Psycho Within Us (The Psycho Series Book 2)

by Chad Huskins

  That same energy was in the halls all around him. As he passed each desk and checkpoint in the hospital, he saw phones being lifted up, male and female nurses speaking quickly to each other in Russian jargon, much of which was impossible for him to follow. Spencer knew what was happening, even as he stepped around each station. The rumor of the wolf was passing through the flock, and the sheep were getting jittery.

  He calmly headed down a hallway that had a sign clearly stating it was for doctors and nurses only. He still felt a little lightheaded, and fought to keep his composure as he passed each station.

  Spencer glanced at a few of the nametags on the breasts of each nurse he passed, memorizing a few names: Malvina Gulin, Nika Grebenshchikov, Olesya Venediktov, Natalya Polishchuk. Names were useful. Names were tools and even weapons at times. Names opened doors as easily as passwords and badges. Names were spells to cast on others. Names were as good as saying “Open Sesame.”

  The panic actually helped him out a bit. At the end of the hall, a set of double doors stood in his way, locked and unyielding. He stood to one side, waited for the inevitable doctor or nurse to come racing through those doors to see what was going on (the rumor of the wolf in their midst would compel them to do this). When it happened, he surreptitiously put his foot up to the door to stop it from swinging back closed, and once the doctor was around the next corner he slipped inside.

  Almost as soon as he was through the door, a nurse stepped out from a desk, on her way to some errand, and spotted Spencer and approached him. “Sir, you can’t be—”

  “Nurses Polishchuk and Grebenshchikov sent me,” he said with confidence, in his best Russian. At once, he had the woman’s full attention. The nurses’ names were the appropriate spell to cast. “A friend of mine is in labor. I believe you have her? Alisa Rodchenko?” Another appropriate spell cast. He kept talking, not giving her time to think. “A man is on the loose in the hospital. He’s running from the police, and he may have a gun.” The woman listened in rapt attention as Spencer gave the description he’d gotten from the nurse at the front desk: blonde-haired, stocky, wearing a dark-grey jacket. “Please, spread the word immediately.”

  This was the message he hoped he got across, anyway. Spencer’s head was still spinning a little, and the Russian language could be very tricky. The nurse seemed to at least get the gist. She nodded, and turned urgently back to her desk. Open Sesame, Spencer thought. The nurse hollered that he still wasn’t supposed to be here, but she cared less now that she was picking up her phone and making a call.

  Such loose, feckless minds, he thought, ducking down the next hallway. It doesn’t take much, does it?

  Spencer ducked down the next hallway and started opening doors. A door into a broom closet, a door into a room that held some plumbing supplies, a door into a room with some spare rubber gloves and scrubs, but no antibiotics or medicines. Then, at last, he came into a room filled with shelves, and those shelves were stacked high with bottles and boxes.

  On his way through the hospital, Spencer had been pulling up the various medicines he would need on his phone, and put their names into Google Translate to get their Russian spelling. However, many of the boxes and bottles turned out to have an English translation on them, as well. It took about two minutes of rummaging past pill boxes of sumatriptan, odansentron, and various other nonessentials before he came across a large bottle of Demerol pills. That’ll help with the pain, he thought, pocketing them. A bottle of Rohypnol, some ampicillin. Another minute of rummaging brought about a great find: cephalexin, an antibiotic pill that wikihow.com recommended he take 500mg four times a day orally. He stuffed what he could into his pockets. That’ll have to do for now.

  Pockets rattling, Spencer turned to leave. On his way out the door, though, his eyes caught sight of Augmentin, a brand of amoxicillin. “Somebody loves me,” he chuckled. But as he reached for the bottle, his head spun again, the tile floor felt a little bouncy, and he collapsed against the shelf. He only fell half to his knees, but reaching out to the shelf for help raked its contents off, sending them crashing to the floor.

