The Bear Trap

by Grant Pies

  Down the hall, maybe thirty feet, the men from the garage with pistols strapped around their thighs turned a corner. Carter stopped, his shoes skidding and squeaking against the polished tile floor. and the men reached down to draw their weapons. Carter turned and ran back where he came from.

  “Freeze!” one of the men demanded.

  Now, he ran at the woman, still standing in the hallway, hoping that the men behind him wouldn’t shoot while she was in the way. Her face was pulled back in surprise, her eyes wide. She backed up against the wall as Carter sprinted past her.

  He barged back through the door leading to the stairs, skipping them two and three at a time. His feet pounded against the concrete, the white lab gown billowing behind him.

  He pulled his phone from his pocket when he reached the thirteenth floor. Still running, he tried to send a message to Sam again, pressed the send button over and over again, but it wouldn’t go through. Above him, he heard the door open and boots echo against the stairs. He reached the tenth floor and kept going. There was no plan beyond getting as far away from the men with guns.

  At the seventh floor a man in white scrubs bashed through the door and lunged at Carter. He slammed into the man, throwing him hard against the solid wall. The man’s head snapped back and crashed against the cement. He paused only long enough to see the man slump to the ground. In the commotion, he dropped his phone. It bounced and slid down the stairs until it crashed on the landing one floor down.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” he said with each step. He took the last four in one leap and scooped up his phone. The shattered phone was cracked and pixelated.

  At the fourth floor, he looked up and saw the men with pistols closing the gap. One of them pointed his weapon down the stairwell, slowing long enough to try and line up a shot, but apparently not aiming enough to his liking.

  At the first floor the stairs didn’t stop. Neither did Carter. He threw himself down two more flights of stairs until they ended, and pushed on the door at the bottom. He crashed into the cavernous parking structure and tripped, his palms scraping along the ground.

  Ignoring the stinging in his hands, Carter leapt up and ran in a zig-zag, knowing the men would come through the door any second and open fire. Sooner than he thought, shots rang out. Unable to pinpoint exactly where, bullets pinged somewhere in the parking garage. Bits of cement flew in the air and the smell of gun powder filled the place.

  One bullet shattered the window of a van next to Carter. He rounded the corner and saw the gate. The large red button pushed down under his bleeding palm, and the chain gate rattled, opening slowly.

  “Come on! Come on!” Carter yelled at the gate, pulling on it to try and lift it faster. He groaned and grunted, then glanced back at the rows of dark blue vans. The sound of boots on the ground grew closer and closer.

  A shot rang out and a bullet crashed against the cement wall only inches from Carter’s ear. He dropped at the sound of gunfire. On the ground, he squirmed and squeezed, pushing on the gate and trying his best to fit in the slim opening. He crawled on his stomach, pinning himself between the gate and the concrete.

  “Argghhh.” He gritted his teeth, the gate scraping his back. More gunshots. More shouts for Carter to stop. The top half of Carter’s body was outside. He squeezed and pulled himself, clawing the asphalt with his hands, bits of dirt and pebbles pressing into his already bloodied hands.

  He broke free and pushed himself to his feet, running into the back alley. The rain soaked into his clothes, and the gate behind him continued to rattle upwards.

  He heard the shot before he felt it. Blood spit out the front of his jacket as it pierced his back and ripped through his stomach.

  At first there was no feeling. He gasped and took several steps forward. But then the burning pain took over, like a road flare lit inside his body.

  Carter forced himself around the corner. Stumbling down the alley and out to the street, he ripped the white gown from his body and pressed it over his stomach.

  His breathing grew shallow and quick. Each inhale pulled and stretched the skin around the gunshot wound. He tried to stand upright and wrap his coat tight around his body, hiding the scrubs and the growing circle of blood underneath.

  His vision blurred and he tripped over his feet. He pulled out his shattered phone. The cracked screen was rough against his fingertips and the glass cut him as he swiped and tapped. It still worked. Now he had signal.

  He pulled the business card from his pocket and dialed the number. It rang and rang until a woman picked up. “Hello?” she said.

