More silence. He’s almost convinced himself that Diego was shot when he emerges with a rectangle of plastic about six inches long and three inches wide. It has two stickers on it. The first sticker marks it as a TUNA FISH AND CHEDDAR SANDWICH and the second has the price, $4.99, and a barcode.
‘This?’ Diego asks.
Ian nods. ‘That’s the one.’
He unbuttons his shirt with his right hand while holding his left over the hole in his chest.
‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Listen. I’m gonna pull my hand away from my chest. I need you to slap that piece of plastic over the hole.’
‘Okay.’
Ian licks his dry lips. ‘Okay.’
Ian pulls his hand away. He inhales and hears that terrible whistle. Then pressure and it stops. Diego is leaning over him, hand holding the plastic over the wound in his chest.
‘Okay,’ Ian says. ‘I got it.’
He puts his own hand over the piece of plastic.
‘Help me sit up and get this shirt off.’
They get Ian up and then get his right arm out of his shirt; then, after putting his right hand over the wound in his chest, his left arm.
‘Now,’ Ian says. ‘Let’s tie the shirt around me. Use it to hold the plastic in place.’
Diego nods. ‘Okay,’ he says.
He shakes the dust off the shirt, then slings it around Ian’s back.
Ian simply sits with his back against the car’s left front fender and catches his breath. Tears of pain stream down his face and his heart beats irregularly in his chest. He breathes in and out. He closes his eyes and opens them. The pain is tremendous. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out the bottle of tramadol. He thumbs the cap off the bottle and looks inside. Three pills left. He pours them into his mouth and dry swallows, then throws the bottle aside.
‘Are you gonna be okay?’
He shakes his head.
‘No,’ he says. ‘But we’re here and we’re doing this, so let’s finish it.’
‘Let’s.’
‘Get the guns from the back seat.’
Maggie is pulling her hand against the cuff, grimacing, unable to get the metal ring over the meat of her thumb, when she hears the first gunshot. Beatrice jumps at the sound and drops the bag of chips in her hand.
She leaves the chips where they lie and walks to the pistol Henry gave her and picks it up from the floor where she set it. She examines it, a confused look on her face, like she doesn’t know how it got into her hand, sets it down again, and walks to the window. The evening light splashes across her face.
Another gunshot sounds and Beatrice jumps again.
‘What can you see?’
‘Nothing,’ Beatrice says. ‘Just a baseball field.’
‘That’s my daddy,’ Maggie says. ‘Those gunshots mean my daddy’s here.’
‘Henry’s your daddy, Sarah.’
‘Henry will never be my daddy.’
Two more gunshots echo through the hollow school building, the sounds bouncing off the walls and repeating and repeating and repeating, but softer each time.
‘Henry will never be my daddy,’ she says again, ‘and you’ll never be my momma.’
Beatrice looks at her with wide, sad eyes, half her face lit by what is left of the day splashing in through the windows, the other half covered in shadows and seemingly younger as the shadows hide the lines in her face.
‘Why would you say such a thing, Sarah? We’re doing all this for you. To keep our family together. Family’s the most important thing there is and we’re doing this for you.’
‘I don’t want you to. I want to go back to my real family.’
‘We’re your real family now.’
Maggie shakes her head.
‘No,’ she says. ‘My daddy’s here. My real daddy. He’s my family. Him and my momma and Jeffrey. My daddy’s a policeman and he’s going to put you and Henry in jail forever and ever. He’s going to put you in jail and take me home and I’ll never have to see you again.’
‘Don’t talk like that, Sarah.’
Tears stream down Beatrice’s round face, but her eyes are ablaze with anger as well as sadness. Her hands form fists at her sides. She almost looks capable of violence.
Maggie has never spoken to her this way, mostly out of fear that Henry would find out and put her on the punishment hook, but also because she always felt a little bit sorry for her, she has always seemed so sad, but she does not feel sorry for her now, and she is no longer afraid of Henry. No longer so afraid of him that she is willing to remain silent. She simply wants to be home with her real family. That want burns hot within her chest. She thought she would never feel that again. She thought the sun that burns within her had died, but it did not die.
