I hesitated for a moment, trying to decide what to do, then continued to the door and looked out.
Pine Tree was rounding the backside of the medical building and heading this way.
Think. Get out or prepare to fight. Back door. Get Anna. Get out.
There was a back door in the building. I’d grab Anna and we’d leave through it.
“Come on, baby,” I said. “We’ve got to go. Don’t bump your head getting up. Ease up and we’ll sneak out the back door. Pine Tree Peavey is heading over here.”
She didn’t respond.
Surely she hadn’t fallen asleep that quickly. She could have, as exhausted as she was.
“Anna?”
Still no response.
Had she passed out from all the blood she had lost?
When I reached the spot where I had left her, she wasn’t there.
“Anna?”
The phone was there. The blankets were. She was not.
I looked around the dim room, searching for her in every direction.
“Anna?” I said, starting to panic. “Anna?”
She wasn’t there.
If she could answer, she would. Did someone have her? Were they still in the building or had they dragged her out the back door? Would they kill her instantly or keep her alive long enough to use her for leverage? If Cantor had her it would be the former. If the officers, perhaps the latter.
I began moving through the building, looking behind and beneath and around its many objects and obstacles, knowing that at any moment, Pine would be coming through the front door.
“Anna?”
I ran over to the back door and looked out into the dark, crimson-tinged night.
There was no sign of her. No sign of anyone.
Not sure what I should do next, but knowing I had to deal with the immediate threat of Pine, I raced back across the building with the bat.
Standing on the side the door opened into, I pulled the bat back and waited.
When he opened the door, he just stood there in the doorway, scanning the room, the door between us blocking him from me and the bat.
But when he stepped in and let the door close, I swung as hard as I could.
Because he was so tall, the blow got him mostly on the back and only a little on his head.
If it did anything but get his attention I couldn’t tell.
As he turned toward me, I tried to swing again, but he caught the bat with both hands and jerked it away from me.
Quickly flipping it around to get a better grip, he handled it like someone familiar, comfortable, a former high school baseball star.
The bat looked small in his hands, as if a child’s instead of the full-size it was.
I began backing away, trying to figure out what to do, backing into and around one of the folding tables and knocking off a pile of blankets as I did.
He came after me.
Lumbering steadily but unhurriedly toward me like a predator knowing its prey is trapped, he slowly, confidently kept coming.
“Pine,” Randy Wayne said on the radio on Pine’s belt. “You got him?”
“Got him,” Pine said into the mic clipped to his shoulder.
“Scott, you got the girl?”
“Got ’er.”
“Where?” I asked Pine. “Where does he have her? How’d he––”
“Butler, get Cantor over there and let’s finish this.”
Circling the folding table, I kept it between us. Pine, frustrated and out of breath, continued laboring around after me.
“Why’re you doin’ this?” I asked. “How can you be okay with killin’ us in cold blood?”
He didn’t respond.
“Where does Branson have Anna?”
Without breaking his stride, he slammed into the table and drove it into me, both dropping me and knocking the breath out of me.
As I fell, I struck my head on the metal corner of one of the pressing machines.
Jarred. Dizzy. Head throbbing instantly. Gasping to get a breath.
Pine was making his way toward me, slinging the large table out of his way with one hand.
I tried to roll, to climb to my feet, but my body wouldn’t cooperate.
With all the strength I could muster, with all the effort I could give, I was only able to get to my hands and knees.
Shoving myself up so I was hunched back on my knees, I freed my hands up and plunged them into my pockets.
When Pine reached me, he snatched me upright, holding me in front of him as if I were a child.
I found the small can of Fredericka’s hairspray, brought it up with my left hand, and sprayed it in his face.
It was no more than a minor annoyance but he released me to wipe it out of his eyes.
As he did, I removed the lighter from my right pocket and lit it.
Holding the small flame in front of his face, I sprayed the hairspray again.
It burned his face. His hair and the top of his shirt caught on fire and I sprayed some more.
He shrieked and began patting out his hair and shirt, dropping the bat as he did.
Bending down and grabbing the bat, I brought it up into his chin like an uppercut. He staggered back, still stamping out the fire.
I swung the bat again, this time at his enormous midsection. The blow was hard and landed well, doubling him over.
With him lowered now, I swung at the back of his head, a cracking hit that felled him.
On his hands and knees now, I hit him again, another hard shot to the back of the head.
This time he went all the way down and didn’t move.
I stamped out the last of the flames on his shirt, took his radio, and ran to look for Anna.
Chapter Forty-eight
As I searched the laundry building for Anna again, I turned up the volume on Pine’s radio just enough for me to hear and pressed it against my ear.
Butler was saying, “I can’t find him.”
“Scott, what about you?” Randy Wayne said.
“Negatory.”
“Chase? Dale? What about y’all?”
No response.
“Pine? Did he come back there?”
“Ain’t here,” I said, trying to sound like Pine.
“Chase? Dale? Y’all there? Over?”
“Fuck,” Butler said. “You think Cantor got them too?”
