The Artful (Shadows of the City)

by Wilbert Stanton

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Oh?” Dodger echoed.

  “I had no idea.” She looked down at her gun and lowered it. “All this time I’m here planning on revenge, you wouldn’t believe all the things I was planning for your…” She pointed to Dodger’s crotch.

  “I don’t suppose they were sexy things?”

  “Oh, no, they were horrible things.”

  “Understandable.”

  “But you’ve explained it all, and apologized. So maybe I should just call this all off and let bygones be bygones?”

  “You’re messing with us, right?”

  “Yes!” She raised the gun and shot Dodger in the leg; he fell back into my arms, knocking us both to the ground. She fired off another shot at his leg, but we both scrambled back, the bullet barely missing. Unfortunately, we were pinned up against old Washington and couldn’t go any further. “He wasn’t my brother, you freaking idiot! He was my soul mate!”

  I tried helping Dodger up. He squirmed in pain. “You said he was trying to kill you! You wanted my baby to stop him from killing you.”

  “We were going through a rough spot; all couples do.” She absently waved the gun around at us. “But now we’ll never know because this jerk killed him!”

  “So then call off all your people.” Dodger stood up, leaning on me while trying to stop the flow of blood from his right thigh. “Call them off and take me, kill me, do whatever you got to do.”

  “What?” Eve and I both looked at him in confusion. Once again, he pushed ahead of me hopping toward Eve.

  “Everything I said is true. I feel like crap, I’m tired, and I am honestly sorry. I don’t blame you for wanting to kill me. I can’t say I don’t deserve it, so call them off, and get it over with.”

  Before I could protest, a shadow crawled over the park. I looked up and saw the small airship. Speakers on the sides blared sirens that were usually followed by an announcement or message.

  “Cease and desist. Everyone put down their weapons, and lay on the ground. You are all under arrest under authority of the Empire. Peace enforcement officials will be with you shortly, make haste in your surrender, and have a nice day.”

  The three of us were momentarily distracted by the airship’s message; by the third loop, I realized I had to stop Eve. Things happened in bit of a blur, Eve was moving back toward Dodger, I was meaning to pull him to the ground and shield him, but was cut short by someone running past me from behind, tackling Eve.

  “Stay the hell away from my man!” Gia wouldn’t stop punching Eve in the face. Eve looked pathetic and helpless. “Really, you tried to hook up with this ugly bitch?” Gia shouted over her shoulder.

  Dodger and I cringed at the sound of her knuckles connecting with jawbone. Dodger was about to say something, but I held up my hand, knowing better than to annoy Gia at the moment. Instead, I climbed back up onto Washington’s arm, flinching every time I heard another sound of flesh hitting flesh. Suits piled into the streets, armed with guns and rifles. Angels and Tribe members, those who weren’t dead or unconscious, were on their knees, hands behind their heads. Those that weren’t as compliant were dealt with by a blow to the head or back of the knee, before having a gun pointed at their face. Everyone was soon put under control.

  Gia must have grown tired of hitting Eve. Dodger stood over them with his hands on his hips inspecting the damage, muttering something to Gia, who nodded in approval. Just Stan was making his way toward us with a procession of Suits, no doubt following the airship as their beacon.

  “I feel like I’m reunited with long lost brothers. What’s going on over here?” Just Stan looked over at Gia, still straddling Eve, with an excited look. “No wait, don’t. I’d prefer to leave it to imagination.”

  We were surrounded by four Suits, all with rifles trained on us. Gia casually stood up, straightening out her pants and adjusting her hood. Dodger fell back into sitting on the ground. He was still pressing at his leg, covered in sweat, straining to breathe. There was a slight wheeze every time he breathed in. More than once he coughed up tar-like phlegm and spat it out next to him.

  “You look like complete crap.” Just Stan knelt down close to Dodger, leaning in face to face. “Just look at the sight of you.” Dodger didn’t reply. Instead, he coughed really hard in Just Stan’s face. He wasn’t miffed, though. He wiped his face casually and stood back up, addressing me next. “You have been a busy boy. I have to admit when you went into Brooklyn I thought you’d never make it out alive. It was impressive. I take it that’s where Smith was hiding. Where is he now?”

