by MB Mooney
Then she noticed the sword in his hand. She stopped waving.
He was bandaged sloppily around his face and neck and arms and hands. He wore only a T-shirt, the slacks and shoes he had before, and she could see the blood, black in the moonlight, crusting through the bandages, still wet in other places. He was in a great amount of pain, moving deliberately, slowly, evenly. He stopped.
He looked at her.
Vikki could see the confusion, the glistening tears in his eyes.
She screamed.
-----
The Postman heard the scream, and he barely recognized the girl, the blond. The burns on his arms, his face, God the pain was unbearable, and he didn’t think he could stand it anymore, the bandages crusting against his skin, the bandages he had stolen from the nurse’s station at the school. The bitterness of chewing half of the bottle of aspirin still filled his mouth.
He could barely see, the darkness, the blurry figures, the blinding lights, the burning in his eyes. He could barely hold the sword, that stupid samurai, Bruce Lee, goddamn sword that weird guy Mr. Smith had given him. But he held it, he managed to, and he would manage to cut the head off of that damn kid, that little shit that burned his ass.
And that couple driving late on a country Georgia road, those unlucky lovers never knew what happened by the time they stopped the car because of some dark figure laying in the road. He had killed them quickly, the sword painful in his hand, but still effective. He had driven towards the hospital sitting in the woman’s blood, and his own.
But he focused on the blond, the boy’s girlfriend. What was his name again? He couldn’t remember. He would kill her first, maybe. Maybe he was around and would watch. He moved towards her. But the closer he got, he noticed something in the grass not far from her. He focused on it. It was a stretcher with a ... the long hair, he saw that long hair from here, and he walked towards that hippie bastard.
Someone was talking to him, cursing at him, and he turned just a bit to see a man sprinting towards him, a red and white uniform running. The Postman lifted the sword and swung at the head of this figure as it neared him.
The blurry uniform now fell to the ground, out of his vision, without a head.
That was easy enough. Maybe that Mr. Smith wouldn’t die now after all. Or maybe he would. The Postman would decide later.
He turned back to the longhaired bastard.
He moved closer and closer to the stretcher lying in the grass.
-----
Matt heard Vikki scream, and he prayed she wasn’t dying. He fell off of the ambulance on the opposite side that he had climbed up on, and he rolled away from his right knee, protecting the pain there as best he could. He crawled around the ambulance, the underside of it to his left, the heat of the engine reaching him.
He could smell gas.
He moved a little quicker, ignoring the pain in his knee with more courage. He wondered for a moment why the pain seemed to be getting less and less, but he figured it had something to do with the adrenaline rushing and surging through his system. Dismissing the thought, he reached the back of the ambulance and saw the madman, his head, arms, and hands covered in bloody bandages. The madman’s back was to Matt, and Matt stood desperately, watching the killer closing in on something in the grass.
It was Richard. The madman was going to kill Richard, the sword straight out to his side, shaking, held with a heavily bandaged hand. Matt could also see the headless body of the paramedic lying on the hill.
Matt pulled the revolver out of his jeans. He aimed. He pulled the trigger, closing his eyes to prepare for the blast.
Nothing happened.
Matt cursed to himself, and he scanned quickly around the handle for the safety. He found it. He switched the lever.
The madman was close to Richard now, almost close enough to kill him. As Matt leveled the gun again, straight at the madman’s back, he saw Vikki move between the madman and Richard on the stretcher. She held her right hand out in front of her as if to stop him, like that would stop a killer. She knelt just in front of Richard, almost sitting on him.
“No!” she screamed. “Don’t you touch him!” Matt watched as she took a deep, defiant breath with intense, tear-filled eyes. “I love him!”
Matt fired. The first shot, loud and deafening, hit nothing, but got the madman’s attention, and he stopped moving, freezing in his tracks. Matt fired again, more ready for the kick this time, straightening his humming arms and holding the gun with all his might with both hands. The deafening sound made him blink again, and the madman was spun around, hit in the shoulder. The madman’s eyes looked for Matt, for something, but didn’t seem to find what they searched for.
Matt fired again.
The bullet clipped him in the side, just under his ribcage. He didn’t drop the sword and stayed on his feet, rocking from side to side.
Matt fired again.
This one hit the madman in the chest, on the left side, closer to the shoulder than the heart. He staggered backwards, dropping the sword to the ground. Matt noticed the bullet tore right through the body, blood splattering in Vikki’s face.
Matt fired again.
The bullet was better aimed this time, tearing through the middle of the body, just below the breastbone, again cleanly through and making Vikki scream against the violence and noise.
Matt aimed again, this time attempting a direct line to the man’s forehead, directly between his eyes.
He fired.
The top of the killer’s head exploded in a bevy of blood and large pieces of flesh. The body fell back onto Vikki.
She screamed.
Matt walked, unhindered now by any pain in his knee at all, over to Vikki. He threw the revolver aside so he could use both hands to lift the dead and bloody body off of her. It was heavy, and he could only push it off of her, rolling it limply into the grass beside them. He bent over and took her in his arms as she wept in hysterics, covered in a murderer’s blood.