As they continued to talk and I steadily searched the building, I began to devise a plan that might both create a distraction and get us some help.
“I’ll get Cantor,” Randy Wayne said. “Y’all just get them to the chapel. And hurry. We’re runnin’ out of time.”
“Ten-four,” Butler said.
“Pine, you got Jordan and Cardigan or just––”
“Just the chaplain,” I said. “Ain’t seen Cardigan.”
“Anybody seen him?”
No one responded.
“Even better,” he said. “We’ll send in the response team to take him out as soon as we finish with his victims. Hurry everybody. IG’s about fifteen minutes out. Let’s finish this shit and give her a good show when she gets here.”
Grabbing as many towels and sheets and T-shirts as I could find, I piled them into one of the canvas carts and rolled it into the back right corner beneath the gas heater hanging from the ceiling.
There were thousands of blankets stacked against the walls in the back corner, but my guess was they had been made of flame retardant material.
Sliding one of the folding tables against the closest dryer, I jumped up on it, clutching a sheet in my hand as I did. I then climbed up on top of the dryer. Confirming the pilot was lit, I draped the sheet around the heater, letting it hang down to the cart below.
Climbing back down, I used the hairspray and lighter to set the cheap cotton clothes in the cart on fire.
Before they even reached the hanging sheet, the pilot from the heater had already lit the top part and flames were beginning to run down.
As the fire grew, I rolled other ca
rts with clothes in them over and began lighting them.
The fire continued to grow and spread.
As I ran over toward Pine, gas from the heater began to feed the flame and with a giant whoooosh it shot flames out, lighting other clothing and carts.
When I reached Pine, he was beginning to stir a little.
I slapped him hard across the face, trying to avoid his burns.
“Fire,” I said. “You need to crawl out of here. Now.”
He moved his head and moaned a little, but that was all.
I slapped him hard again, and again got the same response.
Leaning down and grabbing his arms, I began to drag him toward the front door.
It was very slow going, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could do it.
Smoke was beginning to fill the building and it was hard to breathe.
About halfway to the door, he looked up at me drowsily, coughed, and said, “What . . . What . . . are . . . you . . . doin’?”
“Fire,” I said. “Got to get you out of here. Can you help? Can you crawl or walk or––”
“Yeah. I got it. I can get it from here.”
“You sure?” I asked, releasing his arms.
He nodded and began to crawl toward the door.
As he did, as a fire alarm began to sound in the quiet night, I ran out the back door, back out into the night, back beneath the beginning-to-wan blood moon in search of the girl I had been in love with since we were children.
Chapter Forty-nine
“What the fuck is that?” Randy Wayne yelled into the radio.
If the timing had worked out the way I hoped, he was out of the control room and on the compound with us. His question indicated that he was.
“Fire alarm,” Butler said.
“No shit. Where?”
“Don’t know.”
“Scotty?”
“No idea.”
“Pine?”
I was running as fast as I could toward the chapel, scanning the area around and in front of me for movement.
“Pine?”
I didn’t respond. Kept moving.
Lights on the compound began to flicker on and in the distance a fire whistle whined in the unnaturally quiet night.
“Firefighters and emergency response will be here soon,” Randy Wayne said. “We have even less time than we thought.”
As I reached the chapel, I could see Anna through the back windows.
To my surprise, she was being held by Randy Wayne himself.
The back door was propped open. Without slowing I went inside.
Anna was cuffed and barely conscious, held up by Randy Wayne just a few feet in front of where Emmitt was nailed to the podium. Branson and Butler stood nearby.
Anna, who must have been drugged, was finding it difficult to stand.
“We’re running out of time,” Randy Wayne said into the radio he was holding. “Hurry to the chapel, John.”
He then tossed the radio to Branson.
The chapel was eerily lit, its darkness streaked with carmine-colored light from the moon, three emergency backup lights, one of which was below Emmitt and cast wicked shadows on the ceiling and back wall, and some weak, random illumination spilling in from the front where now lamps were blinking on.
“Yep,” Randy Wayne said when he saw me. “All that was for your benefit. Well, not all of it, but a lot. Okay, some. I appreciate you obliging and rushing on up here for us. The fire alarm your work?”
I nodded.
“How about Chase and Dale and Pine not joining us?”
I shrugged.
“Surrender your weapon,” he said, wrapping the hand that had been holding the radio around Anna’s throat.
I looked down at the bat. I had forgotten I had it.
Butler stepped over and took it from me.
Gripping it by the wrong end, he then slung it around and tagged me on the side of the neck with it. The blow was hard but glancing.
I took a step toward him.
“NO,” Randy Wayne said, and he punched Anna hard in the stomach.
Anna gasped and began to cry.
I stopped. “Okay. Just don’t do that again.”
“What?” he asked. “This?” And did it again. “That’s for making us chase your ass all night. Now, while we wait for Cantor to get here, if we hit you, you turn the other cheek. Got it?”
I nodded.
“Here, come hold this fat bitch up,” he said. “I’m too tired to deal with this shit.”