  Spencer took a couple of deep breaths, steadied himself, and stood straight again. He composed himself and pocketed the Augmentin, then stepped out into the hall, just in time for someone to make a garbled announcement over an intercom. All Spencer could make out was “warning” and “lockdown procedures” and something about all nurses checking in on priority patients.

  There came a loud whine. Spencer glanced out a nearby window, out into the storm, and spotted a trio of police lights coming down the road, pulling into the roundabout at the side of the hospital.

  Moving sluggishly, he turned down another hallway, and, spotting a fire alarm on the wall, used his elbow to smash the glass and pull the lever. The alarm sounded at once. Spencer kept moving down the hall until it terminated at a large, glass-enclosed viewing area. He looked inside, and paused. There were a dozen small beds, five of them filled with newborns, and another dozen empty incubators. Two nurses were rushing inside to grab the beds and cart them out. They hadn’t seen Spencer yet.

  Spencer waited, watching the nurses cart the two beds out of the windowed room and into some other room. Presumably a safe area, in case of fire? He spotted a white coat and some scrubs folded neatly on one of their desks. As the nurses stepped through the door into the other room, Spencer jogged over behind them.

  With the alarm going so loud, the nurses couldn’t hear his approach. He had his Uzi out and aimed at them, in case they turned around and saw him. As soon as they were inside the room, he snatched up the scrubs and the coat, threw them over his shoulder, and stepped into the glass room. Spencer selected a baby at random, lifting it without care because he only had one good arm, but he managed to keep it wrapped in its blanket. He hustled out of the room and down the hall, where he spotted a bathroom and dipped inside.

  Spencer laid the baby by the sink. Having been roused from its sleep by alarm and mishandling, it was squalling. He tore off coat he’d taken from the woman in the street and threw it one of the stalls, but kept Zakhar’s jacket on for warmth. It’s cold as cucumbers out there, boys an’ girls, he thought, remembering a random quote from childhood; it was from the DJs on the morning radio show when his dad drove him to school. Spiffo and Danny in the mornings. Spiffo used to always give the weather: “She’s hotter’n hot sauce out there, boys an’ girls.”

  Funny what came to you in times of stress.

  He tugged on the nurse’s shirt, but not the trousers—the shirt barely fit enough to cover the bloody shoulder of his jacket. Then, he pulled on the white coat. He felt something. A heavy object in his new coat pocket. He reached inside. It was Droid phone. Nice.

  The baby started kicking, and screamed even louder than the alarm going off all around. While it kicked, the wrap around its waist flopped down and he saw it was a boy. “All right, little man,” he said, lifting it up against his breast, trying to mimic what he’d seen others do when handling infants. “It’s you and me against the world. They’ll never take us alive. Ain’t that right?”

  Spencer stepped out of the bathroom and began searching for the nearest exit.

  When the alarm went off, Shcherbakov knew exactly what it meant. The hospital wouldn’t have pulled the fire alarm just because they had a tip that a wanted criminal might be in their midst. He’s trying to create pandemonium. It was astonishing how aware his target was. Most people in the same situation would just run until they ran out of running space, or until they found an exit. But this one was creative, and he knew it was important to place obstacles in his hunter’s path.

  Except for a few nurses checking each patient’s room and locking them in, the maternity ward was mostly empty. He asked another nurse if she’d seen a man matching Pelletier’s description, and this time he got a nod. “He went through here a few minutes ago.” She started asking him what his business was here, but he pressed her for Pelletier’s direction. She pointed down an east w
ing hall, and he ran off without answering her questions.

  Shcherbakov paused at a four-way junction, looked up and down each hallway at the doctors and nurses rushing a patient who had been out on a walk back to his room, as well as rolling another into his room on a gurney.

  A security officer was jogging up to another check-in desk when his radio went off. The fire alarm was a constant noise, but Shcherbakov was close enough to hear parts of the conversation. “We have…won’t tell…another possible suspect in the building…heavyset…blonde hair, wearing a gray jacket…”

  Shcherbakov was walking past the desk when he heard this, and it didn’t quite compute until the security officer stepped around the desk and hollered at him. “Stop!” he called above the alarm. “Excuse me, sir, but I need you to stop!”

