by Brian Keene
I took a faltering step towards her. “About what?”
“About you, Larry. You are a bad man, just like others. Maybe worse.”
“Yeah,” I sneered. “That’s right. I’m just as bad as all the other men in your life. Sell that shit to someone else. I’m nothing like your Dad or the men on that ship or these mob fuckers. I didn’t beat you or rape you or force you to do things you didn’t want to do. All I tried to do was help you. And I got shit on and lied to for it. Why?”
I was aware of the pleading, whining tone in my voice, and of the fact that I was beginning to repeat myself, but I couldn’t help it either. I hated how I sounded, but couldn’t seem to stop. It was like my mouth had decided it didn’t like what the rest of me was doing, and had decided to take over on its own.
Sondra was silent for a moment. Her shoulders were slumped and she was breathing heavy. I couldn’t tell if she was crying, sighing, or just out of breath. She still hadn’t turned around, still wouldn’t face me. When she spoke, it was barely a whisper and I had to strain to hear her.
“I know not about any money. If Whitey tell you I take his money, then Whitey lie. If I had money, I would tell you.”
I stared at her, not speaking. The wave of dizziness had passed again and I felt my strength returning. I took another step towards her. When I didn’t fall down, I took another. As the ringing in my ears faded, it occurred to me that the gunshots had stopped. It was quiet outside. No explosions or helicopters or men screaming. The air still smelled of smoke, though. In fact, the smoke was getting thicker.
“We’ll finish this later.”
“You no believe me?”
“It doesn’t matter right now. Let’s head into the back and see if we can’t find another way out of here—or at least a place to hide.”
“Why?”
“Listen. You hear that?”
Sondra cocked her head. “Nyet, I hear nothing.”
“Exactly. My guess is that Whitey won, which means he’ll be coming after us next.”
“Are you…okay to fight him?”
“Sondra, my body feels like I’ve gone twelve rounds with Mike Tyson.”
“Who?”
“Mike Tyson. A real bad motor-scooter. A world champion boxer.”
“He owns motorcycle? He can help us to get away?”
“Never mind. It’s not important. What is important is that we stop talking and get the hell out of here right now.”
I studied the door we’d come in through, the one that led out to the front of the machine shop. It could only be locked with a key, so we were shit out of luck as far as that went. A quick search of the room showed no junk heavy or big enough to block the door with, either. Worse, with the machines and equipment gone, there was nowhere to hide, and the tool benches were empty—nothing there that we could use to defend ourselves.
“Shit,” I said. “Come on.”
Without thinking about it, I took her by the hand and led her towards the dark hallway. She squeezed my fingers. I squeezed back.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “About before. I shouldn’t have said all that. I feel like a real asshole.”
“Is okay, Larry. We are both…how you say? Having a bad day?”
I chuckled. “Yeah, I guess you can say that again.”
“We are having a bad day?”
This time I laughed. “You’re something else, Sondra Belov.”
“As are you, Larry Gibson. And I was wrong, too.”
“About what?”
“When I say you are like other men, I was wrong. You are not like them. If they say mean things, they not apologize. You do. You say you are sorry.”
“Well, I am. And I do apologize. I shouldn’t have said all that.”
“Once we get out of here, you buy me big dinner and we make it up to each other after—in bedroom. Does this sound good?”
“Sound good? It sounds great. Especially the bedroom part.”
Smiling, Sondra squeezed my hand again. Suddenly, it was like falling for her all over again. Even after everything that had happened, her smile—that perfect, beautiful smile—had complete power over me.
And that was all that it took to suck me back in.
I no longer felt pain. No longer felt betrayed.
Instead, I felt hope.
