Run

by Douglas E. Winter

  And I’m thinking about another run. The run inside the run. The run that the cops and the Feds didn’t know about, at least not most of them. Not Jinx, maybe not Fiona, maybe not even that grey ghost who was sitting in my chair, in my den, in my house.

  It was the run that was about killing the Reverend Gideon Parks. Killing a movement, killing a dream. The run that someone in some high fucking place wanted, and that Jules Berenger and his mad dog CK, who wanted to stay in business and out of jail, were pleased to make happen … with a little help from their friends. The run that no one, cops or Feds, would investigate for very long, because they were inside the thing, it was their run, they had made it happen, and what the hell, they had the perfect patsies, very black and very dead, for their fall guys.

  So I’m thinking about that other run, and I’m thinking about the cops and the Feds and the patsies and the rest of the pawns. The guys who did the running. The guys like Renny Two Hand and Juan E and Jinx. The guys like me. The good soldiers who did what they were told, at least until they got wise or got dead.

  And I’m thinking about the other guys, the guys in the suits, the guys who sit behind those big oak desks in those quiet grey buildings, the guys who aren’t the pawns or the bishops or even the kings.

  They’re the guys who move the pieces.

  The guys who owned Jules Berenger. The guys who CK wants to own him. Who CK wants to be. Those guys. Those fucking guys.

  I’m thinking about those guys, but my head hurts, my heart hurts, and motherfuck my shoulder hurts, and I’m so damned tired of thinking.

  Somehow, someway, I struggle onto my knees. Force myself to stand. It hurts so bad, and it’s not where I’ve been shot. It’s the other wound, the wound inside. I want to stand, I just want to stand, and then I am standing, I don’t know how, but I am standing, and when I stand I feel nothing, I hear nothing, and I see what’s left of the light begin to fade.

  I snap a fresh magazine, my last, into the Glock. I step over one of the dead D.C. cops. Another good soldier.

  I don’t look at him, and I don’t look back. I just find the door.

  Outside the priest’s office is the hallway. To the right is the sacristy and the sanctuary. To the left is thirtysome feet of linoleum and then another door, a windowless metal slab with a red bar for a handle. A fire door. The placard on the door reads no exit.

  And that’s right, that’s the truth, the sign says exactly what it means:

  There is no exit. Not for me.

  There’s nowhere left to go.

  Nowhere but back into the sanctuary.

  Because Doctor D was right. It’s not over. It’ll never be over.

  We kill and kill and kill, and we’ll kill again, for as long as the guns are in our hands. We will kill the sinners and we will kill the saints. We will even kill the saviors. We will kill and keep killing and we will never, ever stop.

  As long as we keep holding on to the guns.

  So I follow my pistol, and I follow the sound, the sound of footsteps, my footsteps. The path is marked in red. Blood is everywhere. It paints the walls, the floors, curdles in dull pools, trickles and pours and wets all the world with its stain.

  The blood leads me down that hallway and through the sacristy, finally brings me to the altar, that silent place of vows unmade and vows that were broken.

  Slim and twisting wisps of gunsmoke, mist, fog, rise around me and drift toward the shattered ceiling. Ghosts. Angels. No no no: dust. It’s only dust and ashes.

  Death. More death. Always death.

  I wipe at my eyes. More blood on my hands. But I need to see. I have to see. And through the broken windows of the cathedral I see everything … and everything is dark.

  I forgot it was night.

  As if that would matter. The darkness is out there, in the night, but it’s here, too. It’s here. Inside. With me.

  The sky’s gone out. There are no stars. A false sunset fades over Alexandria, a shrinking bloom of violence where the city block of warehouses that was UniArms is a smoldering vacancy. Closer, fire shines across the churchyard and into the lawns of the bordering neighborhood, consuming the shrubs and wooden fences. Fingers of flame stretch to grasp at trees and finally the houses.

  The parking lot of the cathedral is littered with the twisted wreckage of cars and people. At intervals on the pavement are bodies, sprawled where they fell or were thrown by gunfire or explosions. In their midst are men with guns, walking and shooting, walking and shooting.

