But still more victims were being dragged from the building by the men whose help Alex had enlisted, so he stood his ground.
Something else caught his attention as his eyes began blurring in and out of focus. A man stood on the roof of the nursing home, watching him calmly. He couldn't explain it or describe the feeling he got from the man in the state he was in, but everything about this man was wrong.
He certainly looked out of place, this man with olive skin and silver hair. He had a stately presence that was underscored by the tailored suit he wore. Hands in his pockets, oblivious to the danger he was in standing astride a burning building, he looked at Grant with a keen detachment. He couldn't have been any more out of place if he tried, yet he simply stood there, watching Grant's every movement.
Grant's thoughts came rocketing back to the present with another unbearable surge of pain from his gut.
No! he thought, bearing down against the rising exhaustion. He squeezed his eyes closed against the pain and the sweat and clamped down with every ounce of strength he had left.
Not until they're out of the building! You stupid little piece of metal, you're not taking me down!
He faltered, stumbling to his knees, but held tightly to the car hoods redirecting the water flow above his head.
I. WILL. NOT. GO. DOWN!!
He cried out in agony, fighting against the fatigue that was overtaking him ...
NOOOOOO!!!
A wave of fatigue poured through him, his muscles spent, his blood running thin ...
Alex was close now, horror written across her features. She was close enough to catch him....
He blacked out.
Grant slowly opened his eyes. He was lying on an EMT gurney, next to similar gurneys in use by victims of the nursing home fire. His back was against an ambulance, and in his periphery he could see a number of other patients nearby.
His mind screamed get up! but his body refused. His vision was slightly blurred, off-kilter, and his head pounded with an intense migraine. The first of those he'd had in a long time.
But he was breathing. He was alive.
"Grant! You're okay!" Alex was sitting at his side. "You're okay.... She nodded assuringly, as if she was talking to herself more than to him. She let out an audible sigh of relief.
"If I'd known you were so eager to be a martyr, sweetie, I could've given you some easier options," she attempted to joke, but didn't quite pull it off. Something about her body seemed weak, deflated.
He allowed a small grin, closing his eyes. His mouth was incredibly dry, but his strength was already returning. With some effort, he raised himself up on his elbows, trying to sit. But he froze halfway there and looked down at his abdomen. His shirt had been ripped off, and the blanket that covered him fell away from his motion.
There was no wound. No sign of a bullet hole. Nothing, except for dried blood staining his skin, and the IV fluids pumping into a needle in his arm.
Now that he thought about it, he felt no residual pain from the attack, save for the headache.
"Fletcher managed to get ahold of Hector," Alex explained. "You lost a lot of blood, but otherwise you're good as new. More or less."
"More or less?"
"Well, it's just. . ." she faltered, frowning. "Toward the end, before you passed out ... there was this thing in your ... I mean, I thought I saw-"
She stopped talking when she saw Grant eying her curiously. "It was nothing," she said. "Forget it. You've got a clean bill of health."
Grant smiled faintly, then shook his head. "Hector is truly a wonder."
Julie had once confided to him her belief that Hector had so much energy-constantly running from one thing to the next, one person who needed his help to another, despite his rotund frame-because he conserved so much energy by never speaking.
The sun was farther along in the sky than where he'd left it, but it couldn't have been more than an hour or two since the attack. It was late afternoon.
His eyes narrowed suddenly. "The shooter, did they catch-?"
"Caught, arrested, and thrown under the nearest jail cell, if the crowd had anything to say about it. No less than eight pedestrians attacked him as soon as they heard the first shot. The police hardly had to do anything. We got everyone out of the building, by the way. If you hadn't held out as long as you did ..."
Grant looked over her shoulder to see a gathered crowd standing behind yellow caution tape. Easily a hundred people waited there, perhaps more. He couldn't quite see the whole crowd; an EMT van blocked part of his view.
