Terminal

by Brian Keene

  “What the hell happened to you, Carpet Dick? What is this shit?”

  “I-I g-got better. I guess it wasn't as bad as it looked, Sherm. Honest.”

  “Wasn't as bad as it looked? Kelvin shot you in the fucking stomach, John. You've got blood all over your shirt and all over your arms and face. Where the hell is the bullet hole?”

  “Um . . .”

  “You're fucking sitting up and smiling now. What the fuck is this shit?”

  Terrified, John looked to me for help.

  “Tommy?”

  Sherm's head whipped back to me. The business end of the .357 came with it.

  “What the fuck is going on, Tommy? Where's the bullet wound in John's belly? How can he be better? I thought he'd just regained consciousness—not his fucking health.”

  “I don't know, man. I honestly don't—”

  “Don't bullshit me, goddamn it! I want to know what the hell happened here. Gunshot wounds just don't magically disappear. What the fuck is going on?”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

  “Excuse me,” Roy interrupted quietly, “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if I overheard correctly, you gave the police a fifteen-minute ultimatum. I'd just like to point out that the time has passed. Perhaps you should call them?”

  Sheila was holding her breath, staring at me with wide, frightened eyes. The others were silent too. Then, in that horrible stillness, I heard something that stopped me cold—the sound of broken glass crunching underfoot in the lobby. A tentative, stealthy footstep. Oscar twitched and I thought that maybe he'd heard it too. A second later I heard another. Before Sherm could notice, Martha spoke.

  “Ye are of your father the devil, and the works of your father ye will do.” She tottered to her feet, weak but determined.

  “What the hell is your problem now, bitch?”

  “Saint John, chapter eight, verse forty-four. You are legion and your time has come. Your father awaits you. You will know hell for all eternity.”

  “Legion, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  Sherm moved slowly, spoke calmly—then the darkness inside of him finally erupted. The monsters broke free.

  “Fuck this.”

  He pulled the trigger, and the top of Martha's head disappeared from the nose up, splattering wetly onto the wall behind her. And onto the ceiling. And onto the floor. And onto Roy. She rocked back and forth on her feet. Her lips moved, with nothing but red above them.

  “Oh my . . .”

  She swayed one more time, then crumpled to the floor.

  The screams and confusion were instantaneous. Sharon and Kim and Oscar shrieked at the top of their lungs. Roy cried out that he was blind, not comprehending that it was the inside of Martha's head that covered his eyes. Benjy cringed against his mother, screaming for it to be over, crying that he couldn't help the old lady; that she'd already gone to meet Jesus. John yelled too—but I couldn't understand what he said. My ears were focused on the sounds from the lobby. There were more of them. Coming closer. Coming fast. Coming hard. The sound of booted feet and harsh, barking voices. There was more breaking glass, too, as windows were shattered by tear gas grenades.

  Smoke still pouring from his barrel, Sherm spun around again and pointed the gun at me.

  “Fuck all of this,” he growled. “Fuck it all.”

  I aimed with the .38, but before I could squeeze the trigger, Dugan brushed past me. Sherm shot him in the chest. Dugan hunched over, his eyes squinted shut in pain, but he refused to drop. Stumbling forward, he slammed into Sherm just as Sherm fired again. The explosion was muffled at point-blank range. The back of his shirt turned red. Shuddering, Dugan cried out. He pressed forward, and managed to knock Sherm to the ground, pinning him beneath his wounded and bleeding body.

  Tear gas began to flood the vault. My eyes felt like they were on fire, and the acrid smell stopped my lungs when I breathed it in.

  “Go,” Dugan roared at us. “Sharon, get the hell out of here. Roy, get them out.”

  “I'm not leaving you,” Sharon cried, but the others were heeding his words. Kim and Oscar sprinted past me while I stood gasping, trying to catch my breath. Screaming, they ran out the door.

  “Wait,” I shouted, then broke into a coughing fit. Between the tear gas and the cancer, I couldn't breathe.

  “Tommy, they're getting away.” His eyes tearing, John started after them in confusion, then took a step back toward Sherm, who struggled to free himself from Dugan's crushing weight. Dugan clutched his wrist, slamming it again and again onto the floor, attempting to knock the pistol from his grip.