  Shcherbakov did stop, and just before turning around, he realized what was going on. He saw it all as if he’d watched it on camera. The son of a bitch knows I’m here. He gave my description to a nurse or a doctor. Shcherbakov sighed. There was no way out of a line of questioning, at least, no way quick enough that would allow him to stay on Pelletier’s trail. They would detain him for questioning, and would want to know why he was so armed. So, he made a decision.

  Spinning, he whipped his coat open and slapped his gun in a master grip, jerked it straight up out of his holster, dropped his elbow, and fired two shots into the officer. The officer had reached for his gun out of reflex, but only got it half out of the holster before the two bullets slammed into his sternum and he dropped.

  Screams. Nurses darting for cover.

  Shcherbakov rounded the next corner before the officer hit the marble floor. He put his gun hand close to his side and began looking for an exit.

  Spencer heard the shots. He smiled. Got hemmed in, didn’t you, asshole? He wiped the smile off his face as he approached a group of young men in scrubs, probably interns, and all of them stunned by the sound of gunfire.

  Spencer put on a look of concern. “Get out! Get out now! There’s a man with a gun! Run!” Later, they might notice his iffy Russian. Later, they might notice that, though he was wearing a scrubs shirt, he wasn’t wearing the trousers. For now, all they saw was a coworker carrying a newborn infant, cradling its head in his hands, ostensibly as frightened as they were.

  They all ran out of the sliding glass doors. At that exact moment, six uniformed police officers were rushing inside. Spencer held the baby up and turned his face so that his scarred side didn’t show, just in case their description of him was that accurate. He was about to scream “Someone is shooting!” but he didn’t have to because the young interns were doing that for him. The officers never gave any of them a second look, only drew their guns and ordered them all outside, to safety.

  Spencer rushed out with the interns, out into that bitch wind. The storm had decided to intensify again, and the sky was filled with a trillion falling stars, all spiraling and being chased by the wind.

  More sirens were approaching but their sound was nothing compared to the infant’s incessant wailing in his ear. Spencer stepped over to one of the interns, and handed the child over. “Here!” he cried urgently. “Hold him. I have to call the nurses, see if Venediktov and the others are okay!”

  “You got it,” said the intern, not even questioning it a little. Open Sesame, Spencer thought. Another name dropped, another obstacle surmounted. The intern accepted the squalling boy, rubbing his back and issuing shhhh noises.

  Spencer pulled out his cell and pretended to make the call, when actually he was pulling up the directions to The Heights on Fermilov again. Fermilov Prospekt, he thought, glancing over the map. Here I come. He peeked inside the three squad cars parked in front of the building. The first one he checked didn’t have the keys left in it, but the next one did.

  The interns were still gawking at the hospital, huddling together to share their heat, when Spencer pulled away. He glanced in his rearview mirror. One of the interns looked over his shoulder, watched Spencer go, but then turned his attention to the other squad cars now racing towards the hospital, along with what looked like a SWAT-style van.

  Spencer thought about his pursuer. Good luck gettin’ outta there now, assfuck, he thought, smiling. Spencer messed with the controls on the console for a moment, and then spotted a spare police radio in the passenger seat. He switched it on, listened to their chatter. He also found the switch to turn on the siren. Blowing through the next stoplight, he reached into his pocket to get the Demerol bottle. He popped four pills and swallowed them dry. Then he popped two pills of antibiotics.

  “Okay,” he said, thinking out loud as he blew through another stoplight. “Okay, okay, what next?” His head spun for a second. “Fermilov Prospekt. Yeah…no! No, I need food. Food. Yeah, right, I need some O.J. Some O.J an’ some fuckin’ cookies. That’ll hit the spot. Then Fermilov Prospekt.” He chuckled.

