“Who was that?” Tom asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Carl replied. “He’s a reporter, too.”
“But why would he shoot at us?”
“Why not?”
“But we’re not his enemy!”
Carl stared at his friend. “He’s from the Tribune. They’re competition. If they’re not with us, they’re not our friends.”
“No reason to shoot at us.”
“It’s a perfect reason to shoot at us. He’s gets the story; we don’t.”
Tom pressed his lips together. “It ain’t right what he did.”
“It’s not about right and wrong.”
The Tribune reporter seemed unaware of them as they closed the gap, forced to weave around the destroyed pillars. The road was like the surface of the Moon, riddled with massive potholes that often left them with no more than a few inches of extra space to get through. They had the city streets memorized, but to their good luck the Tribune reporter wasn’t trying to show off his skill behind the wheel.
“Step on it!” Carl yelled.
“I am!”
“Step on it harder!”
“I can’t go any faster or we could crash!”
Carl clenched his jaw. “Then we crash! We’re not letting this son of a bitch get away!”
Tom hit the gas pedal harder, his hands gripping the wheel firmly as he zigged them through a debris field.
“What do we do when we catch up to him?” he asked.
“Hit the back of his car. That’ll cause him to spin. Box him in after that. Then I’ll get a clear shot.”
“And wreck the front of my baby?”
“You can get it repaired with your first paycheck, or mine.”
As they got closer, their luck remained. The Tribune reporter still had didn’t notice them.
Then Carl realized why; the back window of the car was completely covered with a bulletproof metal sheet.
“Let’s get him off the road,” he said.
Muttering to himself, Tom swung it at the left rear side of the opposing car. The metal frames connected, the momentum of their collision shoving the Tribune reporter away from the water and toward the viaduct. Unable to correct in time, he scarcely brought down the car’s speed before he collided with a large slab of concrete and the exposed metal barbs stabbed into the front tires.
Tom stomped on the brakes, veering them away from the wreck. Before they had even come to a stop, Carl had the door open and leapt out.
“Wait here!” he cried.
He ducked and rolled, lying on the ground as another series of gunshots rang out and struck the Mustang.
Carl stood up and got a clear view of his enemy. The Tribune reporter was obscured by his totaled car, but behind the handgun in his hand was an unmistakably cold gaze.
He aimed and snapped off a shot. The revolver kicked hard. He stepped back, amazed at the firepower in the small gun. He fired again, seeing a spark on the hood of the car as the bullet ricocheted. The close shot intimidated the Tribune reporter, who fired off a final round before tucking his gun away and abandoning his position.
“Come on!” Carl roared. “Let’s hunt the bastard down!”
He heard a moan. Turning, he stared at Tom, who looked back at him with a painful grimace. He was holding his arm, now dripping with blood.
“Guess I should have let you take it for me,” he laughed humorlessly.
“Think you’ll be alright?” Carl asked.
Tom glanced at his arm, nodding as he reached for a first aid kit in the glove compartment. He began clotting the wound as he created a tourniquet with his belt.
“I’ll live,” he said. “Go.”
Glaring ahead, Carl run toward the viaduct at full speed. When he reached it, he leapt into the air and grabbed onto a ledge. Pulling himself up, he climbed another route up to the top, his eyes fixed on the Tribune reporter in the far distance like a wild animal surveying its prey. The instability of the rock scared him.
Thinking of Tom, a powerful indignation overrode all his fears dissipated. Nothing but a sense of vengeance spurred him on as he sprinted after the Tribune reporter.
The top of the viaduct was like an exposed trail leading around the side of a mountain summit, their chosen paths leaving them in danger of falling to their certain death. If the ragged pieces of shattered rock didn’t kill them, the barbs would.
Carl harbored no illusions. Each step might be his last. However, he preferred it that way. It seemed that only when death was near he truly felt alive.
The other man was obviously athletic. His speed did not wane as their chase continued. Fortunately, Carl was equally as fit. The two ran like athletes at the final stretch of a race, each determined to claim victory. A blend of terror and exhilaration rushed through Carl as he leapt for a ledge and over a gap in the viaduct.
His foot slipped, and the edge cut deep into his knee. He cried out in pain, hardly able to move for the first several steps. But he gritted his teeth and pressed on. He heard Fred’s voice in his ear: You cannot hesitate, and when someone tries to kill you that you never give them another chance.
He recovered and jumped again, telling himself that you cannot hesitate and when someone tries to kill you that you never give them another chance. Dipping into a reserve of strength he had never known, he pushed beyond the pain and ran even faster than before.
The Tribune reporter abruptly stopped in his tracks and turned, gun in hand. As he fired Carl ducked behind a slab, leapt up and returned a shot. More bullets zinged past his head. He then heard a wondrous sound of his enemy’s gun clicking emptily.
Dropping the handgun, the Tribune reporter gasped for breath as he ran off. Carl went to pursue but slipped and almost twisted his ankle. He screamed, yet somehow found the will to run at a dead-sprint.
A blood trail ran behind the Tribune reporter. Carl kept chasing the man as he gradually slowed down.
