by Ronnie Allen
Sal showed more control. A firm hand on Tony’s shoulder, momentarily, kept him back.
The three-man ESU team of Sergeant Shipman, Maxwell, and Kramer--suited up in their body armor with shields in front of them--didn’t think too highly of Carlson’s men.
“How hard can it be to take down a woman? What the hell is wrong with you guys?” Shipman meant every word.
Their annoyance perpetuated a non-cooperative operation. They had always had disputes, but not over incompetence. John felt empty-handed without a weapon as an ESU pushed him to the side to be suited in a Kevlar vest and helmet. They waited and listened. No sounds leaked from the apartment. They doubted that Barbara was in there. Good or bad omen they didn’t know.
Then John noticed it. The front door stood slightly ajar. It was barely noticeable, but John pointed to it with his right index finger, while his left hand covered his mouth. Now it turned into a bad omen. Barbara was in there. And she had a plan.
“Don’t do anything stupid, guys,” Kramer implored. “I gotta get home to the baby,”
Tony just wanted her so badly, he ignored Kramer, barged in front of the ESU, and pushed the door in without hesitation, so fast they couldn’t stop him. What was he thinking not to follow protocol? It’d been the same protocol he’d followed for fifteen years. ESU entered and secured the premises first. He knew that.
A sterling silver bucket filled with thirty pounds of ice cubes, toppled from the top ledge of the door, hitting Tony in his neck and shoulders, with the handle of the bucket hooking onto the bottom of the helmet. He collapsed to the ground, knocked out with his helmet torn off, and his gun disappeared under a couch.
John gasped as the ESU team stumbled in, slipping on the rolling ice, as the hologram that Clancy had created played on the walls. All four walls in the living room received vivid overlapping geometric graphics. Triangles, rectangles, parallelograms, octagons, and hexagons in kaleidoscopic intensity of the primary colors, red, green, blue, and yellow were so bright their eyes hurt. And the loud Reggae music compounded the sensory bombardment. Reflective lights bounced through the space onto all of the mirrors Barbara had in the room, on the ceilings, walls and tabletops, making the sense of time, space, and boundaries incomprehensible. They were entangled in a maze of mirrors and lights and couldn’t figure out how to navigate their way through it. It stymied them. It resembled a huge life-like sensory bombardment chamber modeled after the ones in an experimental psychology college lab in the late 1960s.
John and Sal held their ears in agony so they couldn’t focus on helping Tony who struggled to get on all fours. Sergeant Shipman helped Tony up--trembling, in pain, and wobbling--but he was alive. Shipman ushered Tony to a corner of the living room where he then put in a call for backup.
One wall cleared up and whitened. A hologram montage of John poured onto it. As he was repeatedly stabbed in his torso with silver, size-two knitting needles, gushing blood squirted out into the room, flooding Barbara’s blue couch and turning it purple. The authentic representation stunned John. He had the same expression in his eyes as his team. Frantic, terrified were the words to describe it. The men looked around, panicked. They recovered John, trying to catch his breath in the corner with Tony.
“She has the best in store for me.”
His comedic relief wasn’t appreciated. Tony and Sal looked around, frantically, for the source, as Sergeant Shipman, Kramer, and Maxwell moved cautiously. The three of them had the stance of stiff soldiers equidistant in the living room. They froze. Never had they experienced something like this. In New York, they were prepared for everything, and had been, until now.
John was privy to the training they endured. Flexibility and adjustment to situations were key, but they entered situations for which they had been prepared. They were not prepared to go beyond reality into a fantasy world. A world they couldn’t escape. A world that could kill them. The job demanded that they risk their lives, unfalteringly.
Now the montage propelled from the wall and flashed onto John. His arms and legs were cut off by spinning serrated butcher blades controlled by a ghostly looking puppet. The puppet hung in front of him. In his aura. The men didn’t know where to look first. Their bodies, the walls, carpets were all splashed with crimson blood. John’s blood.