It was only nighttime.
Three more gunshots echo through the air one after the other in quick succession.
‘Henry’s probably dead now,’ Maggie says. ‘You’ll be in jail alone and Henry will be dead. No one will even write you any letters and no one will visit.’
‘Don’t talk like that,’ Beatrice says, pushing Maggie. The desk tilts, holds a moment, precariously balanced on two legs, and then crashes onto its side. Maggie’s elbow slams against the floor and pain vibrates through her body and a strange sensation shoots up her arm and her pinky and ring fingers go numb.
Beatrice rushes to her side and works to pull her and the desk up. It takes some doing, but she manages it. Maggie rubs at her elbow with her free hand. She thinks of pulling out of the handcuffs and grabbing the gun from the floor and running out of here. She knows her daddy is here, but she cannot just sit and wait to be saved. She waited trapped in the Nightmare World for a long time, and it was the longest night she has ever known, the longest night, she hopes, she will ever know, and she will not sit and wait ever again.
‘I’m sorry, Sarah,’ Beatrice says. ‘I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry.’ She strokes Maggie’s hair and pulls Maggie’s head to her fat belly and presses her head against it. ‘I’m sorry.’
Maggie pulls her head away.
‘Just leave me alone.’
‘You’ll feel better when all this is over,’ Beatrice says.
‘I don’t want to talk to you anymore.’
Beatrice wipes at her eyes. She walks to the window and looks out again.
‘You shouldn’t say things you don’t mean.’
‘I do mean it.’
Beatrice looks at her once more, and then turns back to the window. She simply stares out into the fading light of evening.
Maggie looks down at her wrist and tries once more to pull her hand through the cuff. It slides fine until the meat of her thumb, and there it stays no matter how hard she pulls, the metal digging deeper and deeper into her flesh.
Frustrated, she hits the top of the desk with her free hand. The other end tilts into the air and slams back down. It is loose. Eyeing Beatrice to make sure the woman is not looking at her, she pushes up on the desk. She lifts the top of the desk as far as it will go. Two of the screws have been stripped from the fiberboard underside. Maybe by the fall. She can almost slide the cuff wrapped around the desk right off. She doesn’t have to free her hand. All she has to do is pull off the top of the desk. She just has to get the final screw out, and she can slide the cuff right off.
Beatrice is still staring sadly out the window. Maggie is stung by another pang of pity for her. Her face just hangs there looking so lonesome. Even after everything there is a part of her that wants to give Beatrice the love she so obviously needs. But Maggie cannot love her. Maggie cannot even like her. She can only feel a strange combination of pity and hatred.
She pushes up on the top of the desk, trying to pry it loose.
Henry lies prone on the roof of the high school. He squints down at the car on the street below, but has seen no movement for some time. He has no idea what they’re doing back there. His arms are cramping. He’s not going to be able to lie like this much longer. And their silence is making
him nervous. They cannot just wait there forever. They have to do something. Why aren’t they shooting back? If they were returning fire he might be able to locate them and finish them off. Just one or two shots would be enough. Then he would know where they were—and when they popped up to shoot again that would be it.
Maybe he already has finished them off and that’s why they aren’t moving. Except he knows better than that. That’s the kind of thinking that will get him into trouble. If he lets his guard down he’ll get himself killed.
‘Can you see anything?’ he says to Ron, who is behind him, crouched down on one knee, rifle at the ready.
‘No,’ he says. ‘What the fuck are they waiting for?’
‘I dunno,’ Henry says. ‘But I don’t like it.’
That’s when he sees the driver’s seat slide forward and tilt toward the steering wheel.
He sees movement behind it—an arm reaching into the back seat, he thinks. It’s hard to tell for certain. But it is movement.
Inhale. Hold the breath. Take aim. Steady.
The world is a storm but he is its eye.
Exhale.
Squeeze the trigger.
