My generation? He makes it sound like there’s something else. I’ve encountered plenty of variations in the form, quality and efficacy of the product. Is Le Vau alluding to that?
“My condolences, by the way,” he says. “I heard about the shooting at the gas station.”
His comment makes me mad. If we’re going to fight, what is the point of being polite? I examine the desktop for anything I can turn into a weapon. A pen to the eye, a letter opener between vertebrae, a paperweight to the philtrum, that area between the upper lip and the bottom of the nose. There are plenty of choices with these ordinary objects. Again, I’m thinking of killing, not wounding him. I amend my thoughts and consider a blow with the stapler to jostle the cerebral cortex. That might do the trick.
“My generation, however, has none of the side effects of yours,” he continues. “We’re experimenting with the dosage. If all goes well, we should start FDA trials next spring and get our approval fast-tracked. We’ve got some good people working on it. A much better business venture than the street has to offer.”
My mind tells me not to believe him, that he’s trying to placate me into thinking he’s working for the greater good. I’m not going to fall for his guile. Yet I’m stuck on the “we” reference. Who’s “we”?
He lifts the stapler. “Of course, I’m not all about the legal dosage for recreational use. If you’re going to save the best champagne for the best occasion, why waste your time on the cheap stuff, right? You go for the gusto!”
He switches the stapler to his left hand. His dominant hand.
“The good news about your generation of product is that it will be off the market once ours hits the pharmacies. No more psychotic episodes, no more cop killings, no more psychological addiction. You get a prescription for that attention deficit disorder you’ve been complaining about, and you’re good to go.”
He’s feeding me a line, but I’m keen on his game. I think his silver ballpoint pen is the best weapon to use. I come up with eleven methods to paralyze him without even thinking about it.
“You know, that’s a pretty good story,” I say. “I’m sure someone will buy it, but not me. So how about we cut the bullshit?” I step toward him. “Why did you deal to Kurt Rodriguez? Was he an experiment to you?”
Le Vau rolls back in his chair, leaving the stapler on the desk at a strange angle. The compulsiveness in me wants to nudge it just a little so it’s even with his tie. Again, he appears in control of his emotions. Not a blink at the mention of Rodriguez’s name. “That boy had potential. I was just curious to see how far he would take it. I had no idea he’d go all the way.”
“So he was an experiment. And you, what, coached him?”
Le Vau is smug in his response. “He had that spark. I simply opened his eyes.”
Le Vau makes it sound as if he was a benefactor. As if he were helping Rodriguez. Rodriguez wasn’t some kind of loner or misfit or abandoned child. He was well-liked by his friends, and loved by his family. All he wanted was a way to distinguish himself from the ordinary. It’s funny how you find what you want if you really seek it. Le Vau happened to own the candy store, evangelizing the merits of his product. One strip, and studying becomes easier. A second, and you can run faster. Up the dose again, and maybe you’ll make history. Keep going, and you’ll become God.
Le Vau is nothing more than a preacher, spreading his infected gospel while hiding behind a club to pursue his true proclivity.
“You could have stopped him.”
Le Vau stands and pushes in his chair, bringing it flush with the edge of the desk. “I could have done a lot of things. How about you? Who did you stop?”
He wants to make me out to be a hypocrite, and maybe I am. My selfishness hasn’t made me a better husband or father. It hasn’t made me a better partner to Mullins. And it hasn’t helped kids like Rodriguez stop themselves before it was too late. Right now, my nerves are frayed to the point where I’m not sure of what I am. But I know this: our encounter is going to end with one man standing.
Le Vau walks calmly around to the front of the desk and perches himself on it. It’s a disadvantageous position. He’d have to go on the defense to fend off my attack. Why would he do that?
