Weaponized

by Nicholas Mennuti

  Kyle concentrates his anger in his left arm, raises his elbow to the passenger-side window, and bashes it. One crack and the glass spiderwebs. He gives the glass one more shot, and seconds later, the window shatters in his lap.

  Robinson swerves the car. “Shit—”

  From the backseat, Lara struggles to stop Kyle.

  Kyle grabs a jagged shard, slicing his own hand in the process, and jams it into the meaty area between Robinson’s shoulder blade and neck. Blood spurts, a steady fountain, the sanguinary consequence of slitting skin in a sensitive area surrounded by nerves and vessels.

  Robinson takes his hands off the wheel, tries to wipe all the blood from his eyes while steering the car with his knees.

  Lara tries to squeeze herself between the divide separating the two seats.

  Kyle reaches over, slams down on the door panel, unlocks the passenger side, and jumps from the moving car.

  He lands hard on his side, then gets up and takes off in a dead sprint.

  The car screeches to a halt on the side of the road. Lara jumps out of the backseat and joins Robinson in the front. He turns to her, blood spurting, and hands her his gun. “Stop him,” he says, furious.

  Lara runs to the middle of the road, tries to set up a clean shot. “Kyle, stop,” she yells. “I’ll shoot. I will.”

  Kyle doesn’t turn around. He’d rather take a shot in the back than slow down.

  He reaches the pier, takes a running dive into the river, and starts swimming past the limits of his body, muscles burning and aching.

  Lara gets back into the car, gun at her side. “He jumped.”

  “I noticed.” Robinson looks at her, his neck spurting, more annoyed than anything else, and says like the ultimate disappointed parent, “He’s your problem now. Get out. Go get him, and don’t miss this time.”

  Kyle swims through the thick dregs of the Mekong.

  He wades for a few seconds, then catches his breath and floats through a patch of pollution. Planks of diseased wood, pockets of redolent food—mealy fruit, rotten meat, hundreds of bruised UN-donated potatoes—and strange sci-fi vegetation, stems and vines, rising from an unseen source. He’s going to need one hell of a tetanus shot after slogging through this sun-spangled septic tank.

  He swims through an assortment of corroded hubcaps and floats over to the rickety deck of a moored houseboat. Two children wearing nothing but torn cloth diapers watch him with a mix of awe and fear as he hoists himself onto the boat’s deck.

  Kyle beaches himself on the wooden planks, rolls onto his back, and breathes in. He’s strained the limits of his lungs; his chest feels like there’s a hot coal in the center. His arms and shoulders tremble.

  The children don’t move, just stare at him like he’s some mythical object dredged from the depths of the sea.

  Kyle shakes off the water, walks the length of the boat, and rips a threadbare towel off a rope acting as both a drying line and substitute sail. He wraps it around his wounded hand, holds it tight.

  He walks to the edge of the houseboat and makes the jump from the boat to the shore. It’s farther than he thought. He goes down on one knee upon impact and allows the rest of his body to follow. He’s overcome; he still can’t catch his breath.

  He hobbles across the shore until he hits the main road.

  Hitchhiking isn’t an option. No one, no matter how many good Samaritan impulses that person is harboring, would pick up someone in his condition. His only hope is to walk until he finds a stand where he can rent a moto.

  He sticks to the side of the road and walks with the traffic. He runs his hand along the sleeves and shoulders of his suit, swats away any refuse left over from his plunge.

  He weighs his options. Surrender is the only viable one he can come up with. Try to find someone to turn himself in to and tell him Robinson’s plan. The problem is, who is he supposed to surrender to at this point? Why would anyone believe him?

  He looks down, and his hand is seeping through the towel, leaving a trail of crimson blots behind. He needs to get somewhere and change the dressing.

  78.

  The sun’s a boiling naked ball. Below, the clouds churn like cumulous magma. Kyle rubs his eyes, which are stinging and swollen from his Mekong bath. Keeping the pressure tight on his wounded hand, he makes a right turn into the congested city and is besieged by sonic chaos.

