GodBomb!

by Kit Power

  Holy shit.

  She’s actually doing this.

  She looks to the stage next, taking in the scene. The sax player has his fists clamped around the trigger switch, the young man’s face is bloody, and she has time to wonder what she’s missed, when a voice from behind her, wobbling with emotion, says, “Next bullet is aimed at you. Of course, I’m not a great shot. I might miss you and hit him.”

  It’s like a bucket of ice-cold water over her head. Panic drenches Deborah, she feels sweat ripple out of her pores, gut cramping. Too fucking soon. Too soon, she’s not ready. She tries anyway, tries to move, tries to stand. She feels a tingling, like the numbness before pins and needles kicks in, and she sees her thighs trembling, but whatever it is that’s happening to her, it’s not happening quickly enough, so instead she yells, “GET BEHIND HIM!”

  Chris sees Mike, witnesses the realisation burst, like on the face of a remedial child who successfully makes it to the potty, and Chris hates him with all his heart. For what he’s making him do. Offering up a silent prayer of his own, Chris closes one eye and, just as Mike starts to twist behind the bomber, he pulls the trigger again.

  The adrenaline to move is still running through Mike’s body, not having yet reached his muscles, when the bullet catches him high in the right shoulder, shattering his collarbone and spitting bone fragments from the exit wound. The blow twists Mike away from the boy, and his hand, instantly numb, drops its grip. The boy, damnably quick, spins and punches Mike with all his strength in the fresh wound, and the spike of pain is monstrous, driving Mike to his knees, his other hand moving to cover the bleeding hole instinctively, freeing the boy. Mike has time to take this in, as he kneels; warm blood beginning to flow down his arm, across his chest, under his shirt. He sees the boy's face twist into a savage grin of victory, watches as he takes a step back, plants, and swings his foot forward.

  Mike doesn’t even try and move, and the boot is still accelerating when it connects with his jaw. His teeth crack together, he sees spots burst into his field of vision, he is aware that he is moving, falling, but the world is suddenly distant, fading. I am being called to the kingdom, thinks Mike, it’s my time, and he has time to think this, time to wonder and regret and not regret, and then the flooring of the stage comes up to meet his still accelerating head, and there’s a second smash of pain across the back of his skull, and an interval of blessed oblivion.

  Consciousness returns slowly. There’s an angry voice, shouting, but Mike cannot make out the words – the sound appears to fade in and out, like an old TV with a dodgy signal. He’s aware of pain – in and behind his eyes, his skull, his shoulder, which appears to be burning. He feels the boards he’s resting on shifting, like someone is walking about. The sounds still won’t make words – or rather, they do, but he hears them without understanding, each word floating into his mind, then pop, gone, leaving behind no impression, no meaning. He feels dizzy, like the bad hangovers, the ones he got a lot towards the end, and he thinks that if he’s dying, it’s pretty shitty that he should die feeling hungover without even having had a drink, and that’s when God speaks to him, one last time.

  Mike listens.

  Deborah’s eyes are glued to the stage as the young man, ranting speech over (she’d particularly enjoyed how his m sounds have all become b sounds, thanks to his remodelled nose), picks up the blade and walks over to Mike. Don’t open your eyes, she thinks. If you’re out, stay out. You don’t want to stick around for this.

  The young man turns the blade point down, above Mike’s stomach, and she wants to yell, to make him stop or at least pause, but she can’t find her voice. Doesn’t want to be next. So she does not yell, and she does not turn away, and the bomber raises the blade as high as he can before bringing it down hard, actually falling to his knees as he drives the sword into Mike’s stomach.

  She does not look away as Mike’s eyes fly open, bulging, his mouth gaping and working a silent scream. She does not look away as the young man leans on the blade, forcing it deeper, causing Mike’s eyes to roll back in his head before snapping back into focus. She does not look away as the young man yells wordlessly, fury and victory and loss and terror, causing her to wonder if this is the moment it ends for all of them.

