Bruiser dragged me back into the hallway, and I realized Mulrooni was right.
I did suck at life. But I wouldn’t for much longer.
Not because I had some grand plan to suddenly improve myself. But because, within the next few minutes, my life was going to end.
As soon as we got out into the hallway and passed the guard watching the door, I made my move.
I went completely limp.
The cardinal rule of abduction is; if someone wants to take you someplace to do terrible things to you, resist. Fighting makes sense in certain situations, but it’s much easier to push or pull someone on their feet, than it is to drag dead weight.
At least, that was my belief up until this very moment. Unfortunately, Bruiser was strong enough to dead-lift a small building. Pulling my hundred and eighty pounds down a hall was no big thing.
“Seriously?” he said, glancing back at me. “Show a little dignity, man.”
Dignity? I once shit the bed in my sleep, while booked in the honeymoon suite at the Four Seasons, because I bought coke from some street pusher who cut it with laxatives. You tend to give up on dignity after something like that.
He pulled me through a door at the end of the hall, and toward a down staircase.
Getting dragged down stairs wasn’t on my to-do list. This ride was over. Time to act.
I pressed my knee up to my chest, getting my hand on my boot heel, flipping it to the side and removing the Seecamp.
The slang term for small firearms was mouse gun, for obvious reasons. The weapon fired .25 rounds, which were less than two centimeters in length, and the bullets themselves were only 50 grains, which equaled about three grams of lead projective. Which was a joke compared to my .45, which fired 250 grain bullets.
The Seecamp had no sights, and I couldn’t hit shit with it beyond a meter, but it was the best up-close weapon that I could find on the black market and still be able to conceal in my boot. Tiny as it was, it still had enough punch to penetrate a skull. I aimed at the back of Bruiser’s head and squeezed the trigger—
—missing.
He immediately ducked, jerking me forward at the same time, sending me face-first toward those stairs I’d been dreading. I squeezed off a second round, aiming for his mid-section, unsure if I hit him because he didn’t react at all. With a normal person, the Seecamp had the stopping power of a slingshot. With Bruiser, it probably had all the impact of a bee sting.
I fired again, but by then I was going ass-over-head down the stairs, so the bullet went somewhere other than my target. Then my world became a bad carnival ride, like Tilt-A-Whirl filled with bricks, and I rolled down half a dozen steps, skidded on my face down a half dozen more, and wound up lying on my side on the platform between flights, struggling to bring focus back to an unfocused world.
I managed to have a quick, fragmented thought—I have a gun, he’ll run away—and then noticed a blurry size 15 shoe being lifted over my head.
Somehow I’d managed to hold onto the gun, and I shot three times, fast as I could, at the impossibly huge rubber sole of the shoe.
I couldn’t be sure with the gunshots ringing in my ears, but I thought I heard a baritone scream. The foot didn’t crush my face, and instead fell away and I squeezed the trigger two more times at the teetering giant. I hit him in the shoulder, then clicked on an empty mag.
Without getting any sort of bearing on my location, I pushed off the stairs with my feet and careened down another flight, sledding on my back for the first few, then catching my shoulder and doing a backward somersault.
I landed, hard, on my ass, my head slamming into a wall.
A flight above me, two double-vision Bruisers began to hobble down toward me. I got a foot under me, tried to stand up, fell, then succeeded on my second attempt and made it to a steel door at the bottom of the stairwell.
Pushing it open, I saw it led to a maintenance hall, concrete floors and unfinished ceilings, lit by hanging fluorescent lamps every few meters. I took a step forward, fell onto my hands and knees, blood spattering the cement. My body started to shout out pain points; my nose, my elbow, my ribs, my chin. My nose hurt the most. I felt my face, encountering hot, wet blood.
Noise, behind me. A giant coming down the stairs. I pushed the door closed, searching for a lock that wasn’t there. But there was a crack at the bottom between the floor and the threshold. I jammed the hot Seecamp into the space, a makeshift doorstop, and gave it a kick to drive it home just as Bruiser’s bulk slammed into it.
