by Rob Hart
The first door leads tp a staircase down to the basement.
Second, boiler room.
Third, pantry.
Fourth—bingo.
A spiral staircase barely wider than my shoulders.
Saved by home renovation shows.
I step into the stairwell and ease the door closed behind me, climb the stairs, find the door at the top locked.
The lock is completely different from the kind I’m used to. It looks like it takes a skeleton key. I have no idea where to even start with this. My lock-picking experience starts and ends with modern tumbler locks. I drop down, peek under the door. Looks like an empty room. Put my ear against it and listen. Nothing on the other side. Not many options left. I put my shoulder into the door, pressing hard.
It takes nearly a minute. My shoulder aches, but finally the door mechanism busts and the door flings open, slamming against the wall louder than I’d like. I fall into the room and find the scrawny guy from the house I visited with Samson. He’s got something in his hands, which are extended out and pressed between his knees.
A silver handgun.
He looks at me, terrified and confused. The gun is rattling from his hands shaking. I consider charging at him but it’s too much ground to cover.
“Where are they?” I ask.
He trembles in response.
Really not feeling good about that gun in his hand. I move toward him slowly. Hands up. “I’m not going to hurt you, kid. But the people downstairs will. Go down this staircase and head out the back and you’ll make it out of here alive. Understood?”
He stares at me like I’m a ghost suddenly manifest in front of him.
“Understood?” I ask, louder.
He nods vigorously. Gets up. Still holding the gun. I take a step forward to close the distance a bit, keep the cricket bat down at my side but ready to swing, so I can disarm him if he brings his arm up.
“Drop the gun and go,” I tell him.
He doesn’t drop the gun.
I flick out the bat and smack his hand. He rears back and grimaces. I probably broke a finger, but no avoiding it. The gun falls from his grip and he rushes past me. But instead of going to the back staircase, he runs to the front.
I’m about to run after him but there’s no use.
He gets to the top and there’s a shout from downstairs.
By the time he reaches the bottom, gunshots thunder through the house, followed by a scream and a heavy thud.
Fuck.
Running out of time here.
I check the door the kid was sitting outside. Figure him for the guard. It’s locked. I’m suddenly less worried about making noise. Reach back and kick hard. It doesn’t move. Do it again, putting my hips into it. On the third kick, the door splinters. On the fifth it cracks.
On the sixth, it flies open.
The room is nearly pitch black, the windows covered in tinfoil. It smells like piss and shit. There’s a small lamp in the corner casting off meager wattage. There’s a bucket, too—probably the source of the smell—and piles of discarded fast food bags.
There are two mattresses. And two figures. The pair of them disheveled, in cast-off jeans and t-shirts, barefoot. They both sit up.
Spencer’s face twists in confusion.
Ginny smiles.
“Darling,” she says. “What took you so long?”
I smile back. “These accommodations don’t seem up to your regular standards.”
“It sounds like World War III down there. Maybe let’s get out of here before we start with the comedy routine.”
She’s right. Ginny scrambles into the hallway, followed by Spencer. They’re barefoot, but there are worse things. Ginny picks up the gun that was discarded on the floor, slides the magazine out, nods, and clicks it back into place.
“I’m a little surprised you’re still alive,” I tell her.
“They’ve been interrogating us. Figured I would break sooner or later. They know nothing about me.” She looks at Spencer and smiles. “About either of us. Now what’s the plan?”
“You really think I thought that far?”
I cross to the back staircase. Edge along the wall. Look down. There’s a body at the bottom of the stairs, face down, kinked up in the narrow space. Dead. I catch a whiff of smoke.
Both stairways are unsafe. No one in this house is our friend. We could escape out a window, down the roof. Easy to slip and fall. Plus, they’re barely dressed. Nearly a full minute has passed since there was a gunshot, but the smell of smoke is getting stronger.