High-pitched screams, intermingled with low growls, wailed from the speakers in the ceiling in the four corners of the room, as if coming from a deranged woman. Visual stimuli pulsated off the mirrors. The ESU struggled to adjust their earphones. They couldn’t control the noise level.
John fought to get the hologram off him. He swiped his arms and legs as the holographic knives repeatedly pierced him. Sal and Tony pulled him away from the spotlight but the images lingered right on top of him. Barbara was in control.
“All right, Kellie. You must have paid Clancy a hefty sum for this. Knock it off!”
She couldn’t be seen, but she was heard loud and clear. “Death to all those who come near me!” It was more sick and more perverted than John had ever heard her yell it.
“Wait till you sees this, you arrogant bastard!”
The hologram continued with movie-like images on the wall. Barbara lunged at John with her knitting needles. He wore his long white lab coat over his suit and she wore the hospital gown. He caught one and seductively pulled her close to him, wanting what she wanted. She slowly pushed off his lab coat and jacket by slipping the other knitting needle underneath them. Then he slid his arms out and tossed the coats to the floor. With a long kiss, she dragged him down onto a bed. They kissed, slowly at first. His lips adorned her face, ears, neck.
“I want it the hottest you can give it, John.” The voice on the montage was, indeed, Barbara’s.
He recognized shots of him that had been on the internet in uncompromising situations. That one, he recalled, was a paparazzi plant.
What a time to regret his strong online presence. The hologram zipped to them both naked, him on top of her, his body molding into hers, his eyes ravenous, kissing, sucking her nipples, caressing her breasts.
While the montage held their focus, Barbara depressed a remote transmitter, triggering unrecognizable explosions throughout the apartment. The men whirled around, looking at everything. Glass splintered in the room. The glass tables caved in. Tony and Sal were splattered with flying glass before they could take cover. Though their faces and heads were protected, their arms and legs were slashed. Bloodied, Tony and Sal jumped behind a couch. Bookshelves collapsed, along with their contents. Heavy alabaster sculptures and books landed on top of Sergeant Shipman and Mike Kramer, crushing their torsos and legs. Their protective gear had failed them. They were gone.
Kramer’s newborn had lost his father.
Maxwell pushed John down in the corner by the debris of the Queen Victoria chair and lay on top of him.
John and Barbara consumed each other. John was aggressive. Animalistic. The montage was snippets but devoid of emotion. John explored every inch of her with his tongue and his hands. She seized him, controlled him, forced him do whatever she demanded. She pushed his head down past her stomach. She ran her fingers through his hair, keeping his head down. He kissed her inner thigh. She spread her legs farther and farther apart. Her hands slithered up her stomach and over her breasts. She flailed them over her head as John came down on her, making her entrance wet with his saliva.
Sal and Tony crept, barely recovered, to John and Maxwell. Their breathing was labored and the sleeves of their shirts and pants legs were torn to shreds. Their wounds would require hours of stitching.
A condom wrapper floated to the floor. John rose on top of Barbara, penetrated.
“You slept with her! You did, didn’t you?”
“No, Tony, I didn’t. So help me God, I didn’t.”
“You piece of shit! Then where in hell did Clancy get these images?”
Barbara picked up the knitting needles lying by her side on the bed and repeatedly plunged them up into John’s stoma
ch and chest just as he climaxed. The shiny silver needles spiked up and down. She didn’t stop plunging. Blood flowed everywhere onto John, her, the carpet. John’s eyes rolled back in his head as he collapsed, dead.
John’s mind went to Vicki. No woman could satisfy him like his beautiful Vicki. For the love of God, he had to make it out of this.
Tony’s gaze darted to the wall. He was breathing heavily. “I gotta--gotta stop this.”
Tony pointed to the light coming from a closet door in the hall leading to the living room. John watched him as he crawled on his belly to the door, followed by the ESU officer. Tony opened it. A bomb positioned low to the ground on the other side of the door immediately exploded, decapitating him, and slicing Jackson Maxwell in his legs, propelling them to the other side of the room. Body parts and gray matter landed near Sal and John. Tony’s head was sliced into minuscule sections. Shrapnel splintered all over the room with such a burst of power, it was worse than being in a war zone.
