by J. N. Chaney
Tiny barked as we found temporary cover inside my bedroom. “It’s okay, buddy,” I said, giving him a quick pat on the head. Then I raced over to the closet and opened the left-hand door.
“Looking for something more comfortable?” Rachel said.
“You might say that,” I replied, shoving the hangers of clothes aside and revealing a gun safe. I punched in my pass code and pulled down on the lever. The vault door opened and the LEDs powered on.
“Here,” I said, grabbing a shotgun and tossing it to Rachel. “It’s loaded and all you…”
Rachel racked the first shell, placed the weapon’s stock in her shoulder, and flicked off the safety.
“Or that,” I said. Then I tossed her a bandolier of extra shells. She slipped it over her head and onto one shoulder, and then gave me a thumbs-up.
For myself, I grabbed a semi-automatic AM26 and two extra magazines. I charged the weapon and put the sling around my head. “You ready?”
“Hells, yeah,” she replied. My kind of woman.
Just then, the gunfire stopped. Either they were about the blow the bomb, or…
“They’re coming in to clear the house,” she said. My thoughts exactly.
I heard footsteps crunch through rubble at front door. Rachel dove out of the bedroom, rolled across the living room floor, and fired rounds into the chest of the first intruder. The man flew backward and knocked into the second assailant standing just inside the doorway. The two fell backward, but not before a third combatant stepped past both of them and aimed at Rachel. She’d racked a third round but wasn’t going to make it in time.
I stepped in front of the third man, my barrel pointed at his chest. His eyes widened in surprise as I fired four rounds into him, jerking him backward with each hit. Tiny charged forward as the man’s body hit the ground, and tore into the man’s throat, ripping and snarling.
The second man recovered from being struck by the first and raised his weapon at me. I trained my sights on him when Rachel fired point blank into the right side of his face. Not much remained of his head, but she still fired a second round. Damn, lady.
With three assailants down, I wondered how many more might be out there. That was when the back door crashed open and boots crunched through glass and concrete. Rachel dove behind the dining room table and flipped it over while Tiny and I took cover behind a hallway leading into the bathroom.
Bullets chewed along the railing over my head while more rounds splintered Rachel’s table. When the barrage ceased, Rachel and I popped up in unison: two men faced us but were both changing out their magazines at the same time. Rookie mistake—one they’d never make again. I fired at the man on the left, drilling his upper chest and neck with half a dozen rounds, while Rachel blew the man on the right into the fridge and then the counter. Blood splattered on the white subway tile backsplash. That was going to be a pain to get out.
We waited for a three count while Tiny investigated the bodies. When no one else came in, we moved back into the living room and toward the front door.
“We’ve got to make a run for the stairs,” I said.
“I thought you swore you’d never take another flight again.”
“Very funny.”
“Let me guess. It’s elevators you hate now?”
Damn, she was good.
“Let’s just get the hells—”
A huge hole exploded in the wall between us. We dropped to the floor, covering our heads. I glanced up at the hole.
“Sniper!” I yelled.
“Infrared,” Rachel added. Based on the shot’s perfect placement in between the combined mass of our bodies, I’d say she was spot on.
“Kitchen!” I yelled. We moved as one, Tiny’s nails skittering along the floor, and rounded back into the kitchen just as another massive round tore through the front wall and split the dining room table in half. Bits of wood peppered us as we made for the back door yet again. Only this time, no more shots prevented us from exiting.
“Now what?” Rachel asked, searching the foliage for any more uninvited guests.
“We can go around and break into Mrs. Vickers’s back—”
Gun shots came from Mrs. Vickers’s residence. I saw numerous flashes of light explode through the first floor windows. “Son of a bitch!” I yelled, fearing the worst for the poor old woman. But there was no time to grieve: more men were moving through her home to flank us. Then I heard more footsteps inside my living room.
I reached my rifle around inside the doorway and fired three rounds in an attempt to force the enemy to the ground. They responded with shots of their own, penetrating my fridge and blowing ice out the top. Someone is gonna pay for that.
“We’re running out of options, Flint,” Rachel said as she nodded toward men coming out the back of Mrs. Vickers’s place.
“One left,” I said.
“Oh?”
I looked across my backyard to the edge of the yard.
“Oh, you can’t be serious.”
I laughed nervously. “Oh, ho, ho, I am very serious. Six stories, straight down.”
“I thought you were afraid of heights?” she asked.
“So much, yeah.”
Bullets broke through the back windows, making both me and Rachel duck.
“Then I suppose you have a plan to avoid the sudden stop at the end?” Rachel pointed her shotgun through the broken window and fired. The shot light up the kitchen like a lightning bolt, and at least one man cursed.
“I have a plan,” I said. “At least about sixty feet of one.” I grabbed the garden hose, unscrewed the end from the faucet, and tied the end around a post that supported the upper deck. “Come on!”
I grabbed Rachel’s hand and took off running across the back yard.
“That’s your plan?” Rachel asked, eyeing the other end of the garden hose in my hand.
“You have a better one?” I asked.
“No! But yours isn’t long enough!”
“I haven’t had a complaint yet.”
