Angels of America: A Circle of the Fallen novella

by Wendy Maddocks

For a minute I’m frozen to the spot, unable to quite believe what just happened, but somehow my feet are moving and doing what Green Eyes is telling me. That fact brings me back to reality –just knowing that my body is functioning without the command of my mind freaks me out more than seeing a girl bleeding out fast and hard on my mint green carpet.

  “Rose. ROSE!”

  “Hunh?”

  “C’mon. Come over here. Kneel down and hold her hand.”

  I frown, not understanding, but kneel beside the girl anyway. I don’t see what difference it will make if I hold her cold fingers – my touch isn’t magic, it won’t bring her back – but his eyes are pleading with me, saying words his mouth can’t find, so I do it anyway. “I’m sorry. If it wasn’t for me, this would never have happened.”

  “Hey. It’s okay. She’s tougher than she looks.”

  “No-one survives a bullet to the head.” Then I remind myself of the little circular scar on his forehead. Apparently, he did. I guess it could have been a blank but still… the impact alone should have blown his brain out through his ears. “Not with this kind of blood loss.”

  “She’s not dead. She’s just playing.” And he seems so convinced that I can’t bring myself – not yet – to say that I’ve had my hand on her pulse since I knelt down and haven’t felt so much as a flicker. Wheels screech and I know without going to look that the SUV has gone. Although they’ll be back to check on me before too long. “Hold tight.” Impossible! As the boy makes his warning, the girl’s pulse jumps beneath my fingers. I look over at the boy, wondering if he felt it too. He’s ignoring me in favor of rubbing the pad of his thumb over her knuckles and murmuring sweet nothings to her that I can’t make out. I’m weirded out but oddly not surprised when her pulse flutters under her skin like a butterfly finding a rhythm and her eyes crack open.

  “Not fun,” she croaks.

  “Hi. Do you need-”

  “No. There’s no time.” She shakes free of both of us, pushes herself up to a sitting position and crawls over to the coffee table which she uses to pull herself up until she is standing. Nothing makes sense about this but I don’t have time to puzzle over it when the girl – I’ll call her Long Hair for now – whips her heads towards the door. “They’re on their way.”

  But their car just sped away from here. We all heard it.

  “They parked around the corner and now two giants are barging through the doors with semi-automatics.” She looks at me with frantic eyes. “You were packing when we came in. Have you got enough for the rest of the week?”

  I’d gotten as far as a pair off Daisy Dukes, sneakers, two shirts and underwear. I don’t give a crap who’s after me, I am not going on the run in my mismatched undies, so I shake my head. With another glance at the door, which I’d guess means the men in suits are closer than she would like, Long Hair points at the messenger bag on the floor and then throws a jacket at me that was comfortably crumpled on my floor. I hardly have time to stuff the jacket in the bag and sling the strap over my shoulder when the girl is on the move, grabbing my left hand and her friend’s right and heading towards the window. My eyes are closed as she launches the three of us at the window. The shattering of glass and the odd chill of outside air blowing in, cold even though it’s warmer out there. And then the change of air pressure and the heavy pull of gravity trying to bring me back to ground. I open my eyes and immediately wish I hadn’t – but my lids won’t go back down no matter how hard I try. We’re defying the laws of physics for a moment, floating four feet beyond my window and, just as we begin our descent, my apartment door slams open and the men in suits start shouting as I sink out of view. Tall buildings are rushing past and the grounds looks like a soft patch of grey rubber instead of the patch of street where Mrs Barker’s cousin tripped and knocked himself out cold. I don’t wanna hit that! But it’s too late. My survival instinct has kicked in, over-riding logic and intuition, making me pull my hand free and curl up into the smallest ball possible for the landing. Only landing comes before the maneuver is halfway completed and I land awkwardly sprawled on the concrete with most of my weight on my left ankle. I swallow down a scream, not wanting to look like a baby in front of these two, but I can’t help a few sounds of pain as I try to stand. Why it seems so important to impress them I don’t know but no-one ever wants to give a first impression of a crybaby, do they?

  There’s a hand suddenly in front of me but I glare at it until it gets taken away. “Rose, you can barely stand on that ankle. Let me help.”

  “I wanna try it for myself first.” That had always been my style. I wasn’t big on asking for help until I was desperate and out of options. I liked to see if I could cope alone and, more often than not, even if I couldn’t do something I just carried on messing up just so I didn’t have to go crawling back to-

  “Look, as much as I would love to see you do this alone, we just don’t have time. Keys.” I throw them at the girl with terrible aim and she snatches them out of the air anyway. “I’ll get the car. Lean on Jack if your ankle gives.”