Chapter 23
Valerie rolled over and answered the phone. She moaned in pain, her ribs screaming at her. She had no idea how long the cell had chirped at her. “Who the hell is it, now?” she asked.
“Detective Mann?” the male voice from the other end of the line.
She woke just a bit more. “Yes?”
“You might want to come out here. There’s been an incident.”
“An incident?”
She heard him sigh.
“Who is this?” she asked.
“Agent Lawrence. Look, I really think that you need to come down here. We might need you to listen to a description and see if it’s your guy.”
“My guy?”
“Our guy, yes.”
“Isn’t this Bureau business? I mean, why call me?”
“Bill Young got out on bail today. We were hoping you’d come down here and help identify this guy.”
“What’s happening down there?”
“I think you need to come down here and see for yourself, Detective. Please.”
Please? “Well, if you put it that way, where are you?”
Agent Lawrence met her at the front entrance of the hospital. His demeanor had changed since she last saw him, since they spent five hours going over her short working relationship with Bill Young and why she had decided to interfere in a federal investigation, all part of his questioning the night before.
Something serious happened, she told herself. Agent Lawrence forced a smile, but his serious demeanor never changed. Damn, he actually smiled at her. She smiled back, trying to hide her anxiety, not to mention the pain that continued in spite of the five ibuprofen she took before coming over here, and she nodded. “This isn’t my jurisdiction,” she said to him, being a little bit of a bitch just for fun.
“Funny,” he said, and he found her more amusing than he should have; or so she thought.
She nodded at him again. “Do you have him?”
“Who?”
“The Postman?”
/>
“You mean Brian Stuart, right?”
“Right.”
He began to walk down the hall. “That’s what you’re here to tell us.”
She followed him closely down the hall, past the lobby, down a corridor. “Why do you need me?”
“Bill Young didn’t have any photographs of his son lying around the house. Or at least, he didn’t leave any for us to find. We haven’t been able to get a hold of his mother for the past few days. And we are searching for other extended family. Brian was in the armed services, but those records are difficult to get to on such short notice. Disappeared as a college student, and a picture hasn’t been available. I need a personal ID, and I need it fast.”
“For the papers tomorrow.” It wasn’t a question.
“Right.”
“Where is Bill?” she asked.
“He disappeared not long after his lawyer came to post bail.”
“Disappeared? I can’t believe you guys let him out on bail. You guys sure are good, you know.”
“We’ve been busy.”
“What about fingerprints?”
He slowed his pace, a fast pace, and almost looked back at her. He paused, changing the subject. “They just got the power back twenty minutes ago.”
“They?”
“The hospital.”
“Another virus?”
“The same. How’s the ribs?”
“Hurt like hell. Why didn’t you answer my question before, about the fingerprints?” Agent Lawrence and his friendly attitude began to scare her. He led her around a corner. She read the painted sign on the door. “The morgue?”
He opened the door, peering at her, and stepped back for her to go in first.
Whoever said Chivalry was dead?
Valerie entered, seeing the row of cabinets on the wall to her right. Agent Lawrence walked over to the third row from the left, the second one up from the floor.
My God, she thought, I’m going to see the dead body of Brian Stuart, the Postman. Bill Young’s son.
The agent pulled the handle.
A smooth rush of air accompanied her first vision of the dead Postman. His body from the waist up was badly burnt, with some blisters still wet. The top of his head was gone, but she looked at his face, or tried to. The scent of blood did not exist in this room, but she could see the brain, or parts of it, what was left of it; and she pointed to his shoulder, where there was a slight scar. “That’s where I shot him last night, but …”
“Yeah,” he said.
“How the hell did it heal so fast? And these other wounds,” she gestured at them, her face set in a grimace, “where did they come from?”
“He was shot.”
“By whom?”
“A guy upstairs.”
“One guy? I want to talk to him.”
“In a minute. This is him, right? This is the guy?”
She studied the face, the features, she looked at the hole in the shoulder from her bullet, impossibly healed.
“Yeah, that’s him. What happened? How did you guys find him? In some out of the way hotel or something? Did you guys corner him somewhere and do this to him?”
“The FBI had nothing to do with this.”
“What?” She whirled around to face him. “Your guys didn’t do this?”
He shook his head.
“What the hell happened?” she whispered, leaning in close. “The mob?”
He shook his head. “A kid.”
She blinked, her blond hair flapping around her face. “Wait. Say again?”
“A kid. A seventeen year-old kid did this to him.”
“Damn, he looks like the friggin’ Marines got hold of him.”
Agent Lawrence nodded.
“How did the kid know who it was?” she asked.
“He didn’t. Mr. Stuart here went after him.”
“To kill the kid?”
“Apparently so.”
“I thought he had finished ... I mean, done what he wanted to do. I thought Franklin was it.”
“So did we.”
“What’s the kid’s connection?”
Agent Lawrence shrugged. “That’s another reason I called you. I thought maybe something about this kid would help you remember something Bill Young told you about Mr. Stuart here.”
The bottom dropped out of her heart. “You still don’t believe me, do you? That I had nothing to do with it.”
