I’m overwhelmed with absurdity in this moment.
Picturing the face of David Hartman.
And I say:
“Where’s the fun in that?”
Franklin starts to circle me seriously, not saying another word.
I see the black glimmer of betrayal in his eyes, all the masks off now.
He was working with Jenison all along—that’s why he killed Death Ray instead of going for the good wound, that’s why he’s stuck to me like glue, this whole goddamn time. That was why Jenison questioned me in the hotel lobby and set herself up for their ambush—when Franklin jumped in there and pretended to save me. It was all a carefully scripted song and dance, all designed to make me believe he was the good guy. Jenison sacrificed her own men to make the illusion complete. And Franklin didn’t care about his buddies getting carved up or burning up at Hartman’s place. He just wanted to get paid at both ends. Handed over the discs to Jenison the second I handed them over to him. Was waiting for me to lead him right to the missing piece.
With the money as his nice little cherry on top.
I think for a second about the clever way Franklin showed me the suitcase back at his house, about how he let me open it and inspect the disc drives, how we dropped them in a safe place together. They were dummies. Decoys. I should have checked them on the computer. What the hell was I thinking?
You were obsessed, I hear Jenison say.
They left my walking-around money taped to my leg when they busted into the hotel room—they could have done anything to me while I was sleeping, but they gave me money and they left me a gun, too. So I would think I had a fighting chance. So I could use the cash to buy Franklin and his men. They were three steps ahead the whole time. Why didn’t I see it?
You were obsessed, I hear Jenison say again.
An obsessed man is a dangerous man.
An obsessed man is in a hurry to his own funeral.
An obsessed man can still kick your fucking ass.
He comes at me again, this time using a giman attack maneuver—I can tell he’s going to fake me out and try for my wound, to end this fast. I don’t let it happen. I’ve been trained to see the definitions of his movements in Japanese. I block his right arm and lower my shoulder into him hard, coming up with a crossed knuckleball into his nose. That knocks him back and he sees stars for a moment, but I didn’t break anything. Just a love tap, so you know who you’re messing with. He might have figured I was schooled hard, but I can see by the shocked look on his face that my ability to ignore pain has come as one hell of a surprise. They teach you that in the marines, too. It doesn’t work if all you’re going on is dull machismo and no meditation technique. I’m concentrating hard on nothing but defeating this man. There is no hole in my side. There is no stinging in my muscles or throbbing in my fist. There is only the enemy and the destruction of that enemy.
Destroy him.
Destroy him now.
He comes at me again and I sidestep and stab fast with a sweep to his legs. He spins and catches my knee in midair and I almost feel something go snap, but I sway like a reed in the wind, rolling over sideways and kicking him with my other foot. This time I find pay dirt. His nose breaks and he lets go of me. I press it and jam both palms into his midsection, trying to send him into the car behind us. He knows about pushing-hands, I can see by the silly look he gives me when I hit him, and there’s nothing he can do about it as he flies backwards . . . but he bounces off the car and burns through my next block with a fist that feels like a metal battering ram when it gets to my head. I turn my face so he doesn’t peg my nose, but the blow still dazzles me and I waddle backwards a few paces. He stabs again and I grab his wrist again. His own inertia carries him face-first into a windshield and his head splits safety glass into a jagged shape that looks like thick plastic wrap imploding around him. The whole thing goes poosh! I can hear him almost yell out in pain.
But he’s back at me like a rubber bullet, really pissed off now. Blood trickles down his face. I duck three more swings. His style is not elegant. He knows the moves, but he’s not put together like I am, not built for speed and accuracy. I jab the nerve center just below the carotid artery in his lower arm and it paralyzes that whole side of his body for just a few seconds, long enough for me to hammer his face again. He spins, sensing my moves now, and I just graze him. I don’t realize I’ve left my wounded side open until he hammers me there and I feel a rib crack in the middle of a white-hot explosion.
Got me good. Goddammit. Stupid.
He hits me again, but I manage to roll with it. The pain is still almost unbearable. I almost drop, but I can’t drop. He’s coming right at me again, like a tank. Have to break his arm fast, level the playing field. It’s like trying to beat up a concrete wall. He sees it coming and he’s armored with thick cords of muscle and callused scar tissue. My blows bounce off him. My next trick is another combination grab-and-thrust, but he slips my grip easy and comes back at me hard. I duck the first swing, but he anticipates my move. The next one gets me three feet down, a horizontal chop right in my throat. Dammit. Should have . . . seen that one . . . coming . . .
Wham.
Right in my midsection.
That might be the ball game.
I drop to one knee, clutching my side. I can see the girl—she said she was my wife—in my mind, standing there for just a split second. Watching us kill each other. With no look on her face at all.
Snap out of it, you dumb weak shit—this guy is gonna kill you.
Blood gushes down my side now, the bullet scrape giving me hell.
I have no air.
I can’t let him win.
The gun—the revolver with one bullet left.
Just out of reach.