Women will do that to you—make you feel things that you shouldn’t.
nineteen
Hand in hand, side by side, we crept into the corridor and let the darkness envelop us. The hallway wasn’t much to look at. From what little I could see, it was in the same run-down condition as the rest of the machine shop. The pitted, brown floor tiles were warped and peeling up around their corners, revealing the grimy, dried paste beneath. The cinderblock walls were cracked and covered with mold. Once our eyes had adjusted to the gloom, we were able to see that the corridor didn’t go far. On the left side of the hallway was an old time clock, along with an empty rack where employees had once kept their timecards. The clock hands were forever stopped at three in the afternoon. Quitting time.
The right-hand side of the hallway had three doors. Two of them led into the men’s and women’s bathrooms. We explored those first. Both restrooms were empty of their fixtures. Exposed PVC plumbing stuck out of the walls and up from the floors. The copper pipes had long since been plundered. The walls were covered with fading graffiti. Most of it looked like it had been written a decade ago, referencing politicians and pop culture who were no longer relevant. The crude slogans reminded me of the men’s room at the Odessa, right before we’d found Sondra hiding beneath my Jeep. Already, that seemed like a million years ago. I suddenly felt old and weary. Not tired. Not exhausted. Fucking weary.
The smoke was tangible now. I still didn’t know what was on fire, but I didn’t think it was the building. The air tasted like soot. I wondered how much longer we could breathe it. My eyes and nose were starting to burn.
“Come on,” I said. “No luck here.”
The third door opened into a break room. There were some round tables and a few chairs, none of which looked safe to sit on. Three dusty vending machines stood against the wall, one for soda and two for candy and junk food. All of them were empty of their contents, but otherwise seemed to be in decent shape. I wondered why the vending machine company would just leave the machines here, and decided that maybe they hadn’t. Perhaps the machine shop had owned them instead. An old bulletin board hung on the wall, clinging precariously by one remaining hinge. The board’s cork was slashed and torn in some spots. Yellowed bulletins were still pegged to it—OSHA and MSDS procedures, safety regulations, policies for Equal Opportunity hiring and sexual harassment. All were things that no longer mattered to the men and women who had once worked here. With luck, those employees had gone on to other jobs after the machine shop shut down, and had new OSHA procedures and safety regulations to follow. The alternative was as depressing as our dismal surroundings. Unemployment in early twenty-first century America—a living death in a world where even the telemarketing jobs had gone overseas and the only work you could get was through a temp agency. No room for pride or dignity or a fair day’s work for a fair day’s wage. The stock market rose in direct relation to your fall. You were better off dead.
But I wasn’t ready to die yet. I still had a job, hopefully. At this point, it was the only thing I still had going for me. That—and Webster, if Animal Control or the landlord hadn’t taken him after the shootings. I suddenly missed my cat very much, and wondered what he was doing right now. Was he hiding in the apartment, watching the CSI guys and wondering when I’d be home? Was Webster hissing at them in annoyance, demanding that the intruders at least have the courtesy to feed him before they left?
My sigh was heavy. So was my heart.
“What is wrong?” Sondra asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just thinking.”
There were no windows in either of the bathrooms or the break room, and no exit doors either. There was no way out,
except maybe through the basement. I figured the chances were good that there were no exits from there, as well. We were trapped.
“I don’t know,” I muttered. “I don’t know what to do.”
Sondra suddenly grabbed my arm. Her long fingernails dug into my skin.
“Ouch,” I cried. “What the hell is that for?”
“Listen,” she whispered. “I think I hear something. A footstep?”
I held my breath and listened. My ears weren’t ringing at all anymore, but there was no sound. If the cops had stormed the building, we’d have known they were there. The silence meant that we were faced with the alternative.
Whitey was coming.
Thinking quickly, I took Sondra by the hand and led her behind the soda machine. It stuck out from the wall, leaving a narrow crevice wide enough for both of us to squeeze into. Sondra’s breasts and my belly both pushed against the back of the machine. It was a tight fit, but we made it. The space between it and the wall was filled with dirt and spider webs. I held my breath, trying not to sneeze when the dust tickled my nose. The soda machine’s power cord had been cut, exposing naked wires. I hoped they weren’t live. It would really suck to get electrocuted before Whitey could kill us himself.