  “He wasn’t so lucky,” I said, meeting his strong gaze.

  “Hmm, shame. Where is it then?”

  “Right here.” Dodger reached into his pocket and fumbled around before taking out his hand and flipping Just Stan off. “Oh, snap, look at that.”

  Dodger was laughing, and Just Stan joined him. He broke out into such a loud ruckus that Dodger stopped, his laugher replaced by yells of pain while Just Stan pressed his foot on Dodger’s wound. “Now, boys and girls, I had better not have come all the way here for nothing.”

  “Here.” I stepped up, holding the blue box out. “I have it right here. Just give us the cure, and leave us alone.” Just Stan smiled and took the box from me. He inspected it cautiously; weighing it in his hand then running his finger along the seal. He nodded in approval.

  “Everything seems in order. I guess that concludes our business. I will be arresting everyone here. No, don’t go driving yourself crazy; it’s only a formality. If I pulled my troops out as is, they would all just start fighting again. As much as I would love to see these Angels wiped out of existence, the fight seems to be going in their favor. Nor can I drop a kill order if everyone is compliant. Your friends will spend a night or two locked up and be released. You three are free to sneak off out the back, think of it as a twenty-second head start. But if you get caught, I won’t help you. As for her”―he pointed at Eve―“I can’t touch her, diplomatic immunity and all that. Can’t say I’d bat my eyes if you killed her, though. I can however make sure she doesn’t get far. Pack it up, boys!” He waved his finger in the air, and the Suits started marching off.

  “Wait!” I grabbed Just Stan’s arm, turning him back to face me. He looked at my hand in shock like he’d been touched by someone with the plague. “You promised us a cure. We didn’t do all of this, I didn’t go through all of this, for fun!”

  He continued to stare at my hand. His face went back to cheer when I moved it. “Oh, silly me, I can be so absentminded sometimes.” He walked over to Dodger and placed his hand on his forehead, then turned his face up and inspected his eyes, and put two fingers on the side of Dodger’s neck. “Lots of bed rest and fluids. Whatever you do, stay away from long journeys and stress.” He smiled at us.

  “What?” Dodger looked more confused than annoyed.

  “The flu, the more up and down you are the worse it’ll get. You need to rest.”

  “Wait, what?” My mind ran with all the symptoms I saw Dodger exhibit. Coughing, tiredness, achiness, sweats… phlegm… headaches….

  “Even before the fall, the best cure for the common cold was bed rest. I would assume the same would go for the flu. The flu is what we injected you with. I suppose all the running around wasn’t helping matters.”

  I dropped down to my knees. Dodger seemed to share my defeat as he fell back, lying flat on the ground, looking up at the sun-stained sky, sighing heavily.

  “You assholes.” Gia decided to say exactly what I was thinking. “You scum! All this time all he had was the flu!”

  “Yes, and he was being such a baby about it, wasn’t he?” Just Stan bent over, gathering up Eve in his arms, and putting her gun under his belt. “Really, a top secret virus that only we know the cure for? Who do you think we are, the American government? If anything you should be happy we were able to modify it, so it doesn’t spread to everyone else. The wonders of science, huh?” He motioned for his men
to follow, they walked off to meet the rest of their squad who started cuffing and strapping people’s hands behind their backs. Dodger, Gia, and I were all left there in the clearing, I replayed all we had been through… over the flu.

  o,” Dodger mumbled, limping between Gia and me, his arms wrapped tightly around our shoulders. “That was embarrassing.” After Just Stan left, we had bandaged up his leg and traveled through the park in the opposite direction of all the excitement. We felt bad abandoning Red and the Tribe, but she would have to understand. We planned to walk an avenue over, around to where Gia had parked our stolen car earlier. Once we got to it, traveling with Dodger would be a lot easier. “I mean, all this time…”

  “You just had the sniffles.” Gia wasn’t the least bit sympathetic.