  And so, because she does not look away, she sees Mike’s arm come up fast, grabbing the young man’s collar, yanking his suddenly scared face down to Mike’s. For a glorious moment, Deborah thinks Mike is going to bite his face, perhaps chew his ear off even, and she feels a bitter joy rise in her chest. Instead, she sees Mike’s lips moving, breathing laboured, forcing some final message out. Deborah watches the face of the young man as this happens, and is amazed at the journey it takes – the fear fades into some neutral expression, which gradually becomes paler and paler, blood draining from his face, then the corners of his mouth pull down, like an upside down smile, his brow starts to furrow, and Deborah’s waning joy surges back as exhilaration. For some reason, she’s reminded of the old joke about the crying donkey and the cowboy in a bar – the one where the cowboy makes the donkey laugh by whispering something, then later makes him cry again, and the barman asks how he did it, and the cowboy says ‘the first time, I told him I had a bigger dick than him, and the second time, I showed him’. It runs through her mind in an instant, as the storm in the young man’s face builds and builds, and the lightning is likely to be terrible and the thunder may just kill them all, but Deborah cares not a bit, she is surging and pulsing with pleasure as Mike drives the words into the young man’s mind like needles, like spikes.

  Fuck him up, Mike. Fuck him up good. For me. For all of us.

  The hand on the blade begins to tremble, and that makes it move inside of Mike, and Mike can no longer talk, breath driven from his body. The young man takes the opportunity to escape Mike’s grip and rises to his feet, straining to pull out the blade as he does so. Mike roars in pain, head flung back as the blade leaves him, and Deborah observes a spray of blood flick from the edge of the sabre as the boy raises it above his head, point to the ceiling.

  He does not pause at the top of the swing, bringing the blade down again hard, again dropping to his knees as he falls. Deborah does not look away as the blade passes through Mike’s throat, sending a spray of bright blood in a fountain that rises over the edge of the stage, splashing the face of the labouring woman on the floor underneath.

  Mike’s head turns, falls, rolls in the socket, loose and uncontrolled, eyes open, sightless, and those in the congregation who look see only their own fear reflected back at them. His leg is twitching, spasming, but the fountain of blood has already begun to slow, to trickle. Gone, thinks Deborah. Passed.

  She turns her attention back to the young man. The fist that holds the blade is now red, the blood glistening in the sunlight beaming through the shattered window behind him. That same light casts his face in shadow, but Deborah can make out his features well enough. He is still very pale, and he appears to be trembling – yes, she notes that the sword tip is wobbling, causing droplets of blood to fall unevenly onto the stage.

  I don't care why you're doing this. I will see you dead for this. The thought warms her, even as she feels the numbness in her face, blood drained away by what she's seen. As if in sympathy.

  He licks his lips twice, swallows. His voice is dusty and cracked as he asks, “Chris? You still with me?”

  Deborah doesn’t hear a reply, but the man reacts as though he’s gotten one.

  “Good. You need to cover the door now. Someone will probably report the shots.”

  He smiles, a sick and pathetic thing, turning his face into a mask. He looks ill, thinks Deborah, like whatever’s going on inside is finally revealing itself, pushing forward from underneath.

  She thinks fleetingly about her own legs and their sudden inexplicable will to motion, and a connection dances just out of reach before evaporating.

  “We’re going to have company.”

  Bad enough we’re going to be killed by
a lunatic with a bomb, we have to put up with crap B-movie dialogue too?

  “No! Don’t open it to look. Just be ready if anyone comes in.”

  She hears a mumbled reply that was probably ‘okay’.

  The young man addresses the congregation again, and while he regains that volume from before, he sounds like a different person to Deborah. She can feel the toll this is taking on the congregation. She realises, with rising disgust, that she can smell it. But she also realises in this moment that it is, in some non-metaphorical way, also killing him. He’d started so strongly, she remembers her conversation with him, her frustration and fear at how smug he’d been, how in control. But now...