I rushed over to Anna and wrapped my arms around her.
“I wish you two didn’t have to die tonight,” he said. “I truly and sincerely do. But . . . come on . . . since you do, isn’t it nice to be in each other’s arms? Life’s little consolation. Am I right? Gotta be grateful for the small stuff. Between you and me . . . that’s all there is.”
The front door to the chapel opened and they all turned to see who was coming in.
“I love you,” I said to Anna. “I’m so sorry about all this.”
“I think I’m losing the baby,” she said. “I’m so scared.”
Pine walked through the doors and up the center aisle toward us.
“Just come when you can, big fella,” Randy Wayne said. “What’s burning?”
When he got closer, his missing hair, charred shirt, and the burns on his face and neck could be seen.
“Besides you,” Randy Wayne said. “Shit. What the fuck happened?”
“Laundry was burnin’. ’Bout out by now. Chaplain got me when we were fighting.”
“He did that to you?”
“What’s goin’ on here?”
“Just waitin’ for Cantor to haul his big knife up here.”
“Then what? Stand around and watch as he does that to them?” he asked, nodding at Emmitt.
“I hope he won’t just repeat what he’s already done,” Randy Wayne said. “He’s far more creative than that. Although . . . if he did . . . he could do the two thieves crucified with Jesus. That could be interesting. Who do you think he’d choose for Christ, though? The chaplain’s the obvious choice, but I’d be disappointed if he went with something so on the nose. Wouldn’t you?”
Pine began shaking his head. “I can’t just stand here and let that sick psycho carve them up. Thought I could, but I can’t.”
“No problem. Go back outside and keep an eye on things. We’ll be out in a––”
“No, I mean I can’t stand by and let it happen.”
“Come again?”
“I just can’t. Chaplain could’ve let me burn in that building down there. He didn’t. I can’t let that go un––”
“Pine, he burned your fuckin’ face and half your hair off. The fuck you mean you can’t do it?”
“He could’ve let me die. He didn’t.”
I had seen the power of mercy change people before, but never as immediately as this. It wasn’t why I did it, but as unintended consequences go, it wasn’t a bad one. Of course, Pine was probably having doubts about what they were doing already. Me helping him out of the burning building may have had nothing to do with it.
“Two choices, Pine. Both involve them dying. Only one involves you dying with them.”
“Can’t let you kill them.”
“You’ll lose your job,” Randy Wayne said. “Be arrested. Go to prison.”
“Look at that,” Pine said, nodding toward Emmitt. “You can stand by or worse watch while he does that to them?”
“I wish it didn’t have to be this way, but we got no other choices now––especially now. We’re too far in. It’s way too late to . . . The point of no return was way the fuck back there.”
Pine looked over at Branson and Butler. “Come on guys. Think about this. You can’t be okay with this.”
“What we’re not okay with is the alternative,” Branson said.
Pine shook his swollen and burned head and began laboring toward us.
“Y’all are gonna have to kill
me too,” he said.
“No problem,” Randy Wayne said. Then turning to Branson and Butler added, “Finish him off.”
“With what?” Butler asked. “We got no weapons.”
“You’ve got a fuckin’ baseball bat,” he said. “Worked pretty well on you.”
“I got this,” Branson said.
He stepped over and prepared to attack Pine.
“Help him,” Randy Wayne said to Butler.
Butler halfheartedly followed Branson a little way down the center aisle, staying several steps behind him.
Pine crouched in a defensive stance, his arms up, ready to take the bat away from Branson in the same way he had me.
As Branson charged him, Cantor came out from behind the podium, striking me on the back of the neck with the handle of his huge knife.
My knees buckled and as I was falling he kicked me. I flew across the front of the chapel and went down hard.
Without me to hold her up, Anna collapsed.
Cantor pounced on her. Straddling her, actually sitting on her pregnant belly and bouncing.
Anna shrieked, then screamed, then began to cry.
“Sneaky son of a gun,” Randy Wayne exclaimed. “He was hiding back there this whole time.”
His attention was divided between what Cantor was doing to Anna and the fight between Pine and his boys.
I was flat on the floor, belly crawling like a baby toward Anna. I wasn’t very far away, but wouldn’t make it in time.
Cantor began cutting her clothes and peeling them off her in strips.
“Lovely,” he said. “So very lovely.”
She was crying and ineffectually struggling against the horror of what was happening to her.
“She is a good-looking woman under there, ain’t she?” Randy Wayne said. “Show us some more before you start to make a mess of her. I wanna see that pristine pussy.”
Cantor continued working as if Randy Wayne hadn’t spoken.
Between her gasps and breathy cries, Anna breathed my name. “John.”
I thought about all the different ways she had said my name over the years––the nuances and shadings and all the tiny variations. I loved the sound of my name in her mouth––especially lately when, for the first time in our lifetime of loving one another, it had been said in intense and intimate ecstasy.
I still couldn’t get my feet and legs to work. The best I could do was crawl across the carpet.
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