  They are two more of the cops, the D.C. cops, blue helmets and white faces, and they move through the smoke in what seems like slow motion, checking the bodies, shooting the wounded, making them into the dead.

  They are CK’s friends, summoned to clean up the mess. Sweep it under the rug. But they’re late, so late.

  Too late.

  Lights flick flick flash: red and blue and red and blue, cutting through the smoke of this burning world. The first of the Alexandria police cruisers veers into the parking lot and slams to a stop, its tires spitting dirt and gravel. An Alexandria cop, a black sergeant as ripped as a power lifter, boils out from behind the steering wheel. He pulls his service piece and says something to the D.C. cops, and he says it again, he says it louder, and now I can hear him, I can hear the Alexandria cop say:

  Holster your weapons.

  The first of the D.C. cops waves to him—hey, hi, say what?—and takes a step his way, and the Alexandria cop says again:

  Holster your weapons.

  The first D.C. cop waves back, and that’s when the second D.C. cop makes his move, swinging his pistol up, but the Alexandria cop shoots first and it’s center of mass, he blows the second D.C. cop down and the first D.C. cop shoots the Alexandria cop and clips his shoulder but the Alexandria cop keeps firing as he falls and the shots take out the first D.C. cop and now they’re all on the ground and more lights are dancing in the air, red and blue and red and blue, a column of Alexandria police cars emerging from the smoke and the fire and the darkness.

  So now it’s time.

  He is alone. He sits in one of the pews, twenty or so rows away, right next to that long center aisle. One last and forgotten worshiper.

  His head is bowed, but he’s not praying.

  He’s waiting. Waiting for me.

  It’s CK.

  Of course it’s CK.

  Because this is what it comes down to. This is always what it comes down to. Two guys with guns who are going to square off and use those guns to solve everything. Or die trying.

  CK stands with a drunken lurch and offers me what’s left of his face, a half-moon etched with blood. His right eye is gone. The unblinking gap, clotted red, gleams like a wet jewel. His teeth are bared. They are jagged and yellow and seem ready to bite.

  About time, CK says. It’s about fucking time.

  Words don’t seem to mean much anymore. Besides, I don’t think I have anything to say to this man. Not now. Not yet.

  I told you, he says.

  That much I hear. But not the rest. He tears a fistful of wires, a headset, from his face, and casts it aside. Then he moves herky-jerky into the aisle. His walk is stiff, uncertain, favoring his wounded leg. He holds the .44 Magnum tight to his side.

  Mine! CK cries out, weaving into the aisle, eighty feet distant. I wonder who he thinks he’s talking to. He turns his back to me, swaggering and swaying all at once, his pistol tracing a circle through the hazy air.

  Mine! he calls again, stumbling in his drunkard’s dance, voice cracking into the plea of a child.

  His mind is gone. I want to say that the guy is crazy. Meaning crazier. But maybe he isn’t crazy at all. Maybe, in a world where weddings bleed into funerals, where D.C. cops shoot Virginia cops and the Virginia cops shoot right back, he is the one person who is totally and completely sane.

  Then, with an effort, CK reels back to me.

  Hey, he says. Hey. The guy is talking to an empty church. To that darkness.

  Lo
ok what we got here, he says. Burdon Lane. A real soldier. A stand-up guy. A piece of the rock. So what’s the deal, Lane? Huh? You talked, didn’t you? You ratted us out. Who did you talk to, Lane? Who did you tell? And …

  And …

  The word seems stuck. An old vinyl record album, the needle caught in the groove.

  And …

  Before it kicks loose and he says:

  And who the fuck made you the honorary nigger? Huh?

  I get what’s left of the CK smirk, and it’s not for effect. The guy does nothing for effect. He wears the face of madness, and part of the madness is the desire, the urge, the need, to kill. The pleasure of taking life because it’s there for the taking.