“Tony! Nooooo!” Fear escalated and shook Sal and John out of balance. Where the hell was backup? Sal screamed, frenzied. He just lost his partner of fifteen years--and John, his best friend.
Sal tossed a gun to John who expertly caught it. Trembling, Sal slipped to a doorway, just barely peering into it when the human Kellie unloaded an automatic machine gun into him from his head to groin and then disappeared from view into a bedroom. At first, John didn’t know if it was a hologram or not. Frantic, he knelt by his dead friend. Feeling the real blood and seeing it drip from his hands made him explode with terror. Then he heard it ripple through the room.
“Death to all those who come near me!”
John grabbed Sal’s Glock. Standing, weak and broken, he screamed, “All right you bitch! You want me, come get me!”
A flash of Barbara appeared on the wall. It spun around and around until it was a total blur.
“Talk to me, bitch! I don’t even know what to call you. Who are you now?”
Flashes of Barbara’s identities through the years materialized on the wall, Kellie Wilson, Pauline Jones, Emily Connors, and Barbara Montgomery. They allied side by side. John fired into all of them, hitting them right in the chest, trying to find the human behind them. His gun emptied.
He dropped that gun, ripped Sal’s service weapon from his ankle holster, and sprang over what was left of the couch. He pitched pillows out of his way. The rubies, emeralds, and diamonds from the bullet jewelry box sparkled on the carpet within the shards of glass.
He stumbled into the bedroom, sweating, fear ridden, and near collapse. Blood dripped through his tattered shirt, and his slacks had gaping bloodied holes. The inflexible Kevlar vest was the only thing giving him the support to stand. Barbara was in bed naked and waiting for him. Piles of her clothing lay on the floor. He was not sure what he saw with blood dripping into his eyes from the gashes on his forehead.
“I’ve been waiting for you, John. I want it the hottest you can give it.”
He lunged at the image of Barbara in bed and dove through it. The image disappeared and he lay face down on the bed, on the edge of consciousness. He was saturated with a combination of sweat, his own blood and the body parts and plasma of his best friends. He must survive, for Vicki, their unborn child, and Ricky.
The real Barbara appeared from out of the closet, naked. She tiptoed up behind him and jumped on his back. The shock of her being real made the gun slip out of his sweaty grip onto the floor. He used his last bit of strength to turn over in an attempt to grab her.
“Come on, John. You know you want me.”
Red and bright purple lights from the corner of the room flashed into his eyes, blinding him. He continued to try to grab her but he missed each time. He thought he was really becoming blind. He rolled off the bed onto the floor, landing on his back. After a few moments to recoup from the lights, which she surprisingly gave him, he saw her stand erect right over him. He grabbed her leg to get her off balance, but this was one strong and in-shape woman, and he was almost unconscious.
She toyed with him with a paring knife, pretending to slit his throat. He defended with his arm and the knife flew backward. He attempted to get up but she kicked him in his chin, making him fall back, banging his head on the night table.
She backed off quickly, grabbing a coat off a chair. “Sorry to cut this playtime short, John. Got some more kills to do before you.”
She climbed out the open window and down the fire escape. He lay on the floor completely worn out going into unconsciousness.
***
Another ESU team dashed in looking at the devastation. They saw the demise of Tony, Sal, and their team members, and knew they needed to control themselves. They split up, in shock. The now-eerie silence was deafening. They found everyone but John.
“Doc? Dr. Trenton where are you?”
“Here.” His voice was barely audible.
After cleansing some clumps of skin and bone from one or more of the victims from John’s face, a paramedic put an oxygen mask tightly on his face. He strained to talk. John had all the signs of trauma, a weak pulse, shallow breathing, a very pale complexion, perspiration dripping from his pores, and his eyes held a dazed panicked expression. He was totally limp
“Dr. Trenton, I know you can hear me. Be still. Don’t talk yet. You have shards of glass all over and you’re bleeding, heavily.” He was disoriented and couldn’t even tell where the voice was coming from, even though the tech kneeled right in front of his face. “We get what happened. You’re lucky to still be alive.”