I turn to Ginny and Spencer. “Check the bedrooms. Try to get some clothes and shoes. Last resort is we go down the roof. But I’m going to check the front staircase. See if enough people killed each other we can sneak out of here.”
They disappear into the adjacent rooms and I move to the front. Get on my hands and knees and crawl down until I can just barely see the living room.
It is fucking bedlam.
Beautifully ornate. Oriental carpet. Wood trim. Gorgeous stone fireplace. There’s a coffee table piled high with glassine bags stamped in red ink. Can’t make it out from here but I’m betting it’s pizza.
Nearly everything is splattered with dark red sprays blood. I count five bodies. None of them is Paris or Athena.
It’s quiet, too, like whatever’s currently happening has moved on to another part of the house, or maybe even ended. Smoke is coiling across the floor. Figure that’s got to mean the fire is in the basement. Probably where the processing operation is.
I dare to stand, take a step down the stairs, and Athena appears.
Her face contorts in rage. She raises the shotgun at me and fires.
It clicks.
First she looks down at the shotgun and frowns.
Then she looks at me and her eyes go so wide they nearly fall out of her head.
“Thought we killed you,” she says.
“Nope!” It sounds jovial. For some reason I’m not nearly as mad at her as I should be.
“You a zombie? White Walker? What’s the deal?”
“You sent Spencer to steal my wallet and he shot me with naloxone.”
She nods. “Motherfucker. Well, better than you being a zombie.” She reaches into her jacket, pulls out a shell and goes to load it in the shotgun. “Almost feel bad about having to finish the job now.”
“Wait.”
She pauses, raises her eyebrow.
“I’ve got no beef with you. Never had beef with Brick. I was here to shut this shit down just like you. We’re on the same side. So, I don’t know, in the spirit of good will, how about not killing me?”
“You not with this crew?”
“I told you at the start of all this, I’m not with anybody. I’m with Spencer.”
“He okay?”
“He is.”
“Where’s he at?”
“He’s okay.”
She lowers the gun a little. “Paris is dead. Motherfuckers caught her in the back of the head.”
For a moment Athena’s façade crumbles and the sadness shines through. I know that feeling. It’s almost enough to make me want to put a hand on her shoulder. Comfort her. Give her something that’ll make her feel better.
I don’t, because she still has the shotgun.
“You set the fire downstairs?”
“Yeah.”
“Where’s the man in charge. Where’s Kid Vicious?”
She shrugs. “Dunno who the fuck he even is. Just know there were people here need killing.”
“So what now?”
“Now I get the fuck gone.”
“You going to let me go?” I ask.
She thinks about it for a moment. Says, “Yeah, sure.”
She clomps into the living room. I’m about to ask if she’ll at least apologize for trying to kill me that first time—not that it’s really necessary, and is probably pushing things further than they need to go—when she comes back into view, Paris slung over her shoulde
r, limp like a doll.
Athena makes for the front door.
I call after her. “Hey.”
She barely turns. Regards me in her peripheral vision.
“Did you kill Timmy?”
“He dead?”
I let that linger. Examine the undercurrents of surprise and concern. I guess that answers my question. It hits me like a fist in the gut. It was so easy to think that Timmy’s death could be chalked up to this stupid fucking drug war. Turns out he lost the war to himself.
“Yeah,” I tell Athena. “He’s dead.”
She mutters something I think sounds like, “Too bad.” I can imagine it’s hard to muster up a lot of grief when you’re already carrying more than a hundred pounds of it on your shoulder. She makes for the door, leaves the house.
The smoke is getting thick. Hopefully she sticks to her word. Hopefully there’s no one else alive in this house, because soon, there won’t be. I go back up the stairs, find Ginny and Spencer in a back bedroom looking out the window. They’re dressed now. Ill-fitting boots and layers of sweatshirts. It’ll do.
“I think we can make it down,” Spencer says.
“No need,” I tell them. “Front is clear.”
We make our way for the stairs, Spencer running ahead of me, clearly looking to get out of the house as soon as he can. He makes it down to the bottom of the stairs and there’s a hard crack. He jerks forward like someone kicked him in the back.
