by Richard Long
When Martin peered inside the chapel, the flood of memories was overwhelming. He could almost see the angel from his vision nailed to the cross before him, still breathing, though barely, leaking so much blood that the floor ran red. But this angel was only made of wood and the cloak of blood covering the angel’s perforated body was caked and crusty.
Martin looked from the angel to the altar. Four nails were pounded into the wood, each rising like an abandoned tower, surrounded by little moats of fresh blood. Who was the victim? Where was he now? What happened here? His eyes travelled to the cabinets below, but there was no sign of the remote control. Did it really exist? There was no way to know, but after a cautious and thorough exploration of the entire room, he was certain it wasn’t here. He was surprised Paul hadn’t shown up yet. That was not a good sign. He liked to make a dramatic entrance, and the longer it was postponed, the more dramatic it would be. Martin was also surprised to discover the books in the cabinet beneath the altar were gone.
Only one volume remained. Martin snatched it off the lectern as soon as he entered the room. The Book was lying next to him now, beneath the angel. Waiting, like he was, for the moment to unleash its power.
Bean stood outside, two feet from the open door. He knew where Martin was hiding. He could still see him. And now he could see something else. The Book. Yes, the Book. He thought about how weird his new vision was, until a deeper part of him silenced his internal dialog like a slap in the face and said, “Look! Listen!”
He looked through his closed eyelids and saw Martin again, holding two big silver guns in each hand. Then he heard Martin listening to him. Whoa! This was even stranger than the seeing—like he was listening through Martin’s ears, hearing his own breathing, his own heartbeats.
Michael knew he had a chance. The chance Paul promised. His vision was so clear that when Martin rose to attack, he would be completely vulnerable. All he had to do was sit tight, keep his finger on the trigger and wait for the perfect moment.
When the perfect moment came, it was Martin who seized it. He stood up and fired one lone slug through the wall right where Michael was waiting. Martin had his gifts as well, and he’d been practicing them far longer. The gifts of sight and touch. Taste and smell. Hearing and speed. In the end, the only benefit of Michael’s newly acquired talents was his uncanny ability to watch a slow–motion bullet as it tore through the extra-thick plasterboard and into his fairly thick skull.
When you flip a coin, what are the odds of getting heads or tails? Fifty-fifty, right? And when you pick six numbers out of sixty in a lottery, the odds are one in 50,063,860, right?
Wrong. The odds are still fifty-fifty. Ridiculous? No. Because either something is going to happen, or it isn’t. Even if there are a zillion possibilities, only one of them will occur. And the variable that may have the greatest effect on whether something happens or not…is the person observing it. Especially if Loren is involved.
Loren has a talent you would scoff at, that you’d call impossible, or fantastic, or any other gawking superlatives that come to mind. When the bullet left Martin’s gun, Loren traveled with it. Through the wall, where it lost much of its velocity, through the bony helmet of Michael’s skull, where it slowed down even more. He rode the spinning hunk of metal like a surfer, bending the quantum waves.
It was a short ride, but extremely exhilarating. This was his supreme talent, twisting the web of probability, until a million possible outcomes narrowed further and further, to a thousand…then a hundred…and finally…only one. The right one.
When he was finished, he turned his attention elsewhere, drained but encouraged by his efforts. It was too early to gauge the extent of his success, but he wouldn’t have long to wait. So in the meantime, in between time, he retreated to the place where he’d been hiding, the place where he felt most at home, regardless of the toll it took on his body to remain there. It wasn’t another secret room, like the one Paul occupied, his eyes rolled backwards, grinning, watching, waiting.
He went back to the place where every beginning ends and every end begins. He went back…to the Maelstrom.
After he fired through the plasterboard and heard Michael’s body thump against the wall, Martin ducked down and peeked through a six-inch gap under the bottom of the altar, watching the doorway, guessing it wouldn’t take long for the next set of footsteps to arrive. Paul’s big clunky boots.
