Blackout

by Robison Wells

Page 54

 

  Jack smiled weakly. “I blocked it out because I was listening to you. ”

  “Oh great,” she said, forcing a laugh. “Good job, Aubrey. We have to get out of here. ”

  “Uncover my ear,” Jack said. “We’ve got to find Laura. ”

  FORTY-SIX

  JACK TRIED TO PUSH EVERYTHING else out of his mind—the throbbing in his own head, his labored breathing, Aubrey’s poorly hidden sobs. He closed his eyes.

  The pain was unbearable, and he kept trying to turn off the sense of touch—turn off the nerves in his own head. But it was an almost overwhelming task. He felt every shred of torn skin, every scrape against his skull, every broken blood vessel. It was excruciating.

  There weren’t any voices, not from the music museum. He could hear one person’s breathing. He didn’t know if it was a soldier or Laura.

  It had to be a soldier. None of the Green Berets would have left Laura alive, not after she attacked them so viciously.

  But if she was dead, they’d have the detonator. Both he and Aubrey would have lost a leg by now.

  He heard the sound of someone on a roof, but he couldn’t pick it out. It was near them—rubber soles on a steel roof. That had to be a sniper, unless Laura was climbing onto roofs now.

  He tried to concentrate even more, but it was nearly useless. Every time he moved his head, trying to locate a sound, the rough rubbing of the bloody sweater distracted him.

  Jack could hardly believe he was still alive. The bullet had come so close. He’d felt every bit of it, as if time had slowed down. He’d felt it rip through his skin, then skid around his skull. He wondered how much farther it would’ve needed to be to the left to have killed him instead of grazing him—a millimeter? Two? He could have been dead right there. No one would have alerted Aubrey, and she’d have been killed by a sniper.

  There was a clatter on a rooftop, the sound of—of a gun? And then quiet. Breathing. Two people had just fought and one of them had beaten the other, and he had no idea who had won.

  “We have to get up,” Jack said, looking in Aubrey’s eyes. He moved the sweater from his head—it was now just a soaked rag, and it was stopping him from finding help.

  “Why?” she asked, plainly terrified.

  “To find Laura. Now. ”

  Aubrey stared back at him for a moment, and then nodded. She stood, still hunched so she wouldn’t be seen over the Dumpster. She gave him her hand, and he pulled himself to his feet. He felt dizzy and tired, and he wondered if this was the right choice.

  The breathing on the rooftop moved, quickly now, faster than a Green Beret could move. It had to be her.

  Why was she fighting the snipers? Why weren’t they just getting out of there? Was it rage? Revenge? Did she think they were going to track them all down?

  “You stay here,” Aubrey said. She reached into her small bag and pulled out the light pink bottle of Flowerbomb. It was a ridiculous image—she was wearing jeans and T-shirt, both her hands were smeared in his blood, and yet she was spraying herself with perfume.

  His nose was immediately filled with the aroma of roses and orchids, mixed with the pungent iron scent of blood.

  She smiled at him. “You look terrible. ”

  “You look like you just murdered me,” he answered.

  She kissed him quickly, and then vanished.

  She shouldn’t have done that. The smell was on him now, right under his nose. He scrubbed at his face with sticky, red fingers to remove the perfume.

  There was so much blood. He was going to pass out.

  He leaned a shoulder against the Dumpster and tried to focus on the remnants of her perfume that were left trailing in the air behind her. She headed back down between the buildings, and it seemed, though he couldn’t be sure, that she was stopping at the corner.

  There was no more breathing from the roof. He tried to focus on the other roofs, where he knew the rest of the snipers were supposed to be, but it was too big of a plaza and he couldn’t be sure of anything. Sounds bounced back and forth.

  Someone was running, their shoes smacking hard against the pavement. It couldn’t be Aubrey—she didn’t run when she was invisible because it made her so unsteady.

  Jack moved out from the Dumpster and down the alley. He wasn’t walking in a straight line, and he knew that he wasn’t going to catch up with anyone.

  Everything had fallen apart. This morning they’d been part of a team of Green Berets and now they were the enemy. They were terrorists. Laura had killed soldiers—she was defending Jack and Aubrey—and now no one would ever believe them. They were outlaws. They were exactly what Captain Rowley had thought they were when he pulled out that detonator. They were killers. It didn’t matter that Jack and Aubrey didn’t kill—he would have certainly killed Captain Rowley to save Aubrey’s life if he’d been able to do it. The fact that Laura did it instead didn’t make him any less complicit.

  Something was burning as Jack reached the end of the alleyway. He could smell it. And he saw Aubrey’s bloody handprint on the wall where she had paused and waited.

  The running feet were somewhere on the other side of Seattle Center, but they seemed to be coming toward him.

  He shouldn’t be there. Those running feet could be a soldier—someone chasing after them, pounding across the cement to get revenge—and Jack was standing around like an idiot. He didn’t have a gun or even a rock. He was half-conscious.

  And then the source of the footfalls appeared—Laura, running at full speed down toward the Children’s Museum. He wanted to shout, to get her attention, but he didn’t want any more attention for himself.

  Where was Aubrey? There was too much for him to keep track of. Aubrey’s perfume wafted in the breezeless, humid air as she made her way toward the center of the—

  What was that burning?

  Bang!

  Jack watched as Laura, running at full speed, stumbled a few more steps, and then plummeted forward, tumbling head over heels across the pavement. There, at the entrance of the Children’s Museum, was Sergeant Eschler with his pistol.

  Jack ran. He didn’t know why. It made no sense, but the only thing going through his mind was the throb of blood and the terror of seeing his bodyguard get murdered right in front of him.

  Eschler saw him coming, and raised his pistol.

  But the sergeant flew into the glass doors of the building, as though pushed by an enormous gust of wind.

  It wasn’t wind, Jack knew immediately. It was Aubrey. She wasn’t strong, and she’d only caught him off guard. The pistol was still in his hand, though Jack could tell that she was fighting him for it.

  It only took a minute for the man to throw her off him, invisible or not. He swung the gun at empty space and fired.

  “No,” Jack breathed. All he could tell was that she was there, somewhere. Her perfume was all over Eschler and the ground.

  Eschler fired a second time and then a third.

  Jack was racing wildly, knowing that he’d be just as ineffectual as Aubrey had been—worse, because he was visible.

  Eschler turned, leveling the gun.

  And then, as though launching from a cannon, Laura erupted from the ground and shot forward, tackling Eschler and smashing him into the cement wall of the front of the Children’s Museum.

  The red-painted concrete crumbled around the impact, leaving a man-sized gash in the facade of the building. Laura stumbled backward, bleeding from her stomach.