoing sound—like a mallet banging a coconut.
Tim crawled over to him on all fours.
He was breathing raggedly; practically out of tickets. But the fight was not over.
This bastard would not give it up.
Stav got up, shook his head—and leaped at Tim.
Tim didn’t believe this lunatic could ever be stopped.
The two men locked arms. At close quarters, Tim caught his opponent’s wild, bloodshot stare. He screamed into Tim’s face, spraying him with spittle and blood as he fought desperately for a purchase on some part of him, any part, that he could turn into an advantage. But they were too evenly matched. They wrestled their way through the upturned table.
Tim did not feel the pain that racked his beat-up, middle-aged body as he, too, wrestled for his life.
Stav’s grip on Tim’s upper arm slipped. Tim seized the moment, swung Stav around so he spun against the kitchen counter, scattering and shattering crockery, cutlery, pots and pans and whatnot.
Tim stepped up and punched him square on the point of the jaw. Stav’s head jolted back with a snap.
Before he could recover, Tim gave him another one in the gut.
But the Canadian was tough, impossibly resilient, and brave. Thrusting out an arm, he grabbed a heavy frying pan and swung it at Tim’s head.
It hit him a glancing blow on the side of the face, stunning and stopping him in his tracks. His legs wobbled; his vision spun: he saw comets and shooting stars.
Stav attacked him again with the pan, bent on beating him to a pulp with it.
But this time Tim saw it coming. He put up a hand, clamped it on Stav’s forearm as the pan came down on his head. Had it connected, the blow would certainly have sat him on his arse, end of story.
Tim’s arm quivered with the strain of fending off this utterly resolute and seemingly indestructible maniac. Stav continued trying to force the frying pan down onto Tim’s head. He had a height advantage, and some leverage, working for him.
Tim watched the trembling pan descend, inch by inch. It was an arm wrestle he was going to lose.
With his free hand he reached behind, trying to find something, a weapon of some sort.
His fingers lighted on the kerosene lantern he’d placed on the kitchen counter. It was hot. Tim was past caring. If he burned his hands, so be it. That was preferable to having his head crushed.
Tim knew if he went down, he would be pulverised.
He grasped the lantern, at the same time forcing Stav’s arm slightly to the side, and smashed it over the Canadian’s head with everything he had.
Bits of glass and metal casing flew in every direction. Kerosene splashed over Stav’s head and shoulders. He became a human torch. Blue and yellow flames raced all over the top of his head, down his face and most of his upper body as tongues of fire chased the inflammable liquid wherever it went.
When Stav screamed, the flames ran into his mouth, and down his throat. He thrashed his arms over his head, trying to put out the fire. Now his hands were ablaze, too.
Tim leaned over, hands on his knees, gasping, utterly spent, exultant. He looked on with a horrified fascination and gratification as the fire did its work. Not every day you watch a man burn to death. No way would he help. Let the bastard burn up.
Shit, I’m as bad as him now.
Stav’s screaming had died as the fire continued to invade his throat and eat up his alimentary canal, voice box and associated inner organs. Open-mouthed, bright flowers of flame engulfing him, he lurched slowly—silently—about the room, crashing into everything; his clothes burned and melted onto his skin. He hit a leg of the overturned table, but somehow stayed on his feet. More than half of him was on fire by now. He almost fell over the lifeless form lying in the doorway, staggering out of the house, swaying as he moved forwards in ultra-slow motion, like a man trying to walk underwater in a heavy diver’s suit, inching ahead but not really going anywhere.
When he got outside he stood still for a long moment. It seemed as if he was deep in thought, or taking in the view. Then he collapsed onto what was left of his face, his arms extended.
Lying dead, Stav continued to burn, as he would for some time to come, until all the available fuel had been consumed by the insatiable flames and his flesh was nothing but black char.
37
Tim remained in the kitchen, trying to gather strength before climbing the stairs. There was still one more to deal with. He’d been shot, but Tim didn’t know how badly. He hoped he was dead.
And Amy was up there with him.
He had to get up those stairs as a matter of urgency, and yet his body would not respond. The fight with Stav had probably only lasted three minutes, but it seemed interminable. Tim knew from his encounters in the ring that a three-minute round can feel much, much longer when you are on the receiving end.
His limbs were overcome by a paralysing fatigue and heaviness, every joint ached and his head still throbbed from the frying pan.
He forced himself to check on the dead man by the doorway.
Turning him over, removing the beanie, he saw with horror and unspeakable grief that it was Jimmy Raines. He’d been shot in the chest several times. Yet, somehow, he’d managed to kill his adversary—the body at the foot of the stairs.
He placed two fingers on Jimmy’s neck.
Incredibly—impossibly—there was a flicker of a pulse.
Somehow, Tim had to get help.
The big question hit Tim like a bomb: what was Jimmy doing here? How did he know something was up? No answers came to mind, for the moment.
He turned to the stairs. Looking up, he saw Amy sitting on a step about halfway. Her blonde hair was a total shambles; she wasn’t crying, or sobbing, but seemed to have subsided into a kind of trance. When she saw him she lowered her face between her knees.
Tim was about to ask if she was all right, but the words stopped in his throat.
He went on up.
38
Cornstalk wasn’t sure how many times he’d been hit. He figured maybe three.
First, there was the graze—mo
re than a graze—on the right side of his neck. There was torn flesh on the wound. From that, blood ran freely.
He was also shot in the left hand. From what he could tell, the bullet had passed clean through. His hand was a bloodied mess.
On top of that, there seemed to be a wound on the left side of his stomach. Hard to tell with all the blood, but he was pretty sure there was a hole, and definitely a sharp pain and a burning sensation in his guts.
You know when you’ve been gut shot.
What Cornstalk didn’t realise was that, in fact, he’d only been shot twice by Jimmy Raines. The first bullet nicked his neck, narrowly missing the carotid artery, and the second hit him in the left hand. The bullet had entered the hand, exited his wrist, then struck a rib and ricocheted into his abdomen.
Leaning against the blood-spattered wall, dealing with the pain and trying to nurse his wounds, he knew he had to somehow get himself to a hospital, soon. The blood loss was already quite evident around his feet. He could feel it squelching in his underpants and down his legs.
Problem was, it hurt to move—especially that sharp rib pain and the burning sensation in his guts.
He kept his good hand clamped on his neck, trying hopelessly to stop or at least restrict the flow. When he began to straighten up, his guts screamed. But he had to make a move, or die right here.
There was one hell of a rumpus going on downstairs. He hoped Stav or Christo was giving it to that lawyer, and that other bastard, whoever he was.
With his revolver stuffed down the front of his jeans, Cornstalk bit his lip and lurched out of the room. He was bent over, his left arm wrapped around his stomach, and his right hand at his neck. He didn’t see it, but he was leaving a hefty blood trail behind him.
By the time he’d reached the landing, that rumpus downstairs had stopped.
He got to the staircase and leaned against the banister, trying to slide his way down to minimise the pain he experienced with each step.
