by Garth Nix
Anna stared at Khalish. She wasn’t any sort of Rambo. Hell, she’d even been a failure as a Girl Scout. And yet Khalish was telling her that she was going to have to take on two hardened criminals.
“She’s going to need a weapon,” Gil said.
“Indeed.”
“I’ll be right back.”
Gil turned and walked to a door that Anna assumed was a storeroom of some sort. He stepped in and closed the door behind him. A moment later, he exited the room with a gun in his hand. He set it down on the bar in front of Anna.
Khalish grinned in a feral way. “This will do the job nicely.”
“She’s going to need a plan, too.”
“Yeah,” Anna said dryly, “and maybe some help from Batman, as well.”
Khalish gave Gil a puzzled look. Gil shrugged, as if to say that he was just as baffled as Khalish.
Gil said, “Is this … Batman … a god, too? I’ve not heard of him.”
* * *
Anna pulled her car into a parking space in front of Borders, the local super-sized bookstore. She reminded herself that this was the easy part of the plan, then pushed everything into a mental compartment so she could focus on the task at hand. Taking a deep breath, she got out of the car and hurried into the store. Just inside the front entrance, there was a small stack of blue plastic baskets with black carrying handles. She grabbed a basket, then filled it with a bunch of mass market paperback books from the table of bestsellers that had been placed prominently in the center of the store’s main aisle.
Regular-sized books, not massive tomes like The Game of Thrones. She needed smaller books.
Apparently, a lot of people shopped for books around lunchtime, because there was a line. Or maybe it was because of the rumors that the store was in financial trouble. She waited impatiently, fidgeting nervously until it was her turn. When she plopped the basket on the counter, the cashier, a woman in her early sixties with an improbable hair color, took one look and laughed.
Smiling, the cashier said, “Find everything you were looking for?”
“Yes.” The woman seemed a little taken aback by her terse answer and lack of an answering smile.
The woman started pulling the books out of the basket and ringing them up. “My, I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but you have very eclectic tastes.”
Anna shrugged. “Sometimes you just need to stock up on books.”
“Well, all right, if you say so.”
When she finally got back to her car, she put all of the books in the duffle bag that her assailants had provided her to hold the cash from the bank job. Zipping up the bag, Anna considered it glumly. To a quick glance, she supposed that the bulging bag might look like it was full of cash, specifically the wrapped stacks of cash that banks kept in their drawers. But to her, it looked like it was full of books. It would have to be good enough.
Now, the hard part. She was so scared her hands were shaking. She clenched them around the steering wheel to still them.
Right now, she was safe. The two thugs couldn’t do anything to her. Well, except obviously kill Patty and Scott. Safety for her wasn’t a choice, though. She’d never be able to live with herself if she abandoned her family. She had to go home and face the wrath of Moe and Larry. Kill or be killed, like some modern-day update of that old western, High Noon.
No more delays. She inserted her key. A moment later, she was pulling her car out of the parking lot. Ten minutes after that, she was driving through her neighborhood. All the familiar houses, with all the usual people going about their business just like normal, clueless of the disaster that threatened her family.
A block away from her house, she swerved to the side of the road and screeched to a halt. She got the door open just in time as she threw up.
From the sidewalk, a man walking a yellow Lab called out, “Are you all right, ma’am?”
“Yeah,” she said, wiping her mouth with a tissue. “It’s just morning sickness.” It was the quickest excuse she could come up with and it seemed to satisfy the man, who let his dog pull him away.
She didn’t know if she could do this. She was having trouble catching a breath. Taking on two stone-cold killers, by herself. It was crazy. Just absolutely insane.
You can do this. You’re stronger
than you think you are.
She looked around wildly to see where the whispering voice had come from. There was nobody nearby, not the dog walker or Khalish or anybody else.
Eerie.
This is what she got for hanging around with obscure gods and cursed bartenders.
OK, if she was going to do this, she needed to get herself under control. She leaned back and concentrated on managing her breathing. Once she stopped hyperventilating, a strange sort of fatalism set in, as if she were an arrow loosed from a bow. Her course was set; there was nothing left to do but continue onward to the target.
She got the gun out of the glove compartment, made sure the safety was on, and tucked it into the back of her pants.
Then she drove home and pulled into the driveway, like it was just an ordinary day.
She got out of the car, grabbed the duffel bag and walked to the front door. Her mouth was dry. She was sweating. She unlocked the door and pushed her way in.
Larry was right there as she opened the door.
“You got the money?”
“Yeah,” she said, lifting the bag slightly. “I’m a bank robber now. Yay.” Hopefully the bag looked like it was full of money.
She couldn’t see Moe or Patty because Larry was blocking her view of the living room. And she couldn’t just walk past him, because then he’d see the gun tucked into the back of her pants.
He smiled. “I love it when a plan works.” He probably wouldn’t love it so much when he found out about her revision to their plan. If she could just get the big lug out of her way.
