by Russ Munson
That was it. I was trapped. The end. I had come this far and I crawled to my death. One lousy spur-of-the-moment decision and it was all over. That was the world now, I guessed. A few hours ago, my hardest decision was choosing whether or not I should drink a Red Claw after my match or share a pitcher of Bud with my father. But now, even simple decisions were fraught with danger.
My heart didn’t change. You could hook me up to that EKG and you’d see no difference. I was devastated, sure, but my body didn’t show it. I closed my eyes and squirmed onto my back. With a finger, I traced a pattern in the concrete. A star. Then another. And another. I wondered if there were stars in heaven. Or maybe heaven was higher than the stars and it was daylight all the time. Twenty-four hours of daylight. No darkness. Was that happiness? I didn’t know. Certainly, they all went crazy in Alaska when it never got dark. But I was pretty sure there were no stars in hell. All you got to see were the spikes of the stalactites, all twinkling in the flames, like saliva on sharpened teeth, pointing at you.
Was the Horseman’s death my fault? Could I be blamed for what my body did? No doubt the courts on earth, if they still existed, would find me guilty. But what about the higher court? The cloud justice. Surely God knew there was a difference between my body and my mind.
Maybe that’s what heaven was. A lofty hard drive for your consciousness. Freedom from pain. Maybe that’s why we had managed to fly rockets all the way into space without finding any evidence of the cloud palace. Our bodies are left behind, but our minds live forever as vapor in the clouds.
It was a nice thought.
And maybe hell was the opposite. Maybe hell was being trapped in the rotting shell of our own bodies. For all eternity.
It was a shitty thought.
But either way, heaven or worms, it was coming.
Chapter Sixteen
There was scraping overhead.
I opened my eyes. A muffled voice. Grunting. Nothing discernible. Someone was crawling over my head. He or she was scrambling on the concrete lid of my grave liner.
“Help!” I said. I pulled down the T-shirt over my mouth. “I’m trapped beneath you!”
The scraping stopped. I waited. Listened.
Then it came back.
“Help!”
Then it was gone. Dead quiet.
My spirits, briefly buoyed, sank again.
Maybe I deserved this end. Karma for the Horseman. Ultimate accountability. Maybe my intentions were worth nothing. Maybe observable actions were all that mattered in this universe.
Even if I could take a wild swing at the concrete, it would do nothing. Broken knuckles was all. I was going to die in here.
And yet, my heart was pumping away at its same old rhythm, calm as a glassy lake. I tried to get the adrenaline pumping. I thought of all the things that pissed me off. I thought of when the media reported that my idol, Jon “The Soul” Ralphie had been paid to take a fall in the second round. I thought of when that reckless megalomaniac usurped my party’s nomination and got himself elected and made us all look bad. I thought of when my mother threatened to leave my father if he didn’t stop his drinking. I thought of when Mikey’s body betrayed him, when the tumor pressing on his brain like a finger filled him up with hate.
Still nothing. No fear. Only cold calculation. Even as I tried to find a reason to be frightened, my brain was still working out the details.
It came to me then.
I twisted onto my back, unzipped the duffle bag, and took out the bottle of water. I took a sip. It was hard to drink lying down and it ran down my cheeks and pooled in my ears. Then I wet the cheap cotton shirt over my mouth so it wasn’t chafing my lips and drank the last drop. No need to save it for later. There might not be a later.
Lying on my back, my spine pressed into the pavement, I pulled my knees into my chest and put my feet flat against the concrete. The space was tight and my hip flexors ached.
I had spent half of my life in the gym. My bench press was okay and my squats were decent, but the real strength was in the leg press. Poundwise, it was everyone’s strongest. A thousand pounds wasn’t rare to see in the gym. Even the old guys could load the sled with plates and dumbbells and push it all day long. There was something unique about angle of it, about the way your back was pressed into the cushion, the way the gravity worked, that let you push extraordinary weight.
I figured it was no different now. I took a deep breath and pushed.
Nothing.
I took another breath. Pushed again. My quads quaked, my spine pressed into the asphalt. I gritted my teeth, clenched my fists, and pushed, hard enough to give myself a hernia.
There was a slight shift. A gap of light opened. I rested, took three short breaths, and pushed again. My forehead burst with sweat. More light. More movement.
I thought of her. Of her face.
I pushed again.
A large crack where the concrete had splintered opened. It wasn’t fear I needed. It was love.
I pushed harder. The gap by my head widened. The light brightened. The concrete was separating, but I had to get out from underneath the chunk.
One more time. I concentrated on her. I channeled everything I had and pushed. My abs were tense and aching. I pushed like I was giving birth to a giant boulder. I pushed until my legs were fully extended.
I locked out my knees. The chunk of concrete was at a forty-five degree angle now. It had opened a gap large enough to see the yellow of the lobby, the tiled floor flooded with dim light from the backup generator.
My legs quivered, a thousand pounds of concrete ready to fall back on my head. There wasn’t enough room to push it out of the way and my legs weren’t long enough to give it another push and I didn’t have enough strength left to lower it gently.