  I know it because I feel it too. My finger strokes the trigger of the Glock. I want it to happen. Oh, I want so badly for it to happen. But I have to try to stop him, even though I know it won’t work, that it’s going to happen as surely as if it was written in a book.

  I drift down the altar stairs, one and two and three, and I stop, as if I’m waiting for him. Keep the moves steady, nothing abrupt, nothing sudden. And keep him talking; most of all, I need to keep him talking. So I breathe out the words:

  You did.

  He likes that one. He likes it so much he goes to work on it. He starts chewing those words like a steak. Tries to decide whether to swallow or spit.

  A helicopter swoops in low. The sound of its wings batters the broken ceiling. Its searchlight lances into the ruined interior and is blunted by the smoke, the darkness.

  I wonder what it sees, and as I wonder I hear the voice, the voice in the night, the voice that growls out of the hailer, that caroms off the thumping wings, that echoes into the sanctuary, the voice that says

  Inside

  The voice that says

  This is the Alexandria Police Department

  The voice that says

  With agents of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms

  The voice that breaks suddenly into a whisper, a whisper at my ear, and Eighty f, it’s saying, eighty f, until the other voice returns, the voice in the night, the voice that says

  Put down your weapons

  The voice that says

  And come out with your hands up

  Before the whisper at my ear again:

  Who? That’s what it whispers. Who the fuck are you?

  And I have to say something, I have to hear my voice, my own voice, so I say to CK, I tell him:

  Put the gun away. The cops—

  The cops, CK says, and he blows what’s left of the smirk off his lips. Then:

  Whose cops? he says. Mine? Yours?

  They’re here, I tell him.

  Oh, yeah, he says. They’re here.

  He starts toward me again, his body shambling forward like a wound-down machine that wants to stop but can’t. His left leg drags behind the rest of him and when it catches up, the whole damn thing starts over again.

  A pained gasp, maybe it’s a cough, maybe it’s a laugh, rattles from his throat, and then more words:

  And what are they gonna do? he says. Send me to Vietnam?

  A flicker, a tiny shimmer of light, steals like silent lightning across the darkness behind him, and I blink, I try to blink the blood from my eyes, but there is nothing else to see, nothing but the darkness and CK and the gun in his right hand.

  His sick laughter ratchets on and on until he says:

  Fuck the cops. This isn’t about them. And it’s not about guns, is it? Not anymore. It’s not about money, either. Ten million dollars, Lane. Can you even think about counting that kind of paper? Ten million dollars you pissed away today. But it’s not about that. No way. And you know what? It’s not even about dead people. It’s not about Gideon Parks. It’s not about Mackie or Two Hand—

  His shuffle ends about twenty feet from me, and so does his speech, because that’s when he says:

  It’s about nothing.

  CK straightens, shifts his grip on the Magnum, and says:

  Nothing but you and me.

  I look at CK but I don’t see CK. I see the Reverend Gideon Parks, but he’s just a man, a man with a dream, maybe, but just another man. Now he’s dead. I see a young man, they called him Juan E, I see Juan E and his friends, his crew, and they’re dead too, all of them dead. I see an old man, standing with his wife, she called him John, John Henry Mason, lost and so very afraid in a building that burned down around them. I see Renny Two Hand in the ditch and Lauren in the trunk, and I see Jinx on the floor of that office, and finally I see CK, I see CK standing there in the aisle and I tell him:

  You’re wrong.

  I tell him:

  This is about everything.

  I raise the Glock on him.

  The darkness behind him blurs, flutters like the wings of a waking bird. I push the thought, the impossible thought that the darkness is alive, back down into the basement of my mind.

  He answers with the Magnum, and then these words:

  Well, then, he says. Fuck everything. And most of all, fuck you.

  My Glock is loaded and it’s got fifteen rounds of hollow point. His Magnum’s a roundhouse, so that gives him maybe six shots of what are probably cast-bulleted hunting loads that’ll cut through cinderblock, not to mention Kevlar, like it’s toast. But CK doesn’t shoot. He doesn’t do anything. He just holds that hand cannon on me until I realize that he’s waiting, waiting for me to say something, do something, that will bring us to that moment when I shoot him and he shoots me.