  In the hall, stern voices shouted “Police officers! Down! Get down!”

  “Tommy,” John hollered again, his voice frantic.

  I couldn't answer him. The cough I'd been battling to contain rattled my chest. My lungs and throat exploded, filled with raw, red, unbearable pain. I sank to my knees, praying for it to end. Deep inside me, something moved, dislodging itself from my body. As it tore free, long ropy strands of bloody saliva dripped from my lips. The loose piece pushed upward, then stopped. Gasping for breath, I found that I couldn't breathe. I was choking on a piece of myself.

  Half-blind from the tear gas, John ran past me, intent on chasing down Kim and Oscar. He still had my pistol in his hand. I tried to cry out, tried to warn him not to go outside, that the police were there, but I just choked. My ears started to ring, and my heart and head were pounding—craving oxygen and threatening to burst. Dropping my pistol, I waved an arm at him but he never saw me.

  “Police! Drop your weapon and get on the ground, now!”

  He froze in the doorway and the roar of rifles shook the vault. A second later, I heard his body hit the floor. Inside my head, I screamed his name.

  “T-tommy . . .” John wheezed.

  The ringing in my ears grew louder. White spots appeared at the edges of my vision.

  “Mr. Tommy,” Benjy cried out.

  Weakly, I tried to wave him away, tell him to stay down. I sank lower, thrashing and clawing at the floor, trying to breathe.

  “Benjy,” Sheila screeched, her face red from the gas, “get back here!”

  “He's dying, Mommy. Jesus is coming for him.”

  Jesus is coming and boy is he pissed, I thought. Later my niggaz. Peace out. I'm going out to find myself now . . .

  With one hand still clutching Sherm's wrist, Dugan grabbed his face and slammed his head against the floor. Enraged, Sherm bellowed in pain and managed to latch on to Dugan's ear with his teeth. He tore his head away, taking a chunk of flesh with it. Dugan screamed. Their blood covered each other. Struggling, Sherm rolled him over and landed on top. Straddling the older man, Sherm finally ripped his pistol hand free and raised the gun.

  Then my vision blurred completely. I couldn't breathe, couldn't see, couldn't smell. But I could still hear. I heard voices. Sherm and Dugan. The cops. The hostages. And other voices too. Squeaky voices, sharp and cruel. They were coming closer.

  Suddenly, there were hands on me, tiny hands. I rolled over and my vision came back. Benjy stared down at me, his eyes filled with fear and sadness.

  “I'm sorry, Mr. Tommy. Mr. Dugan made me do it. He made me untie him so he could get your gun. I didn't want to. I tried to tell them you were a nice man but they wouldn't believe me. They said it was the only way we could get out.”

  My constricting throat bulged as I struggled to answer him.

  “Lie still, Mr. Tommy. Lie still. We have to hurry.”

  I felt his fingers wrap around my throat. They were warm—so warm. The panic and fear vanished, as a wave of calm washed over me. The shouts, the struggles, the gunshots and voices—all were distant now, muted. Even Benjy's voice seemed to come down a long tunnel. The only thing I could hear clearly were those other voices, the ones I couldn't see. I knew what they belonged to, and I was afraid.

  Then, suddenly, I could breathe again and the voices vanished. The warmth continued to spr
ead through my body, flowing like water. I could feel it burrowing, hunting out the cancer cells and destroying them as it went. It flowed through my head and my chest, my lungs and my throat. The tightness in my jaw disappeared and my throat was soothed. The persistent, crippling headache that I'd lived with for the past few months vanished. The warmth filled me, making me whole again.

  And there was a light . . .

  “You're all better, Mr. Tommy.”

  Looking down at me from above, with the fluorescent lights glowing over his head, he looked very much like an angel.

  I was all better. I knew it instinctively, deep down inside. The cancer was gone, just like John's gunshot wound and Roy's heart attack and Sandy the dog and all the others that Benjy had helped in life.