Ginny and I both duck. There’s someone lying in the hallway now, gun drawn. Fucker wasn’t there before. Ginny roars and leans over the bannister, firing wildly as blood seeps out of Spencer’s left flank. He’s not moving.
Ginny’s not hitting anything but the floor, splitting the blonde hardwood. Somewhere a home renovator is weeping.
I look over and catch a glimpse of the person with the gun rolling away, back toward the kitchen. Don’t think. Jump over the bannister, land hard, roll into the living room as the sheetrock explodes above me, white dust swirling in the air to mix with the thickening black smoke. I look up at Ginny and nod. She leans over and returns fire, giving me some cover so I can pull Spencer out of the range of the shooter.
He’s bleeding but I feel a pulse. I grab a throw pillow off the couch and press it down hard on his back to stop the bleeding. He groans and tries to move away.
Ginny yells at me from the stairs. “Ash? I think I got him.”
I peek around the corner. The figure is prone. I’m about to give Ginny the all clear when the guy’s hands jerk up. Another bullet slams into the wall, narrowly missing me.
“No you didn’t.”
“Sorry, darling,” Ginny says.
I look around. Not a ton of options. Best I can think to do is loop around through the dining room, into the kitchen, come up on this guy from behind, and hopefully he doesn’t shoot me.
“Ginny, you got any bullets left?”
“I think so.”
“You fucking better. On three.” I lean down to Spencer. “Hang in there, buddy.” I get up, ready to run, and call, “One-two-three!”
Ginny and the figure trade bullets. I circle around, nearly tripping over bodies along the way, until I make it to the hallway.
It’s the first good look I get at the guy with the gun.
He looks like an accountant. Jeans and a t-shirt. A beard. An unremarkable face. Tennis shoes. He looks like he drinks light beer and is very proud of his propane grill.
He sees me, raises the gun, and fires. I freeze.
It clicks.
Getting real lucky with people not counting their bullets today.
He tosses the gun aside and that’s when I see the blood pumping out of his leg.
Must have caught a bullet in the femoral. I say that like I’m a doctor. But there’s way too much blood for it to be a flesh wound. Gushing out like a busted pipe. The guy is so pale he’s nearly green, and he’s exerting a massive amount of strength to move his limbs.
“Come into my… fucking house,” he says, choking on the words.
The smoke is billowing from under the door leading to the basement. It’s thick and choking now. He coughs. I lean down next to him.
“You’re him? Kid Vicious?”
He laughs, looking down at the widening pool of blood. “Started as joke. Someone called me that. Hated that… fucking name.”
I want to feel bad for him. Really, I do. He’ll be dead soon. But then I remember that he was planning to kill a whole bunch of people to make that name stick. I look around for a dishtowel or something, anything to stop the bleeding, because for as much as I think he deserves it, I’m not going to stand by and watch.
I can’t.
But by the time I turn back to him, he’s gone.
I head for the stairwell. Ginny is standing with Spencer now. Good to see that he’s on his feet. “Get him out of here. I’m going to check the bodies. Make sure no one’s still alive.”
“Ash, we really should go.”
“I’m not leaving anyone to get burned alive. I’ll be right behind you.”
The two of them make for the door. Getting hard to see now.
Makes me think of my dad. How he’d watch movies like Backdraft and get so angry. Said you can’t look around inside a house or a building that’s on fire. There’s too much smoke. You crawl around on your hands and knees, searching by touch.
I’m seeing now how right he was. The smoke is crushing. It pushes into your eyes, your lungs. It’s like a living thing that wants to hurt you.
I grab a towel off the counter, run it under the tap, hold it to my face. Breathe through that. Stay low and run from one body to another.
Everyone dead.