  The darkness behind him shifts. The darkness shudders. The darkness moves.

  So that’s when I say it, when I say the one thing, the only thing, that there is left to say. I say:

  Tell me, CK. What was it like?

  The last word comes right back to me: Like? he says.

  Yeah, I tell him. What was it like? How did it feel … to do what you did? In New York?

  How did it feel? CK says. When I killed the Reverend Gideon Parks?

  His face twists into another agonized smirk, and he swings the Magnum to the right, where the cross, fallen from above the altar, angles against the first of the pews. CK squeezes down, and the Magnum roars. The shot blows the top of Christ’s head into oblivion.

  Then CK and the pistol are facing me again, and he says:

  It felt just like that.

  And it’s then, watching him close on me, his finger curling back onto the trigger, that I smile. I smile for Jinx and what he showed me, and this is what I know:

  I don’t need the pistol anymore.

  I show CK the Glock, and I show him what Jinx showed me.

  I show him what to do with the gun.

  I pull the magazine and I flick the bullets, one by one, onto the floor.

  CK starts to laugh, but stops when I tell him:

  I didn’t talk, CK. But you did. You just did. You broke the rules. Like Mikey. Remember Mikey? Another guy I watched you kill. But you screwed up this time, CK. And it’s the last time. You know why?

  The magazine is empty, and I toss it aside.

  I look at him and I look right through him and I know, I know, I don’t need the gun. Not anymore.

  I let the pistol slip through my hands. I feel its weight, so heavy, leave me forever, crashing down onto the floor. Gone.

  You talked, CK. And you know what that means, don’t you? It means: You die.

  CK looks at me, looks at the discarded gun, looks again at me. Disbelief melts into a hideous smile that wants to match mine, but he does not know, he cannot ever know. He forces a laugh, and then there’s nothing left for him to do but call my bluff.

  He locks his elbow and points that Magnum at my face. Ten feet away, but it looks and it feels like ten inches. That one eye stares down the shiny barrel, over the sights and into my head.

  Another sick laugh. It ends with a cough, and CK spits out blood and finally the words:

  Forget those fucking fruitcake poets, he says.

  This is the way the world en
ds, he says.

  With a bang, he says. With a motherfucking bang.

  Then:

  Silence, startling silence.

  He thumbs back the hammer and the sound of the action is like some cosmic gear shifting into overdrive.

  That’s when the center of his chest expands, erupts, explodes, geysering shirt and suit coat and Kevlar, tissue and bone and gristle, muscle and guts and blood and blood and more blood.

  I feel the red rain on my face, my hands, a spray of heat that quickly goes cold.

  I see the fist-sized gap in CK’s chest, and I see the shadow, the shadow just past his shoulder, the shadow with the gun.

  I see what’s left of CK topple forward, onto his knees, the look of sadness turning to one of surprise and then to the slack sigh of death. His lips can’t quite form that one last word.

  Who? Is that the word, seeking some final knowledge, the answer that could take him, satisfied, to the grave?

  Thin beams of crimson pierce the darkness, crisscrossing and then merging into a halo that circles his head. He wears, for one fleeting moment, a shining crown. Then the strings that hold him upright are cut. His body tumbles onto the floor.

  Is it who or … what? Or why?

  As if the answer to each question isn’t the same.

  It’s always the same, and it’s coming now, coming out of the darkness.

  In the far corners of the sanctuary, the shadows begin to move. The shadows rise, the shadows stand, the shadows walk through the ruined cathedral, silent and certain. They wear black uniforms, black helmets, black masks. Their weapons shine ruby lines through the smoke, the darkness, laser aimers that dance around me, over me, painting my bloody clothes a deeper red. Their bodies are armored and carry the tools of their trade: flares and grenades, ropes and batons and handcuffs and all manner of authority and death.