  “Dr. Abbott?” Carter coughed, pressing one hand against his stomach. “Dr. Abbott? It’s Carter. Will.”

  “Will? You sound—"

  “I need help.” He lifted his hand from stomach. It was covered with blood. “I don’t know how much time I have.”

  The Never-Ending Darkness

  “Slow down. Slow down,” Dr. Abbott said. Her voice calm, like nothing could rattle her. “You’ve been shot?” Carter could picture her face as she said this, trying to process the information.

  “Yeah.” He coughed and stumbled down the sidewalk, stopping to leaned against a lamp post and glance down the street behind him. “I can’t explain. I just need help. No hospitals. My name can’t be in any system. They’ve been following me, and—"

  “Okay, okay,” Dr. Abbott said. “Where are you?”

  Looking around, he said, “The Loop. Canal and Monroe.” The pain was too much to breath deep. Shallow inhales were all he could manage.

  “Alright.” Dr. Abbott’s voice was strong and demanding. “I know the area. I’m relatively close. There should be a pharmacy one block south on Adams. Can you see it?”

  Carter looked up and squinted, turning his head to look each way down the street. “I think I see it.”

  “Alright. Get there. Stop the bleeding as much as possible. Gauze, cotton balls, whatever. I’m leaving now. I’ll meet you there.”

  Carter grunted and hung up, his hand gripping the phone was slippery with blood. He felt the thick liquid soak into his waistband as made his way towards the pharmacy, hobbling down the street.

  The sidewalk was filled with people in dark suits, holding umbrellas over their gelled hair. But in the sea of suits, one man stood out. Back towards the Accenture building, in a blue jumpsuit, he had the military posture and the fixated eyes of a man looking for someone. One hand was down at his side and didn’t swing when he walked.

  Carter turned back towards the pharmacy and tried to blend in. But his gut shot forced him to shuffle, to move in a way so as not to jostle his body too much. He thought he would stand out, but to the contrary, no one gave him a second look. His unshaven sickly appearance lent itself to that of a homeless man, a man the suits of Chicago would look away from, avert their eyes and pretend he didn’t actually exist. They barely looked at his face, much less his stomach.

  Half a block from the pharmacy he twisted to look over his shoulder. The man from Accenture was still there, still scanning the crowd. Several people walking the other way brushed against Carter, bumping his shoulder. Each contact was like a gut punch, pulling the air from his lungs.

  Eventually, he reached the pharmacy and pulled the door open, leaving a slight smudge of blood on the door handle. A bell dinged overhead. He shuffled to the first aid aisle, grabbed gauze and hydrogen peroxide from the shelf, and shuffled straight to the bathroom in the back. He dropped onto the toilet and unbuttoned his shirt, revealing his bloody stomach.

  He opened the hydrogen peroxide and poured it over his wound. It was cold on his skin, and the blood poured away, dripping in a pink foaming puddle on the floor.

  With all the smeared blood washed from his stomach, there was nothing more than a dark bullet hole left, blood pulsing from like a slow garden hose. “Oh shit, oh shit.” His head spun and the cold sweat he’d felt at the sight of the bodies in Accenture came back.

  Wadding the gauze up, he pulled his notepad f
rom his pocket, put it in his mouth, and clamped down. After a deep breath, he jammed the gauze into the wound and let out a muffled cry. His eyelids fluttered and the room blinked from dark to light. With a wound like this, every poke and prod felt sharper and deeper than it really was. It felt like he was cramming his entire fist inside his stomach and his organs were being pushed from side to side to make room.

  There was a knock on the door, then an older woman’s voice. “Hey, what’s going on in there? I saw you take stuff!” She pounded on the door.

  Carter ignored her. Once the clump of gauze was wedged in his stomach, he unraveled the rest of the roll and wrapped it around his body. Then, as tightly as he could, he wrapped the second roll of gauze around his stomach.

  “Hey!” The woman pounded on the door again. “You better pay for that!”

  “Okay!” Carter snapped. The word burst through his mouth like he had been holding his breath for minutes.