Finally, he finally surrendered to the pain, hardly able to stand. The wound had taken its toll. Unlike Carl, there wasn’t that final reserve of strength. He wasn’t as angry.
Carl approached, his revolver drawn. He stared into the eyes of a man not much older than he.
The reporter took out the report and tossed it at Carl’s feet.
“It’s yours,” he said. “I put up a fair fight, but you earned it.”
Carl picked it up and placed it into his coat. The reporter watched him in the hopes he would leave, but he also realized that it is not about right or wrong. Fred’s voice reverberated once more: You cannot hesitate, and if anyone tries to kill you that you cannot give them any chance.
He aimed at the man’s heart, praying the reporter would throw his hands up and call out in the most pitiful voice imaginable. It would expose the heart of a coward and make the act more tolerable.
But the reporter refused to do it. He had his hands at his sides, his chin lifted high with pride. Carl would have done the same had fate decided he die rather than his enemy.
The bullet entered the reporter’s body just below his chest. He dropped without a sound, falling over the edge and into the briar pit of barbs like a doll discarded into a trash heap. Carl didn’t want to see the result of his work.
But he looked, anyway.
The man’s body was perforated with metal barbs. His eyes were still open, as if looking back at his killer.
A concoction of conflicting emotions brewing inside Carl left him simultaneously intoxicated and sober as he put away his gun and headed back to the Mustang.
He thoughts instantly returned to Tom. Was he still alive?
The thought ate at his conscience like acid. His anger turned inward. Why hadn’t the bastard shot him instead of Tom?
He returned to the car and found Tom moving around in the driver’s seat. He seemed calm, but clearly in agony.
“How’s the arm?” Carl asked.
“I’ll live.”
“We should drive back to the newspaper. They’ll
know where to take you.”
“Is he dead?” Tom asked.
Carl nodded. “We couldn’t let him get away with it. I had to get him.”
“You have the report?”
“Yes. Now isn’t the time to argue.” He nodded at Tom’s arm. “You good enough to drive with it?”
“Sure.”
Tom tried to turn the engine on. After one attempt, he yanked his hand away and swore.
“Maybe you should drive,” he conceded.
They switched seats. Tom sat uncomfortably in the shotgun seat, having never been a passenger in his car. However great his pain, it didn’t keep him silent as he lectured Carl, starting with how to shift gears and accelerated around the corner. Carl endured it until they had driven beyond the viaduct. His mood, already soured by the shooting, caused him to snap.
“I don’t need a side seat driver!” he yelled.
Tom was unruffled by the outburst. “I just want to make sure it’s done right.”
“I know!”
“What’s wrong?”
“I just killed a man, that’s what! And if he hadn’t wasted his bullets, and if I had fallen at the wrong place, it might have been me lying there with a piece of rusted barb sticking through my gut for you to find.”
“Sorry, man.”
“Why does it have to be like this? Why do I have to feel like shit?”
Tom did not speak for a while. Then he said, “You don’t have to do it.”
“No, it’s got to be. I’m going to have to like it or live with it, along with everything else.”
Carl handed the city report over to Tom. The pages had been partially damaged during the chase, but they were all readable. Tom skipped most of the commentary, moving to the end where he found the conclusions the now-deceased city engineer had apparently made.
The reason for the secrecy: the owner of a skyscraper downtown was planning to demolish it and rebuild. But the shock waves from the demolition would be the straw that broke the camel’s back for the viaduct’s remains. The city knew this would happen but saw it as an opportunity to remove sections of the waterline they regarded as undesirable.
Flipping through the pages, he came across the engineer’s handwritten notes. All of them would make good quotes.
“Hell of a first day story,” Tom remarked. “It’s like Norton wanted to start off with a bang.”
“He’s going to get it.”
“Carl?”
“Yeah?”
Tom’s voice was somber as he examined his arm, his hand drawn back with fresh blood on his fingertips.
“I think you might want to drive faster.”
***
Carl didn’t bother to park in the back lot. He pulled up alongside the curb in front of the newspaper building. One of the sentries at the entrance barked at him to move it, but he flipped him off as he got out and moved to Tom’s door.
The sentry insisted he move it. He only backed off when Carl pointed a revolver at him.
The standoff ended as soon as the sentry saw an unconscious Tom in the front passenger seat. His arm was wet with blood; the tourniquet had somehow failed. Unable to do anything from the driver’s seat, Carl had been forced to watch his friend pass out well before they had reached a safe zone.
“Where’s can I take him?” Carl asked the sentry as he lowered his gun.
“I’ll help you.”
Kicking the front doors open, the two of them carried Tom to the receptionist, ordering her to get someone with medical training. She calmly phoned someone and recounted the situation to him, then promptly told Carl to take Tom to a room on the second floor. Tom was both tall and heavy, and they struggled carrying up the stairs. Carl abruptly grew impatient. He took Tom and threw over his shoulder.
Buckling under the added weight on his injured knee, Carl gripped the railing and used it to pull himself up the steps until he got to the next door. Moving through the hallway, he found the specified room. Inside was a man in overalls drinking coffee.
“Help him!” Carl cried.
The man tossed the coffee and told Carl to set him down on the table in the middle of the room. He tore at Tom’s clothes until he found the wound pooled in blood.