“Quite honestly, Detective Mann, I don’t know what to believe. I’ll show you what I mean. Come on.” And she followed him out of the morgue after watching him close the Postman into his cold, metallic crypt.
They caught the elevator not far down the hall, and she didn’t pay much attention to the floor number Agent Lawrence pushed. A kid? She still dealt with the shock, shaking her head periodically, to no one but herself in particular, but a little afraid at the same time. She thought about those goons, those hired guns. How many had there been? Ten? The Postman killed fourteen people the other night all by himself and tonight couldn’t hit his mark. Maybe he had been exhausted or wounded more than she thought.
“How many did he kill tonight?” she asked, knowing peripherally the elevator moved upwards.
“In total? Four. He killed a man by the name of Steven Richter, kidnapping his stepson, who the paramedics found unconscious two or three hours ago. He ran all over the place trying to find another kid, beating one of his friends pretty bad. That friend is in a coma. That’s where we’re going. Well, I’ll let the kid tell you what happened next, but Mr. Stuart killed a young couple in order to get their car. He pulled over an ambulance and killed a paramedic in the process. A cop is in critical condition.”
“What’s the kid’s name?”
“Which one?”
“The one who Brian went after, wanted to kill.”
“Matthew Walker, parents Jim and Alice. They’re on their way, maybe already here. They’re pretty upset.”
“No shit. Name isn’t familiar. What about the one in the coma?”
“Richard Albright. We’re going to his room. All the kids are there. They insisted. I figured I could wait a while before drilling them.”
“That’s so ... human of you,” she said, and she made her sarcasm as obvious as possible.
He laughed. “Thanks for your confidence, Detective, but my humanity has nothing to do with it. I have to wait on their parents anyway.”
“So why are you doing this?” Valerie asked. “I thought you wanted me suspended for all my interference in this case. Why include me now?”
Agent Lawrence frowned and lowered his head. “For one thing, my superiors told me to give you some … leeway in this. But also,” he took a deep breath, “you’ve been right about a lot of things, some things we should have listened to, perhaps. This is bigger than we thought. Not just another serial murder case. There’s a corrupt cop involved, the mob, and now these kids. I don’t know where they hell they came from. So I figure maybe we could work together instead of …”
“Instead of you being an asshole?”
He smirked. “Yeah, that.”
The elevator stopped, and they stepped out together, Agent Lawrence leading the way. “So, we’re talking to Matthew, right?”
“And his friend, Vikki.”
“A girlfriend?”
“So I gather. They don’t particularly act like it, but she was involved as well.”
“Poor kids. They’re lucky they’re alive.”
“Maybe,” Agent Lawrence said, just before stopping at a closed door a few yards down the white hospital hall from the elevator. “It depends on what you call luck.”
-----
Matt watched Vikki, letting his gaze pass from her to Richard and then back again. Richard’s face and arm had been bandaged after the attention given by the emergency staff. His arm and back now possessed several stitches, and his face would have a scar, even though the doctor wasn’t sure how noticeable it would be. But Richard would now have a constant rem
inder of this night every time he looked in the mirror. He was in a coma, hooked up to a myriad of machines to monitor his condition and progress.
The doctor said the trauma to the head had been severe, but he didn’t expect any brain damage. Richard should be out of the coma in a matter of days. This comforted Matt, who had spoken to the doctor while Vikki stood beside him without saying a word.
Despite all his own injuries, he felt no energy drain. He found it odd that he had been so exhausted a few hours ago, and yet now he couldn’t sleep at all. He wondered what took Jim and Alice so long, figuring they would be here by now. His knee felt fine, not an ounce of pain to speak of, just a little soreness, and his elbow, well, that was a little weird. He distinctly remembered hitting his elbow during the wreck in the ambulance, and he also distinctly remembered seeing the blood flow from a cut there. In fact, as he looked down at the elbow, he could see the bloodstains there, his own blood tainting the gaping hole in the sleeve of his sweater.
But there was no cut.
No scab, no sign of any break of the skin, as if it never happened. Just like the cuts on his hands.
Did Vikki see this? Is this the reason she hadn’t said a thing since declaring her love for Richard? Ah, there were endless possibilities to what bothered her, to what silenced her in his presence, everything from shock to fear to utter confusion to complete exhaustion. And an hour or so ago, he was the same, felt the same as she. Now his mind cleared, and he thought with reservation about the evening.
People were dead. He heard them say so. Not just the paramedic, but a young couple that the madman had stolen the car from. And Marcus was involved, or his stepdad. For the first time, Matt wished he could leave. For the first time, he realized he would never have a home. Not with madmen coming after him and endangering those closest to you. Matt was the reason these people had been caught up in such a violent event. It was all his fault. And he couldn’t forgive himself for it, for doing this to Richard, to Vikki.
He had to know what he was now. There was no choice anymore. He could feel the drawing to another place, to the truth.
But the one thing that hurt him the most, the one thing that hung in his mind like an annoying set of wind chimes, continued to be the words she had said about Richard, to a killer, the desperation in her voice, the intensity in her eyes. I love him.