  Then, Spencer’s humor died quickly. He glanced in his rearview mirror, and saw no one chasing him. It was over. Almost as much of a letdown as it was a relief. He tried to console himself with what might be waiting on him at The Heights, but…

  His mind kept drifting back to that brawny blonde bastard that shot him. He wondered if the police really would catch him. A small part of him hoped so. He hoped the bastard was sent to prison for a long time, passed around from boyfriend to boyfriend until nobody could tell his fart from a sigh. But a larger part of him hoped the blonde-haired fucker dipped out.

  Spencer touched his right arm, and winced. I owe him.

  The siren carried him through another stoplight. But he knew that soon he would have to ditch the police car and get another ride. As soon as they pieced together what had happened, they would start searching for the car. If Chelyabinsk Police were like most police back in the States, every squad car would have GPS locators in them.

  Gotta switch it up again, he thought, smiling again. Gotta keep ’em on their toes. Wouldn’t be doin’ my job if I didn’t.

  Cursing his luck, Shcherbakov spotted the six police officers rushing down the hall, about fifty meters dead ahead. By the look in their eyes, they had already determined he was a person of interest; maybe even saw the gun at his side.

  When he turned down another corridor, he heard one of them yell, “Stop!” He tried two doors, both locked. All of them were probably locked now: hospital protocols at a time like this, an unknown person loose in their building, and now shots fired. The Grey Wolf fired two shots into the door lock, then kicked it in. He shut the door and stepped through a dark room. A man and his boy were standing frightened in front of the hospital bed containing an unconscious elderly woman.

  Shcherbakov just pointed his gun at them and said, “Don’t move.” He went to the window, fire two shots into it, shattering it. They screamed. He cleared the rest of the glass with his elbow. He looked over the ledge. He was still on the first floor, and leapt over the windowsill into the thick decorative bushes surrounding the building. He stumbled through the snow, slipped on the ice on the pavement, and recovered himself quick enough to dash across a parking lot that was quickly becoming wreathed in flashing blue lights.

  The winds buffeted him, and before he could even get halfway across the lot he was covered by thick snowflakes. More sirens wailed as he stepped over a fence at the far end of the lot and came into a small forested area. A short jaunt through it, and he came into the parking lot of a closed, dark shopping plaza.

  Phone in hand, he called Zverev, who answered on the first ring. “Yes?”

  “He’s gone. He’s gotten away.”

  A long pause. “This isn’t like you.”

  “He isn’t like the others,” Shcherbakov countered.

  Another long pause. “Forget him. The other woman is waiting for you. We have confirmed it. She has a room at the Vidgof, just like our friends told us.”

  “I can find him.”

  “Not tonight, you can’t. Not in this weather. And not with what I’m hearing on the scanners.”
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  “You can keep the police off of me—”

  “Not when it’s this hot, cousin. Things have to cool down.”

  Shcherbakov felt his blood boil. Never in all his years had he failed his cousin, or any of his other employers, for that matter. Shcherbakov swallowed his pride, and glanced over his shoulder at the sound of more sirens. Ruminated. “All right,” he said. “But you should move.”

  “Why?” Zverev wanted to know.

  “Because I don’t know where he’s going next.”

  “What makes you think he’s coming here?”

  “I can’t be sure, but he’s come after everyone else tonight that matters.”

  Another long pause. “I will make preparations. I think we’ll make for Location Green.” Location Green was one of a few fallback spots his cousin had engineered in preparation for fallouts such as this one. Locations Red and Blue were outside the city, but Pelletier had already shown proficiency in that sort of environment when he went for Zakhar. Location Green was a fortified penthouse at the center of the city, not too far from the Hotel Vidgof. “Just get clear, and let me take care of the rest.”

  “Of course. And cousin,” he added. “I am sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Nobody’s perfect.” He hung up.

  Shcherbakov looked at his phone. No, he thought. But I was. Before tonight.