He saw hastily-written posters and signs held high in the air by the onlookers that bore expressions of gratitude and love, well wishes and prayers. All for him.
He found himself shaking his head, almost involuntarily.
Alex turned around to look, and someone in the crowd noticed the motion.
"He's awake!" one of them cried.
And then the most remarkable thing happened. There were no shouts, no murmurs among the crowd. No one tried to break the yellow tape and run toward him and Alex. A silence fell over the crowd as every eye focused on Grant, who gazed wordlessly back at them.
One person began to clap. She was joined by another. And another. And soon the entire crowd thundered with applause. The signs and posters danced in the air animatedly, and a few individuals put fingers to their mouths and whistled in appreciation. Fists pumped into the air, and a fair amount of whooping was heard.
Alex turned back around to face him, a smile on her face but her eyebrows high above their usual position. He was quite sure she was enjoying this considerably more than he was.
A hand was placed on his shoulder from behind. "Thank you," said a husky male voice.
He swiveled to look as a fireman walked around the gurney to stand at Grant's feet. It was then that Grant noticed the man's badge. This was no mere fireman-he was the fire chief. Of Los Angeles County.
The chief looked as if he wanted to say something, but unspoken words passed between his eyes and Grant's. Grant knew the look on his face, because he felt it on his own. Too much had happened today, more horrors witnessed by both than any single person should see in a lifetime. Grant knew that all of the chief's firemen had given everything they had to the struggle today, every one of them a hero. And Grant saw a reflection in those eyes of all of the lives that had been lost-all of the ones he and his firefighters hadn't been able to save, including some of their own who had no doubt fallen in the line of duty.
It was a face filled with grime and soot and sweat and puffed out eye sockets. It was a face that must've looked an awful lot like his own at that moment, Grant surmised.
Despite all this, the fire chief smiled at Grant. It wasn't a big, beaming smile, or a kindly look of admiration. It was the grim look of a man who was taking in someone he considered his better, far more than an equal, and had no idea what to say to such a person.
"Thank you," he said finally, nodding at Grant. He turned loose and extended his hand to Alex, who accepted it with a nod of her own. "Ma'am," he said with an air of gratitude.
Then he simply turned and walked away.
Grant looked at Alex. Alex looked at Grant.
She reached up to his forehead and brushed his mussed hair away from his face. "You need to rest a little more, doctor's orders."
Grant looked down at his prone body on the gurney once more. "I don't think my insurance will cover this," he remarked. It was a joke, of course. He had no insurance because he had no public identity on record.
"Somehow I think the city of Los Angeles will be able to underwrite this one," Alex replied. She turned and left him alone to do as she'd requested.
Grant studied her as she walked away, unsettled by the uncharacteristically maternal gesture from the young woman. She had truly become his partner in the field over the last few months, and the closest thing he had to an equal. No one understood what he faced every day better than she did.
Still, something about the since
rity in her voice caught him off guard. His thoughts shifted back to the fire chief, the crowd, the victims that lay next to him ... These thoughts and many others collided and bounced off of one another in his head. Resting was the last thing he wanted to do. He'd rested enough while he was unconscious. He needed to get back on his feet and get back out there.
Earn all of this approval he was getting from everyone around him. Somehow.
Alex sighed. She was tired, though she knew it was nothing compared to how Grant must feel, what with the gaping stomach wound just a little while ago.
The thought of it made her queasy, but not because she'd seen the wound itself. She just didn't like the thought of Grant at death's door. After all, he should be indestructible.
"Is Guardian okay?" called out a voice.
She hadn't realized it, but as her thoughts wandered, so had shecloser to the crowd behind the barrier. The voice came from a small boy who wore a T-shirt with "Guardian" emblazoned on it and a Zorro-style mask over his eyes.
Her heart melted at the sight of him; he couldn't have been more than eight years old.
"He'll be fine," she said, walking a little closer to him. "He's a superhero, remember? Bullets can't hurt him as easily as they hurt everyone else."