He pulls a clear plastic sheet from his pant pocket. He lifts it up, exposing a two-by-five set of gel-like buttons, also clear. He pops one square off the perforated sheet. There’s a single button in the middle of the square. He pockets the rest of the sheet. “One of these is better than thirty of your strips. Except you don’t pop it in your mouth. You apply it to the skin, like this.” He places the square flat against his wrist and pushes the button. It pops inward, squeezing out a gel that reminds me of hand sanitizer. He tosses the empty square on the table and rubs the gel into his wrist. “See? It absorbs almost instantaneously. The rest evaporates, with no residue. It’s pharmaceutical grade quality. The good news is that it hits twice the neuroreceptors as the old product. That means you’re firing on all cylinders.”
I’m painfully aware that I just let him dose up in front of me. I think my senses are dulling. Are the strips finally wearing off?
He answers my next question before I even ask it. “It’s my second application today.” He folds his hands, scarred knuckle on top. “Normally, I do one but, you know, special company and all.”
He’s blocking the pen by sitting on the desk. And all the other implements I was considering using. He’s outmaneuvered me before I realized it. Even though I don’t feel afraid, I’m starting to get this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“Well, there you have it,” he says with a smile.
I can’t resist asking, “So, what happens now?”
Le Vau slides off the desk. He shrugs, still smiling. “Now, I kill you.”
He comes at me before I have the chance to duck out of the way. His knee connects with my stomach, propelling me backward. I stumble three steps before righting myself, the wind nearly knocked out of me.
Instant nausea rises up my throat. I suppress my gag reflex. It costs me an elbow to the face. I barely deflect it, taking the brunt of the blow with my shoulder, the rest with my cheek.
I collide with the wood casing adjacent to the door. It’s a hard knock to my scapula, pain surging up my back.
Le Vau throws a kick. Somehow, I manage to sidestep it. His foot demolishes the Sheetrock to my right instead of my sternum.
When he removes his shoe from the hole he created, I’m already to his left, near the desk. Pieces of drywall chip off and cascade to the floor. He stamps the dust from his foot. The whole bottom part of his pant leg is coated with Sheetrock debris. It seems to infuriate him, but only for a moment.
“You’re good,” he says, shifting the weight to his left heel. “Nice to see you actually remember your combat training as a police officer.”
There are equations firing in my brain. Some are telling me that my odds are greatly improved using one of the desktop implements available to me. The others are telling me that I have a one in five chance of surviving, period, based on the amount and quality of product in my system. I need something better to even the fight.
“It’s right here.” He pats his left pocket, again reading my mind.
One gel would do it. But I’d never last long enough to get one.
I lunge for the pen, snap it up, and roll across his desk, knocking over his expensive lamp. It crashes to the floor. The glass and bulb shatter, but I’m on my feet, desk between me and my foe, my only safety net.
He steps around to his right as I circle back. I expect him to grab the stapler, but he’s going to use his bare hands.
He hops oddly on each foot toward me, like some kind of wound-up toy with springs for legs. I wait for his bounce to reach one body length and then swing the metal pen to stab him in the carotid artery.
I’m mid-swing when he alters his step, duck
ing below my thrust. I can’t block his punch to my groin. Pain explodes from my testicles.
I double over and lose the pen, along with my balance. He follows up with a kick to my solar plexus, sending me skidding into his coat-covered waste basket.
I land on my back, cushioned only by his sports jacket. I try to use my leg as leverage to stand. I manage to get one foot on the floor. I cry out as the pen I’ve dropped is driven through the top of my sneaker.
“Ouch,” he says. “That must hurt.”
I’ve never experienced agony this intense. I’m unable to get up. The waves of crushing pain are radiating upward from my foot. I’m seeing stars.
“Anyway.” He peels me off his jacket and onto the floor. My face strikes broken glass. It cuts into my skin. The pen is sticking out of my sneaker, punched through the tendons in my foot, gnawing at my nerve endings.
Le Vau ties the arms of his jacket together around my throat, lifting me up. I instinctively pull at the hangman’s noose, try to breath.