Martin’s plan was going perfectly. Well, almost perfectly. He wasn’t totally certain Paul witnessed Michael’s demise as he intended, or even whether he was lurking close by. If not, the gunshots would lure him and then…
Just a little more time and I’ll be back with Rose. He kept perfectly still. Looking. Listening. Waiting. Usually, those were his three favorite pastimes. What was taking so long? He cursed soundlessly, staring up at the face of the angel. Was it smiling at him?
BLAM! The bullet grazed his hip. Without looking, Martin pumped six shots under the altar back to the doorway. The shooter had to be Paul. Why didn’t he hear him coming? Martin did a body roll to the wall away from the candles. He looked at his hip, crouching motionless in the darkest shadows. It was only a scratch. He thrust his guns out…staring at the open portal…waiting…listening.
The shooter was listening too. Then, quite fearlessly, he stepped inside the room. It was Bean. He was looking down at him with a big, crazy grin on his face. A thin, red trickle ran from a hole in his forehead, skirting around his eyeballs like two boulders in a stream, cascading down each cheek into his frozen, smiling mouth.
The kid. The kid had shot him. And he did it with a bullet in the middle of his brain.
Martin was so shocked that he hesitated, just for a moment. It was all the time Bean needed. Blam! Blam! Blam! Two of the shots missed Martin completely. The third hit him in the middle of his chest. Martin felt his body stiffen. He stared aghast at the bright red gravy on his drab green vest
Why hadn’t it stopped the bullet?
Bean took a jerky step into the room, wincing at the tightness in his face. Was he smiling? It sure felt like it. But when he tried to relax his cheek muscles, nothing happened.
Even though Martin was still cloaked in the shadows, Bean could see him perfectly, slumped against the wall, raising his gun-clenched hand with extreme difficulty, like someone had dumped concrete all over his shirt and it was quickly stiffening. Bean tried to shoot him again, but now his own arm could barely move. His legs were still working and they dragged him farther inside, hoping he could touch the Book before Martin fired again.
Blam! Blam! Martin pointed at his slowly moving target and missed.
Twice.
Blam! Blam! Blam! Michael found some feeling in his arm again and fired back where Martin was crouching. He missed by a mile. Blam! Blam! Martin tried again, but his arm was so stiff and heavy he barely missed his own feet. He was about to squeeze the trigger again anyway when Michael fell to his knees and then on his face. He couldn’t move at all.
To those of us observing from our far-flung locations it was the lamest gunfight in history. Sergio Leone would have laughed his ass off, but none of us were. Not Paul, not Johnny, not me, not even Loren.
“Hey, open your eyes,” Rose said, halting her druid tale, thinking I was bored, I suppose. When I remained silent with my eyes closed, she soon realized my attention was focused elsewhere. “Why are you grinning like that? Can you see him? Is Martin okay?”
I could have told her, but I didn’t. What would I say? From her perspective he was in terrible shape…but he looked okay to me.
Bean heard them coming. He could feel the pistol in his hand, but couldn’t lift his arm. His eyes felt like two portholes, with an equally limited view. The scene was horrifying. When Paul walked into the room, his eyes still rolled backwards, Michael thought he was in a monster movie. When The Striker followed, he was sure of it. He carried a hammer in one hand, the business end covered in blood. His other hand was dragging a body stuffed in a burlap bag
. Most of it anyway. The bag was split like a baked potato. So was the body inside. A winding cord of entrails followed in his wake.
Loren dropped the bag and its messy contents only a few feet from Michael’s face. Then he turned solemnly toward Martin, bent down and felt for a pulse.
“How is he?” asked Paul.
“Gone,” answered The Striker.
“Oh, my,” Paul sighed. Turning to Michael, he winced exaggeratedly at the bullet hole in his forehead, then turned to Loren. “I guess it’s two-for-one day, eh, old friend?”
The Striker let out a rumbling laugh and took the Beretta from Michael’s hand like he was plucking the last petal from a daisy. He gave it to Paul, who dropped it into his pocket.
“Pleasssshh,” Bean managed to hiss. “Hellllfff meeee”
“Shhhhhh…don’t tax yourself.” Paul grinned “And don’t you worry about any funeral expenses. The fire will take care of that.”
“What fire?” Bean tried to say, but his tongue was paralyzed.