The boy grinned and nodded. But then a thoughtful expression passed over his face. "What can hurt him?"
Alex knelt close to the boy and peered into his eyes, which were barely above the yellow police tape marking off the boundary where civilians shouldn't cross. "What do you mean?" she asked.
"You know, like Superman is hurt by kryptonite," the boy said. "What's Guardian's kryptonite?"
Alex tousled the boy's hair playfully. "He doesn't have one. No green meteorites for Guardian."
If only that were true ... she thought. A simple bullet had almost done the job today.
"You! Young lady!" A television reporter covering the dramatic events pushed his way to the front of the crowd and held out a microphone. A cameraman was attached to his hip. "Are you on Guardian's team?"
Alex was flustered, and slightly annoyed at the rudeness of the reporter breaking up her moment of fun with the little boy. "Well yes, but-"
"What is your power? Are you related to Guardian? What's your superhero code name?"
Alex stammered, struggling to respond to the barrage of questions. It was the last one that caught her attention most.
"I've given this some thought, actually," came Fletcher's voice in her ear. She tried not to roll her eyes; as happened so often in the field, she forgot he was listening in. `How do you feel about Emoticon'?"
Alex frowned and cleared her throat, forcefully. "We don't actually use code names. `Guardian' was an invention of the press, if I'm not mistaken-"
"Who is that talking to Guardian?" the reporter interrupted. Alex turned to see Grant rising from his gurney and putting his shirt back on, blatantly ignoring her insistence that he get some rest. A stooped, elderly man, probably in his late seventies or early eighties, was gesturing wildly at Grant. Strange sounds that sounded nothing like normal speech could be heard coming from the old man's mouth.
The reporter kept asking questions, but Alex was no longer listening. She immediately moved to join Grant, but she quickly stopped short. She'd received a mental signal from him to stay away.
"Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. ..." the man blustered. There was no stutter; he simply couldn't create words or anything else beyond basic, guttural sounds. He wore a pair of baby blue pajamas and a matching pair of slip-on bedroom shoes. He had bushy white hair and a scraggly but full white beard. Old-fashioned spectacles with bold frames sat atop his nose. He was a good head and a half shorter than Grant, though it wasn't clear whether that was because of age or bad posture.
The man was undoubtedly one of the residents of the nursing home, now displaced by the fire. From the looks of it, he'd led a difficult life. He was missing one hand; a prosthetic limb took its place.
The harder the old man tried to get Grant to understand, the more unintelligible his gibberish became and the more visibly frustrated he obviously felt. It was a vicious circle.
Grant had no idea what the old kook wanted, but it seemed that he wouldn't be able to get rid of him until he'd conveyed whatever was on his mind.
"Rrrreehhhhh," the man went on, his eyes wild now over his own inability to communicate.
Grant thought about maybe something to write on would help, but where would he get his hands on something like that out here?
"Rrraaaann ... ttt."
Grant froze. Had this old man just said his name?
"Grant?" Grant whispered his own name.
The old man's eyes grew even wider, and he nodded vigorously.
"How do you know that name?" Grant whispered.
The old man put his hands up and swept them back and forth, a gesture Grant interpreted as, never mind that.
Grant was startled when the old man grabbed his hand with his one good one and balled up Grant's hand into a fist. With jerky, quivering movements, he roughly but slowly unfolded Grant's fingers one at a time until three of them were standing up. Then he let go and stepped back, motioning with his fake hand at what he'd done.
"Three? You want to tell me there's three of something?" Grant concluded.
Another excited affirmation from the old man.
Who was this weird old relic?
The man grabbed Grant's hand again and pointed wildly at the watch he wore.
"Time?" Grant asked. "Three times?"
Frustrated again, the old man shook his head violently and motioned at Grant's watch again. This time he traced the circular shape of the timepiece, but he traced it backward.
"Backward time ... A countdown?" Grant pondered. The man reacted positively. "Is something counting down from three?"