  My cancer had been growing. Growing at an alarming rate. I'd been dying. And now I wasn't anymore. That meant I would have to face the music, face the consequences of what had happened since the moment I'd decided to rob the bank. All the lies and deceit. All the pain this would cause Michelle and T. J.—and the pain I'd caused these poor people around us. John. Keith. Martha. Lucas. Mac Davis. Even Kelvin. So many people. So much pain. So much death. Dead because of me. They'd done nothing to deserve it. They'd just been living their lives. And because of me they were gone. The weight of it all crushed down on me.

  “I'm sorry,” I mouthed to Benjy, and he smiled.

  “It's okay, Mr. Tommy.”

  Then Benjy lifted his hands and the sounds came rushing back. There was a gunshot; close enough to rattle my teeth. Sherm succeeded in ramming his pistol under Dugan's chin and pulled the trigger.

  Sharon's wail filled my ears. She clawed at her face in complete despair while Roy and Sheila cowered against the wall.

  Throwing Benjy beneath me, I crouched over his body, sheltering him with my own, and raised the .38. Sherm pushed himself up from Dugan's bloodied remains and clambered to his feet. He was unsteady, shaking his head and working his jaw back and forth. Snot and blood ran down his face.

  “Get out of my head,” he screamed.

  I got the feeling he wasn't talking to any of us.

  “Sherm? Put the gun down, Sherm.”

  His watering eyes focused, and he pointed the gun at Benjy and me.

  “Ain't this a bitch? What the fuck are you doing, Tommy? Using the kid as a human shield? You think I won't shoot you if you got that little brat with you? You think five-oh won't kill you? You're wrong, bro. Wrong on both fucking counts.”

  “Attention,” a deep voice yelled from outside, “you inside the vault. Throw down your weapons and come out slowly with your hands on top of your heads.”

  “It's over, dog. The cops are in the building. They're right outside the door. Nothing else we can do. Let them go. Nobody else is going to die,” I pleaded with Sherm.

  “Fuck that. It ain't over till I say it's over.”

  “This is your last warning,” the cops shouted. “Throw down your weapons, place your hands on your heads, and come out of the vault slowly. We will not tell you again.”

  “You gonna shoot me, Sherm? You gonna shoot the kid?”

  “Life's a bitch, then you die, Tommy. Remember?”

  I was speechless.

  “Come on, Tommy! Isn't that what we said? Life's a bitch, then we die, so why not grab it by the horns? You remember that shit? Well, I got to tell you, bro—this is definitely the most fun I've had since I left Portland. Today was a good day.”

  “Sherm—”

  “A good day to die.”

  “Sherm—don't!”

  “Get ready, Tommy. Here comes the boom.”

  He grinned that trademark grin, and for the first time in my life, I saw beyond the party guy with the hard-as-nails exterior, past the broken little boy that all the girls wanted to fix. It was like I'd been peeking at him through a window all this time, and at that moment, somebody opened the curtains, giving me a clearer view. Sherm's grin was a glimpse inside his head, and there were monsters inside. There were lots of monsters.

  And then the grin grew wider, stretching the skin on his face, turning into a leer. Broader still, and Sherm looked past me, his eyes widening in surprise. He stood immobile, except for that expanding grin, a smile that split his face in half. His trigger finger tightened.

  I pulled my trigger first. Sherm squeezed his a second later.

  Everything exploded.

  The cops behind us shouted something, but it was lost beneath the roar of Sherm's gun, and the answering volley of their own. Terrified, Benjy screamed, and Sheila reached toward us in horror. She shrieked without sound. Something punched me in the back, right in the kidney—a cop's boot maybe, or a riot club. All of a sudden I was having trouble breathing again.

  The guns roared again, and Sherm's grin split impossibly wide, wider than his face. Teeth and flesh and strands of gristle flew as the smile ripped his head apart. It vanished in a cloud of fine, red mist, but I swear that for a second, I could see the grin superimposed over the spray. The cloud grinned. His body stood there, refusing to fall, still clutching the pistol, while the gunshots echoed around the vault. When his body finally toppled over, I was sure that I could see his grin plastered on the wall behind it.

  Sherm was gone, but that was okay, because Benjy was fine. Benjy was safe. Benjy was quiet. He wasn't crying anymore. I tried to tell Sheila to stop screaming, tried to tell her that he was okay, that he was underneath me, but I couldn't breathe, let alone talk. Something sharp was poking me in the side, but I didn't know what it was. The room was suddenly getting cold.

