by Pro Se Press
“You see how marvelously wealthy these professional sports people are today? A miniature hospital concealed within the stadium. They can do almost anything here: set a broken bone after taking x-rays, install stitches, run all sorts of tests. I suppose they could even deliver a baby here or transplant an organ if they were shut off from the outside world and had no choice. Quite impressive!”
Monroe was impressed. He had to agree with Khan on that subject. He had not expected a ballpark infirmary to be so well equipped. There were several examining tables, radiological equipment, microscopes for blood testing, and treadmills and weights that were presumably for testing muscles to check for injuries.
“Do you know what’s in the next room?” Khan asked. “They even have their own MRI device! Can you imagine how much a thing like that costs? And all because of a silly game with sticks and balls!”
“Fascinating,” Monroe quipped, getting tired of Khan’s voice.
“Now,” Khan continued, “I want you to go over to that examining table against the left wall, the one with the cabinet of drawers within reach of anyone sitting on that table.”
Monroe did as he was told. He sat on the edge of the table looking across the room at Khan.
“Good, we’re going to have some fun…or I am, at least. You’ll be in too much pain. In those drawers are all sorts of interesting medical instruments. You’re going to demonstrate their uses on your own body for my amusement. Your goal is to stay awake as long as you can. If you should grow too weak to continue to do as I tell you or you should faint or go into shock before I’m satisfied, I’ll shoot you. You won’t leave this room alive, but you don’t strike me as the sort who wants to die even a second before you must, so I think you’ll play along. In fact, let’s add this to my little promise from before: the longer you stay awake and alert to experience all that pain, the more likely I am to let Miss Willows live! Now let’s begin, and don’t even think about throwing anything at me. I’ll squeeze the trigger long before it hits me. Open the top drawer.”
Monroe slid the drawer opened and wondered if he had slipped back in time to the Inquisition. The instruments of medicine, he knew, could serve double duty as implements of torture, and never before had he been so terrified by the sight of scalpels, needles, and other tools of the physician’s trade.
“Take out that long sewing needle,” Khan said, apparently having memorized the contents of the drawer at some point before Monroe’s arrival. “Stick it into your left thigh.”
Monroe obeyed. He plunged the long, thin needle into the flesh of his left leg and winced as it slid in. It hurt like hell but he would not cry out, not yet at least. He had an idea churning around in his mind now, a possible way out, but he would have to endure a considerable amount of self-inflicted pain before he could convincingly make it happen.
“Now pull it out and repeat the motion on the other leg,” Khan said.
Monroe’s face twisted in pain again as the needle came out. His expression contorted further on the second stab. He allowed a grunt to slip out of his mouth.
“Enough with the needle,” Khan said. “Pull it out and throw it aside.”
“Nnngh,” Monroe growled as he removed the long metal splinter and let it drop to the floor.
“I think we should see some blood now,” Khan said. “Some red to go with your white and blue! Pick up the scalpel.”
Monroe lifted the sharp surgical instrument from the drawer, held it like a pen.
“You’re going to roll up your left sleeve,” Khan commanded, “and slice your forearm, just deep enough to really feel it. But no veins, yet. I don’t want you bleeding to death, at least not for a while.”
Monroe decided to take his big chance now. What he intended to do would involve physical pain but would also rely on his being able to push his mind in a very specific direction to trigger an exact physical reaction. It had to be real.
He lifted the scalpel to his left arm, slid it along the skin between his wrist and elbow, letting the edge dig into the flesh, drawing a thin crimson line, freeing the blood to run from the cut. The pain in his nerves was bad and his voice rose in a strained murmur. As he cut, he directed his mind to bring up images, things he wished he could have left buried behind the walls of memory.
He forced the mental pictures he had saved on one very specific night in Paris to flood back to the surface of his mind. Genevieve was with him. A shot rang out. She crumbled to the ground, her blood, as red in his memory as his own was in that room in Fenway Park, spilling onto the steps of the Opera.
The pain was unbearable, not in his arm, but in his heart. He saw her die all over again and it cut him to the core. He made the image stay, would not let it slip away from him no matter how badly he wanted to shut it off. All the pain and grief and shock rushed back and hit him like a truck plowing into his body at full speed. It literally made him sick.