  The worst thing about a gunshot to the gut, Carter quickly discovered, was that it couldn’t be tied off. Part of him wished they’d shot him in his arm or leg. Or maybe he would have been better off just taking the bullet in his head.

  If you’re not going to live through it, then quicker is better.

  The thought took him by surprise. Maybe Sam was right. Maybe Carter was a pessimist.

  His eyes pulled shut. He forced them open, but wondered if he had really passed out for a few minutes. By now he hoped Dr. Abbott was at least halfway there. He stood from the toilet, dizzy and in pain. His body wavered back and forth. Outside the bathroom stall, his pale face looked back at him in the mirror. He rinsed the blood from his hands, splashed water on his face, and brushed his hair back. He left the bathroom.

  “Excuse me!” the old woman from behind the counter snapped. “You have to pay for that stuff! I saw you take it into the bathroom. What’re you stuffing things in your pants and planning on just walking out of here?”

  “Um, no,” Carter spoke softly. He leaned against a shelf. “No, I was planning—"

  “Sure you were. What was it? What did you take back there?”

  “Just a – a thing of gauze … and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide.” He slowly stepped towards the counter and leaned on his elbows, holding himself up. He’d never realized before how every movement put tension on the skin covering the torso.

  The woman took off her glasses, letting them hang around her neck by a colorful chain. She made a face of confusion and disgust. He knew he looked bad.

  “Gauze and peroxide, huh? Nothing else?” Her eyes traveled down to Carter’s blood-stained shirt and her expression turned to something different.

  “Nothing else.”

  Without another word, she tapped on an old cash register. “Six seventy-seven.”

  The bell on the front door of the pharmacy dinged. Carter turned, hoping to see Dr. Abbott. But instead the man from Accenture stood in the doorway.

  Carter dropped to the floor and scurried around the aisle, feeling the gauze shift and bunch around his stomach.

  He crawled on his knees to the next aisle, fighting the pain ripping through his body. A small gap between two shelves let Carter watch the military man. He took two cautious steps forward, extending his neck as far as he could to look over the shelves. Carter hoped the man didn’t see the blood left on the exterior door handle. Then, without a word, the man left the store.

  Carter slowly exhaled and stood, clenching his stomach. The woman at the counter stared at him, her forehead wrinkled and her eyes narrowed.

  “Dropped a penny,” Carter grunted and forced a smile that fell somewhere between awkward and pained.

  “You okay?” the woman asked. “You in some sort of trouble?”

  “No, no, no.” Carter shook his head. “No trouble. Six seventy-seven?”

  He reached in his pocket and pulled out a crumpled $20 bill. He dropped it on the counter, stuffing his blood-covered hand back in his pocket before the cashier noticed.

  “Keep the change.”

  The bell at the front door dinged again. This time, Dr. Abbott stepped through the door, out of breath and hair tangled from the wind or running to the pharmacy. Her clothes were wet.

  “Holy shit,” she gasped at the sight of Carter. She rushed to him, but stopped short of touching him or trying to prop his body up. He looked past her out to the street. Maybe twenty feet away the man from Accenture was still patrolling, sticking out like a sore thumb.

  “Is there a back exit?” Carter asked the woman. Either trying to be helpful or just not wanting to get involved, she, without hesitating, pointed to a hall that led past the bathrooms and out the back.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  Dr. Abbott wrapped her arm around him and they burst out the back. The hot sun shone through the storm clouds. The rain had stopped for now, but the lingering humidity filled the air.

  “Did you drive?” Carter asked. Dr. Abbott shook her head. “Shit!” He coughed, and something gurgled inside his throat.

  “Faster to run I suppose. What happened?”

  “I told you,” Carter said, turning his head back and forth, trying to figure a plan that involved him getting his injury treated as soon as possible. “I was shot.”

  “I see that,” she said, helping him stand. She threw her head back to try and fling a strand of curled hair out of her eyes. “How? You need a hospital!”

  “No. Not now. Not yet.”

  “Not yet?”

  Carter nodded in a direction and tried to start walking but his eyes fluttered and he stumbled. Dr. Abbott caught him, leaning him against the wall.

