He took his time getting there and stopped for a while on the beach. The surf was breaking against the shore and the crackle it made reminded him of the beaches in Mexico. Before they had foamed red from the dead bodies that piled up in front of him; killed by their own friends and brothers.
The two officers in the surveillance vehicle were already gone. Jack checked his watch; they’d clocked out almost twenty minutes early.
As he walked by the outdoor café he scanned the faces of the patrons. Sure enough, the blond man with dreads he had seen last week was sitting at a table, sipping a beer. Jack turned away from him.
Jack walked past the café and spotted a bench facing the ocean. He sat down, the heaviness of his gun against his ribs, and watched a heron dip into the ocean and come out slick and wet. He would look back to the café and noticed that every few minutes the man checked his watch.
The bank was almost closed. Nothing would be happening today. Jack rose and was about to walk back to his car when he saw the man at the café get up, pay, and walk into the street. He crossed and went straight for the bank.
Jack watched as the man stood out in front and checked his watch. He didn’t pull out a weapon or even look inside. He just stood by the door like he was waiting for someone. Jack went behind a telephone pole and leaned against it, his eyes on the man. Was he really casing the place or was he just some crazy drifter with a weird ritual? That was unlikely. He was part of a gang known for bank robberies. Something was going on.
A woman in a red skirt and white blouse walked up to the bank. As she tried to go to the door, the man smiled and said something to her. She asked a few questions and then left, going back to her car, which was parked across the street.
Why would he turn someone away, unless…
Jack’s heart raced as he took out his phone and dialed William. It went to voicemail. “William, it’s happening now. Right now. They didn’t come in from the outside. Get the hell down here.” He hung up and dialed dispatch to request officers. The clerk told him the nearest unit was seven minutes away.
Seven minutes was an eternity. The lobby to the bank closed ten minutes ago. They could already be out of there.
Jack walked over as casually as he could.
He walked by the bank, avoiding the eyes of the man standing out front. He tried to glance into the windows but couldn’t make out anything but offices and a single teller standing at the front. He looked to her and she glanced at him and then away. He was about to walk past when he noticed her hands on the counter. They were shaking.
Jack looked to the man out front. Their eyes locked and both men knew exactly what was happening.
The man reached into his jacket and came out with a handgun. Jack dove to the ground, pulling out his Desert Eagle, and got off two rounds, one entering the man’s hip and knocking him back against the doors.
Jack was on his feet.
Too late for surprise now.
Anyone inside would’ve heard the man fly against the doors. If they had hostages, they might take them out before the units arrived. Jack couldn’t wait.
He ran around the front and past the doors, glancing in through the office windows. He went to the rear of the bank and to a back entrance near a dumpster. He tugged at the doorknob and the door opened. He stepped inside.
The bank was quiet except for the hum of the air conditioner. Jack kept his weapon low as he navigated through a maze of offices and supply rooms and onto the main floor of the bank. He looked around the corner, keeping his body concealed. He could see the teller. She was standing in the exact same position, her countenance white as a ghost.
“You have been most helpful,” a voice said. It didn’t sound human. It sounded artificial, like it was coming through a computer that almost, but not quite, mimicked human voices.
Then Jack felt the vibration through the floor. He thought perhaps it was a tremor until he saw the thing step into view in front of the teller. It was massive. Far larger than the video he had seen could capture. Its metal suit gleamed under the soft lights of the bank and its muscles bulged like they were about to pop. It was also taller than he had thought, and its head almost hit the ceiling of the bank.
There was no way he could fight that thing by himself. He began to quietly back out when he heard the teller scream. He looked again to see her raised in the air by the throat, the thing laughing as she fought for her life.
“Let her go,” he shouted. The thing turned to him and Jack fired. He fired three rounds, two of them bouncing uselessly off his suit. The third entered his cheek and the thing dropped her and roared in pain.
Jack ran out and saw that three dreadlocked men carried canvas sacks of cash and gold into a hole that had been made in the floor of the bank. Two of them jumped into the hole and the third went for his weapon. Jack fired and hit the man in the chest as a round flew by his own face. The man fell, his weapon flying out of his hand, and Jack turned toward the thing.
Before he could react, it had sprinted the distance between them. It was fast. Too fast for him to do anything. The thing picked him up and his ribs felt like they were being crushed. As if he was in the middle of a head-on collision between two semi-trucks.
The thing threw him across the bank with such violence he crashed through the teller counter. His back snapped and the air rushed out of him. It was as if he had fallen off a skyscraper.
He managed to crawl, his mind a mess of agony and the raw instinct of survival. He heard a laugh above him and felt pain in his back as the thing lifted him into the air. Jack looked into its eyes; they were white with thin gray outlines of the pupils and irises.
“I am the next step in evolution,” the thing said. “Your species in now endangered.”
He smashed Jack into the ceiling and then slammed him into the floor. Jack felt nothing now, not even pain. A dull sensation droned in his legs as the thing walked over them, crushing them into a bloody pulp, before it jumped down the hole it had made, and was gone.
