by David Gallie
Sliding off the car, I got back behind the wheel and tried to start the engine which simply wheezed and then died on me.
‘God, fucking damn it!’ I screamed, more out of frustration than anger.
I turned the key again and nothing. Not even a wheeze this time. More frustrated than I had ever felt in my life, I slammed my fists against the steering wheel.
The deal had been rigged. The devil must have known I was never going to get the damn car started in time. He was probably sitting in his chapel of horror laughing his ass off at my puny attempts to give him what he wanted.
Sam, remember when it comes to working with cars you need to treat them the same way you would a woman. Roughhousing them just won’t work and you’ll be left even more pissed off when you first started.
It was the voice of my old mentor Clark. He was long gone now, another dark spot in my past, but his advice was always solid when it came to cars.
‘Okay, please start for me, baby. Please.’ I begged as I turned the ignition key.
For the briefest of moments there was nothing, not even a sign of life, and then like a punch to the jaw, the Mercedes roared to life and I couldn’t help but smile as the instrument panel lit up in its gentle orange glow.
The digital clock situated at the top of the dashboard stated I had no more than twenty minutes before my end of the deal would be broken, so without further hesitation, I threw the car into gear and steered it in the direction of the ambulance.
Someone must have been on my side as every set of traffic lights I reached where green which in turn meant it took only five minutes of driving before I was able to catch up with the ambulance.
I found it hard to believe that it was the same ambulance I had run into only moments ago. In the back of my mind, I had envisioned a recovery crew coming to take it away and a new ambulance arriving to recover the patient and restart the journey from where the last one left off.
As I got closer, though, I was actually quite surprised to see the battered and bashed doors of the emergency vehicle. It only served to make the whole night all that more bizarre. First, I fucked up with the hit, and then just to add insult to injury I had to make a deal with the devil just so I could complete what I had originally started out to do; only with the added bonus that I get to live forever if I can pull it off.
Then there was Lisa. My beautiful wife. The woman who had given me five years of real love and not the shit I had to pay for from the girls on the street. My heart ached for her, it never really stopped aching, but I tried my best to ignore it, hoping that it would eventually go away.
The problem with that way of thinking is that you simply can’t ignore what your heart feels. If it wants then you must give it, otherwise you only end up torturing yourself. It was in realizing that I knew I wasn’t trying to save myself, I was trying to save the woman who had given me so much and asked for so little in return a chance to enjoy the heaven she so truly deserved.
It seemed totally unfair that she had been in hell all this time, while I was out roaming the streets and killing people for money like I had done for so many years before I met her, and probably would continue to do so even if I did manage to pull off the impossible.
I tried to change my mode of thought and concentrate on the job at hand, which for now was following the ambulance. This time, I kept a safe distance. The rain outside was slowly turning to snow as had been forecast earlier this morning.
I had to narrow my eyes as the snow began to fall faster and harder, almost blinding me at times due to the speed of the car which was fast approaching seventy miles an hour. The glimpses I caught of the outside world were nothing more than a stream of blurred buildings and the occasional blurred face of a homeless person scavenging for food or shelter or both.
For what seemed like an eternity I kept a cars distance away from the battered emergency vehicle, knowing that for some reason the breaks on the Mercedes were not working as they should and if I had to stop suddenly then it was going to involve hitting something hard.
That hard object eventually turned out to be a police cruiser.
I had been so focused on keeping up with the Ambulance that I had not been paying attention to the roads as much as I should have been; so when both my Mercedes and the ambulance reached the junction just a quarter mile from the hospital I did not notice that the lights had changed to red just as the ambulance screamed on through.
In one sense I was fortunate that I only clipped the front of the cruiser, and I could see the look of shock on the driver's face as his cop car spun until it was parallel to mine before crashing into the side of my car with a loud thud.
The air was filled with the sound of glass shattering and I could hear the angry voices of the officers inside the cruiser. I quickly glanced at the dashboard clock, there was now only twenty minutes left until the deal had to be completed or I was looking at an eternal life of damnation.
‘Don’t you dare try and pull away, boy.’ I turned to see the passenger of the cruiser, an overweight, mustachioed man with a bright red face, struggling to reach for his service revolver. His partner, on the other hand, was too busy trying to get the car to start again.
It was as I watched him that I realized I could still feel the soft purring of the Mercedes engine vibrating through the chassis.
A quick glance through the broken windshield and I could see the red and blue lights of the ambulance dance of the nearby buildings like a cheap laser show as it continued on its path to the hospital.
I realized I had to make a quick decision: If I remained where I was I was busted and the deal would be broken. If I put my foot down on the gas, sure I would reach the hospital and the ambulance with my target, but I would also have these two angry cops plus their backup to deal with.
I was damned if I did and damned if I didn’t. But just when a sense of despair was starting to creep into my gut, something sickening and bizarre happened.