The door rattled and budged six inches, but the Seecamp was a tough little weapon and its metal frame held together.
Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said about the concrete floor. On Bruiser’s second shoulder butt, the door opened two feet, the Seecamp digging a trench into the cement.
I got to my feet and headed down the hall, tripping because I’d left my boot heel hinge open. I twisted it back into place and got up just as Bruiser burst into the hallway.
He had two tiny blood stains on his shirt, one in the shoulder and one in the belly. His foot was also bleeding.
He looked appropriately pissed.
“You ain’t no skinhead,” he said. “You’re a little bitch boy. I was gonna kill you quick, out of respect for your brother. But now I’m going to rip your face off and make you choke on it. How do you like that?”
“I don’t like it,” I said honestly.
He limped toward me. I judged the lamp above my head, figured it hung about sixteen inches higher than I could reach. I jumped for it, fear giving my vertical almost Jordan-like air time, and managed to grab the end of the fixture. Grabbing it hard, my weight pulled it down and I smashed it onto Bruiser’s head.
Then I kicked him the one place where no men had any muscles.
As he bent forward, I punched him in the jaw. I’d punched a few guys in my day. This was more like punching a metal Dumpster.
He swung a lazy backhand that knocked me into the wall. I’d never been hit by a car, but I could imagine that’s what it felt like. I ate the floor, falling into shards of broken fluorescent bulbs.
Some switch inside of me flipped, and took my humanity with it. I was an empty cup.
Then the cup filled. With rage.
High on cocaine, adrenaline, and complete disregard for my own body, I made two fists and punched the glass, embedding shards in my knuckles. Then I twisted onto my feet and put up my dukes.
“Want to go?!” I roared, spittle flecking from my mouth. “Let’s go!”
I jabbed him in the cheek with my right, shredding it with the glass, then shuffled and hit him with the left.
Pop. Shuffle. Pop-pop. Shuffle.
He swung. I ducked. Gave him some chin music.
Pop.
Pop-pop.
Solid right to the eye.
Then another car hit me, and the next thing I knew I was on my back, counting the constellations swirling around overhead.
I jerked to a sitting position, looked at my hands.
They were a mess, like I’d stuck them in a garbage disposal. But Bruiser’s face was even worse. It resembled an undercooked lasagna.
He swiped at air, the blood in his eyes making him blind. I should have taken that moment to kill him while he was temporarily incapacitated. But killing this guy bare handed wouldn’t be easy. So I did what every final survivor in a horror movie did; I ran away.
The hallway took me around a corner, to a door with another staircase. I climbed them two at a time, the pain in my hands really starting to kick up, and then pushed through a door and found myself out on the boat deck.
Movement, to my left.
A man with a gun?
No, it was just a man, talking on his phone, but I’d already committed and was vaulting over the edge of the boat into the stinky, murky, fetid waters of the Fox River.
The river resisted, slapping and stinging my body before letting me in. I clawed through the brownish water, eyes stinging, the swirls and
eddies pushing at me while sucking away my body heat. When I broke the surface I was already several meters away from the boat, being carried away at a good clip.
You can’t fight current, so instead of wasting energy trying to, I swam in a shallow diagonal, heading for shore, letting the river guide me. After a few minutes of effort, I reached the shore, grasping onto the rocks lining the riverbank, shaking uncontrollably from cold, pain, fear, exhaustion; you name it, I was shaking from it.
I managed to mudskipper my way up to dry, dry land, into the empty parking lot of some abandoned factory, limping like a muck-and-mire-oozing swamp creature, waxing philosophic about the rule of threes.
A human being could survive three minutes without breathing, three hours without shelter, three days without water, three weeks without food.
I was good on breathing, food, and water. But if I didn’t warm-up fast, I was going to collapse with hypothermia. If no one found me, I’d die outright. If I was found, I’d be taken to the nearest hospital, which is the first place Mulrooni and his goons would look for me, which was another speedy way to French kiss the grim reaper.
