by Kit Power
“I have no use for you, beast. You are unclean. I send you ahead. In dishonour.”
“Don't.”
The madman stares at her. She feels the sweaty bald man looking too, and the feel of his gaze makes her face itch unpleasantly. But she does not look back at him. She stays on the madman.
She watches him draw breath. Once. Twice. Then he speaks.
“Why not?”
“Because...” She tries to think, tries to remember why she spoke up, but it's all too much, the pressure and the fear and the grossness, and the dull pain behind her eyes, in her stomach, the bomb and the sword and the blood and...
“Katie?”
...and Alex. Her love. Here and gone. Forever.
“Katie? Why not?”
Her mind turns on Alex, and the girl in the chair, and the pregnant woman, and Mike, his lovely story and terrible end, and then she remembers, and she says, “Because I don't want him on my conscience.”
Her eyes move back to her attacker. On his knees, eyes streaming with tears. Snot and drool running down his face. Urine pooling under his knees. Abject. Despairing. She makes eye contact, and waits until she's sure he's looking.
“I don't want your death on me. I don't want to see you bleed. I don't want to have to think about you for the rest of my life. I don't want to have to think about you ever again.”
He starts to try and talk, stammers, spittle flying from his lips. She cuts him off.
“Shut the fuck up! Shut up! I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing it for me. Okay?”
Her eyes move back up to the madman, and she tries to make her voice soften. “Okay? I'm doing it for me.”
The madman stares at her. His gaze is intense, face very still, brow furrowed. Katie stares back, trying to stay calm.
“Noble, Katie. I respect that. Truly, I do.” He nods, and offers a small smile. “But it's not your call. I say he dies. And my will be done.”
Katie feels her face fall, and the man wails, a long, high note, and the wailing is joined by other noises, pitching up and down, getting louder. The madman hesitates, and Katie has a moment where she feels a disorientation that threatens to become dislocation, feels the world drawing away, becoming distant, and just as she teeters on the brink, the flashing blue lights through the windows connect with the word sirens in her mind.
She closes her eyes and takes a huge shuddering breath. Sirens. Too many to be able to tell how many. Different types too, pitches clashing, so Katie thinks that means there’s probably police and ambulance or maybe a fire truck out there too. She hears them get close. The sirens cut off. They are close enough, big enough, that she hears gravel crunching under tires.
She opens her eyes. The madman has gone. The sweaty bald man is curled in a ball on the floor. He is trembling, sobbing, head clenched tight between his own arms.
“Could the person who fired please identify themselves. I repeat, can the shooter please make themselves known. The building is surrounded. There is no way out. We just want to end things peacefully. Please acknowledge.”
The voice is coming from inside the church, and Katie experiences another moment of disorientation bordering on panic, before she realises it’s coming from the dead policeman’s radio.
She stands up so she can see his body; Andrew, his name was Andrew, and she notices with no surprise that the madman is already crouched at the body, picking up the radio handset and looking at it.
“Hello?”
Nothing.
She sees him frown, then press the button on the side.
“Hello?”
“Officer Jackson?”
“No. Officer Jackson is indisposed.”
“Who is this? Please identify yourself.”
The madman looks up at the boy with the gun. Katie sees them communicate silently.
“Call me Isaac.”
“Issac, is Officer Jackson there? Is he hurt?”
“He’s here.”
“May we speak with him, please?”
“No.”
There’s a pause.
“Is he injured? We know shots have been fired.”
“He’s fine.”
“We’d like to speak to him to confirm that.”
“No.”
“Isaac...”
“I tell you what, let me save you some time. I’m armed. I have a room full of people here, maybe seventy people. I do not intend them any harm, but I am not going to let them go until nine o’clock. At that time, I will let them all go and give myself up.”
Katie feels a surge of anger at that last that makes her feel nauseous.
That sad sack isn’t worth blowing lunch over, sweetheart. Now, what have I got in my pocket?
Suddenly Katie realises that all eyes are on the madman and his friend. That they’re both looking at the dead policeman and the radio, and the sweaty bald man is sobbing into the floor, and no-one is looking at her. She kneels down next to Alex, eyes moving quickly between her and the bald man, but he seems entirely out of it. She lifts back the jacket carefully, looking again at the pocket, wondering, looking back at the man. Then she reaches her hand inside, fingers touching cool metal at the top of the whatever-it-is, and from the madman, she hears
“Now, if anyone attempts to come in here before that time, I will start shooting and innocent people will die...”
And that’s when Katie hears a guttural scream of agony from the floor in front of the stage, and every pair of eyes in the church flips back in her direction.
Deborah turns towards the scream. The woman is giving birth, Deborah observes, and it’s just like on TV. She’s covered in sweat and her face is distorted in pain and she’s on her back with her legs spread and her husband is holding her hand, and it looks awful.
It’s also means that all eyes are now looking in Deborah’s general direction, and that could be bad, because she doesn’t want anyone to notice that she’s moved. That she is now positioned close to the aisle, at the edge of the stage.
“What was that? Isaac? Are there injured people in there? Isaac? Is someone shot?”