The driver of the cruiser, angry and frustrated at the lack of cooperation his vehicle was showing him, turned the ignition key again. A low grunt, like an animal being awakened from its slumber, emanated from under the hood of the cruiser and then there was a flash so brilliant I had to shield my eyes.
Within seconds, the air was full with the sound of tortured screams. The sounds of men enduring pain way beyond the imaginings of most people. When I could finally open my eyes again I was greeted with the horrific site of the two police officers engulfed in flames. The last thing I saw was the anguished, pleading look on the mustachioed officers face and then the skin on his top lip bubble and melt over the place where his facial hair used to be.
I tried to reason with myself that the whole thing had happened because of an electrical fault with the cruisers ignition system, but in my heart, I knew fine well that other, unseen forces, were at play and that made feel even more nauseous than the site I had just witnessed.
Either way, I simply did not have time to dwell on how it all happened. All I knew was that one obstacle had been removed, at least temporarily allowing me to carry on with what needed to be done.
I offered no second glance at the burning vehicle or its occupants as I put my foot down on the accelerator. All I could think of was putting as much distance between myself and the foul scent of burning flesh as possible.
Thankfully the Mercedes was still happy to keep running for me, and so we sped off in the direction of the ambulance and the hospital it was heading towards. There was no doubt in my mind that it would not take long before more cops arrived to find their friends charred remains, nor would it take them long thanks to the wonders of CCTV footage to track me down at the hospital.
I needed to finish the deal and finish it quickly if I wanted to stand any kind of chance of making a getaway. How ironic it would be, I thought, that I should complete the devil's deal only to languish in prison for the rest of my newly found eternal life. Now that would be the true definition of irony.
The Mercede
s roared to life once again as I Pressed harder on the gas pedal. There was the briefest sound of metal scraping against metal as my car freed its self from the cruiser.
The Community General is one of the smaller hospitals in New York, built primarily to serve the local neighborhoods, which did not exude wealth or status but in fact were at the lower rungs of the ladder where no one would want to live. It was a squat looking building made with more concrete than anything else. Its glass windows, although brightly lit, seemed way too small like a pair of ill-fitting spectacles.
There was a large parking area at the rear of the building and a wide crescent area out front where ambulances and other emergency vehicles could off-load the sick and wound. A small patch of grass sat in front of the concrete crescent with a large square chunk of granite with the hospitals name boldly engraved in it.
The ambulance carrying Mancini had already reached the hospital and to my dismay, its rear doors were hanging limply open.
As I drew closer I could see the brightly lit interior of the vehicle was empty. Both the paramedics and my target where already inside which meant I was going to have to go public if I wanted to make the deal on time, which, coincidentally enough, had ten minutes left to go before it would be broken.
Deciding that my car would be no use to me regardless of what happened after midnight, I left it idling just a few feet away from the ambulance.
As I was about to climb out into the cold night air, and the blizzard that was accompanying it, I reached over to the passenger seat where I remembered leaving the .45 revolver, my trusted weapon of choice for most of the jobs I took on.
My dismay grew when I quickly realized the lethal weapon was no longer where I had left it. It occurred to me that the jolt of the crash had probably sent it flying to the floor, but a thorough search of the soft carpeted area around the seat turned up nothing.
This night was just going from bad to worse. I still had the golden bullet, handed to me by the dark lord himself, safely tucked in my trouser pocket but it was no good without a gun to fire it with.
Another thought did occur to me though as I forced the door open and slid outside. All of the hospitals in the lower Manhattan area always had armed guards. It would mean having to get physical, but it was the only opportunity I had to obtain a weapon I could use.
There was a slight tingling of fear running down my back as the snow hit and melted against the soft skin of my stubble coated face. I think this was due to the fact that there was no certainty I would be able to get a good enough shot off to kill this so called minion of Satan. I mean if a bullet straight to his forehead isn’t going to do the job then another one is less likely to make much of a difference.
I reconciled with myself that there wasn’t much point on dwelling on that rather large problem, since if I was unable to make the deal on time then it would all be for nothing anyway and I would end up in the place no human ever wants to go, experiencing the kinds of torture that only the devil himself could dream up.
The heavy scent of disinfectant was accompanied by a gust of warm air as the automatic doors to the accident and emergency area of the hospital slid open revealing a tired and bedraggled looking nurse behind the reception desk and just a few homeless looking men dotted around the waiting area.
As with most hospitals, everything looked clean and germ-free and there was very little noise except for the sounds of someone being rushed to one of the operating theaters for emergency surgery. I could hear surgeons bark orders at their nurses and the clanging of a metal bed carrying the patient himself as it was hurtled down the hallway at breakneck speed.
What worried me as I stood there letting in the cold and glancing around, was that I could see no sign of a security guard. There was always at least one standing guard near the main doors, usually, some guy who was more inclined to hurt people than heal them.
‘Can I help you, sir?’ Her voice sounded as tired as she looked, and I could tell the nurse behind the Formica coated desk would happily accept any chance to get rid of me.