Out in the machine shop, the back room’s door crashed open. We heard it slam against the wall. Sondra jumped. I reached down and squeezed her hand again, making sure she stayed silent. I waited for someone to shout, ‘Police!’ and listened for the sounds of radio static, but instead, there were only footsteps. Familiar footsteps. Calm, slow, assured footsteps. The sound of nice dress shoes on concrete. A sound that filled me with dread and resignation. The sound of death.
We stayed motionless, barely breathing, and listened as the footsteps came closer. Whitey searched the back room and then entered the hallway. His footsteps stopped for a moment. I imagined him standing there, staring into the darkness, grinning. Could he smell us? Smell the blood on our clothes? Smell our fear? I remembered what he’d said to Sondra when we were hiding with Yul in the warehouse—that he could tell where she was hiding, that he could sense her baby. I’d chalked it up to bullshit at the time. Figured it was just an attempt to psyche us out, force us to reveal our location. But now, knowing what I did, I wasn’t so sure.
I’d never believed in the supernatural. Well, not completely anyway. Pennsylvania Dutch powwow magic and Appalachian folk healing were one thing. Demons and monsters and psychic powers were something else entirely. Powwow, when you boiled it down, was nothing more than herbs and alternative medicine, combined with a little bit of good old-fashioned religion. Some of the ingredients in your average powwow spell were also available at the local health food boutique or in the organic aisle at the grocery store. Monsters and things that go bump in the night—they weren’t so easily explainable or obtainable. They had no root in reality. I didn’t encounter them on a daily basis, therefore, they didn’t exist. But despite my feelings and my disbelief, a monster walked among us. A corpse, fueled by hatred or obsession or something else, that wouldn’t stop until we were dead. I’d seen the proof with my own eyes. Call him a zombie, call him possessed, call him whatever the hell you wanted to, but the fact remained that Whitey Putin was still stalking us when all laws of medicine, science, and simple fucking logic dictated that he should be lying down dead.
If Whitey had the superhuman ability to do those things—to stay alive with half of his head blown off, to slaughter policemen while they pumped him full of lead, to survive blood loss and mutilation and major organ damage—then why couldn’t he sense the baby? Why couldn’t he track us through the seed he’d planted in Sondra’s belly? It made sense. Supposedly, he needed those stem cells. Maybe they called to him, pulling at him the same way that Sondra had pulled at me all those long, lonely nights when I’d watched her on stage.
The footsteps slowly came down the hall. The men’s room door squeaked open. We heard it swing back and forth on its rusty hinges. The footsteps echoed as Whitey searched the bathroom. Then he entered the hallway again and did the same with the women’s restroom. When he was finished searching, he came out into the hallway once more. The footsteps stopped at the break room door.
Fear is an amazing thing. It coursed through me then, but all of my pain was gone. I felt totally alive—if only because death was so close.
“I have a gun,” Whitey said. “I took it from one of the policemen outside. I do not think he will mind, since he is currently on fire. Actually, I’m sure he’s nothing but ashes by now. What is the American saying? Ashes to ashes, dust to dust? Somewhat appropriate, don’t you think?”
I shivered. The sweat on my arms and head felt ice cold. Beside me, Sondra trembled. She let go of my fingers and put her hands over her belly.
“In any case,” Whitey continued, “he won’t be needing the gun anymore. It’s a very nice weapon. Very powerful. Of course, it won’t do much to me, but on the two of you, I think the results will be quite spectacular.”
He stepped into the break room. I peered through the space between the machines. I couldn’t see all of him, but what I did see wasn’t very pretty. His bloodstained clothes were burned and tattered. Entire chunks of flesh were missing from his torso, limbs, and face. The tip of his nose was gone and one of his fingers had been severed. Both were probably lying out in the parking lot somewhere, just waiting for a bird to swoop down and pluck them up. One of his eyes was red. A hole in Whitey’s belly provided a gruesome kaleidoscope of colors—purple and white and black and more red. Lots and lots of red.