Ian hears the bullet slam into his car and flinches, but Diego does not. Diego simply reaches into the back seat and comes out first with the rifled Remington 11-87 and the sawed-off Remington 870, and then with the .308 and the duffel bag in which the boxes of ammunition are stored. Ian pulls the duffel bag toward him and unzips it. He tosses Diego the shells for the .308. Then pulls out shells for himself and gets to loading the two shotguns.
Once they’re loaded he slides to the front of the car and looks around the bumper trying to spot Henry, trying to spot movement of any kind. He knows the shots are coming from across the wide street, and from the north, and from a good distance, by the sound of it.
‘Where are you, you son of a—’
He pulls his head back quickly and a moment later there is the sound of a gunshot and the dirt three feet behind the place where his face was kicks up a cloud of dust, and a few pebbles from the ground throw themselves against the right leg of his Levis.
‘They’re on the roof of the school,’ he says. ‘About fifty, sixty yards away.’
Diego nods. ‘What do you want to do?’
Ian closes his eyes a moment, thinking. He did not want to get Diego involved in this way. He did not want to ask of him what he is about to ask of him. Even now he wishes he had talked Diego into heading back to Bulls Mouth. If Diego was not here he would have to think of something else. But Diego is here. He opens his eyes and looks at his friend. This will change him. What he is about to ask of his friend will change him forever.
‘How’s your long-distance shooting?’ he says.
Ian sits on his haunches behind the Mustang. To his right Diego is readying himself for a run toward what once was a hardware store. If he can get behind it, he can make his way in relative safety to the top floor of a three-storey hotel called the Jackrabbit Inn about three hundred yards further on. From that vantage point he should have clear shots at Henry Dean and his brother on the roof of the school.
‘You ready?’ he says.
Diego nods.
Ian exhales and his exhalation turns into a deep cough. Liquid gags up from his lungs like muddy water from a well-pump and he spits it to the asphalt between his feet. Tears stream down his face. He leans his head against the car fender before him and spits once more. His chest is throbbing with pain. Last time he tried to do this he was shot. What is it they say about doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results?
‘One,’ he says, looking toward Diego.
‘You sure you’re—’
‘Two,’ he says, cutting off the question.
Diego nods briefly. The nod tells Ian that he accepts that as an answer.
‘Three.’
Diego takes off running.
Ian jumps to his feet, swinging the shotgun up and into the crook of his shoulder, and he fires at the roof of the schoolhouse. The pain is incredible. Concrete explodes less than a foot below the place where Henry is crouched. A white shell flies from the shotgun, arcs in a blur through the air, and hits the asphalt to his right. He fires again and again and again. Both Henry and his brother drop down, becoming invisible from this angle.
But Ian remains standing, squinting toward the school, watching the flat line of the roof and waiting.
Blood runs down his sweaty belly from the hole in his chest, which is throbbing with pain. His breaths are quick and shallow, as he can manage nothing but shallow breaths any longer. Any time he tries to breathe deep it turns into a painful coughing fit. He knows what is happening. With the tube removed from his lung he is drowning in his own blood. It is beyond a feeling of drowning now; it is the actual thing.
A flash of movement from the roof of the school. He fires. Concrete explodes.
The movement ceases.
Ian glances behind him.
Diego is out of sight.
Good. Black dots are swimming before Ian’s eyes and he doesn’t think he’ll be able to remain standing much longer.
He fires off the last three rounds in the 11-87’s magazine, listening to the shells clink to the asphalt to his right between shots, and then allows himself to sink to the ground behind the car, out of breath and in pain. Every shot sent a terrible force through his right shoulder and his wounds are now screaming. Sweat runs down his face and drips from the end of his nose. He blinks several times, and then looks for Diego.
He does not see him, nor does he hear him.
The air is silent and still but for the sound of his own breathing.
And then he does hear him. He hears the rapid rhythm of his boots. He hears running. He is far away and getting farther.
Ian nods. Good.
He grabs the box of deer slugs and starts reloading.
Maggie slides the handcuffs down the length of the arm of the desk, being careful they don’t rattle too much. She slides them beneath the wooden desktop, now detached from the frame, and then she is loose. The cuff slides off and dangles from her wrist. It is strange: a tightness in her chest seems to uncoil with the simple knowledge that her arm is free.