“Why didn’t you apply a tourniquet?” the man asked.
“He did, and it stopped working.”
As the man was calling for more help down the hallway, Carl glanced at the clock on the wall.
Two o’ clock.
An hour left.
He looked at Tom’s seemingly lifeless body on the table as more men helped place pressure on the wound. A part of him wanted to swear off the story and remain there with his friend - the hell with the deadline. He had no idea how dire Tom’s condition was.
Death could come to take his closest friend the same way it had his father, depriving him of a chance to say goodbye. He couldn’t endure that twice.
However, he somehow knew Tom’s time had not yet come.
He curtly left the room and headed to the third floor. The newsroom was a frenzied mood. A circle cigarette smoke hung above them like a cloud. The tobacco haze and organized bedlam allowed Carl to slip into the room and reach his desk unnoticed. Taking out the report, he placed it on his desk and plopped out a notepad to write an outline for the story.
Norton appeared by his side. He touched Carl’s shoulder, his voice soft.
“Make this deadline, kid,” he said as he walked away.
The phone rang. It was Usher.
“How are you, kid?” he asked.
“Alive. Your friend isn’t. Another reporter from the Tribune killed him.”
“That’s too bad. He was a good guy.”
“Thanks for your help. Love to talk, but I’m on deadline. We’ll talk later.”
He was about to finish writing his story when Fred passed by his desk and got a whiff of Carl’s clothes. It was hard to miss the sulfuric odor. He paused and studied Carl closely. The young man’s stoic demeanor pleased him.
“Good for you,” he said before returning to his seat.
Sighing, Carl looked over at Tom’s empty desk. A profound loneliness entered him. He thought of the Tribune reporter. Somewhere, his desk was also empty.
Pushing back the carriage return on his typewriter, he pushed all emotions aside and allowed the words to flow from his head to his fingertips as he typed. He still had much to write.
Above him across the room, the clock ticked loudly.
***
Carl was standing beside Tom as he slowly opened his eyes. The color in his friend’s face suggested he had improved. Groaning, Tom tried to rise but fell back into his pillow. Glancing to his right, he eyed the drip running from his arm up into a bag hanging from the bedpost.
“They removed the bullet,” Carl explained. “But they said you lost a lot of blood.”
“Gotcha.”
Pulling a chair from the wall, Carl sat down beside the bed. He couldn’t help smiling.
“How long have I been out?” Tom asked.
“It’s been less than a day.”
“The paper got out?”
“Yeah.”
“What about us?” he asked. “Did we get ours out?”
Without looking away, Carl brought a newspaper out of his coat and slapped it on Tom’s lap. The Cascadian’s prominent masthead featured a minimalist Evergreen tree. At the bottom of the front page, he saw the headline: REPORT SAYS VIADUCT COLLAPSE IMMENIENT.
A frown appeared on Tom’s face as searched for their names.
“Where’s our byline?” he asked.
“We don’t get them.”
“What the hell kind of policy is that?”
“A smart one. No one knows who works here.”
“Nobody’s going to know we wrote it?”
“The right people will know. Word gets around. That’s what Usher told me on the phone. By the way, he hopes you don’t die.”
“Glad to know he cares so much.”
Tom set
down the newspaper on the stand beside his bed. Carl took it and rolled it up and put it into his coat. He rubbed his hands together nervously, his head bent down as he tried to think of what to say.
“Look, I’m sorry about the Mustang,” he said. “I’m paying for the repairs. It’s on me.”
Tom couldn’t pretend to protest. Placing a hand on the bed, Carl leaned forward and cleared his throat.
“Look, I don’t…”
“Don’t what?”
“You’re like a brother to me,” he said so softly it was like a whisper. “I don’t want you to think I don’t give a shit. I got you into this mess.”
“Bullshit,” Tom said as he fought to sit up in the bed. “I make up my own mind. You didn’t make it up for me. I chose to come here. You didn’t make that choice for me.”
“I know. I just didn’t…”
“What? You didn’t want me to think you were using me?”
“Something like that.”
Tom stared at him grimly, then broke out into restrained laughter.
“What’s so funny?” Carl asked.
“You. You like to pretend you’re so tough. And you are. But you’re terrified you aren’t living up to some image you’ve created that somehow doesn’t apply to anyone else.”
“Doesn’t seem right to hold people to ideals they never agreed to.”
“I would have done the same thing you did. The only difference between you and I is that I wouldn’t have doubted my actions afterwards like you are right now.”
“Why not?” Carl asked.
“Simple; I know what I’ve gotten myself into. I don’t think you have yet. Or maybe I’ve come to terms with it.”
Carl wasn’t sure what to make of that remark. Tom wasn’t the most decisive person he knew. At the same time, he didn’t sway once he made up his mind. However, it was surprising to find him embracing their new life so unhesitatingly.
Someone banged on the door. Norton entered before Carl had a chance to get up. Behind him were four of his nameless associates, their faces as stiff as a statue.
Norton gazed down at Carl, then at Tom.
“You were shot?” he asked Tom.
“Yes, sir.”
“While on the job?”
“Yes, sir.”
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