  Everyone seems to be at war with everyone else on these streets far removed from Angkor Wat’s famed temples and tourist infrastructure. A wedding procession—about one hundred strong—strolls between gridlocked cars, further fucking things up. Car horns bleat at the bridal party, the members of which are decked out in traditional garb and holding cakes and gifts over their heads.

  Kyle cuts between the cars.

  More honking, more shouting; a cluster of hotel buses try to merge. This is a city composed of people who can’t stop yelling “Fuck off” at each other, and the merciless sun hanging above clearly feels the same way about them. Fuck off, it says. Don’t touch.

  Kyle mixes in with the wedding party, dashes across traffic to the opposite side of the street, and hits a wall of vendors selling spinning street meat, fried bugs, and flamboyantly patterned fabric.

  He walks on, trying to mingle gently with a crowd that doesn’t share his goals, a crowd who seem to be staring and then—intentionally or unintentionally—knocking into him. And there’s a simple explanation for this.

  On either end of the street are police officers handing out Wanted flyers with Kyle’s picture adorning them.

  He thought seeing his face on television for a year alongside Chandler’s would have inured him to losing control over his image; however, there’s something about the tactile nature of his photo being distributed that unnerves him in a way pixelation never did. He could always turn off the TV, shut the computer down, so somehow—in his own mind—he still controlled the flow of his face. Not anymore.

  His hand throbs; he feels his pulse hammering in the wound, cellular conversation. He’s completely soaked through the towel. No more time. He has to change it.

  He has to stop.

  He rounds the corner, swiftly snatches a long lime-green silk scarf from a fabric vendor’s table while the owner is busy scolding her kids, and ducks into an alleyway. He shares it with several children trying to set insects on fire by focusing sunlight through a shard of glass.

  He removes the saturated towel and readies himself to examine the wound. He’s not squeamish about other people’s injuries, but he’s seriously queasy when it comes to his own.

  The cut is a clean slice across the length of his palm. From a psychic’s standpoint, he cleaved out over a third of his future.

  The bleeding is heavy, but what’s making the wound throb is the crud from the Mekong in the gash. He needs to rinse it out. Some stitches would be optimal, but there’s time only for the essentials.

  Water.

  He’d like to flush the wound with bottled water, but his wallet and the bills inside are drenched, so he can’t pay a street vendor. If he uses tap water on it, he’s going to get an infection. If he doesn’t clean it out, he’s going to get an infection. There are no good options, only possible palliatives.

  He grits his teeth. He’s got to clean it.

  He walks down the alley and finds the back entrance to a restaurant. Next to the dumpster brimming with putrefied vegetables, chicken appendages, and bloated flies in a post-buffet state is a garden hose. He opens his palm, works the nozzle, lets the stream run through a chain of brown coughs, and then lowers it onto his hand.

  It burns more than he’d imagined. Feeling faint, he leans against the wall for support while the stream runs over the gash, and a blood-spangled puddle collects around his feet.

  He cuts off the water flow, drops the hose, and starts to pat the wound dry with the scarf. He averts his gaze, looks toward the mouth of the alley—and sees Lara round the corner and begin sprinting toward him.

  79.


  Kyle palms the silk scarf and shoulders the steel side door to the restaurant. The door gives and crushes the cheek of a chef hauling a colander of green beans to the stove. He goes down to the floor, instantly unconscious. Green beans soar and scatter. Kyle flops inside.

  It must be four hundred degrees in the kitchen. In every direction, an appliance or stovetop is sizzling, spitting, boiling over, or about to be overrun with flames.

  Before the staff can ask questions or chase him out with a cleaver, Kyle bursts through the cheap plastic sheet separating the kitchen from the restaurant proper, which is about the same size as the kitchen. The walls seethe with flashing neon characters and splattered sauce. The air is a pungent mix of spices, sweat, and Freon.

  There’s not enough room between the tables for Kyle to run. He jumps across them in a mad dash to the door, upsetting people’s meals and causing a melee among the diners.