Her arm is free.
She looks up at Beatrice.
Beatrice does not look back.
The gun sits on the floor next to a pile of chips and candy bars.
Maggie slides out of the desk, eyes on Beatrice, and makes her way silently across the room. She is barefoot, so it is not difficult to be silent. But Beatrice must see her movements out of the corner of her eye, in her periphery, because she turns to look at her and says, ‘Sarah, what are you doing? Henry said to stay here.’
Maggie runs to the gun and picks it up.
Beatrice walks toward her, but stops when Maggie points the gun at her.
‘I don’t want to shoot you,’ she says with a shaky voice. ‘But I will.’
Beatrice is silent. She simply stares at Maggie with her wide, glistening eyes. Tears once more roll down her round face. Her chin trembles. Her shoulders sag with defeat.
‘We’re never gonna be a family again, are we?’
‘We never were,’ Maggie says.
Beatrice leans back against the wall and slides down it to a sitting position, with her knees up and her arms on her knees. She looks down at her lap. Maggie can see her cotton panties. Somehow that makes her seem very much like a little girl. Tears drip off her face and splash against her dress.
‘We never were,’ Beatrice says, eyes focused on nothing, and it seems as if she is speaking a foreign phrase for the first time. A foreign phrase whose meaning she does not quite understand.
She looks up at Maggie as Maggie backs her way out of the room.
‘We never were,’ Beatrice says again. Then: ‘But I loved you.’
‘I didn’t love you,’ Maggie says.
Then she turns around and runs out into the corridor, looking for a way out.
The first shot from above thwacks into the roof just to the left of Henry’s legs. He can feel the displaced air ripple outward and press itself against his body and he hears the bullet connect with the roof, an almost wet crack like a bone breaking open and spilling its marrow, and several splinters are thrown against his Levis.
‘Where the fuck did that come from?’
Ron behind him scanning the surrounding buildings, looking for the source of the gunshot whose bang still echoes through the empty streets of the town.
‘I don’t know,’ Henry says. ‘It had to come from above. The angle is wrong for—’
The second shot hits less than a foot shy of the place where Ron is crouched, and splinters fly from the roof and into his face. He falls backwards with a curse, blinking as tears stream down his face, about a dozen bleeding pin-prick holes in his cheeks.
Henry looks back toward the street. The shooter, which has to be Peña because Hunt is still trapped behind his now bullet-riddled car, has to be in the Jackrabbit Inn, it’s the only building taller than the schoolhouse, but Henry can’t see him anywhere. He doesn’t see him on the roof, and while several of the windows on the third floor are open, all he can see behind those windows is darkness. The sun is setting behind the building, lighting Henry and his brother while keeping the east side of the Jackrabbit Inn in shadows. And it’s the east side of the hotel he and Ron are facing.
‘We have to get off the roof,’ he says. ‘Ron, we gotta get off the—’
Ron is sitting up, rubbing his eyes, when a third shot is fired. A red dot presses itself into the center of Ron’s left hand. He pulls it away from his face and looks at it.
But the bullet continued through the hand, and there is another dot in his left cheekbone and his left eye is filling with blood and a slow trickle runs from his right nostril, down onto his lip, and then along the top of his lip, drawing a red mustache there before dripping from his face.
‘Ron?’
Ron looks up from his hand to Henry.
‘Something happened to my . . . hand.’
He holds it up for Henry to see, blinks several times, and falls over sideways.
‘Ron?’
Henry gets to his feet and turns in a full circle, confused somehow—this isn’t how it was supposed to happen. It was supposed to be easy. It was supposed to be easy and quick, a few shots and finished. He glances toward the Jackrabbit Inn and again sees only darkness in the windows there. He turns and runs toward the hatch in the roof as the fourth shot cuts through the air. He drops down the ladder and lands in the janitor’s closet and falls backwards against a shelf full of cleaning supplies.
The Dispatcher Page 26