  “Not only that, I thought I was dying. I confessed a lot of things when you guys were gone, man. Things someone who isn’t going to die shouldn’t have confessed.”

  “Like the fact that you overly indulge in women, to hide your desire for men?” I said with a smirk, but I was still reeling from the shock of the situation. Everything that happened from the moment Stan injected Dodger was for nothing. I wanted to scream in frustration.

  And yet, before I could allow myself to lose my mind in hysterics, I realized something. We saved Peter and Red’s kid… Smith would have died anyway, but at least he wasn’t alone when he did. I was able to prove to myself that I could stand on my own two feet, and then of course there was Gia. I looked over at her, struggling under the weight of Dodger. They were both saying something, probably throwing insults back and forth, but I didn’t hear them. I was lost in her beauty, her strength, and most importantly how she made me feel. I had grown up a lot due to the circumstances. We all had.

  “I’m telling you the best cure for the flu”―Dodger shouted over Gia’s voice―“is a hand job!” Well, I guess we didn’t all grow up. Gia looked over at me and rolled her eyes, then smiled. Everything that had happened didn’t matter. It was all worth it.

  My stomach turned, and my palms were sweating, and it wasn’t because of the burden I was carrying. I mouthed the words before I lost my nerve. “I love you.” Somehow her smile managed to grow even wider. Her face lit up. Her beauty took on whole new heights of perfection.

  She opened her mouth and then paused, frozen, her eyes registering shock. When time began again, it continued in slow motion, the echoing sound of the gunshot was still reverberating through the air.

  The windshield of a nearby car exploded, hitting us with debris. Gia dropped down to her knees, pulling Dodger with her. I let his body fall from my grasp and stared in horrified shock. The back of Gia’s sweater was turning red. Dodger looked at me and yelled something, but it was silenced by the sound of another gunshot. His eyes never looked as determined while he hurled himself in front of Gia. His body bucked with the impact as a small explosion on his chest painted the street red. He fell to the ground like a heap of discarded meat. Gia, still on her knees, fell over to the side.

  I ran to her, pulling her into my lap. She was wheezing and struggling with pain, blood bubbling out of her mouth. Dodger wasn’t moving, I yelled his name, but there was no response. Eve walked out from behind a car. Her right eye was swollen shut, her lips were also huge with swelling, and her nose seemed to be turned at an impossible angle. We should have killed you. The gun she held tightly was leading her toward us. How’d she get away from Just Stan?

  “One bullet left,” she said. “Who gets it? You, her, or him?”

  I looked down at Gia, bleeding out in my lap. Dodger lay unmoving on his side, a puddle quickly spreading around him. All that mattered is gone.

  “I think… Plan B…” Dodger was up on one arm, and in his other hand he had a glass shard that he brought down hard into the back of Eve’s shin. She screamed, falling to the ground. Dodger rolled over onto his back, and, oddly seemed to not be in any pain. “Twist, go!”

  “I…”

  “Go!”

  I wanted to refuse, but there was something about the way he said it that was so final. Like a programmed robot, I got up onto my feet and lifted Gia in my arms. She was heavy, but there was no way I’d let her down. Her whimpers told me there was still hope. Already, Eve was trying to get up, brandishing the gun, but Dodger pulled his body on top of her, pinning her down with his dead weight.

  “Bye,” I heard him say before I started to run. In all my life, I had never felt like such a coward. I made it to the end of the block before I heard the final gunshot. I dropped to my knees, tears begging to be released. I wanted to vomit, to curl up into a ball and die. Gia was becoming heavier in my arms, her face growing pale.

  “Take me home,” she whispered. “Get me home. They can help.”

  “How? We won’t make it!” I couldn’t hide my defeat as I screamed, tears streaming down my face, mixing with snot and spittle. “Please, don’t leave me.”

  “The car, drive me home… tell my dad that I followed you… you had no idea.”