Gunfire came from inside the kitchen while more shots rang out from Mrs. Vickers’s back porch.
I heard Tiny charge after us, barking as the gun fire grew more concentrated. But every step we took made us a harder target to spot in the fading light. And distance was an under-valued commodity when it came to firearms and bullets.
“Faster!” I yelled, tossing the rifle over my shoulder and wrapping the hose around my forearm. I looked at Rachel who then scooped up Tiny, which was no small task. I reached out and grabbed her, pulling her to my side. Bullets whizzed past our heads and blew chunks of dirt up at our heels.
“Hold on!” I cried out. We took three coordinated steps up the raised flowerbed, onto the short fence, and then atop the outer glass security wall.
“HOLD ON!” I hollered and we leaped into open air. My stomach lurched as I felt the uncontrolled momentum shift of freefall. I squeezed the garden hose, hoping the synthetic weave would hold our combined weight—at least for a few seconds. But the more time slowed down, the more I realized…
This was a stupid plan.
Suddenly, a bright white light filled my vision. Then my hearing went flat as something slammed against my head.
30
“We got another one!” I heard someone yell from far away.
Another what? I thought to myself. I tried to open my eyes, but something covered my eyelids. In fact, it was all over my face too. I tried to wipe it away, but my arms… they were pinned in place, one over my head, the other at my side.
“Don’t move, sir,” said the voice from before. “We’ll get you out of here.”
Out of where? I tried to ask. But my mouth wouldn’t move, and my lungs felt… damn, they were on fire. My chest hurt, and I tried to take a breath but… but couldn’t.
I felt a wave of nausea wash from my feet to my head. I was going to be sick. No… I was going to pass out.
The next time I awoke, it was in a hospital bed. I blinked myself awake
, grateful that my eyelids opened this time. But I was not grateful for how much pain assaulted me over the next few seconds. I groaned, twisting in bed, which then produced more pain.
“He’s awake!” someone said from outside my room. I saw a woman pass by two police officers and race toward me. “Mr. Doe, please don’t move.”
“Gods!” I said, struggling to sit up.
“No, no, you need to stay down, sir. You have been badly injured and need your—”
“Get your hands off me, lady.” But even I could tell my speech was slurred. Something was definitely wrong with me. What had happened?
“Mr. Doe, please—”
“Who the hell is Mr. Doe? That’s not my name.”
“I’m sure it isn’t, but until we figure out who you are, you need to rest.” The nurse reached up and tapped some buttons on a screen. I tried insisting that my name wasn’t Mr. Doe—whoever the hells that was—and that I was…
My name was…
I felt so tired. My eyes were so heavy.
When my eyes opened a third time, my torso was half elevated, resting on a much more comfortable bed in a far different room. For one, the cops were gone. But for another, my view was downright ridiculous. I blinked several times, wondering if perhaps I’d arrived in the afterlife.
Spanning from left to right in front of me was Ti Bier’s cloud floor. Or at least I thought it was Ti Bier. The clouds stretched to the horizon, lit by a sun at high-noon. Then I noticed the glass, tinted a shade of purple, and I could see the seams between the panes. So this wasn’t the afterlife.
I raised my arms, both of which had tubes coming out of them. They slapped together as I tried to force myself to sit up, but my muscles felt weak. A machine stood on either side of my head, just out of the corner of my vision. While I couldn’t fully see them, I could hear them beeping and whirring, no doubt doing something to keep me alive.
A gentle knock echoed off the glass to my left. I turned to see who it was, but I was still groggy. It was a short man in a grey business suit.
“Come in,” I said. My voice sounded raspy.
“Flint, it’s good to see you alive,” said the man.
I blinked a few times until my vision cleared. “Mr. Oragga?”
“Yes, yes.” He smiled. “And it’s still Min to you.”
“What are you doing in my hospital room?”
“Making sure that you’re well taken care of, Flint.”
“You’re… you’re a nurse too?”
The man laughed. “No. I’m still just a businessman. But my nurses have been taking very good care of you.”
“Your nurses?”
“Yes, you’re at my home, Flint.”
I looked around. That was why I had the view off the rim. Of course.
“What… what happened to me? All I remember is…”
Oragga waited for me to finish my sentence, but I was having trouble remembering why I was here.
“There was an assault on your home followed by an explosion,” Oragga finally said.
The memory came flooding back. Rachel had broken into my apartment, we were talking, and then I saw the neutron bomb under the couch, just like the ones that Fabian and Nico had planted in the platform. There was a gun fight, then we leaped off the apartment’s top floor with a garden hose wrapped around my arm.
“Mrs. Vickers… did she…?”
“She perished, I’m afraid.”
I leaned my head back. Godsdammit. The lady had a mouth unfit for a Navy battlecruiser, but she’d never hurt a living thing, so far as I knew.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Oragga added.
“And… Rachel? Tiny? Everyone else?”
“Several others were killed in the blast, I’m afraid. But both Rachel and Tiny will make a full recovery and are also being seen to here in my home.”
A sense of relief mixed with remorse as I struggled to parse the emotions that conflicted with one another in my chest. On one hand, I was elated that my dog had lived, and—while I hardly knew her—I was glad that Rachel had survived too. On the other hand, however, more innocent lives had died in the blast—from a bomb clearly meant for me.