The tension in the voice comes through loud and clear, crappy radio speaker be damned. She looks back up the hall over her shoulder, careful not to turn her chair around, and sees that the young lunatic is not looking so good, suddenly. That smug expression that had recently crept back, the one he’d worn as he’d smacked her around the head in the bygone era of this morning, it’s been slapped off his face, looks like. She can see him in profile, as he looks at the shooter, and she actually sees the panic jump from one to the other like an electric spark, and she feels a savage satisfaction.
“Isaac? Isaac, we heard screaming. Isaac...”
“Wait, just wait!”
“Isaac, if there are people hurt, we need to...”
“You need to shut the fuck up, or I will shoot someone!” The fear in his voice is unmistakable, and to Deborah, it’s a cold drink on a very hot day.
“What do you think, Chris?”
“I don’t know; I don’t know. If they think people are hurt, maybe they'll rush us?” Voice trembling again. What a fucking wimp.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck! I just want... ah, fuck it, nine o’clock! Just five hours!”
“Hey, you said this was a part of it, remember? You felt it, so...”
“I know what I said. I also recall something about the distance between feeling and knowing, don’t you?”
“But, you...”
“Just... Hello Officer? Yes, I’m afraid someone was trying to escape. I had to point the gun at them, and it made them scream. No-one is hurt.”
He lets go of the button straight away. Lesson learned too late, thinks Deborah.
“Isaac, shots have been fired, if someone is hurt in there, you need to send them out right now. No-one has to die, just...”
“And no-one will if you just leave me alone. I just need some quiet time. At nine, if you don’t interfere, I will...”
The scream starts up
again, and he winces as he releases the button. Quick enough? Deborah strains to hear the voice over the lowing of the birthing cattle.
“Isaac? Isaac, it sounds like someone is hurt. Please let them go, Isaac. If you need to be left alone, just stay in there. Let the people go. We won’t try and get you; you can stay as long as you need. But if you don’t let the people go, we might have to...”
The yelling has died down again, and Deborah can see the knuckles of the killer turn white as he clenches the radio in his fist.
“You come near that door and I will shoot someone. You try and come in the building, I empty the fucking clip. You sit tight, and this will all be over at nine. That’s it; that’s all you need to know.”
“Isaac...”
“I’ll check back in at seven. If you break radio silence before then, I’ll shoot someone. Out.”
The young man stands and spins, now facing down the aisle, looking towards the front of the stage. Deborah holds her nerve and just stares back. She has time to wonder if it would be smarter to drop her gaze.
His eyes hold hers, then slide past as he says, “Peter?”
The man squatting by the birthing woman half rises from his haunches, looks over at the killer. He is pale, Deborah observes, but he seems composed. She wonders how tight he’s really wound. How close to snapping.
“Yes?”
“Is Emma... is she close?”
“Yes. Our baby is coming. It will be here soon.” How he keeps his voice that even Deborah does not know, but there’s raw fear bubbling under.
The young man glances back at his accomplice. Deborah sees them talk without words. He turns back. Points. For just a second, Deborah thinks he’s pointing at her, and at that moment, she discovers she is nowhere near beyond surprise or fear.
This is an unwelcome realisation.
“Katie?”
Deborah sees the girl, huddled over the body of the woman who got shot, jump like someone caught her playing with herself. To Deborah, it is an unmistakable motion of guilt, but the young man is either too distracted to notice or too frantic to care, because all he says is, “I need you to go and help with the birth.”
“I... but...”
“I know you’re not a nurse. I know. But you care, and you tried to help, and I think Emma needs someone like that. So go and help her, would you?”
“I... Yes. Okay.”
Deborah strains to hear the girl, read the tone of her voice – listening out for that note she'd heard before. Defiance, fury... something. Some spark.
Friend, foe, or more dead weight?
The young man turns back to his accomplice, and they start talking in low voices. All of Deborah's attention is focussed on Katie, and so she is the only person in the building to see Katie conceal something down the front of her trousers, pulling her T-shirt loose to cover it as she stands and turns around. The only one to see Katie wiping the back of her hand on the shirt as she does so, smearing something over the front of it, covering for the untucking.
Just in case.
Smart girl.
Deborah keeps the smile from her face through sheer will.
Katie fixes her eyes on the birthing woman as she heads over, so Deborah feels safe staring, but the shirt is too baggy, and she can’t tell what’s going on under there.
Frustrating.
Katie is in the aisle now, moving directly towards Deborah, head down. Deborah looks past her, sees the two psychos are still deep in no doubt riveting theological debate.
Katie closes, turns towards Emma, and Deborah, acting on pure impulse, kicks her.
Katie literally jumps, jerking her body away even as her head turns, and Deborah flicks her eyes back to the nutters, certain the movement will have caught one of them. But no, the circle jerk remains in place.
Lucky.
Eyes back to Katie, who stares at Deborah’s leg then back at her face, mouth actually making a small 'o' of surprise. Deborah grits her teeth in frustration, taps her foot once, nods. Yes, my fucking legs work. She points at Katie’s midriff, raises an eyebrow, cocks her head to one side. Katie blushes, and Deborah has time to think the girl has completely misread her. Then she lifts up her vest.