It was about sixty degrees outside, the wind wicking away my heat at a torturous rate. I hobbled past the decrepit factory, windows on the first two levels boarded up, the higher-ups broken by vandals or time or both. Mother Nature had reclaimed much of the asphalt in the parking lot, weeds springing up wherever there was even the smallest crack.
I limped onto the street, shivering so bad I could hear my own teeth clack together. A car approached, then sped up to get away from me. I wasn’t sure how far away my truck was, and I was on the other side of the river and had no idea where the nearest bridge was. Maybe I could find a motel, but it was doubtful anyone would rent me a room looking like I’d just killed six people in the Black Lagoon.
I headed in the direction of the Bad Samaritan who’d driven away, and saw a cross in the distance.
A cross on the spire of a church.
That’s what I needed. Not religion; God and I had parted ways long before I’d been blessed with cancer. But churches were magnets for guilty people, and one tried-and-true way to ease guilt was charity.
As expected, when I entered the church parking lot I saw a metal Dumpster-looking bin in the corner, where parishioners could donate clothing. I opened the metal sliding door and pawed through the crap nobody wanted. I quickly found an old wool blanket, which I cocooned myself in as I searched. It only took about ten minutes for me to put an ensemble together. Nylon swimming trunks with the white webbing inside, husky jeans, a Backstreet Boys t-shirt, a hoodie with a ripped sleeve, four mismatched socks, a holey watch cap, and a pea coat that smelled like someone had died in it.
I stripped under the blanket, sitting down and prying off one boot with the other, and then the other boot with my toes. My Macy’s suit was trashed, and I piled it in a wet heap. Then I dressed best I could, using the swim trunks as underwear, putting on the shirt, the hoodie, the pants, the jacket. I couldn’t work the zippers, not with my hands all cut up and nearly frozen, so my fly stayed open.
Still shivering, I used an old housedress to wipe some of the mud off my face, a nearly impossible task without a mirror. Then I tugged on the cap. I couldn’t get the socks on, or my boots, so I shoved them into an empty pillowcase.
Reserves dwindling, I limped out of the parking lot and onto the street, the blanket tied around my neck. It billowed behind me in the wind, the world’s worst superhero, and I followed the road until I found a bridge to cross the Fox River.
By the time I got back to my Bronco, my feet were so numb I kept tripping. I stayed on the perimeter of the parking lot, looking for Mulrooni’s men, forcing myself to be patient and not rush in.
My patience lasted all of thirty seconds, and then I beelined for the truck, starting it up with intense difficulty, blasting the heat, and then pawing at the glove compartment to try to get the bag of cocaine out. I couldn’t get my fingers to work the latch, didn’t want to press my luck by sticking around, and got the hell out of Oldridge.
Once on the expressway, I managed to regulate my body temperature, but got really drowsy. A bad sign. My body was shutting down. I kept alert by putting my filthy knuckles into my mouth, trying to bite out the pieces of glass. The pain, and the foul taste, kept me awake long enough to get to the suburb of Schaumburg, where I found a hospital, pulled in the busy ER, and presented myself as an accident victim before pretending to pass out; a ruse that got me seen immediately.
I “came to” in a room in the ward. Actually, it wasn’t a room so much as a curtained-off rectangle, but I got a bed, and IV, and a chubby older nurse who looked like she’d just sucked off a lemon. She helped me get into a hospital gown, covered me in blankets, and began to clean my hands, and I let out a groan worthy of the seventh circle of Dante’s Inferno. I kept groaning, which they tended not to like in the ER because it freaked out the other patients, and then a doctor arrived and gave me some lidocaine shots in the hands and pushed synthetic morphine into my IV, which went a long way toward taking the edge off.
They packed my broken nose, picked out eighteen bits of glass, gave me twenty-nine stitches, wrapped my hands in bandages, injected some broad spectrum antibiotics into my bag, and then began to pester me in earnest for ID and insurance information.