  Lara smashes through the steel door and follows his path.

  Kyle makes it out the front door, spills back onto the teeming street.

  He knows being in the middle of a crowd isn’t going to keep Lara from shooting him. He also knows he’s not going to outrun her. His only hope is to get away from her.

  He looks back; she’s getting closer, almost at the door.

  There’s only one option left.

  He shoulders through the crowd, making his way toward the cop at the end of the street. He doesn’t turn back, but he hears Lara crash through the front door of the restaurant.

  “Kyle…stop,” she yells.

  He picks up the pace until he reaches the end of the street, where he’s face to face with a local cop holding a stack of Wanted flyers featuring Kyle’s close-up.

  He stops, catches his breath. “I’m turning myself in to you,” he says.

  The cop clearly has no idea what Kyle has said. Come on, Kyle thinks. Even this is going to be a struggle. Jesus Christ. “I am turning myself in to you,” Kyle repeats slowly, nodding and with accompanying hand motions to indicate handcuffs.

  Once again, the cop stares back.

  Behind him, Kyle hears Lara tossing over pedestrians and speeding his way.

  No time.

  Do I just grab this guy’s gun and point it at him? No, he thinks. No need to add to my perpetually expanding criminal record. He grabs one of the flyers from the stack, holds it up next to his face, points at the photo, then at himself. See? It’s me. I can’t make this any more obvious.

  And now the cop gets it.

  Really fucking gets it.

  He draws his gun, trains it on Kyle, and starts shouting instructions in Khmer.

  Kyle has no clue what the instructions actually are, but he’s more than happy to put his hands up, get down on his knees, and stay still. The cop keeps his gun level, grabs his walkie-talkie, and speaks animated Khmer into the apparatus.

  Kyle waits for him to finish, keeps his hands locked above his head.

  The cop commands Kyle to get down on his stomach—at least, that’s what Kyle takes from the exchange—then walks in a circle around him shouting incomprehensible orders while waving his gun.

  Kyle turns his head and sees Lara staring, gaping at the scene. He can only imagine what she must be thinking.

  That he’s cracked, finally gone suicidal.

  But Kyle figures rage is her primary emotion, because as crazy as she is, she’s not going to gun him down in front of a cop and risk being shot and killed herself.

  They share a last skewed look and then she storms off, leaving Kyle to sort through the consequences of his Pyrrhic victory. Now he’s going to have to deal with the Chinese, who are about even with Robinson in terms of complicating issues.

  Because even if Kyle does manage to convince them he’s Kyle West, not Robinson, they’re going to be just as thrilled to have Kyle West in their possession.

  80.

  Robinson stands on a makeshift tarp of hotel-room towels and a tropical-themed shower curtain—banyan trees and a breeze. His feet are bare and streaked with dots and dashes of blood. He takes a generous gulp from a bottle of Grey Goose, then puts his cigarette on the lip of the cream-colored sink.

  The bathroom mirror is a severe square bordered by naked halogen bulbs, providing him with both an excellent spot to perform DIY surgery and about the hottest fucking room one could imagine. Orbs of sweat drip from Robinson’s forehead down his nose, lips, chin, earlobes.

  He takes a drag off the cigarette and squints through the smoke while making a pragmatic assessment of the surgery required.

  The shard of glass Kyle jammed into his neck left a ragged puncture wound between his neck and shoulder, right in the area above his trapezius muscle, a knotty mix of tendons of particular importance to comfortable sleep.

  Robinson leans into the light, separates the flaps of lacerated skin, and looks inside. The halogens do a languid dance against the seeping and shifting fluids, and he sees abstract figures and shadows in the interplay; it’s like watching time-lapse photography of clouds.

  He snaps back to reality, picks up a threaded needle from the countertop, and holds it in his hand. He’s shaking too much to make the first stitch. Nothing will go right if the first one isn’t even.