“This one,” Paul replied, with his arms stretched wide.
Nothing happened. Or nothing seemed to happen. Then he smelled the smoke.
“And then there were two…” said Paul, peering through the gathering smoke at the bodies on the floor. “I guess it’s down to you and Billy now.”
“He’s not worthy,” said The Striker without a trace of humor, for once.
“I admit he’s a tad slow on the uptake this time around…” Paul said, bending over Martin’s body. He held the blade of his sickle to Martin’s nostrils, searching for a whiff of breath reflected in the chrome. He straightened up, pocketed the sickle and pulled out Martin’s gun, adding, “Even so, he’s far more worthy than you.”
“I don’t understand. What have I done?”
“Oh, we both know what you’ve done, so let’s stop playing patty cakes. You were plying your craft on Bean, stacking the deck against Martin. I know you’re gloating inside, thinking your treacherous gambit has paid off—in spades, no less. I’ve always been one to applaud ambition and treachery, but you’ve truly crossed the line here. This isn’t a contest, Loren. There’s more here at stake than that.”
“I know what’s at stake,” said The Striker without emotion.
“Aye, that you do. Which presents another problem. Billy still has much to learn, and I can’t imagine you being too helpful, with your own prospects on the line. I’ve always said I’d give you a fair shot. But when it comes right down it, blood is blood and I have to protect the line. Surely you understand that.”
“I’m part of the line.”
“Yes, but not by blood,” Paul said, watching the smoke gather on the ceiling, raising the pistol higher.
The Striker clenched his jaw so hard it loosened the nails in his temples. “If that’s the way it has to be, then put down the gun. Let’s settle this the way it should be settled.”
“Sorry, Loren,” he sighed, pointing the pistol at The Striker’s high, domed forehead, “I don’t have time for a whole gladiator thing right now.”
BANG! It wasn’t the pistol firing. It was the sound of the floor collapsing beneath The Striker’s naked feet.
Paul leaned over the gaping hole in the floorboards, shaking his head. “Oh, my goodness!” he shouted as The Striker brushed the dust from his body two floors below. “I’d take a shot at you, Loren, but I’m sure the gun would jam. Or backfire. You really take luck to a whole new level!”
“Why don’t you join me?” Loren shouted. “It’s only a short hop down here for you.”
“I’m afraid I must decline your gracious invitation…though I’m sure I’ll be seeing you later,” Paul shouted back. “Then we can have that little tussle you’re craving.”
“I look forward to it,” The Striker said, pulling a three-inch splinter from his bicep.
“Oh, I surely do as well!” Paul dropped Martin’s pistol to the floor with a loud clunk as he pointed to the purple-veined length of The Striker’s bony, bloody arm. “It should be quite a battle…a real nail biter. Look at the reach you have on me!”
Loren looked up with a sneer. Paul gave him a salute and watched him disappear in the smoke, then turned around and knelt beside Martin.
“What a pity,” he said, gazing into his wide-open eyes. “They’re so beautiful. I might as well keep one.”
Tetrodoxin and curare. Separately, either one could kill you in high enough doses. In much milder concentrations, the combination does something quite remarkable: it simulates death.
Tetrodotoxin, also known as fugo poison, is an extract taken from the puffer fish. It induces a coma that is virtually indistinguishable from death. In Haiti, the substance is used in Voodoo rites of zombie creation. The witch doctor usually administers the drug in low doses over time. Gradually, the victim becomes more helpless and dependent, unable to even feed himself. Eventually, he’s drugged into a deathlike state and buried in a ritual ceremony. Later, the doctor digs him up to put him back to work…as his personal slave. Martin made his own special variant of the potion, combining it with an extremely low dose of curare. Curare, he learned after many long nights in the public library, is used in blow darts by native jungle tribes to paralyze their prey. It creates complete paralysis almost instantly, though the victim is still alert, and able to feel pain.
One of his pistols was loaded with special ammunition…gel caps filled with a mixture of that wonderful potion and a generous dollop of fake blood, just for color. The gel cap cartridges were designed to penetrate at least one layer of clothing and enter the bloodstream, much like an aerosol hypo. He intended to use it on Paul, so he could have some extra fun with him before he killed him for real.