“Let’s go show Moe the money,” she said, nodding towards the living room.
He turned and walked a few steps away. She caught a glimpse of pink beyond him to her right. Patty was wearing pink lingerie, so that placed her on the couch. She still couldn’t see where Moe was.
Larry stopped and turned around. “Hey, where’s Curly? He should be right behind you.”
Anna had no idea what he was talking about. She made the snap decision that this was the best ambush situation she was going to be able to achieve. She couldn’t afford to let Larry get close to her again.
She dropped the duffel bag, pulled the gun out from behind her, swept the safety back with her left hand, and shot Larry in the center of his chest. Startled, he looked down at the spreading circle of blood staining his shirt, then stumbled in her direction. She shot him again in the head and moved right as he fell.
Her shift in perspective revealed that Moe had been in the living room, too, but Larry had inadvertently blocked her view of him. While she’d been shooting Larry, Moe had drawn his own gun and started charging in her direction. He shot first and she felt the passage of the bullet as it passed an inch or so away from her head. She fired back and missed, but his next shot went wild, too. Then she shot again and hit him in the right shoulder. He bellowed and dropped his gun but kept moving.
“Mom!” Patty screamed.
Anna tried to dodge out of Moe’s way, but he slammed her into the wall. She felt the drywall give way as her head hit it. The impact knocked her gun away.
“You’re not following my Rules,” he shouted, savagely punching her in the stomach. She doubled over in pain. “I’m gonna make you watch while I rape your daughter again, then I’m gonna choke the life out of both of you.”
She was trying to process the fact that Patty had already been raped as he began pummeling her, knocking
her against the wall again and again with the force of his blows.
Get out of there. Don’t let him keep you
trapped against the wall.
Anna stomped on his foot with her low heels. Moe roared in pain and a
nger. While he was momentarily distracted, she kneed him in the crotch and broke out of his grasp.
She got three steps towards her gun before he grabbed her long hair and yanked her to a halt. Her scalp felt like it was on fire. He punched her in the kidney and she screamed in agony, then Patty was there trying to help.
Moe backhanded Patty and she tumbled over the arm of the loveseat with a scream. As Moe turned back to Anna, she headbutted him and felt his nose break with a splash of blood. He shouted inarticulately and knocked her backwards onto the glass coffee table with its wrought iron supports. The table shattered under their combined impact, leaving Anna sprawled in a welter of safety glass shards, with Moe on top of her. The thug wrapped his hands around her throat and choked her. She grabbed ineffectually at his wrists. His hands felt like steel bands around her neck.
If you match him strength for strength, he’ll beat you.
Hit him where he’s weak.
Anna could feel the edges of her vision closing in. She cupped her hands, then slammed them into his ears as hard as she could. He yelled, “Die, bitch!” and kept choking her. She punched him in the right shoulder, right where she’d shot him. He screamed, his right arm collapsed, and he fell to the side, loosening his grip on her throat.
She gasped with relief as air flooded back into her lungs.
Keep up the pressure. Don’t give him
any time to recover.
She rolled away from Moe and felt a wrought iron table leg poke her in the side. She grabbed it and lashed out, battering the thug’s head. She got to her knees, felt the sting as she cut them on glass shards, and screamed with rage as she hit him again and again and again, until his head was smashed and she was splattered with blood and she didn’t think he’d be getting up any more.
Anna looked up and saw Patty staring at her with wide eyes.
She dropped her makeshift club and painfully stood up. “Nobody messes with my family.”
* * *
Later, in the hospital ICU, after the excitement of the police and the emergency vehicles and the press, Anna looked back at her husband from the doorway, his still form wrapped in bandages and attached to all sorts of tubes, wires, and monitors. He was stable, the doctors had said, though they wanted to keep him for observation for a few days, and he’d even recovered consciousness long enough to give everyone a thumbs-up. Broken ribs, a rather severe concussion, lots of contusions and a rather badly broken arm that was going to require some surgery, but that could wait for a few days.
She turned and made her way through a maze of therapeutically pastel-colored passages until she reached a long hallway that smelled of Lemon Pledge and other odors she suspected she didn’t want to identify. She pushed through a set of double doors and found herself in Emergency, with its bright lights and extra-wide corridors. After one wrong turn, she got herself oriented and found her daughter’s room.
As Anna entered the room, Patty said, “My Mom was a total bad-ass.” She looked up and smiled when she spotted Anna. “She just took those guys down.”
The individual she’d been talking to—a tall, black man wearing a stylish business suit sans tie—turned as she approached and gave her an appraising look. Had to be a cop, the way he looked at her.
“Mrs. Brodie?” he said, holding out his hand.
“Yes.” She grasped his hand and he gave it a firm shake, just enough to be authoritative without approaching overbearing. “But you can just call me Anna.”
“All right, Anna.” He grinned at her. “I’m Detective Shade Michaels, Philadelphia Homicide. Just a formality in a case like this, but I’ve got a few questions for you.” He gestured toward the door. “If we can go someplace more private, please?”