‘Yes, I was involved in a car crash just a few minutes ago. My uncle Jim Mancini was in the passenger seat and the paramedics have brought him here.’ I quietly prayed she did not know about the bullet hole in his head, although I saw no reason why she wouldn’t, after all, it was her job to know these things.
‘Mr. Mancini is on his way to theater three. Just head down that hallway there and you’ll find him.’ She may have looked like a woman who had been awake for far too many hours but her eyes were strangely alive and full of knowledge. It was like she knew exactly why I was standing there in front of her.
I followed her trembling finger as it arched towards the hallway to my right. I gave her one last glance, thanked her, and then made my way in the direction I had heard the cacophony of sound a few seconds ago.
I still had no gun, but I somehow felt like that wasn’t going to be a problem. Sure enough, as I made my way down the hallway, the fluorescent lights almost blinding in their brilliance, I could make out the padded jacket of a security guard. As I got closer I noticed that his stance was relaxed, and he was leaning against the wall.
He was outside the first operating theatre. He was a tall black man with a large frame and demanding presence. I was perfectly capable of fighting and had taken down foes larger than myself but this guy was going to take a lot more time and energy than I was in possession of at that moment.
The hallway offered no means of hiding. There were no recesses in the walls, no shadowy nooks where I could sulk until I had formed a plan. Worse still, there was no way of creating a distraction other than simply walking up to him and that seemed like it was going to be my only viable option.
I was going to have to try and hit him and hit him hard if I even wanted to just stun him enough to grab his gun. I was just a few feet away from the edge of the corridor where the hulk was waiting when an idea suddenly occurred to me.
Heart pumping hard in my chest, I reached into my trouser pocket and tightened my grip on the golden bullet. If this thing was meant to destroy a demon and no special gun was required then that meant there was something in or on the bullet which could help me beat him without a gun.
Or it could just be the devils way of a cruel joke. One last laugh at my expense before he came to take me away and leave his so called friend free to be dispatched by a more capable hit man than me.
Only one way to find out, I reasoned as I drew closer to the guard.
‘Hey, man.’ I said, moving until I was less than a foot away from the massive man beast of a guard.
His huge head turned to look down at me and for the briefest of moments his expression was one of anger but it was quickly replaced by surprise as I slammed my fist with the golden bullet encased in it upwards and into the underside of his chin.
There was a brief sound of skin being torn, kind of like a sheet of paper being ripped from a writing pad, and then the crack and squelch of bone, muscle and tendons being ripped from their casing. Blood squirted in all directions from his damaged arteries, soaking the walls, floor and even me, as his huge head danced in the air for the briefest of moments before hitting the ground with a thud.
Stunned, I ignored the small river of blood streaming down my face, and watched the remainder of the guards’ body first drop to its knees and then fall flat onto the floor, blocking the way for anyone who could not climb over him.
I looked at the small, golden bullet in my hand. It seemed to glow brighter than it had done earlier when I took it from the man the world not only despised but respected out of pure fear.
It took a few moments for me to recover from my awe of what had just happened, but the constant reminder that I was on a time limit forced me back into reality. I had probably only minutes left before the deal would be broken.
Keeping that in mind I continued on down the hallway, leaving the headless corpse of the security guard behind for some other poor soul to discover, which I assumed in a busy
place like a hospital wouldn’t be long at all.
Operating room three was situated near the next corner of the hallway at the end, just before one could turn left and carry on to the other rooms. The cacophony of noises, desperate and angry voices demanding medical instruments and medicines I had never heard of before, grew louder as I reached the doors leading into the room.
When I looked inside through the lettered glass panels I could see at least four people milling around this wrinkled old man with various tubes coming out of his arms, nose and throat. There was a moment of doubt inside me as I wondered if I had reached the right room, but when I noticed one of the men inside, dressed in green scrubs, begin to cut along the patient's forehead I felt more certain than ever that I had finally recovered my target.
In my awe at what I had done to the security guard, a realization had dawned on me just before I was about to enter the operating room: I had forgotten to take the big guards revolver. I was still without a gun, yet as I clenched tighter on the bullet in my hand, I somehow knew that I had the only weapon I was going to need to see this thing through.
Knowing was one thing, but I certainly did not feel I was capable of taking on a minion as powerful as I had been made believe he was. I could only hope my secret weapon was going to be enough.
So, drawing a deep breath I pushed through the double doors with their bright red lettered glass panels and begun the fight to keep my life and give a new one to the woman I had loved for so long with all my heart.
Now, more than ever in my lifetime, I badly needed to succeed. Not for my own gratification, or for my own wealth, but for someone who gave me everything and asked for nothing in return.
The surgeon, along with the three other occupants turned to stare at me as I entered the room. Covered almost head to toe in blood, I must have looked like the victim of a street attack or worse, but instead of being offered help and solstice I was greeted with anger.
‘What the fuck are you doing in here?’ Screamed the surgeon, the mask may have covered his snarl, but I could see the rage in his eyes.