CHAPTER 14
Jack didn’t remember an ambulance ride, or the emergency surgery he had received because parts of his spine had thrust out of his back, breaking through the skin like white lumps of clay. He remembered only one incident in three days of sedation and surgery: his sister crying over him and asking him to please wake up. He thought he was awake.
He couldn’t keep track of the days or times and only knew when a doctor or nurse mumbled something about it. He had pleasant, warm feelings through most of his body except when the medication wore off, and then he would want to scream but found that he couldn’t. He didn’t understand any of this until one day an attending was explaining to a resident that this patient was, “in a coma,” and “unlikely to pull through.”
Jack wanted to yell. He could hear and feel everything that was going on around him but he couldn’t interact with his surroundings. He was stuck inside his own head, forced to atrophy in a bed. His mind as sharp as it had ever been.
The waking moments soon melded with the sleeping and he lived in a dream world where he knew nothing of what was happening or why. He clung only to the memory of his sister crying over him. He could picture her face and the tears that must have been flowing down her cheeks. He could see Hank standing by the door, staying stoic though he wanted to cry just as much as his wife. But this was all in Jack’s mind. He couldn’t open his eyes any more than he could stand up and walk out of the hospital.
One day, he couldn’t be sure how long into his stay, two nurses came and spoke about a date one of them had gone on the night before as they scrubbed his body with a sponge. He could hear them ring the sponge out in a bin of water and then feel the warmth of the sponge as it went over his skin.
After they cleaned his body, they dressed him in what he guessed was a hospital gown. They did this by tilting him to one side, putting his arm through, and then tilting him to the other and doing the same. One of the nurses pulled the sheet up over him to his chin even though the te
mperature outside was soaring.
They wheeled him along the corridor and Jack heard the ding of an elevator before he felt the rising sensation of being carried upward. The elevator stopped and they got off and wheeled him again before he came to a rest in some shade. The nurses checked a few IVs that he could feel connected to him and left.
He tried desperately to scream for them. He tried to move his toes and then his fingers, to blink his eyes or move his eyebrows. But the only functions of his body that still worked were those that didn’t require his front and motor cortex: his heart, lungs, and organs. He was a soul trapped inside a flesh tomb.
Jack could no longer tell the day from the night as few people came to his room. Occasionally he would hear his sister’s voice as she read to him, usually the morning paper. Sometimes doctors checked on him, and slightly more frequently nurses. Once, a neurologist came to his room and ran ice cubes in his ears and up and down his feet. Since he didn’t respond, the neurologist concluded, Jack Edward Kane was brain dead. The family should be notified about pulling the feeding tube so the organs could be harvested.
Horror filled Jack in a way it had never filled him before.
You’re fucking crazy, I’m right here! I’m still here!
A time of long silence passed after the neurologist’s visit before his sister was back in his room. She was reading the Op-Ed section of the LA Times when the door opened and he heard Hank’s voice.
“How is he?” Hank asked.
There was a long pause before Nicole said, “Dr. Bachan says he’s brain dead. He called him a breathing corpse. He said we should…he said we should pull the feeding tube.”
“Did you talk to Mike and your mother about it?”
“Yeah. They said that it’s what he would’ve wanted. That…”
She began to cry and Jack heard clothing rustling. He was frantic and screaming and doing everything he could, his mind fear and anger.
Nicole cried for a long time before Hank said, “Come on. Let’s go home.”
Jack cried out but didn’t hear his voice. It was useless. The doctor was right: he was now a breathing corpse.
CHAPTER 15
Reese Stillman stood on the corner of Madison Boulevard and watched the cars go by. It was eleven at night so the traffic was thin, but there were enough cars that he would have a decent collection to choose from. He was chewing gum and would pop it every few minutes. He thought that this must be what rich people feel like when they go shopping.
A Mercedes was coming up the block. It was in the lane closest to him. He took a few steps to the right near a bus stop and leaned against the sign. Two cars were ahead of the Mercedes at the stop light.
As the Mercedes slowed to stop behind the cars, Reese looked inside. It was an older couple, the man in a suit and the woman in a gown with a thin fur over her shoulders. Reese smiled and pulled the 9 mm out of his waistband.
He grabbed the door handle and pulled. The door opened. Most people didn’t think to lock their doors as they drove.
“What is—”
Before the woman could finish Reese had backhanded her across the mouth, causing her head to hit the headrest. He reached in and unbuckled her, pulling her out of the car by her hair as she screamed. The man was frozen stiff, staring at Reese with his mouth open.
“Hi,” Reese said, getting in and shutting the passenger door. “Please drive. Or I’ll kill you and drive myself.”
The man began to drive, checking on his wife through the rearview to make sure she had made it to the side of the road.
“Where are we going?”
“Just drive.”
They drove for a few minutes, the gun on Reese’s lap with the barrel pointed at the man’s guts. Reese liked this car. It was a smooth ride. Even the bumps and gravel in the road from the city’s constant construction were taken with a glide.
“I like the car,” he said.
“Listen, I have a lot of money. Why don’t you let me go and take it? I think there’s over a thousand dollars in my wallet.”