She led him down the hallway where they stopped near yet another set of double doors. Hospitals really were like mazes.
“The guys you called Moe and Larry, well, they’re real bad guys. Nobody’s going to miss them.” He raised an eyebrow, which gave him a raffish look. “In fact, I’d go so far as to say you did the public a service.”
Anna quirked her lips in a half-smile. “Thanks, I think.”
“Interesting, though. We never did find that bar you said you went to … what was it called?”
“I have no idea,” she said. “I never really looked.” Anna decided that Shade was considerably sharper than the cop that took down her statement before she and her family had been whisked away to the hospital.
“In your initial report, you said that one of the perpetrators mentioned somebody named Curly. Implying that there might have been a third man.”
“Yes.”
“Well, somebody reported a body in that general area, behind what used to be Linda’s Cafe. Turns out, that guy’s fingerprints are all over the gun you used.” He shot her a quizzical look. Another carefully calculated mannerism. She’d bet he was excellent in an interrogation room. “You want to explain that?”
She shrugged. Inside, she was shocked. Her mind worked furiously. Maybe Curly had been the guy in the car, the one that had come into the bar after her. Oh, shit. Maybe that was why Khalish had suggested she leave to fix herself up.
“I’ve got absolutely no idea.” She cocked her head. “I thought figuring these things out was your job.”
“Indeed.” He leaned against the wall and stared intently at her for a moment. “I’ll give you my theory. You were followed by a third man, someone who was supposed to make sure you pulled off the bank job.”
“Possible. I did see a man in his twenties with long hair.” That was why Larry had been surprised. He’d been expecting his other partner to be right behind her.
“Right.” Shade nodded. “Either you knew you were being followed, or not. But you decided to seek out some friends, maybe somebody from your days on the wild side.” That was fast work, digging up her sordid past in less than four hours. “They took out your stalker—somebody snapped his neck like a twig—gave you his gun, and set you up so you had a chance to take out the other two.”
She frowned. Definitely Gil’s work; he’d seemed more than strong enough to break a man’s neck. “It’s a good theory.” She leaned against the wall next to him. “It’s still wrong, though.” Way wrong, but also strangely on point, too. “Besides, if I had a friend that tough, why wouldn’t he have come along with me to help out?”
The detective sighed. “That is a flaw in my theory.”
“So, really, you got nothing.”
“Yeah,” he said heavily, fixing his gaze on her face. “On the other hand, I know your story doesn’t quite check out, Mrs. Brodie. I don’t care that much—this time—because all three of these asswipes needed to be taken off the street. But … don’t cross my path again. Seriously.”
Anna nodded. “Understood.”
* * *
Much later, after she’d rocked Patty to sleep in their hotel room, Anna quietly left and returned to her home. It was after two in the morning and the crime scene techs were long gone. There was yellow police tape across her front doorway, fluttering in a slight breeze.
She was more tired than she could possibly believe, but she hadn’t been able to get to sleep. Making the best of the situation, she’d decided to leave Patty sleeping peacefully and quickly go home and pack some clothes for them for the next week or so. No way were they returning to the house to live until the bloodstains and the wreckage were gone.
She ripped the crime scene tape down and went in, flipping the wall switch on as she went. The air carried the coppery scent of blood and the sharp tang left behind by gunfire. The living room was a shambles, a blood-spattered debris field centered around the smashed coffee table. There were outlines in masking tape where the bodies of her attackers had come to rest. Good riddance to them.
Anna walked into the kitchen. She got a saucer out of a cupboard and then pulled a candle out of a drawer. She lit the candle, got it situated firmly on the saucer with a dab of hot wax, and then set the saucer on the counter.
She bowed slightly to the candle and said, “Thank you, Khalish.”
You’re welcome.
Ale For Humanity
Mike Marcus
Joe drove to the grocery store on empty roads, seeking the milk he’d forgotten while shopping earlier that day. He arrived just after six to a darkened store, his car crunching across the deepening blanket of snow covering the parking lot that had been packed only an hour before with Christmas Eve shoppers. He sat in the car staring vacantly at the neon sign, the car windows fogging from his breath.
When the cold started to seep in, waking Joe from his daze, he started the engine. I just want to go home, climb into bed and wake up two days from now, after Christmas is over and I don’t have to think about it, he thought.
Despite his intent to go home, Joe found himself pulling into the parking lot of The Four Bucks. He’d visited the pub a few times before and the lights were on. From the parking lot Joe smelled wood burning in the fireplace.
I don’t want to spend Christmas Eve in a bar, but it’s better than alone at home surrounded by Eleanor’s things, Joe thought. Even if my only company is Gil. The guy is strange, but he pours a pretty good beer and it’s better than being alone tonight.
When Joe entered The Four Bucks, he found Gil standing behind the bar, looking toward the door as if he’d expected him.