Unfortunately, Martin made a very careless mistake in his rush to suit up for the big shootout. He put on the wrong vest. It looked just like his other Kevlar vest, but it had some special modifications. It was designed to perform a triple function: stop bullets, release blood squibs (so the attacker believed the bullets hadn’t stopped) and release a small amount of the Magic Potion into his bloodstream via a spring-loaded injector he had taken from an Imitrex migraine kit. Martin called it his “doomsday vest.” It was about to live up to its name.
He got the idea for it when he was bounty hunting. He’d taken a slug in his regular Kevlar vest on three separate occasions, making a big show of toppling over and then popping back up like a jack-in-the-box, guns blazing. Wouldn’t it be cool to add a little razzle-dazzle with some blood squibs, like in the movies? He did just that, and rigged a parachute rip-cord to trigger the squibs when a bullet came near him, resulting in some very entertaining arrests, while sparing himself the extreme discomfort of actually being shot in the chest.
Never one to rest on his laurels, Martin took his invention to the next logical level. Logical, that is, for someone like Martin. What if he really looked dead? That would make for an even more dramatic reprisal…right? He did some research, discovered the amazing properties of tetrodoxin and curare and went back to the drawing board, creating the doomsday vest. So, when Michael fired his completely unexpected and remarkably accurate bullet, instead of doing his standard dead-man-fake-out routine, Martin was totally paralyzed. And much, much worse…he could still feel everything.
Bean was pretty much in the same anchored boat. The bullet lodged in his brain could have killed him at any second, with the slightest jog of his body. It also could have restored all his motor functions, with the same little nudge. When Paul spoke to him and he tried to answer, the warped lump of metal in his brain shifted, three millimeters south. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. The spreading paralysis that kept his hand clutched on his pistol and his mouth smiling like Dr. Sardonicus instantly became total paralysis. The effect wasn’t much different from Martin’s potion. And like Martin, he could feel everything.
Michael had a hard time making sense of it. When the bullet moved and his tongue froze and stiffened, he wondered what had happened. Was this what it felt like t
o be dead? He heard stories of people floating outside of their bodies, but never watching from the inside. He could hear and smell too, which was also strange. He watched Paul come over and look into his eyes with that big fucking smile on his face.
Then he walked over to Martin.
Martin watched with his paralyzed eyes as Paul came closer, his steps sounding like the wheel of fortune spinning at the San Gennaro festival. Where it stops, nobody knows. When he held the sickle up to his mouth, Martin was terrified. When he stood back up again, Martin felt a huge wave of relief. Hallelujah. Martin thought that maybe, just maybe, he was going to get out in one piece. Then the fire started. That was bad, but it only went downhill from there. After Loren crashed through the floor, Paul came back. As he leaned over him, Martin couldn’t even blink. But he could feel Paul pry his eyelids apart. He tried to move his fingers. He tried again before the blade descended.
Martin’s agony was surprisingly surpassed by his torment for fucking up his chance to kill Paul. But the drug had to wear off eventually, right? It was already past the five-minute mark. If he woke up right away, there was still a slight chance he could kill Paul, escape the fire, and save Rose. Then he heard the firemen arrive and fall silent, one by one. Paul put on a black and yellow fireman coat…and picked up his book. At least one of them was smart enough to have an escape plan. Paul looked at him one last time with his gas mask on. He winked before dangling his own eye in front of him. It looked so small now. Bye-bye.
Martin felt the wood get really hot beneath him. He thought about Paul, still alive, while the flames licked at his back. Then he thought about Rose and cursed himself again.
Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! screamed the trapped voice in his head. The smoke was starting to strangle him, and he still couldn’t move.
Bean watched as Paul took Martin’s eye. Paul did it so…professionally, that there was hardly any blood. He used his thumb and forefinger to pop out the eyeball, then snipped the muscles and nerves with his long, curved knife. When he was finished, the eyelid sank into the empty socket like a loose tarpaulin. Michael guessed, correctly, that he’d done this before.