  And then it’s just me and Green Eyes – Jack. I guess it might be a scene out of some teen movie if there weren’t two gorillas 50 feet above us, tearing my home to bits. That kinda thing puts a dampener on the mood. “Why do we need my car? Can’t we take yours?” It had to be harder to spot than mine.

  Jack just stares at me blankly. I’m feeling confident. “We don’t have one. It’s yours or nothin’.”

  “But… how did you get here?” My little town is reachable only by road and about 500 miles from any decent airport – okay, I exaggerated that but, trust me, not by much. No cabbie in his right mind would drive out here. The fare would be monumental! “You did, didn’t you? You came with them.” My injured ankle is going to take my weight. I turn and try to limp away from him but only manage a few steps before the joint gives way and I feel myself sinking to the ground. And then Jack has shoved his shoulder under mine and wrapped both his arms around my waist.

  “You best pray they ain’t looking out the window,” he hisses and he’s right. Too busy letting my paranoia convince me he is another bad guy to think about the dangers I’m sure of. “Trust me, Rose, we want to save you.” I do. I do trust him. My brain tells me I should take help where-ever I can find it. And it tells me I’ve found it here – or rather, it found me. There’s no more time to think because my Miata comes roaring out of the underground parking lot and idles beside us as I fumble for the back door and scramble in, Jack right behind me and trying to keep me from jarring my ankle too much. Once inside, Long Hair glances at me in the rearview, nods once and pulls away.

  “Keep that leg up.” Jack picks it up and places it on his lap, his hands circling my ankle to keep it still. “We will need to pick up something more inconspicuous later.”

  “Inconwhat?”

  I get my first inkling that the girl is a lot smarter than Jack, or just likes making him feel stupid.

  “Sorry, cowboy. I mean less easy to spot.” She smiles back at him and looses one hand from the wheel to reach back and hold his hand for a minute. There’s something there: something deep and genuine, something lost between them. “Any second hand dealerships around?”

  “There’s a used car lot just off the high street but you might catch herpes from the backseats.”

  “Trampy and sleazy at the same time. Sounds… disgusting, actually. And perfect.”

  “Maybe I wasn’t clear. Buy car from there. Cold sores on your lady parts. Just sayin’.”

  “Okay, okay, what can we do for now? There’s bound to be another lot around. We’ll find a place on the way. For now, I think we need to lose this tail.” A black SUV is just turning out of a street and following us from a distance. It changes lane when we do. Keeps dropping back and then overtaking a car to make it look normal but, coloring their movements in the knowledge the men in suits want me for some rea
son, everything is way too precise to be random. I slide down in the backseat and hope they weren’t close enough to see me before. “Stay down.”

  “That was my plan,” I tell her. Did she think I was gonna wind down the window shouting ‘here I am! Come get me, boys!’? Jeez. “What is it with those guys? Don’t they give up?”

  “Not when they’re followin’ orders, no.”

  “Orders from who?” I don’t know why I’m asking that. I already know it’s the woman from my school – maybe she’s in the back of that SUV right now – but even she has to be getting instructions from somewhere.

  “Stay there for now and you’ll be alright. They shot through the window, saw me fall, think you are dead. Which means they’re following the car, not you.”

  “How long before they figure out I’m, you know, alive?”

  Long Hair doesn’t answer for a long time. She just turns left or right so many times even I’m lost. Which wouldn’t be the case if Jack would let me up. “We have freedom.”

  The car slows then stops and I’m finally given permission to sit up. My back does not thank me. The few moments of stillness have seen off my adrenalin and questions dances a frantic tango in my head, all trying to be in charge. Along with that come pain and plenty of it. Every tiny movement ii make, right down to the gentle rhythm of my breathing, brings fresh jolts of agony radiating out from my ankle. No time for that though. “Don’t stop yet. They’ll find us.”

  Jack touches my hand and shakes his head, a finger on his lips. In the rearview mirror, the girl is holding the wheel so tight her knuckles are milk white and her face isn’t much better. There are lines at the corners of her scrunched up eyes that weren’t there when she appeared in my apartment. The girl puts hr hand flat on the beige felt inside the roof of the car and my gaze flicks past her to the mirror where I see the black SUV go lumbering past, slow enough that I’m sure they’re watching us. Then it goes past us. Thank God. My relief is short-lived when the SUV reverses and tries to do a three point turn into the alley. It’s just narrow enough to fit down without shearing his side mirrors off, yet wide enough to block off all possible escape. I gasp again and reach for my handle thinking that at least I can give these guys a run for their money. Jack puts his hand over mine and I stop moving, shocked. His other hand is on the girl’s neck. “You’re still bleeding.”