He slams me onto my side in the middle of his shattered lamp, knocking my skull against the brass base. My head throbs, but the air rushes back into my lungs. I’m left gasping, a dab of blood rolling down my cheek.
He reaches across for something on his desk. I should take advantage of the split second his midriff is exposed above me, but I can’t do anything. My autonomic system is misfiring. He pulls back, standing over me with an object in his left hand. It takes me a second to focus, and when I do, I’m seeing that silly stapler.
I actually laugh. It’s funny, although I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the idea of Mullins reading my cause of death in a report, crying and cracking up at the same time.
Le Vau laughs too. “I know, who would have thought: a stapler!” He hefts it. “It’s made of resin, fabricated by a 3-D printer. I’m guessing part of it will disintegrate when I drive it through your skull. What do you think?”
I keep laughing, not because it’s funny, but because I need to buy time. There’s a moment in any life-and-death situation where you know whether you’re going to make it or end up with a headstone. That’s when you need that FM, that f’ing miracle. It happened to me once, when I was rookie, during a shootout with an armed robber in a convenience store. My duty weapon had jammed, and all the junked-up kid needed to do was take me out with his pistol. Instead, the clerk did what she wasn’t supposed to do: engage the suspect. The pepper spray to the face bought me my second chance. Now I need that same kind of FM. Too bad no one’s around to save my ass.
I feel glass beneath my right hand. A couple of pats, and I find a shard about four knuckles long. I grab a hold of it. I fix my sight on Le Vau’s left thigh, right where his pocket is. If I can just get myself into a sitting position …
“Let me ask you something.” It’s a last-ditch effort to gain a few more precious seconds. I push myself up onto my elbows, knuckles down, shard hidden. I prop my back against the wooden leg of his desk. “If you had the new generation of product available, why didn’t you sell it to Rodriguez? Why give him the old stuff?”
He rotates the stapler with one hand, the other ready to wield it if I flinch wrong. “I think you already know the answer.”
I do, and it sickens me. Le Vau is a sadist, pure and simple. He wants to create an army of flawed super humans to watch them destroy and combust. The new product isn’t any better. It’s the same maker of monsters, except the user will think he’s in control, when in fact, he will end up changing into the very thing Le Vau has become.
He gives the stapler one last twirl and then holds it up. I know he’s faster than me. I know he’s stronger than me. I also know that I’m dead sitting here. If I make it out alive, they’ll probably take my shield away, and that’s okay. I’ve gone down the rabbit hole, and I don’t like what I’ve turned into. But the most important thing is that I don’t want to leave my daughter a legacy of a loser father who threw his life away chasing a drug high just to feel “normal.”
In slow-mo, I watch the grip in Le Vau’s left arm tighten. I can tell he’s going to be dramatic and go for the overhead blow by the way he’s arching back, emboldened by my injury and compromised position no less. It’ll take him a half second longer to execute, but the payoff will be as grandiose as he had hoped.
His thigh is within arm’s reach. I don’t need theatrics for what I have to do.
I pivot the weight to my right hip. With all my strength, I lash out with my glass dagger. I anchor the point three inches in from his hip flexor, sinking deep and dragging down with a ripping motion. He yelps, losing momentum.
With my other hand, I reach for his torn pocket. I snatch the bloodied sheet of plastic tabs from the fabric, tearing away three gel squares in the process. Reflex drives Le Vau backward to recover from my stabbing. I smash the torn sheet against the floor, popping the gels with my fist, slathering my skin with clear liquid and blood. His eyes widen, a notion of fear and recognition on his pain-tortured face.
I feel my skin electrify as I yank the pen from my foot. I’m hit with a major endorphin rush as it falls from my hand. Every synapse and neuron awakens. I’m slowing time more than I ever could with just the strips.
A second goes by, and I’m on my feet. I know there’s pain in my foot, but I reroute the signal, and block it off. I’m thinking faster, multitasking processes normally handled linearly, going deeper than I’ve ever gone.