The man grabbed Grant suddenly by the shoulders and nearly hugged him, so overwhelmed was he that Grant was finally beginning to understand.
But Grant wasn't. He had no idea what any of this meant.
"Looks like you've made a new friend, Mr. Wood," said a jovial voice behind Grant.
A black woman appeared, dressed in bright-colored scrubs-the kind used by nursing home employees. Her name tag read "Teresa" and had the nursing home's name and logo off to one side.
"Do you know him?" Grant asked.
"Of course. Mr. Wood is one of my favorite patients," she said smiling.
"He keeps you laughing, huh?" Grant prodded.
"If only," she said with overstretched sadness. "Poor old soul took brain damage to the part of his brain that controls speech some time ago. He can barely say anything at all."
"How did that happen to him? What happened?"
"I don't know the details," Teresa replied. "But it must have been some kind of blunt-force head injury."
"Did he lose his hand at the same time?" Grant couldn't help asking.
"I don't know, honey," Teresa replied, her eyes slowly dawning with recognition of just who she was talking to. "Oh! I'm so sorry, sir. He shouldn't be bothering someone like you, just let me get him settled in here somewhere. I'm sorry about this ..." Her voice trailed off as she spotted a vacant wheelchair nearby and quickly retrieved it.
"It's no bother, really," Grant was saying.
Just as Mr. Wood sat in the wheelchair Teresa had brought him, he snatched a small pad out of her large front shirt pocket, along with a pen. She was startled by the action and nearly screamed.
"Now what do you want with that?" she asked him over-dramatically. She seemed to think it was pointless for him to try to write anything with his spasmodic movements.
The old man ignored her and scribbled something on the pad and then hurriedly handed it to Grant.
Grant could barely make out the letters that had been scrawled across the blank paper in red ink; it was something a few steps worse than a small child's handwriting. The "c" and the "s" were backward, but if Grant wasn't mistaken, the word Mr. Wood had written was "acts."
&nb
sp; "Acts? Is that what you've been trying to tell me?" Grant asked, looking into the old man's eyes.
The man nodded and then pointed at Grant's hand again. Grant's mind spun, piecing it together.
"Three acts? Three things are going to happen ... and that's the countdown? A countdown from three?"
The old man closed his eyes, smiled, and sighed a great, heaving sigh, as if a tremendous weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Whatever it meant, Grant had figured it out.
Teresa, oblivious to their talk, was still busy preparing to cart off Mr. Wood. She circled the chair, grabbed the handles, and pushed him away from Grant with another quick apology.
"But a countdown to what?" Grant called out. "A countdown from three ..." he mused. "Three events will count down to something?"
It was a full minute before he realized that Alex was standing beside him. He had no idea if she'd heard him talk to himself.
"What was that about? Who was that guy?" she asked. "And why did you want me to stay out of it?"
Grant didn't reply, only put out an arm to steady himself from a sudden wave of dizziness. His hand landed on her shoulder.
"We've talked about the inappropriate touching, sweetie," she said playfully. "Respect the personal space. And you're supposed to be resting anyway-"
Then she looked into his eyes for the first time, and she dropped all pretenses. "You're scaring me, Grant. You look spooked. What is it? What did that man say to you?"
Grant's mind was racing to places and times and possibilities very far from here. "I honestly don't know."
A deep red sunset came and went.
Grant watched it disappear while quietly eating a quick supper, until what he saw was replaced by darkness. Red skies at night usually meant good tidings, but in no way could Grant imagine this to be the case tonight. Maybe, he thought, the sky is mourning for the earth. It soaks up the gallons of blood that were spilled on it today.
Even though his body had healed, he still found himself horribly sore, both from the shooting and from the day's exertions. Hector stopped at his side briefly to dispose of his plate for him. The large man offered an encouraging smile, and then he was off again.
Fearless (Dominion Trilogy #2) Page 6