“It was under my damn couch,” I said after a minute.
“The bomb?” Oragga asked.
I nodded. “It was just like the ones the thieves used in your building. Some sort of customized neutron bomb.”
“That would explain the amount of damage, then,” he replied, touching his chin with a finger. “Did you happen to get a good look at any of your assailants?”
“Not really,” I said, shaking my head but then thinking better of the movement. “They were big, with high-end weapons, dressed in black.” Then I remembered how the two men in the kitchen changed out magazines at the same time, attempting to cover one another. “Though I’m not entirely sure all of them were professionals,” I added.
“Oh?” asked Oragga.
“Some of their efforts weren’t coordinated well.” The more I thought about it, the more I felt like this was the B-team sent to do what the A-team had failed to. “They had all the right weapons, but not enough experience.”
“That’s saying something for a man who escaped on the end of a garden hose.”
“I’m telling you, Min. These guys… they were expendable.”
“Apparently, their boss felt the same way,” Min said. “We found their bodies in the wreckage. No survivors.”
“Who does that?”
“Very powerful people with resources to burn.” Then Oragga pulled his hand down and looked at me. “Rest, Flint. We’ll talk more when you’ve got your strength back.”
“No,” I said, reaching out and grabbing his forearm. But my grip was hardly as strong as I’d wanted it to be. “We talk now.”
“Flint, I hardly think that—”
“Did you do this?”
Oragga froze and then studied my face.
“You’re a powerful person. So I’ll only ask you this once more. Did you do this?”
It might have been two years since I had been a paid detective, but I still had the instincts of one. Those would never leave. Somehow, I sensed both Oragga and I knew that the way he answered this question of mine would determine how the rest of the conversation went.
“No,” he said. “That wasn’t me. And that will never be me.”
That was all he said. But, somehow, I believed him.
“Then who was it?” I asked. “The people who you alluded to? The ones you said were coming?”
Oragga sighed. “I’m afraid so. And I’m sorry this happened to you, Flint. However, I can assure you, it will never happen again.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because, Flint,” he said, placing a hand on my arm, “you’re dead.”
“I’m what?” I tried sitting up, confusion washing through my brain.
“As far as Sellion City is concerned, as well as the hospital, and every member of the populace, you died in a tragic explosion that ripped your building apart.”
“I did?” I was still unable to follow his line of thinking. Whatever medication I was on, it was strong. And I wasn’t complaining—I just wanted to be able to think more clearly. Then I remembered the nurse in the hospital room, the one before this one.
“Is that why the nurse called me Mr. Doe?”
“John Doe,” Oragga said with a nod. “Yes.”
“But why?”
“To keep you safe. And from now on, you will be.”
“Safe?”
“If the enemy thinks they killed you, then they have no reason to come after you or your family ever again.”
“So you… you killed me.”
“In a word, yes.” The short man smiled jovially, clearly proud of his own handiwork. I wasn’t sure I felt so elated. “You can thank me later.”
“I’m not sure I want to thank you at all.”
“That’s fine too.”
Just then, a splitting pain ripped
through my head, causing me to shut my eyes. “Gods!” When I finally opened them, I saw Oragga typing something on a screen. A moment later, I heard a soft chime and something cool went up my left arm. In seconds, the pain in my head subsided.
“Did you… do that?” I asked.
He nodded. “My medical technology is, as you know from my office, far more advanced than anything the hospitals have. Though we are working on getting them up to date. So much red tape.” Oragga wrinkled his nose. “It’s almost like the administrators want the patients to suffer more. I will never understand it.”
The man seemed genuinely interested in my care, and I appreciated that. But I still didn’t know if I could trust him. This all… it felt like…
“It feels like you’re just trying to get me to accept your offer.”
Oragga laughed so loudly, it shocked me. “My good man!” he exclaimed. “For one thing, I would never go to such deplorable lengths to convince someone of something I wanted them to do. But furthermore, you already gave me your answer, and the will of others is one thing I will never violate.”
“So you didn’t try blowing me up?”
“If you ask me that again, I’m going to have you sedated,” He smiled.
“No, no,” I said, waving him off. “I’m good, I’m good.”
“Very well.”
“Then you don’t want me to take the job?”
“Flint, of course I want you to accept my invitation, but as I said, you already gave me your reply. What I have done now is merely ensure that no matter what you choose to do next, you will be able to do so in relative anonymity. I might suggest leaving Sellion City unless you don’t mind facial reconstructive surgery. But other than that, I will make sure you have a new identity. The only thing you’ll have to worry about is not angering your neighbors or getting in too many bar fights.”
“There is a tendency for that, yeah. And Tiny doesn’t exactly know how to control his piss either.” My heart panged as I thought of Mrs. Vickers and her orchids.
“Well, if that is all, I’ll leave you be.”
But I couldn’t get Mrs. Vickers out of my head. She’d probably died in her sleep and never felt a thing. But that didn’t matter. She’d been murdered. Several tenants had been, from the sounds of it. And then there were all the hostages who hadn’t made it out of the complex alive.