He dropped the scalpel, hunched forward clutching his stomach, and began to retch, coughing and straining, suddenly violently ill.
“Richard, you disappoint me!” Garrett Khan’s voice babbled in the distance. “I thought you’d be able to take so much more! This is no fun at all. Game over!”
Monroe’s eyes lifted just enough to see Khan’s feet stepping closer, closer. Khan was moving in to take the shot. Six feet away, then five, then four. The three foot mark was reached and Monroe moved. He drew himself up and threw his body at Khan, slamming into him, sending the gun flying from Khan’s hand.
The two men fell in a tangled heap on the floor. Khan flung out his fist, connecting with Monroe’s jaw. He stood while Monroe was temporarily stunned. Monroe got up onto his knees, reached out for the gun, but Khan anticipated the move and kicked the pistol, sending it sliding across the room into the door that led to the MRI room. Monroe charged after it but Khan caught up to him, grabbed him by the back of the shirt, tried to keep him from grabbing the firearm.
Monroe struggled to his feet, grabbed Khan’s collar with one hand and twisted the doorknob with the other. The door opened and Monroe shoved Khan into the next room. Inside was a table above which hung the huge Magnetic Resonance Imaging unit. Monroe ran at Khan, pushed him onto that table, and landed on top of him, holding him down. He wrapped one hand around Khan’s throat, squeezing hard. Khan fought back, trying to go for Monroe’s eyes. Monroe turned his head to avoid Khan’s nails. With his free hand, he reached out and made contact with the panel of controls for the MRI machine. He hit every switch at once, trying to cover all his bases. Overhead, a loud humming sound began.
“Garrett,” Monroe grunted as they struggled, “you still have that implant in your brain, don’t you? I’d bet all the money I’ve ever seen that it’s got some metal in it.”
As those words left Monroe’s lips, Garrett Khan began to scream as if all the pain in the universe had suddenly started to burn him from the inside out. He stopped trying to scratch Monroe, stopped trying to fight at all, and clutched his head with both hands, screaming like a banshee on the rack. He convulsed, he twitched, blood trickled from his nose, and there was a terrible popping sound as the huge magnet overhead sucked the small metallic chip out of Garrett Khan’s brain and straight out the back of his head, spraying the wall of the room with blood and bone and gray matter. After the pop, Khan did not move again.
Monroe rolled off the table, got up, ran out of the room. He went back to the security center, limping and panting and groaning, nearly exhausted and with blood still seeping from the long, narrow wound on his forearm. In the room of television screens, he picked up the telephone he recalled seeing on his previous visit.
Most people today, Monroe had observed, do not bother to memorize telephone numbers. With cell phone contact lists, people simply dial names now, not bothering with the digits. But to a man in the intelligence field, memorization is everything and can mean the difference between success and failure, life and death. It was easy for Monroe to recall the number he had used to call Mr. Nine before
he had lost his phone to the water of Fenway’s indoor pool. Now he called that number on this phone.
“Monroe, I’ve been trying to reach you,” Mr. Nine answered. “Status report, now!”
“Khan is dead, sir,” Monroe rasped. “You can send in the damn FBI now…and the police…and everybody else. Five body bags should do it…and an ambulance with room for two. I have to go now, sir. I have a lady waiting for me.”
Click.
Chapter 19: What Time Remains
Two weeks had passed and Monroe’s bruises had faded away. The wound on his arm was almost unnoticeable now and he predicted that not even a scar would remain after a month. He had spent most of his time since Fenway Park in his apartment, seeing nobody and only talking with Mr. Nine a handful of times.
The press had been kept in the dark about the night in the stadium. Mr. Nine had made sure that no news of the deaths of Garrett Khan and his men had leaked out. As far as the rest of the world knew, nothing out of the ordinary had happened there at all.
Winter Willows would spend several weeks in the hospital. Her shattered nose required reconstructive surgery, which was discreetly paid for by the United States government. The FBI visited her and she agreed, after some convincing and some comments that could have been construed as threats, to accept their offer of a new start with a new name in a place she had never been before and where no one knew her. Monroe was glad when Mr. Nine informed him of Winter’s decision.