I feigned sleep, and when I was alone and feeling returned to my fingers I quickly dressed, pocketed some extra gauze pads, the bottle of lidocaine, and fished my used syringe out of the plastic biohazard disposal bin. Sticking the IV bag under my armpit, I walked out of the ER, outside to my Bronco, tugged on my socks (but still couldn’t put on my boots), hung the bag from my rearview, and then dug into my glove compartment.
And then I realized my nose was packed with cotton.
I had the lidocaine syringe, but shooting coke required some prep work. I was already stoned on the synthetic morphine, and the drip drip drip was still making magic, so I left the cocaine alone and headed toward Flutesburg, trying to figure out my next move.
So far, Mulrooni had been using restraint with Pasha. But I had a feeling my actions had made the situation worse. To this guy, murder was part of doing business.
Which didn’t make sense to me. If Mulrooni was so quick to snuff me out, why was he playing the extortion game with Dr. Kapoor? If he wanted her out of Flutesburg, why hire those incompetent, incontinent jokers to follow her around, and instead have Bruiser snap her neck?
I was missing something.
Mulrooni mentioned Dr. Griffth. He’s the one who hired me a while back, for the same problem Pasha was having. But he ended our business arrangement, without any explanation.
Maybe I needed to have a chat with the good doctor.
It was dark, and I caught myself passing out at the wheel. I pulled into a Walmart, and did some parking lot triage. Tugged out my IV, tied a knot in the tube, and tucked it under the seat. Pulled the cotton out of my nostrils, and put some coke up there. Then I trudged into the department store bathroom, stood in front of the sink, and used a few dozen paper towels to clean off my face and hair. I still needed a shower, and some new clothes, but I no longer looked like the Swamp Thing. More like a somewhat fresh zombie.
I bought jeans, a t-shirt, socks, some cheap gym shoes with Velcro straps, three rolls of medical tape, and a big jug of drinking water. Then I found a mid-range hotel, and loitered in the hallway for just long enough to catch a handful of kids using their key card to get into the swimming area. Any hotel that had a pool, had showers. I threw my stuff in an empty locker, grabbed a complimentary towel, and turned the water up to scald.
The heat raining down on me was almost as good as drugs.
It took twenty minutes of washing blood and gunk down the drain before the water turned clear again. My hand wrappings fell off, exposing zig-zags of ugly black stitches in jagged swollen cuts. I made two fists, watched blood leak out between the seams. The pain was tolerable.
In the locker r
oom, I dressed in my white trash ensemble, then spent a few minutes wrapping my hands in medical tape, thick, between the knuckles, like a boxer before a fight. I checked myself in the mirror. My eyes were starting to blacken; a side-effect of the broken nose. But I looked pretty damn good, considering all that happened.
Which was my intent. I would go days without caring about my appearance. But now that I was working, I owed it to my client to look presentable.
Okay, that was bullshit.
The real reason I’d spent so much time cleaning myself up was Pasha.
Why? A sense of pride? A need for her approval?
I just got the shit beaten out of me, working for her. Why should I care if I showed up at her place, looking like a beaten dog?
You like her.
I considered the thought. I hadn’t liked anything in so long I forgot what it felt like.
That’s the drugs. She’s out of your league. You’re a loser.
I knew that little voice in my head was mine. But I didn’t have it before Earl showed up. Obviously, my cancer wasn’t talking to me. Had to be the drugs. Or maybe a brain tumor. Maybe Earl had finally migrated into my head, and took root there.
What are you hoping for, Phin? To fall in love? Settle down?
You know you can’t have that.
You want to start a family with this woman? You’d be dead before the kid was even born.
“I don’t want that,” I said, getting back into my Bronco.
You wanted it once. With Annie.
Annie Bloomcamp was a short blonde with light green eyes and a round face and a figure that was too curvy for fashion modeling but filled a bathing suit quite well. I met her at a club I was bouncing at part time, in between problem solving jobs.
You think Annie made you normal?
In a way, she did. So much of my life had revolved around violence. Escaping it. Then, later, looking for it.
You like the violence.
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