  Now we’re off script. Now, anything goes. Deborah has time to wonder why this should be scarier, and she figures it out: because the script gave them time. Time to pray. Time for the miracle. Now, though, there are four bodies, and a woman on the front row who sounds like she’s going to give birth any minute.

  Not to mention a cripple who feels sure that, with just a bit more time, she may be able to walk.

  Fuck, anything could happen, and the trouble with that is, most of those happenings lead to a premature detonation and an end to the whole mess. And Deborah doesn’t want that.

  Deborah wants to live. She wants to walk out of here and never look back.

  “I want you all to think about what you’ve seen here. Think about what it might mean. God has a plan. This we are told. God has a plan. This is all part of it. Right? That’s what you have to believe. If you believe, this is what you have to...” He trails off. You look so small, thinks Deborah. So ill. She hates him so much; she feels a little ill herself. Her left foot moves forward, sliding just a little on the step. Her foot is now half off; toes suspended in the air.

  That’s when he looks over to her, sword swinging around to point, it seems to Deborah, at her face. “'Get behind him?' Deborah? Did you really say that?”

  Deborah feels a chill run through her whole body.

  “Get behind him.”

  He takes a step towards her. The blade moves a step closer. She stares at it, focussed on the beads of Mike’s blood she can see on the tip. She is dimly aware of her heart squeezing in her chest, too fast, painful.

  “Get. Behind. Him.”

  Each word a step. He’s near the edge of the stage now, the point of the blade close enough that Deborah feels like she’s going to go cross-eyed, but still she can’t stop staring.

  I’m going to die. He’s going to kill me.

  “Deborah? Look at me.”

  She can’t. All she can see is the blade, Mike’s execution, the blood rising from his neck, the fountain, the dullness in his eyes...

  The point jabs forwards, scary close to her face, and she blinks hard, and her eyes refocus on the pale, angry features behind the blade.

  His lips are twisted in a snarl. His neck cords stand out like wires under the skin.

  I’m going to die.

  She feels her anger drain away, recede. She feels herself breathe in, and out. It feels like communion. Like communion used to feel, before the accident turned it into an empty ritual of desperate begging, of unanswered pleas for charity.

  It feels real.

  This is my breath.

  “Deborah.”

  “Yes.” Her voice comes out clear. She is pleased. She wants her last words to be heard, understood.

  She takes another breath.

  He turns the blade, but she does not look away from his face. That’s where I live or die. In whatever lives behind that strange, angry mask. Eyes on the prize.

  “Get behind him?”

  What is he asking? What can she say?

  “You think the chair will spare you? Stay my hand?”

  “No.”

  She takes another breath.

  “Will you scream?”

  He lets the question hang. So does she.

  “When I slice open your stomach?”

  “Yes.”

  Trying to divine the question behind the question. Am I dead? Is there hope?

  She remembers an eternity ago, thinking about free will. She can feel her left leg, out of place but still useless.

  She breathes in. She breathes out.

  He squats, squinting, reading her face, she thinks, trying to.

  “You don’t seem scared.”

  “Maybe I’m terrified.” She feels tears trying to rise, chokes them back. She will die with dry eyes. That is her will.

  She breathes in. She breathes out. The air is sweet.

  He stares at her, eyes vacant. His frown deepens, then locks. He is still panting from the fight, the blood from his nose still drying on his lips. She stares at that for a moment, wondering if she will live to see him wipe his face.

  Either I die staring at that bloody nose or I live long enough to see him cleaned up. Win-win, really.

  The laugh tickles her diaphragm, threatening to roll out her mouth. For the first time since he turned to her, she feels a stab of terror in her chest. Not like this.

  She screws her lips together, bites down on her tongue, the pain suppressing the giggle, forcing her to wince.

  His eyes regain focus.

  She inhales.

  “You know what I think?”

  “No.” She exhales. The urge to laugh is gone. So is the fear. She wants to live. She feels like every cell in her is screaming it.

  He allows the silence to hold. The blade points at her chest.

  “I think you want me to end it.”