I jump for it and he jumps after me. Lands like a boulder. I feel something in my spine give a fraction of an inch. He picks me up off my feet, raises me into the air above his head like a TV wrestler. The air up here is crushing and stale. And I’m headed back for solid ground in way too big a hurry now. The pavement comes up like a wall against my back and I lie there, looking up at him as he comes down fast again, like a giant about to squash an ant. He doesn’t see my foot until it stabs him right between his legs. Everything I’ve got goes into the kick. He feels it hard and screams out loud. Doubles over, choking. I struggle to my feet . . . and it takes all the mind over muscle I possess. The pain stabs me, my bones grinding and shrieking now. I have just a few seconds before the burst of adrenaline that comes with a blow to the lower regions armors him again. He grits his teeth and staggers back and I unleash everything I have left on him. Double combinations to his deltoids. Hard balled fists against his kidneys. Another shot to his groin. He acts like it really hurts and I think I almost have him . . . until I feel the tearing sensation in my guts . . . and he smiles, halfway doubled over, sneering:
“Getting a little tired, kid?”
His fist hits me while he’s still talking.
My nose holds, I don’t lose any teeth. I hear one of his fingers, the little one, break against my cheekbone. But it’s like I’m inside a church bell, the entire world vibrating and quaking and shaking every thought I have into a jumbled mess . . . and I can’t see anything anymore. I feel my legs go next. He has me on the ground now. I feel his blood dripping in my face. Unbreakable. The son of a bitch is goddamn unbreakable. And he’s about to break me in half. Has both of my legs in a scissor hold, folding me like a green twig, my back flat on the ground. This is a death grip. I’m going to die. He’s going to kill me. Whatever it was that gave in my spine is going again. It’s a terrible sound, rumbling and popping in my throat. I try to move my legs but they won’t listen now. I look around for the gun—there, just a few feet from me. My hands make a reach, but it might as well be a million miles away.
He sees me go for it and almost smiles.
Lets go of me.
My whole body collapses on the concrete.
Franklin sees that I can’t
move, spits blood onto the ground next to me, then walks over to the gun. Very slowly, he does it.
Knows he has all the time in the world.
I try to get up, to face it on my feet, but I can’t. I’m lying here in a pool of my own blood, shot and bleeding and broken right in half.
I’ve failed you, Toni.
I’ve failed us both.
And now I’m going to die here.
He stands over me with the pistol. His voice is brittle and coarse:
“Here comes the big surprise, kid.”
He lowers the gun.
“I’m not gonna kill you.”
• • •
He tells me I fought him good. No one ever messed him up like I did, not even back in the war. He says we were pretty evenly matched, that it was just chance that put me on my back and left him still on his feet. I’ll live through it, if I’m lucky. I can’t hear his exact words—it’s all muddied and garbled and blown back to me in bizarre waves—but I can tell that’s basically what he’s saying.
I can’t move.
At all.
• • •
“I’m gonna take your car, kid. Hope you don’t mind. And I’ll be sure to give your regards to Jenison’s people. They won’t be looking for you anymore, now that we have this.”
His voice is clearer now—I focus on it to stay alive. He pats the Gold’s Gym bag, tosses it into the driver’s seat.
Leaves me here.
“There’s no hard feelings. I think you’re okay. I would have shot you dead if you hadn’t been so scrappy. Kinda makes me feel like we ain’t so different. I had you pegged for something else altogether. I’d get to a hospital soon, if I were you. You’re bleeding pretty bad now.”
You son of a bitch. You don’t believe in anything. You didn’t even care about your so-called friends getting hacked to death.
The Weasel was more a man than you’ll ever be.
He pauses in the open door of the car and cocks his head back at me, like an afterthought. “You’re a tough kid. But not tough enough.”
I tell him to go hell, but the sound chokes in my throat.
He understands.
“Sticks and stones,” he says, chuckling. “So long.”
He slams the door and starts the car. Pulls out of the parking space and leaves me there. One of the tires rolls through a pool of my blood, painting a jagged crimson tendril on the concrete.
• • •
The car is long gone when I reach into my pocket for my cell phone. I almost expect it not to be there, but it still is. The same phone I called the girl on, back in the hotel bar. I dial a number and don’t expect anyone to answer. But the right person does.
Franklin.
“Kid? Is that you?”
“Yeah,” I tell him, finding my voice through sheets of pain and blood bubbling in my mouth. “There’s something you should know. You were right, after all. This is the easiest thing I’ve ever done.”
The sound of my voice over the cell phone activates the two circuits in the remote detonator I made from Alex Bennett’s leftover gear.
I hear the car explode from two blocks away.
• • •
Unbreakable.
That’s the word that comes back time and again, echoing across the wavering, fleshy chambers of my mind as I swim in a dream, the faces shimmering all around in an infinite darkness—everyone who ever mocked me, cursed me, tried to kill me. Only a few ever loved me. They aren’t here. Just the bad guys. Somewhere out there in the real world, I am bleeding and broken. I can see that, too. I’m not all the way under, not yet.
Unbreakable.
I can feel that I’m willing my upper body to drag me towards the girl, who said her name was Toni, who is another face that mocks me, another question I have no answer for. I’m fighting back the maelstrom of voices and memories, resisting the temptation to give in completely, because I know if I do, I’m dead. I have to save myself. They can’t break me like this. I have only a few moments to act.