  A shadow fell over us and a black boot stomped down on my hand. I screamed as the bones in my wrist and fingers shattered. The pistol slipped from my grasp. Roy shouted at somebody to be gentle with me, but his pleas were ignored. Sharon slumped over Dugan's body, sobbing uncontrollably, her hands still duct-taped behind her back. Sheila had freed her hands and clawed at me, shrieking Benjy's name over and over again. Once more I tried to soothe her, but several pairs of rough hands rolled me over. I gasped, as the sharp thing pressed into me again, and that was when I realized that I was bleeding. There was a lot of blood.

  But not all of it was mine.

  And then I saw why Benjy was so quiet and still and why Sheila was screaming.

  Sherm's grin smiled at me from the bloodstain on the wall.

  I started to black out then. The room started spinning. I was dimly aware that I'd thrown up again. Sheila slapped and clawed at my face, and one of the cops pulled her back.

  Faces stared down at me. Cop faces. They weren't friendly.

  Blood trickled from my mouth as I whispered to them.

  “I'm going out to find myself . . .”

  “Just lie still, you piece of shit. Paramedics are on their way, though I don't know why we should save a scumbag like you.”

  “If I should get here before I return,” I continued, “please hold me until I get back . . .”

  “What did he say?”

  I opened my mouth to repeat it and a scream tumbled out instead. I screamed for a long time and finally something inside my throat ripped.

  Then I shut my eyes.

  Let me have another cigarette.

  Thanks. Contrary to what you might have heard, these things aren't like gold in here. This is a nonsmoking facility. Even the guards aren't allowed to smoke. So no, cigarettes aren't gold. They're the fucking Holy Grail.

  When it was all over, the cops found Lucas in the bathroom and Keith in his office. Sherm had wracked up quite the body count: Keith, Lucas, Mac Davis, Kelvin, Martha, and Dugan. Six counts of murder. But it didn't stop there.

  So what else do you want to know? I've pretty much told you everything. I said it before and I'll say it again. Life's a bitch, then you die. That's my philosophy in a nutshell, and one that's been reinforced over and over since that day.

  Except that you don't die. Life's still a bitch, the biggest bitch of all, in fact. But you don't die. It's the others around you t
hat die. The ones you love. The innocent. The ones who didn't deserve it. And that is the biggest bitch of all.

  Jesus didn't get me, and neither did the monster people, and I have no doubt that the voices I heard belonged to them. The cancer didn't kill me either. Benjy saw to that. I still don't know how he did it or what that strange power of his actually was. It could have been God or Satan or something that would have given Fox Mulder from The X-Files a hard-on. Maybe it was magic. Maybe not. All I know is that it was real. I'm living proof. The cancer didn't kill me because Benjy cured the cancer.

  The bullet from the SWAT team's rifle didn't kill me either. I lost a kidney and a lot of blood, and now I've got a scar on my side that looks like a shark bite, but I didn't die. On the emergency room table, when they removed the shrapnel and what was left of my kidney, they found no evidence of the cancer. After Michelle called the cops, my name and face were flashed on the news, my doctor and Casey the pharmacist and even Mr. Anthony Myers, the funeral home director, contacted the authorities and told them what they knew. While I recovered in the hospital (they wanted to make sure I was healthy enough for arraignment), the doctors conferred with my doctor, and checked and double-checked the diagnosis. Final analysis—no traces of the cancer remained in my system. If it hadn't been for my doctor standing by his initial analysis, they'd have probably all thought I made the whole thing up. I think most of them did anyway.

  The bullet that took my kidney also took Benjy's life. It passed right through me and hit him. The police commando who fired the shot couldn't see him beneath me in the confusion. All he saw was my gun. There was a hearing, and a panel determined that the shooting was justified and the officer acted correctly. The media had a field day with it, and the officer ended up quitting the force anyway.

  I saw on the news that Sheila was going to sue the police department over it, but before that ever happened, she was dead. She committed suicide one month after the robbery. Witnesses said she walked in front of a bus during rush hour. Just stepped right off the curb. The bus driver couldn't stop in time. According to the papers, she'd been distraught over the death of her son.