It would crush me. Splat me. My whole body shook under the burden. My legs trembled. I clawed at the asphalt beneath me, bracing myself for the pain. Any second, my knees would buckle.
Chapter Seventeen
“Jesus, man. That’s some Herculean shit.”
I turned my head to the voice. The man who had been crawling over the concrete had come back. He was leaning around the chunk of concrete. He was a black guy with gray hair and teal hospital scrubs.
“You need a hand?”
I nodded, straining.
He dropped into the hole beside me and put his back against the concrete. “On the count of three,” he said. “One, two…”
I didn’t hear the last count. I pushed through my calves and he squatted his back into the concrete. The load lightened, moved to ninety degrees, and then fell away in a crash of dust.
He extended a hand. I took it and he pulled me to my feet. My hands were still gloved and wrapped from the fight and I couldn’t feel his skin. My legs were weak and wobbly and I had to grab a twisted girder to keep from falling.
“Thank you,” I said.
“I’m sorry I passed you by. I thought I was hearing things. My ears are still ringing,” he said.
“Mine too.”
“I’m Carter.”
“Jake.”
A splash of blood the shape of a flower had exploded on his chest like someone had vomited on him. I didn’t want to know the details.
“Thank you for your help,” I said and turned to climb over the rubble.
“Where are you going? Don’t go in there. The whole building’s about to fall.”
“Do you work here?”
“Not anymore.”
“Are there people still alive in there?”
“Look around you, man. There ain’t no services running. Everything’s been wiped out.”
I grabbed my duffle bag and slung it over my shoulder, but he grabbed the strap.
“I’m serious, man. We go this way. Not in there.”
“It’s not an option for me.”
From nowhere, he slapped me on the side of the head.
“Ow! Jesus!” I said.
He raised his fists, ready to fight. Bu
t his eyes were wide and darting back and forth between his hands as if he was a spectator at the show of his own body. God, it was happening again.
“I don’t want to hurt—“
But before I could finish the sentence, I swung my knee around and delivered a spinning hook kick to the side of his head. He crumpled and splashed in the rubble.
It took me a moment to realize what I had done. The man who had saved me was now lying face first in the debris, twitching.
I clenched my fists and screamed at the sky. “Leave me alone!”
The building answered with a groan deep from within its damaged skeleton.
“Whatever you are, I’m done with this. I’m not for sale!”
And then, from out of the swirling ash and the floating embers, shapes emerged. A dozen of them. Men and women. They were swinging two-by-fours and tire irons and stop signs. An angry mob, possessed.
They were coming for me. Who else?
“Jesus.”
I scrambled over the rubble and ran into the yellow light of the lobby. It was deserted. I stopped at the main desk, a crescent island holding a monitor, and looked at the directory hanging on the wall. It was inside a glass case. I ran my finger down the list of departments and their designated floors.
“C’mon, where are you?”
In the reflection in the glass, a shape popped up from behind the desk. It was an older guy in a polo shirt, the words Arlington Hospital embroidered on his chest. Before I could find what I was looking for, he stood on his chair and climbed up on the desk and lunged at me.
I sidestepped him, put a hand to the back of his head, and drove him into the glass. It shattered and broke through the tiny placards that held the names of the departments. They scattered all over the floor, the rooms and floors all jumbled.
I knelt beside the old man and grabbed him by the polo collar. His forehead was bloody, his nose broken. I guessed he was a volunteer. He had come here to help, and this is how the world rewarded him.
“Are you yourself?” I said. “Can you hear me?”
He blinked away the blood.
“I said, can you hear me?”
He nodded.
“Which floor is maternity?”
He mumbled something.
“What?”
“Thirteen.”
“Wonderful,” I said. It was all the way at the top. Behind me, the mob was climbing over the rubble. I let the old man down gently, gave him a roll of gauze from my duffle bag, and ran for the elevators.
“Elevator’s out,” he mumbled.
I stopped and stared at him for a moment. Of course it was. Maybe the Horseman’s blow had done more damage than I thought.
Behind him, the mob was in the lobby now, a hundred feet away, and swarming. They were swinging their weapons. One had a shotgun. The man holding it tried to hold it level and then fired at me. The blast blew apart the sign overhead and a picture of a smiling couple shattered by my feet.
“What do you want with me? I haven’t done anything to any of you!”
The man loaded another shell.
I wasn’t about to find out. I made an abrupt turn and darted into the stairwell.
Chapter Eighteen
Thirteen floors.
Every half-floor, a bubble camera monitored the concrete landings. Past the landing, the stairs doubled back and climbed to the next floor. From the bottom, through a rectangular shaft where the exit signs made the railings glow red, I could see all the way to the top.
I didn’t waste any time and bounded up the first flight. Below me, the mob banged on the door. Their faces were pressed to the wire-laced glass in the window. The handle jiggled up and down, as if they had poor motor control and couldn’t figure out how to get it open. They were like robots made of meat, their programming still incomplete.
As I neared the first landing, the second-floor door popped open. A large man stood in the yellow light. He was a silhouette, but then he stepped into the redness of the stairwell and a uniform emerged. At first, I thought he was a cop, but then I could see the white patches on his shoulders, and I figured he was a paramedic. He was at least my height, and bulky enough to look as if he were wearing sparring gear underneath his uniform. The heft must’ve come from lifting people onto stretchers all day long.