Where are you, my love?
Tell me what to do.
Like you always did.
Make these screaming faces go away. Make them stop laughing at me. I have things to do. I am crawling on my elbows now. I can feel it way back there. I can feel the tears pooling in my eyes from the strain on my upper body. I can feel my teeth clenching together, my legs dangling uselessly behind me. The sound of Franklin’s words, the finality of his voice . . . just before I killed him.
You’re a tough kid. But not tough enough.
The sound of sirens, somewhere in the distance—the terrible soundtrack of my life these days. How long has it been since he left me here? Can I see the girl in front of me? Toni’s weird doppelganger, crying in a misty half darkness, desperate to be saved, like I am.
She said her name was Toni. I want to believe her. I have to. She proved it, didn’t she? With a kiss in a room full of dolls . . .
So why does this all feel so wrong . . .
I’m a killer now. Like my father.
Murdered someone with my own hands . . .
The nightmare shifts gears and the punishment comes now, sparks of memories spritzing on and off like the channels on an old color TV set with the sound turned way up—so that the voices and the muzzleflashes and the music top out the speaker system and overload the amplifiers—static blowing past me, empty stations hovering in the blank canyons of absolutely nowhere. Pieces of my life, shattered and flickering in a horrible slipstream, slashing me, mocking me . . .
You’re a killer now, son. Welcome to the monster club.
I see the first job I ever did, the one that didn’t go so well. Two cops on the street when we walked out. My father, his finger fast on the trigger. The sneering smiles of a million angry gods right in my face as the gun blows my mind . . .
Unbreakable.
I see the first time I was in jail, surrounded by the smell of sweat and stale cigarette smoke and plots that go nowhere because you’re a loser. The face of the man who called himself Shanker, the first guy who ever tried to kick my ass, and his blood still salty and desperate in my mouth . . .
Unbreakable.
I see David Hartman, sitting behind his desk, telling me about the power and the glory, all those god-awful life-worn clichés dangling in front of me like a joke told to an eight-year-old who doesn’t understand anything . . . and his cruel stare . . . his hand on the meat cleaver . . . telling me he has the last laugh after all . . .
. . . and I fight him.
I fight his image back.
Because I beat this asshole. I won already.
I’m not a killer, not the way they are.
I am better than monsters like this.
Unbreakable.
• • •
Toni . . . it’s Toni now. I see her face, for real, just a glimpse—and she looks like the girl who tried to fool me—but then it’s gone. And then it’s back. And then it’s gone again. Urgent flashes in the dark. Telling me I have to get up. I can’t stay here. It’s time to run like hell. I mutter something to the ghost in my head, telling her my legs are gone now. They got me good. You can only dance the edge for so long . . . and love does not stay . . .
Get up, she tells me.
Don’t pussy out.
She touches my face and her fingers are cold. They smear something on my cheek, and it’s warm. Streaks of blood. It’s just a dream.
It’s the girl now, right in front of me.
The girl who looks like Toni.
Or maybe she looks like Toni.
The fingers form into a hard slap across my face now. I can hear her voice, telling me to get up. It wasn’t Toni, it was just some girl. The voices that mock me . . . they recede back ever so slightly . . . and the parking garage smears into view for just a moment. I realize I’ve been crawling towards a hallucination this whole time. I’m up for air and I have this one chance. I open my mouth and words come out. I control them in quick bursts, tho
ugh the shoots of pain in my side.
I speak into the cell phone and call for help.
My fingers have dialed 911 and I’m telling them to come get me.
They’ll find me.
They’ll arrest me.
But they’ll save my life.
The girl nods yes.
She looks so much like Toni when she nods like that.
Get up, she tells me.
Don’t pussy out.
Get up now.
GET UP AND RUN!
And as her voice rips through my head, the pain in my body explodes like magma, the images shattering like fragile faces blown to hell . . . and it’s the worst pain I’ve ever felt . . . the final pain . . . the pain of losing everything in one moment of absolute failure and weakness . . . and I’m screaming . . . SCREAMING . . .
• • •
The rage thunders back, crashing upward from my destroyed bones, blasting through my eyes, setting the metal in my skull on fire . . .
. . . and there they all are . . .
. . . my father . . .
. . . my teachers . . .
. . . Toni.
It’s you.
Not some phantom, not a woman that tells lies.
It’s really you.
I’ve waited so long for this moment.
This moment happened so long ago.
It’s our wedding, solidifying all around me in beautiful detail, the white-on-white of the room that surrounds us, all full of silks and curtains and fluttering lace, rose petals at our feet, her sharp scent swirling like invisible tongues of sweet dragon breath, her face smiling with all the promises we made before this, and the promises we make now. She stares at me with eyes that can see across time, see into the future. The image of her face is so clear now, and I keep expecting to lose it, keep expecting her eyes to turn black or fill with blood, while the pain in my head punishes me and the voices slither back to mock me . . . but this is the moment . . . the real moment . . . brought back to me because I’m almost dead in the real world . . .
Yes.
Almost dead.
I can almost feel my body back there.
Almost feel the blood running from me, my bones shattered and useless.
But I don’t care.
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