  He tries to muster his inner reserves, takes another belt of booze, but he’s lost too much blood and can’t get his body to stabilize. He studies himself in the mirror, fascinated by his own destruction.

  Lara walks into the bathroom, soaked in sweat, her clothes clinging, and helps herself to Robinson’s cigarette. “You need me?”

  Robinson keeps staring in the mirror. “Yeah. I can’t get the skin to line up to make the first stitch.”

  “You want me to wash up first?”

  “I don’t know how much longer I’ll last before I pass out.”

  “Okay,” she says.

  “Fuckin’ Kyle stabbed me at an angle.” He laughs. “I would’ve done the same.”

  “About him…”

  “Later,” Robinson says. “I’m going to pinch the skin together and you put in the first three or four stitches. I can finish up the rest.”

  “How many you think you need?”

  “Twenty, maybe. Give or take.”

  “Christ,” Lara says. “I don’t think…”

  “Just line up the skin and close it. When I get back home I can have a real doctor redo it.” Robinson takes another shot of vodka and arches his back so Lara can start.

  She leans in, stabilizes him against the sink—in case he reflexively jumps on the first stitch—and pinches the two flaps of skin together so they line up. “I’m starting.”

  “No need to tell me,” he says.

  Lara powers her way through the first stitch, trying to keep the skin straight. “Okay?”

  Robinson coughs, breathes in. “Do a few more. You need to leave me with a straight line to work with.”

  Lara goes back to work, starts the second one. “I need to clean it off. There’s too much blood. I can’t see what I’m doing.”

  “Fuck it,” he says, visibly in agony. “Don’t stop. Just keep going.”

  She spits on her hand, clears away a spot, and continues on.

  “Christ,” he says. “You sew like a fucking Russian. It’s brutal.”

  She snorts a little to stifle a laugh and keeps going.

  “Enough,” he says. “How many is that?”

  “Around six.”

  “Fine. I’ll finish it later.”

  Lara backs away. Robinson turns around, takes a drink of vodka, and offers her the bottle. She drinks. Their eyes lock, eliminating the need for conversation.

  Robinson opens his arms to invite her in. “Come here.” She acquiesces, and he holds her close. “Now, tell me.”

  She speaks into his shoulder. “I couldn’t find him. I’ve been looking this whole time.”

  Robinson pushes her away, fixes her with a glare, which she tries to match. “You’re lying,” he says. “You never have to lie to me. You know that
by now.”

  “I’m not. I looked all over the city. I couldn’t find him.”

  “Just tell me the truth.”

  “I couldn’t…”

  “I just need to know what I’m walking into tomorrow.”

  “He won’t be there.”

  “You found him. You couldn’t pull the trigger. It’s my fault. I left you alone with him for too long.”

  “He just…he just disappeared, Julian.”

  “Hey,” he says. “Hey. I’m human. It’s hard to kill someone you’ve spent a few days with.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “I’m not mad at you,” he says, and brings her back inside his arms. “I just need to know if he’s a factor I have to deal with.”

  “He isn’t. You won’t need to worry about him.”

  He runs his bloody finger over the inside of her forearm in soft strokes. “Don’t be embarrassed if you liked him more than me. It’s okay. Just talk to me.”

  “I didn’t like him more.”

  “You can like him all you want. I just want to know about your interaction.”

  “The plan is solid. You really think you need to worry about him? He’s just a computer guy.”

  Robinson suppresses a smile. “Just tell me.”

  She’s cracking under Robinson’s calm, can’t hold back her panic. “I love you. I do.”

  “I know that. And I love you.”

  “He won’t be there tomorrow,” she says, starting to breathe unevenly. “He won’t. I swear.”

  “You never need to be afraid of me,” he says. “I love you.” He makes it sound like a veiled threat.

  She starts to cry.

  “Just tell me.”

  “I found him,” she says. “I did. I found him.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she says. “I am.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Just keep going.”

  “I had him cornered on the street. He saw me and turned himself in to the cops. I couldn’t…I couldn’t shoot him. I couldn’t do it.”