  I looked back, a part of me hoping that Dodger had wrestled the gun away from Eve and shot her. But there she was, like the angel of death herself, standing over his dead body, reloading the gun with bullets she pulled from her pockets. Before I could talk myself into giving up, I let the flight instinct take over. A surge of adrenaline ran through me, my blood warming every inch of my veins. Gia became lighter. I struggled back to my feet, and I ran.

  I heard only a couple more gunshots. The echoing sound of thunder bouncing through the air, blocks away, they weren’t anything of importance, just a slight disturbance. But, for me, they were life shattering; they were the sound of my whole existence turning. And I ran, I ran until I was certain I would collapse from exhaustion, and then I ran more. Under the dead weight in my arms, my body screamed, my legs begged for respite. Yet still I ran. Seems like most of my life was spent running.

  I couldn’t risk Eve following us, so I went around in circles, trying to make it as difficult as possible for her to give chase. Finally, when I felt like my body could no longer take it, I returned to the car. When I reached it, my arms were numb, much like my mind. I was going on fumes. I was just a passenger riding along in my body, and this was a ride I no longer wished to see. Driving the car, I had no sense of caution speeding through the streets. I worried only about getting Gia home, whoever got in my way be damned.

  Reaching the Brooklyn Bridge was no problem; I paused at the entrance and cursed myself, not remembering the combination of light blinks. It was too bright out for them to see it anyway. What was I supposed to do? I initially thought about giving up, but when I turned around and saw Gia lying in the back seat, squirming around in pain, it was enough to spur me on. I pushed down on the accelerator with all I had. The car wheels screamed in protest as they tried to gain purchase and then the car shot off like a rocket. I swerved back and forth, trying to keep the steel missile under control. Bang. Everyone is always shooting at me now! The guys on post were showering the car with a barrage of bullets. I didn’t care. I had to keep going. It would all get sorted once I got to Chrysler’s. I didn’t even flinch. Nor did I even think about avoiding the Skinlicker that stood in front of me, face bloody from his last unfortunate meal. His body flew over the hood of the car with a loud thump.

  All in all, it took me a little less than an hour to reach Barclay’s Center. Guards approached after the car screeched to a halt in front of the entrance. I yelled for Chrysler and pointed to Gia in the back. They didn’t even bother to ask questions; one ran inside while another helped me carry her into the building. By the time we reached the lobby, a number of guards came to help. Some looked at me questioningly, but I paid them no mind. We placed her on top of the reception desk. At this point, she was covered in blood. Before we started the drive, I had tied my sweater tight around her mid-section, using the material to stop the bleeding. She was still breathing, but very lightly. Her eyes occasional flutter open now and then, but her gaze was distant.

&
nbsp; “What the hell is going on here?” Chrysler ran into the reception area led by the original guard who had met us outside. Upon seeing Gia, his face dropped, he seemed to be on the verge of screaming when he ran over. “Dear god, what happened to her?” He looked up at me accusingly. “You! You did this!”

  “No, I brought her back!” My conscience ate at me, knowing I would have to put the blame on her by lying. “She followed me. I did like you said; I returned the box to Reynolds. But she followed me. We got into a problem with the Angels, and one of them shot her… killed Dodger…”

  “I’ll deal with you later.” He frantically looked around until he spotted a well-dressed man running toward us. He wore a fancy suit much like the one Randy had. The man looked panicked and out of breath.

  “Steven, call them!” Chrysler demanded.

  “But, sir,” Steven said, shifting between confusion and concern.

  “But? But nothing! Call them now. This is my daughter! So help me god, if she dies, I will take this whole damned city down with her!”

  Steven nodded and ran off.

  Chrysler waved the other guards over. “Come on. Let’s get her to the roof.”

  “What’s on the roof?” I asked.

  “Nothing for you to worry about. You are dismissed, and I would suggest not leaving the premises. I will have words with you later.”

  “No! I’m going with her.”

  He looked cold and hard at the way I was holding her hand. “Boy, you are lucky I don’t kill you where you stand. Guards help me bring her.” They pushed me away and lifted her gently, while walking over to the elevator. I thought it would be hopeless; there was no way he would let me follow. But Gia started fighting. As far gone as she was, she started struggling against her father and the guards.