  “Time’s not on your side, Will. If not now, then it may be never. Let me see.” She pulled Carter’s shirt up to expose the gauze wrapped around his stomach then pulled the bandage down until she could see the bullet hole packed with more gauze. “Bloody hell,” she mumbled to herself. “Lean forward.” She moved her hands around to his back and pulled the gauze out of the way.

  “It went through,” Carter groaned.

  “It did indeed.” She leaned Carter back against the wall. “It could have hit any number of things. Intestines, kidney, liver. Pretty much anything, and there’s no way to tell, not unless you go to a hospital.” She crossed her arms, and Carter winced with each movement. “What are you in? Just tell me if it’s the police.”

  Carter clenched his jaw and shook his head.

  “Let me help you. You called me for my help. I can’t do that unless you’re honest. Is it the cops? Are they looking for you?”

  “No,” Carter said, his head wavering back and forth. His vision blurred again. “Not the cops.”

  “But someone is after you?”

  “Mm-hmmm,” Carter nodded.

  “Okay, I can hide you. I can get you in the hospital, to a room, but not a trauma room.” Carter felt his body sliding down against the wall. “No paperwork. Promise.”

  “Okay,” he said, his voice drained of any force, just air in the form of words drifting from his mouth. “Okay.”

  “Stay here. I’ll hail a cab.” Dr. Abbott ran off, and Carter slid all the way down the wall until he was slumped on the asphalt behind the pharmacy. His life didn’t flash across his synapses, at least not in its entirety, only his poor decisions. Maybe every single decision he had ever made forced him to this place. This time. His breathing grew shallower, his head felt light, he saw nothing but darkness.

  “Will!” Dr. Abbott’s voice was yelling. “Will! Wake up!” Her hand smacked against his cheek. “Get up. I got a cab!”

  She tugged on his arm, and he slowly stood. She pulled him to the cab, and he fell into the backseat. By now, there was no pain. There was almost no feeling in his body at all. Dr. Abbott pushed his feet inside and closed the door. She jumped in the passenger.

  “Okay, go!” she yelled.

  The rest came in short spurts. It was mostly darkness, interrupted by momentary pieces. First it was just the ceiling of the cab and the sound of tr
affic around him. Then darkness. Later, it was being dragged through a side entrance of the hospital. Dr. Abbott standing over him yelling orders to two other people. Then darkness. A bright overhead light and Dr. Abbott shouting, “Ten blade!” and holding her hand out. Someone passed her a scalpel.

  Then darkness. Then darkness.

  The Grim Mathematics of Harvesting Humans

  Carter woke in a hospital bed, shirtless, surrounded by brown cardboard boxes and racks of folded hospital bedding. Bandages were wrapped around his stomach, and an IV tube stuck out of his arm and ran to a bag over his head.

  “Hey.” Dr. Abbott stood from a chair in the corner. She had changed into green scrubs and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. “Just lie back. Take it easy.” She placed her hand on his chest.

  “Wa –” Carter licked his lips. His throat was dry and scratchy. “Water.”

  “Here.” She picked a sliver of ice out of the cup of ice chips she was holding and placed it in Carter’s mouth. “The shot went clean through. That’s not to say there wasn’t a moment I thought you’d meet a sticky end.” She slipped another ice chip in his mouth. “But here you are.”

  “Where?”

  “A storage room.” She looked around, admiring the makeshift operating room.

  “The other people?”

  “Sworn to secrecy,” she said, motioning to zip her lips and throw away the key.

  “How?” Carter laid his head down and sank into the pillow.

  “What? You don’t think I have friends here that would help? I’m offended.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. They owed me. Now I owe them. And you owe me even more.”

  Carter nodded slowly. “Dr. Abb—”

  “Olivia,” she interrupted. “I think after all this we’ve both earned a little less formality.”

  “Olivia,” Carter smiled. “I do owe you. Thank you. I’m sorry.” His voice was barely a whisper. “I shouldn’t have gotten you involved.”

  “You did the right thing calling me. What kind of doctor would I be to not help an injured person? I took an oath to help others … plus, it gave me a dose of excitement. This week was a bit dull until now.”