In the living room I take one last look at the pile of heroin. It looks like they’re packing it into bundles to go out. Hopefully that means only a few made it into circulation. I grab a handful of the empty bags and head out the back door for the guy with the tan. He’s not there. He could be among the dead inside. I could barely make out anyone’s face. Could have gotten away.
I circle around to the front of the house. Ginny and Spencer are standing in the snow, watching. I join them. This big beautiful thing, flames licking out the windows, smoke billowing out the doors. I take a deep breath, cough hard. My nose is running. I reach down and grab some snow and use it to clean my hands, my face.
A basement window shatters.
It’s going to take some time to trek back to the road. And then we need to get Spencer to a hospital.
But it’s so easy to stand here and watch the house burn. Like all of this is finally, finally over.
“You okay?” I ask Spencer.
“I think so,” he says. “Thank you.”
“Hey, you save my life, I save yours. Now we’re even.”
I feel something on my shoulder, turn to find Ginny’s hand.
Ginny, the queen of the Lower East Side. Stripped of her armor, face covered in grime and soot, limbs thin, face gaunt, days worth of beard growth. But still wearing diamond earrings. Not willing to surrender.
“We should go,” I tell her.
We stand there a few moments longer, watching the flames envelop the house while the snow falls in circles around us, the mix of hot and cold oddly pleasant.
By the time we make it to the foot of the road, a fire truck is moving toward us at a brisk but careful pace, the wide tires cutting rivulets in the snow. I open the gate for them. The truck slows down a bit alongside us and the chauffeur peers out the window. I point up the road.
“Place is shot up,” I tell him. “Everyone was dead before the fire got going.”
The chauffeur nods and they continue on their way. They’re being tailed by ambulances and police cruisers. I wonder if someone saw the smoke. Maybe Athena called it in. Doesn’t really matter at this point. The only thing that matters is that it’s done.
“Fuck,” Ginny says under her breath.
I’m sure she’d like to avoid going to the hospital on this
. She’s going to have a lot of explaining to do. Spencer, too. Gunshots don’t get brushed off. Personally I think the cops and paramedics are for the best, because Spencer is fading, blood spilling down his side, his skin sallow. If it weren’t for Ginny holding him up he’d have hit the floor.
“No sense in drawing things out,” I tell Ginny.
She nods, throws Spencer’s arm over her shoulder and moves toward an ambulance. Without looking back she says, “We’ll talk.”
“Sure.”
A few of the police cruisers follow the fire truck. One of them stays behind, along with an ambulance. I go to the cruiser and the cop who climbs out gives me a curious look.
“Don’t need ambulances up there,” I tell him. “Everyone is dead.”
After that, it’s chaos. Cops asking us questions. EMTs checking us over. Ginny and Spencer end up in one ambulance that tears ass down the road, while I end up sitting on the back of another, sucking down canned oxygen. My throat is raw and scratchy, like I smoked twelve packs of cigarettes in an hour. It does not make me miss smoking. Minor smoke inhalation, the EMT tells me.
It’s not long before Detective Perry is there, in a long black overcoat, boots crunching in the snow, furious look on his face.
“You,” he says.
“Me,” I tell him, moving the mask aside.
“Can he take that thing off?” Perry asks the EMT.
The EMT nods. I hand it over, a little sad, because the rush from the oxygen is nice. I hop off the back of the ambulance and Perry gestures for me to follow him. We walk toward the gate.
“What in the hell is going on here?”
Used to be, I would follow that up with a smartass comment in the course of evading the question. Tell him I was out for a hike. If I was in a really pissy mood, I’d say I was on my way to meet his mom. Which is about as juvenile as it is satisfying.
Instead I tell him a story.
I fudge some of the details. Tell him I was looking for my friends but didn’t have any idea what I was walking into. Two crews got in a gunfight and we made it out of there. That it was the tip of a deadly spear. It helps when I hand over the empty stamped dime bags and explain the fentanyl plot. I suspect they were hot on this trail. The way he nods, throws out a little grin here and there, makes me think I’m filling in some missing puzzle pieces.