  “Huh.” Quickly, she clambers over the seat and into the back with me and Jack squeezes past into the front. Before he lets go of my hand, he whispers, “Ssh, Katie knows what she’s doing.” Oh crud. This bad feeling is getting stronger every second and I feel sick. Not sure what else to do, I slide back down in my seat and listen as car doors slam and stomping footsteps get closer to us. We’re all gonna die. As if thinking the same thing, Katie reaches over and twists her fingers with mine and I can barely hear the men in suits approach over the sudden whooshing in my head – like wind even though there isn’t any. One of the men knocks on the window and Jack buzzes it down. A warning glance from Katie orders me to swallow my bubbling scream when I see a semi-automatic held a few inches from Jack’s temple.

  “Are you the police?” he asks. “Have we done something wrong?”

  We. The one with the gun glances into the back. He pretty much looks through me and rests his gaze on Katie. The other bouncer type just stares at us and silently challenges either of us to move just so he has an excuse to shoot. But Katie has curled up on the seat, knees to her stomach and her free arm half across her face, looking for all the world like she’s asleep. “What’s up with her?”

  “We’ve been driving across the state and thought we should get a nap before either of us fell asleep at the wheel. This alley seemed dark and quiet. I thought that was best.”

  “Where’re you headed?”

  “Texas,” he said with a half second hesitation. Being too quick with the answer would have told them something was wrong.

  “Did a girl give you this car?”

  “Yes sir. I got the pink slip right here. Somewhere.” As he rummages through the mess of papers – failed tests, report cards, candy wrappers – on my dash, Katie frowns then nods so slightly it might not have been a nod at all. He locates the right paper hanging out of the glove compartment and hands it over. “Here it is.”

  Goon 1 skim reads it. “You don’t look like a Kathleen to me.”

  “No, sir, only in my spare time. My sister dealt with it.”

  They’re brother and sister? Okay, the girl sounds English – maybe they do things different over there… ‘Cos they certainly didn’t seem like siblings back in my apartment. And suddenly I’m sad again because I know I’m never going back. The voices in the front are getting quiet and I have to strain to hear them but moving would make them notice me. And they obviously haven’t noticed me yet. That’s also going on the list of conversations we need to have. Next thing I know, though, the men in suits are getting back into their SUV and reversing out of the alley. Katie takes her hand out of mine and I immediately miss it. For some weird reason, I felt safer than I have all day when she was touching me. The whistling in my head also stops but I don’t miss that as much. The noise of the street behind us rushes back and I know the men in suits and their lady boss are out there somewhere. Just waiting for me to make a slip up. If Katie could be holding me again, no-one will find us. I don’t have time to think about the danger because her hands suddenly fix around my injured ankle, sending lightning bolts rocketing through me. A hand slaps over my mouth as I open it to scream. I look at Jack in panic and try to pull away from them both. Girl’s stronger than she looks. Like, way stronger.

  “Don’t. Scream. Or it’ll hurt more.”

  Oh God. So they are going to kill me. I need to get of here.

  “You think you should fix yourself up first?”

  “I can run with a head wound. You can barely walk on a twisted ankle.”

  He half smiles then looks back at me. His face is friendly enough but, after that warning not to scream, I’m not so sure. And then there’s a tugging and I glance down to see Katie gently pulling on my foot until it stays straight. And then an uncomfortable, sharp heat flows into the joint, surrounding bones and tendons and muscle. It hurts – just like Jack promised – but it’s more bearable when I don’t tense up in anticipation of the next wave. Still, my back arches, my toes cramp, my fingers go into fists and I almost hyperventilate against his hand – as if it’ll help! Just like that it stops. Immediately, the pain seems like a ghost, a long-ago memory. I put my right foot on the floor, undo my shoe, and do the same on the left. There’s no pain – not even a twinge. Wide-eyed, I turn to ask Katie what she did and how she did it but she has slumped over with her face half smooshed into the window. Her eyes are closed and circled with a bruised purple. Shallow breaths fog up the glass. That pretty face is white under her light tan. I could swear she is sleeping if not for the blood now flowing freely down the back of her neck and beneath the collar of her leather jacket. No-one can nap through that.

  “We need to find a hotel for the night,” she murmurs. “I won’t risk going back yet.”

  “There’s a Jokers Inn a couple miles down the freeway.”

  “That’s too close. Further.”

  I’m not much help. It’s rare that I leave the city and, when I do, I’m normally home before I have to find somewhere to stay. Jack turns the key in the ignition, taking a few tries before it catches, and starts backing out of the alley. “Hold tight. I’m a crap driver.” As we start following the signs to get us out of the city and onto I-95, he’s not kidding. It’s all stops and starts and either going too fast or too slow. The men in suits better not be watching us still because suspicious much.

  Chapter three