***
It was snowing lightly on the evening when Monroe decided he felt strong enough, in both the physical and emotional ways, to do something he had begun to feel more and more that he had to do. He made himself presentable first, taking a long, hot shower, shaving closely and thoroughly, and putting on his sharpest black suit. Then he stared at the walls of his apartment for a very long time, measuring and visualizing and estimating. Finally, he chose a spot. He took a hammer and pounded a nail into the wall. He dug a box out of the closet, one he had been avoiding since moving in. He took out his favorite photograph of Genevieve, a black and white image where her hair waved in the wind and her eyes twinkled and her entire expression reminded him of why he had fallen in love with her in the first place.
He hung the picture on the selected spot on the wall and stood back to admire it. It seemed to Monroe that Genevieve, from wherever she had gone, smiled down at him by way of that photograph. In his mind he could almost hear her voice.
“It’s all right, Rick. I’ve been avenged. Let me rest. Now go enjoy your life before you get too old to use the time you have left to you. And be careful out there, my love.”
Monroe smiled back at her, and he turned away.
***
He had just changed out of the suit and was about to sit down with a book for an hour before heading to bed when the doorbell rang. He glanced at the clock. It was just past nine and he was not expecting anybody. He wondered if it had anything to do with Mr. Nine; perhaps a new assignment. But he suspected his supervisor would give him another week at least to make sure he was fully recovered before sending him off on another job.
He went to the door, opened it, and smiled in surprise when he found Angela MacIntyre standing there smiling back. “Well hello,” he said.
She looked gorgeous, Monroe thought: dressed casually in jeans and a North Face jacket, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, minimal makeup, and, most noticeably, her arm no longer in a sling.
“I’m sorry to just show up like this, Rick,” she said, “but somebody called me right after I left the rehab place and moved back into my apartment. They said they worked with you and they gave me your address, said you had a tough time since last time I saw you and that you could use a little company. Is it okay that I came here tonight?”
“Of course it is,” Monroe said. He meant it. “Come in, Angela. How do you feel?”
She walked in, hugged him, then stepped back and raised her hand in the air between them. “I feel fine.” She smiled, wiggling her fingers. “Most of the feeling is back and I can do almost everything with this arm again. So I’m mostly back to normal and looking for a new job.”
“That’s great,” Monroe said. “Sit down and I’ll get you a drink.”
***
Three drinks each and an hour of small talk later, Angela had migrated from a chair to the couch, where she now sat with her head on Monroe’s shoulder. Her sneakers were empty on the floor and her legs were tucked under her as Monroe’s arm covered her shoulders.
“Nice place you have here,” Angela said.
“Thanks,” Monroe replied. “Do you want to see the rest of it?”
“We’ll get there eventually,” Angela said. “It’s the next logical step after this…”
She turned to him and kissed him. He kissed back and after a minute of it carefully placed his hands under her body, one behind her back and one behind her knees, lifted her up and carried her in the direction of the bedroom.
“Ready for that tour, Miss MacIntyre?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be, Rick.”
By the time Angela Macintyre was gently put down on the bed, she had demonstrated the extent of her recovery by nimbly unbuttoning her carrier’s pants in transit. Richard Monroe saw that as a sign that it was going to be a delightful evening.
THE END
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Aaron Smith is the author of thirty published stories in genres including mystery, horror, science fiction, and fantasy. His work includes stories featuring Sherlock Holmes, Allan Quatermain, and many of his own creations. His novels include Season of Madness and 100,000 Midnights. He is currently working on a sequel to Nobody Dies for Free. Information about Smith’s work can be found on his blog at http://www.godsandgalaxies.blogspot.com.
You have just finished reading
NOBODY DIES FOR FREE
By Aaron Smith
Edited by Percival Constantine
Editor in Chief, Pro Se Productions-Tommy Hancock
Submissions Editor-Barry Reese
Director of Corporate Operations-Morgan Minor
Publisher & Pro Se Productions, LLC-Chief Executive Officer-Fuller Bumpers
Cover Art by Ariane Soares
Book Design, Layout, and Additional Graphics by Sean E. Ali
E-book Design by Russ Anderson
Visit the Pro Se Press website at http://www.prosepulp.com for more New Pulp novels and short story collections
Pro Se Productions, LLC
133 1/2 Broad Street
Batesville, AR, 72501
870-834-4022
[email protected]
http://www.prosepulp.com