John blankly stared at them, moaning unintelligible words as he struggled to sit up, but they restrained him. He comprehended what he heard, but he couldn’t get the words out with any meaning. He looked around in bewilderment as the room spun before his eyes, and he felt like he was on a cloud drifting off into heaven. He was in a whirlwind of despair and the techs didn’t have a clue as to what raced through his mind, which was twelve hundred miles south.
He wasn’t focused on who worked on him and he lost awareness of where he was. He smelled medicinal odors, but he couldn’t place it. He felt someone rolling up his sleeve, but he couldn’t fathom why. He felt like a Ken doll being poked, prodded, contorted out of shape, rolled, and folded up, which for a Ken doll would be broken in half.
Only he knew what he was saying. Only he knew what he envisioned. Only he knew what messages he was receiving from his unconscious at this moment. He saw Vicki and Barbara in the same scene. A scene that lasted two seconds. That meant one thing.
Vicki was in trouble.
He had to get to Florida to save his Vicki and his soon to be children, Ricky and the baby Vicki carried. He couldn’t die. He couldn’t let her die. He couldn’t let their unborn child be taken from him. Didn’t Vicki know he’d noticed? He needed to snap back. He must.
The last twenty minutes had become a vague nightmare. He wasn’t aware if it was real or if he was dreaming. How could that be? He was always the guy on top of everything. He was the rock. How could this be happening to him? He must be the rock for his family.
“Breathe, Dr. Trenton, breathe. You’ve got to relax. You can’t fight us. We’ve got to stop the bleeding. We’re going to give you something to calm you down.”
He shook his head, but he couldn’t talk. His breathing was too tight. His diaphragmatic breathing wasn’t working. Max wasn’t coming to hit them over the head to make them listen to him. Not that they would understand him. He struggled with the tech’s hold on him, and he lost. His eyes must have looked scared to them, not forewarning of what he desired to say. They must have assumed it was fright from the devastation around them. He felt a needle go into his arm. And a moment later he was asleep.
CHAPTER 44
John’s breathing deepened. He moaned in his sleep, but couldn’t move a muscle. They had restrained his wrists and ankles so he couldn’t disrupt, or pull out, the IV tubes if he awakened. Bandages covered both arms, which were stitched in sixteen places fr
om his wrists to his shoulders. He had cardiac and respiratory monitors counting every beat and every breath in the ICU.
The sedative relaxed him enough to enable him to slip into a deep meditative state. He could usually go there himself, but the sedative took him deeper. First, he saw in black and white, kaleidoscopic round swirls in front of his eyes as if they originated in his eyes. They rotated slowly from directly on top of him, and then moved slowly farther and farther away in front of his third eye, until his mind was a blank slate, and he could participate in the vision. It seemed like it took a long time. The sounds of the ICU lessened and then were replaced by others. He couldn’t discern them at first. As he traveled farther, he knew. He was able to make contact with Barbara and see her in real time, where she was, and what she was doing. He felt himself travel to Barbara.
He astral traveled.
He heard the sounds in the club, the voices, house and techno music, as he perched on top of the bar invisible to everyone.
Barbara’s moves were slower and more strained than usual tonight. She wore a Marilyn Monroe blonde wig, bright red lipstick, and she revealed her own baby blues. She was disengaged, unfocused; just not sexy enough for the men who gazed at her, willing to pay for what they wanted. She danced on stage like a matronly woman who was having trouble keeping her balance after consuming three or four unusually strong cocktails a few weeks after having a hip replacement. She soaked up the effects of the sensory bombardment as well as the men she’d just murdered.
“Unappetizing” as they told the manager of the club Raunchy. It lived up to its name. The women were more scantily dressed than at Zodiac. Whiskey, her stage name, wasn’t cutting it. Even though wearing the same outfit as in Zodiac, minus the boots, her lethargy wasn’t doing her any favors.