Deborah sees the top of a thin glass jar, lidded, tucked into the waistband of the girl’s trousers. She can just make out the top level of a pink shiny fluid within before the white cloth drops again. She looks back up at Katie, nods. Katie nods back. Good girl. She turns and squats down, next to the woman, and talks to the man with her.
“How can I help?”
Deborah stares for a moment, and then her gut turns cold, as though something has gone horribly wrong, and it takes her less than a second in her heightened state to realise why.
The young man is no longer talking.
She looks up, feeling guilty as hell, and sure enough, the bomber is staring at her, eyes blazing, face twisted into an angry smile.
“What are you doing? Who said you could move?”
She feels the shape sliding into place inside her, deep in her belly, pushing forward now into her privates. The pain as each wave hits her body is the worst she’s felt in her life, and each wave is closer than the last, stronger than the last, each new surge of pain is a new world’s worst, and she feels as though she is being torn apart down there, stretched beyond breaking, and as the latest surge subsides she realises she is screaming and manages to stop, manages to peel open her screwed closed eyes, manages to find her husband’s face, he is smiling and praying but he is scared, she feels it, and she sees it even more clearly in the face of the girl now with them, holding her other hand, telling her she’s okay, she’s going to be okay, a stupid mantra of ignorance from a child too innocent and too dumb to know what pain is, the way she herself had been before this, when she’d seen footage of women giving birth, thinking what a fuss they made and how dramatic they were being and how she was sure she’d be more stoic than that, more dignified, and now here she is on the cold floor of a community hall masquerading as a church, surrounded by strangers, howling like a wild dog passing her litter, and surrounded by fear and the smell of piss and blood, a madman with a bomb who will kill them all, her baby included, and still her body fights to shit this child into the world, a world it will have no time to even see or comprehend before it is pushed through to the next, and she wants it to stop happening, to just carry her baby inside, keep it warm within and free from sin until the end, and ascend together, but her own hateful biology, her traitor body, ah, that has other plans, that useless impulse to live, to survive, to have her baby, no matter the cost, no matter the point, and she reflects for a second on how stupid it is, how stupid we all are, dumb animals trapped by our natures into behaviours our minds know are futile, it’s all fucking futile, she’s going to die, her baby is going to die, scared and cold and screaming in a world that will never make sense, and she prays for God’s mercy, and she prays for the end to be quick and painless for all of them, but especially for her child, and then her body heaves again, and there is only the pain, bright and savage and burning inside, as her body pushes and pushes and forces her child through her, tearing its way to the light and life and God-willing breath, and she is lost in the pain and the surge and screams just like the women she mocked in her mind, she screams in pain and fear as she pushes her child closer to birth, closer to death.
Katie’s mind is spinning, slipping, as for the second time in the last five minutes her hand is crushed by the grip of another. Emma, the madman said she was called Emma. She tries to process what is happening, what may happen in the next few minutes. Emma is close, that much is clear, very close, and the girl in the chair is clearly planning something but now the madman is arguing with her, getting angry, and Katie is so scared. The argument had been drowned out by the screams, but as the current round of contractions passes, she hears it fade in again, like a weak radio signal.
“...theory of the scapegoat, Deborah?”
She swallows, throat dry and pai
nful. Not fair. So close!
“Yes.”
He smiles. It's awful.
“Because you seem like bad luck to me. So maybe...” The blade rises quickly, point a short thrust away from her stomach.
“Please, don’t...” She feels the fear, making the blood pound in her throat. Making her voice wobble. She hates it.
“MAYBE...” The blade comes up, under her chin. She feels the skin in her neck pushed in by the point of the blade. “...I should just end it for you now.”
“Please. Please. Don’t.” She's trying to calculate, to read him, but her instinct said to play it scared, so she did, and now she can't stop. Because she is scared. Because he's out of control now. He's lost, and angry.
He wants to kill her.
“Why not? It’s what you want.”
His smile shows teeth. It doesn't reach his eyes.
“Please put the sword down, please...”
It's all she can think to say – all she wants in the world, right now.
“I’m just giving you what you want. The release you crave so badly.”
The blade presses harder. The pressure is still gentle, but feeling it increase is awful.
“I’ve changed my mind! Really, I’ve...”
Panic is close, now. She feels her eyes filling up.
“Deborah...”
“I don’t want to die!” The tears start to spill down her face.
“Stop.”
The blade moves quickly. The pressure under her chin is gone. Instead, a cold band lies across her windpipe. Her throat makes a small squeak, like a mouse.
“Don’t you think it’s strange that Mike couldn’t stop me? That the priest couldn’t? That this woman is birthing, that man went bestial just as the police turn up? Does it feel to you like an accident? Honestly, does it?”
He has no idea anymore how crazy he looks. How crazy he sounds.
“It feels... like a nightmare.”
His grin becomes wider at that. Touching his eyes. She wants to flinch, to turn away. The cold steel at her throat negates the instinct, a mute denial.