“A G, huh? Now why would I take a G when this car is worth fifty times that?”
“You want my car?”
“Turn left.”
The man turned, glancing over once to the gun. Reese could see droplets of sweat forming on the man’s forehead. He was right to fear him.
“What’s your name?” the man said.
Reese slammed his fist into the man’s ribs, knocking the wind out of him. The car jerked to the left and ran up on the curb, nearly hitting a bench with two people on it. Reese grabbed the wheel and twisted it back to the right. He held it a few moments as the man caught his breath.
“Just fucking drive.”
They drove another five minutes before coming to an empty field. It was filled with what looked like green and gold wheat but were just weeds overtaking an abandoned parking lot. Garbage was thrown around and the nearest business was a Wal-Mart almost a full block away.
“This is your stop,” Reese said. “Thanks for the car.”
The man got out of the car without protest. Reese slid into the driver’s seat and pulled out of the lot. He checked his rearview and saw the man pulling out a cell phone from his pocket and dialing. Wrong move.
Reese hit the brakes and stepped out of the car. He took out his 9 mm and raised it. The man saw and bolted in the opposite direction. A shot rang out through the night and dirt kicked up near the man’s feet. Another shot and more dirt. The man was running up the street to the Wal-Mart. Reese took his time, aiming for the man’s hamstring, and fired. A mist of blood spit out of his leg. The man yelped in pain as he collapsed onto the pavement.
Reese laughed, got into the Mercedes, and drove off.
The three men waited on a corner as Reese pulled to a stop in front of them. They hopped into the car without a word and didn’t mention anything about its luxury. Reese sighed. The Myrs were crazy, and unfortunately, uncivilized. They didn’t know how to enjoy the nice things in life when they presented themselves.
As they drove, no one talked. But the car was filled with the sounds of automatic rifles being checked and re-checked. Ski masks were handed out and latex gloves were slapped on. Jimmy was still in the custody of the LAPD. They had him in a holding cell and he was supposed to be arraigned tomorrow and then sent to the county jail to await the appointment of a lawyer and a scheduling conference on his case.
The police precinct looked old and boring. Reese thought it looked like an office building and he was glad he hadn’t become a cop. His dad was cop, before he blew his brains out over the dinner table one night.
They parked in front and Reese and the three men slipped on the ski masks. Reese looked back to them as he opened the door and stepped outside. One of the men had a duffel bag and he unzipped it, revealing three assault rifles. They each took one, and turned to the building.
They bounded up the stairs leading to the front entrance like it was an Olympic event. They burst through the doors firing, not even waiting to identify proper targets. Their rounds entered the walls and broke out windows. They hit everything in the precinct they could see. A few people dove behind desks. Reese didn’t care about them.
The three men ran to the back and saw a policeman, a balding African-American, down on his knees behind his desk. His gun still in the holster. Reese placed the muzzle of the assault rifle against his temple.
“Where’re the keys to the holding cell?”
“They’re locked down. When you walk in, you gotta ask the clerk to buzz you in.”
“Who’s the clerk?”
“Her…her name’s Cindy.”
“Thanks,” Reese said. He turned away like he was going to leave but instead spun and slammed the butt of the rifle into the back of the man’s head, knocking him cold.
Turning away, they went through a large gray door. They were in a small room with someone, a young female, behind bullet-proof glass. Reese raised his weapon.
“Hollow po
int,” he said. “Can tear right through bulletproof plastic.”
The female swallowed. “What do you want?”
“I want to be buzzed in to the holding cells.”
The female reached down and pressed a button. The door buzzed and opened. Reese turned to his men. “Stay here. If she tries to call anyone shoot her in the head.”
He ran across the room and into the holding cells. They were packed tight with men in street clothing and a few in the orange LA County jumpsuits provided to prisoners. Reese stared at all the faces, the men beginning to shout and hit the bars with cups and plates as they realized what was happening.
“Reese!”
He turned to see Jimmy’s face pressed up against the bars. Somehow, even with Reese wearing a ski mask, Jimmy could tell it was him. Reese ran to him and they embraced through the bars as best they could. “One sec,” Reese said.
He ran back out to the woman. “Open the cell doors,” he shouted.
She looked at him but didn’t move. He pointed his weapon at the bulletproof glass two feet from her face and fired. The rounds popped into the booth like a pen tip through paper. The woman screamed and immediately pressed another button. Reese heard cell doors creak open behind him. He walked back to the thirty or so prisoners escaping their cells.
“You guys wanna make some money?” he shouted. “Come with me. If not, you’re free to go.”
CHAPTER 16
Jack’s thoughts had run their course. His mind screamed for as long as it could but even a voice in the mind can go hoarse. Nothing was left to think about except the terror of slowly starving to death in the dark.
He couldn’t be sure how long he was alone but it was a long time. Nurses came in quietly now and straightened the room, emptied his catheter, and checked his feeding tubes and IVs. There were no human voices in his world now.
As he was drifting off to sleep one day, he heard someone speak to him.
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