Instinctively, I put my hands in the air. “I’m unarmed. I don’t want any trouble.”
He stood firm on the landing and said nothing.
I glanced behind me. On the ground floor, the mob had burst through the door and were fighting shoulders to get past the frame. The guy with the shotgun got through first and loaded a shell.
There was no turning around.
“Is anybody home?”
His eyes darted back and forth as if he were frantically trying to read something on my face. Then he charged. He barreled down the flight of stairs, taking two at a time, gathering speed, no caution to keep himself from tumbling head over ass. He was a boulder, blocking the whole path and coming straight at me.
Eight stairs. Six stairs.
Then the cinderblocks beside my head exploded. The debris stung my ears. I flinched and ducked and the shotgun blast echoed throughout the stairwell.
It didn’t stop the paramedic. Four stairs. Two stairs. He had the higher ground. Stopping his momentum would be impossible.
He lunged, taking the last steps all at once. At the very last second, right before he tackled me, I ducked, planted my hands on his gut, and followed through the arc of his momentum and heaved him over my head.
He hit the guy with the shotgun first and bowled him over, knocking out the rest of the mob. They lay in a groaning heap on the ground floor, a ball of writhing bait.
I didn’t waste my time. I climbed past the second floor landing, turned the corner without a pause, and ran up to the third floor.
The door popped open. Two women ran out. They were dressed in bloody blue scrubs and waving scalpels, their blades tracing arcs of red in the exit light.
God, I thought. What was this? I had enemies on every level. I might as well be trapped inside a game of Kung Fu on Suzie’s old NES.
The two women were barely in control of their arms. They looked like fighters in a game of Mortal Kombat when some newb didn’t know what he was doing and mashed all the buttons at the same time. They were flailing those scalpels so heedlessly, they were slashing each other’s arms and scrubs, showing blood and skin. In a few minutes, they’d be wearing nothing more than rags like the VHS sleeve on some cheesy horror movie.
I raised my hands.
“Please. I don’t want to fight. All I want to do is pass.”
They bared their incisors, their blades flying. Getting past them would be as dangerous as diving through a fan in an air duct.
Behind me, a flight down, the mob was on its feet again, this time led by the paramedic. I turned back to the blurring scalpels. They were flinging a fine mist of blood. Antibiotics were not to be wasted and I didn’t want to risk another deep cut. Besides, I had no idea whose body those scalpels had been inside before these butchers had come to slice me.
I slipped the duffle bag off my shoulder and swung it around my head like a medieval morning star. I built up the velocity over three revolutions and then I charged the surgeons, aiming for their hands.
The duffle hit the first one in the hand and her scalpel came loose and clattered on the stairs. The duffle kept on its path and smacked the other surgeon’s hand and drove her arm against the wall, but she didn’t let go of the blade. Instead, she turned her wrist and jabbed. I used the first woman as a shield and shoved her into the scalpel. A scream escaped her lungs as the blade embedded in her belly. Off balance, the two of women fell head first down the stairs.
I kept climbing. I was sucking air, my lungs screaming, my legs jelly from that leg press. I might as well have done a Stairmaster circuit after squats. I grabbed the railing to pull myself along and made it to the fourth landing.
No one came out. I
paused to catch my breath. Behind me, the mob kept coming. They were crawling over each other, absorbing the surgeons and gaining strength.
Then the door flew open in my face. It knocked me back into the cinderblock wall.
Stunned, pinned between the door and the wall, I shook my head to get my bearings.
Through the window in the door, I could see a young, bald man in a white jumpsuit. A janitor. He was wearing glasses, probably a college kid who was getting experience in a hospital before applying to medical school.
He looked around and then turned and saw me in the window. He yanked the door back and swung a wooden mop handle at my head. I raised an arm to shield the blow and the handle splintered against my forearm. The bone twanged like a tuning fork and my whole arm went instantly numb.
Damn funny bone. I dropped to one knee, my whole arm feeling like I had dangled it outside a bus window in oncoming traffic.
Before I could recover, he grabbed the neck of my shirt and threw me into the railing. I doubled over it, the force of it squeezing blood into my head as if I were hanging upside down.
The shaft loomed below. All four flights.
He stepped toward me to grab my hips and throw me over the railing, but I dropped down low, slid past his arms, and with an open palm, struck him in the small of the back. He banged against the railing, the metal singing. Before he could turn around, I ducked and grabbed him by the ankles and heaved him over the railing. His scream trailed off and then there was a wet thump at the bottom that echoed through the stairwell.
“Put that on your resumé,” I said.
The mob was still coming. I shook out my arm and kept climbing. I had barely reached the halfway landing and was taking the turn onto the stairwell when above me, the fifth floor door opened.
Five patients funneled through the frame. They were all in their hospital gowns. I almost laughed at the absurdity of it. I was stuck in some sadistic nightmare. The patients stood together as a group. One scratched his head, and the others followed suit. Their movements were identical, as if a single puppeteer were controlling all of them at once.