Whitey clutched a police revolver in his right hand, tapping it aimlessly against his hip. He stopped beside one of the tables and pulled out a rickety chair. The legs squeaked on the tiles, and the chair creaked as he eased into it. He crossed one leg over the other and pointed the handgun at the vending machines. I wondered if he could see our feet, but then decided that it didn’t really matter. There was no doubt he knew exactly where we were hiding, or at least had a close proximity, just like before.
I heard the distant wail of sirens again. Another wave of cops and emergency personnel were probably descending on our location. This time they’d take no chances. They would hit this building with everything they had. Problem was, Sondra and I would most likely be dead before then.
Of course, judging by the amount of smoke that was beginning to drift into the break room, we’d all burn to death first.
“So,” Whitey said, “I have seen what this weapon does on flesh. I wonder what it can do with these machines?”
He pointed the pistol at the first vending machine and pulled the trigger. Sondra’s scream was lost beneath the report. The bullet slammed into the vending machine, rocking it back and forth, and then ploughed through the back, embedding itself in the wall just a few feet from where we stood. The vending machine wobbled a few more times and then was still.
They’re not bolted to the floor, I thought. The fucking things are sitting here loose!
And that was when I came up with a plan. It wasn’t a good plan. In fact, it probably wouldn’t work. But it was certainly better than the alternative.
“Hmmm.” Whitey stood up and walked towards us. “That was interesting, wasn’t it? Judging from the sound—and Sondra’s scream—the bullet must have traveled completely through the machine. Amazing, really. I wonder what the effect would be at point blank range?”
He placed the barrel of the handgun against the second vending machine’s glass front. Then he pulled the trigger again. The results were the same as the first, but the damage to this machine was much more severe. The unit rocked back and forth, just like the other had done. This time, Sondra and I both screamed. Sondra began pleading with him in Russian, presumably begging for our lives. Instead of answering her, Whitey just laughed.
“I have many bullets left.” Whitey now stood directly in front of our soda machine. He placed the gun against it. His breathing was harsh and ragged. I wondered how much of his lungs were left.
“We have seen what one bullet does to these machines. I wonder what would happen if I used all of my bullets? Are you ready to find out?”
“Please!” Sondra switched to English. “Please Whitey, do not kill us. Is way we can work this out. I know things. I can tell you. Valentin and Alimzhan have been stealing money from you. Cherney and Ludwig deal drugs on side, and not give you cut. Buy them from black man on Queen Street. You see no money from this.”
“You are much better at sucking dick than you are at begging, whore. I am completely aware of everything that transpires within my organization. Valentin and Alimzhan have already been dealt with. Cherney and Ludwig have children at home. If they need extra money, why do I care if they take a second job? As long as it doesn’t impact me, then I am all for it.”
“But you have killed others for this…”
“And perhaps I will kill Cherney and Ludwig, as well. Perhaps I will have them shot in the head—order their corpses to be disposed of in LeHorn’s Hollow or some other suitable place. But that is not your concern, Sondra. You should be worried about the fact that I’m going to kill you first.”
“We can work something out,” Sondra repeated. “Please. I tell you anything you want to know. The building is on fire, Whitey. You will burn with us.”
“The smoke is from the burning police cars outside, and there is nothing to work out. I’m going to kill you both, and then I am going to slice open your belly with a piece of sharp metal from this very machine. I will cut out our child and rip it open with my teeth.”
I shuddered, grinding my teeth together and re-opening the wound in my mouth. The taste of blood made my stomach sick.
“Ah,” Whitey sighed. “There is nothing quite like it in the world. To sink your teeth into soft flesh, to ingest what you need, feel it working inside of you, the power it brings coursing through your veins. It is too bad you are not one of us, Mr. Gibson. You have fought well today. Your valor is to be commended.”