  “No...”

  “I think you’ve had enough, Deborah.”

  “No, No, I...”

  He jabs forward with the sword. The point pushes against the fabric of her shirt. She feels her skin dimple under the pressure.

  “I am talking. You can’t lie to me, remember?”

  She does not breathe.

  “I think you know you’re going to die today, and you’ve decided to do it on your terms. I think...”

  She starts to shake her head, feeling the tears rising, and now the struggle to hold them down is too much, and the point of the blade is at her throat, and she goes rigid, body and mind frozen.

  “I think you want to commit suicide by sword.”

  She feels the cold metal on her windpipe. Her mouth is dry. She cannot swallow. Cannot speak. She feels her life twisting by a thin, fine thread. She breathes in shallowly through her nose. She waits.

  He leans forward. For a second, she feels the pressure on her throat increase, then his shoulder and arm shifts. He brings his face close enough to hers that she could lean forward and kiss him.

  If she could stand.

  He looks at her, stares, eyes blazing now, fully aware, alert.

  She breathes in. She breathes out. She stares back.

  He opens his mouth.

  “Do you know what the sadist said to the masochist?”

  She can’t shake her head for fear of cutting her own throat. Can’t speak for lack of spit. She tries to answer with her eyes. She stares, frantic, gaze flicking between his eyes. Please. Please.

  He leans closer. She sees Mike’s blood on his cheek –stark against his milk pale skin. Tastes his breath.

  “No.”

  He grins.

  The blade is gone, and he stalks back across the stage, taking the centre, staring out into the congregation.

  “Pray! I want to talk to him. The hour grows short.”

  Deborah feels a tremble start inside her, in her spine, her stomach.

  The killer looks back at her, into her eyes.

  “The hour grows short.”

  She closes her eyes.

  I'm going it fucking kill you, boy. The thought feels calm. Rational.

  It feels like a promise.

  There’s a roaring. Pounding. It surrounds her, engulfs her. Boom, boom, boom. Rhythmic. Titanic. Tidal. She is inside a maelstrom, at the heart of the storm, but it is not calm, it is raging, each pulse concussing her, squeezing and e
xploding. At first it feels constant. Then, gradually, she discerns a rhythm within the chaos. The explosions are paced, even. As she notices this, they start to fade, becoming less violent. Other sensations fade in. There’s a second rhythm, a motion. Up and down. Coolness in, warmth out.

  Soothing, this, as the pounding fades and localises, becoming situated, no longer all encompassing. It’s motion, her motion. Rise and fall. Repeat.

  There’s a pulling, dizzying sensation which comes and goes. She feels the weight of something pressing in, pressing down. There’s a disembodied moan that rises to a yell then fades again.

  Nightmarish. Is this a nightmare? She thinks not. In and out.

  Breath.

  Not dead then.

  Dizzying again, like her consciousness is settling back uneasily into her skull, after being... elsewhere. Somewhere dark.

  Somewhere blank.

  She’s aware of light. Her eyes are shut – feel glued shut, right now – but she’s aware of light behind them. On the other side, there is a lighted space.

  Her head is still spinning a little, like that time she got really drunk and then had a bong at that party, and she ended up laying out in the field, holding onto the ground to keep from falling off and wondering if the moon was going to stop that ridiculous spinning thing it had going on. Like that, but without the attendant nausea and feelings of incipient divinity that faded once she started heaving her guts up.

  She comes back to her own physicality slowly, hesitantly, afraid of what she will find. Something bad has happened. May still be happening. Right now, there’s a massive blank spot where her immediate past should be. She only knows it’s a dark place.

  A bad place.

  The grunting and screaming again. The word nightmare reoccurs, and she regards it lovingly but with no real hope. The screaming is real. So is the bad thing. The pink light appears to be fading in, fading up, becoming brighter. Surfacing, she thinks. She’s aware of pressure on her stomach, an unyielding rigid surface under her back, a thin layer of sweat that coats her body like she’s been dipped in it.