Instinctively, I’ve got my hands gripped on the lip of the desk, assessing weight, size and mobility. I don’t even think through the shift in power to my lower body. I just do it.
Le Vau swings into action. He knows what I’m about to do.
But I’m faster. I redistribute power to my hands and forearms and flip the wood table up. I anticipate his angle of attack and thrust hard. The desk smashes into his torso. I throw all my momentum into the push, crushing his body into the cinder-block wall. There’s no yield to the masonry’s ruthless surface. The desk breaks apart from the force of the collision, two of the legs prying loose, splinters flying.
Impact complete, I grip the side of the damaged table and toss it. It lands loudly a few feet away, upside down. Le Vau crumples to the ground, blood streaked along the wall from where his head made contact.
I collapse to my knees next to him, winded. He looks at me, head cocked oddly, neck vertebrae damaged. “I can’t feel my hands,” he manages to say, alarm in his voice. Something’s wrong with his mouth too because his speech is slurred. “Go ahead,” he prompts. “Finish it!”
There’s nothing more in the whole world that I want. I conceive eighteen different ways to sever his spinal column. It’s what a Roman gladiator would have considered with a fallen adversary in the arena. I look around the disaster of the office. There’s no emperor to give me the go-ahead. The decision is mine.
“No.” I pat him on the shoulder, my way of saying, “You’re not getting out of this easy, pal.” The reality reflects in his horror-stricken eyes. I imagine he’s scared shitless of going to prison as a cripple after facing an unforgiving jury. I don’t care what he thinks.
I try to rise to my feet, but something’s wrong with my motor functions. It’s like the wires have been disconnected from the battery, leaving my limb muscles unable to contract voluntarily. I push back against the wall with what little strength I have.
Time begins to return to normal. With Le Vau incapacitated, my thoughts shift to home. I want to crawl into bed so badly, to hold Suzie close and confess everything, and ask for forgiveness; to promise her my selfishness is over, and that I will be the father and husband she deserves.
The door bursts inward. Knob and lock smack the vinyl floor. I glimpse a portable battering ram being retracted.
The first police officer aims his submachine, shouting, “Don’t move!” He’s wearing ballistic armor and goggles. He gives an “all clear” and two more team members enter, f
ollowed by a most unexpected sight: Mullins, in jogging pants and a striped polo shirt a couple sizes too small.
Mullins glances at Le Vau, and takes a knee beside me. “Hey partner, what the hell, huh?” He looks me over. “Jesus H. Christ. What have you gotten yourself into?”
It’s a damned good question. I lean my head against the cinderblock. “I know.” I don’t bother asking him how he found me. I’m sure my subconscious mind wanted this. I thumb in Le Vau’s direction, pointing out his scarred knuckle. “Arrest him.”
Mullins registers a sliver of surprise and nods his head slowly. He motions to the element leader. “Read him his Miranda rights, and then get someone with a backboard in here.” The SWAT member goes about his task.
I feel my brain baking under a torrent of neural activity. I’m crashing, and I’m crashing hard. My eyes close for a moment, electrical pulses firing across my retinas.
Mullins snaps his fingers. “Stay with me, buddy. I’ve got EMS on the way.”
I reach out, my arm blurring into three. How fast is my pulse racing? Mullins takes my hand. “Easy there, stud.”
I try to keep from fading. “I’ve done a bad thing.” My throat is suddenly dry. I’m parched and there’s no water to be found. “Real bad, Ed.”
“Yeah, I know. It’ll be fine.” To me, “fine” amounts to rehabilitation, maybe incarceration. I do appreciate Mullins not being a jerk about it. He adds, “You can give me the details over a beer.” He shakes his belly for emphasis, and grins.
We both know it’s a joke. I eke out a smile for him. “Yeah, that’s what you need.”
Writers of the Future Volume 31 Page 6
