Макс Коллинз - Shoot the Moon (and more)

At four-fifteen my bladder beckoned and I headed for the can. It wasn’t the cubby-hole I’d expected, but was large, with tub, sink, head and even a window. Beyond the window, a fire escape. Good thing to know. The window was locked already, to my relief.

Back to the chair.

Four-twenty.

Outside the door, noise. Footsteps. Careful footsteps, but plainly footsteps, coming down the corridor. I eased over to the bed, placed my hand over Susan Stewart’s mouth and jostled her awake. Her eyes golf-balled and sounds tried to come out of her, but I wouldn’t let them.

“Trouble, maybe,” I whispered.

She began to tremble.

“Easy, Suzie, easy. Please. Stand over at the left of the door. Over in the corner. Quick!”

She rose and padded quietly across the room and molded herself as well as she could into the corner. She was terrified. Almost as terrified as I was.

Key in the lock, moving in the lock, working in the lock.

Door exploded open.

Hal.

Hal stood in the doorway and fired an automatic and fired it and fired it, not aiming at anything, not bothering to look at anyone. He emptied the gun. Then he looked to see if he had hit anyone. Which he hadn’t.

“Nobody’s that stupid, Hal,” I said, “except maybe you.”

I lifted the .32 at him, quivering, my face as tight as a clenched fist, my vision a searing, brilliant red. Squeezed the trigger. The gun belched fire at him and I squeezed some more and it belched more fire at him.

And Hal stood there and grinned at me.

I couldn’t be that bad a shot, good God no, not at six feet!

Yet there Hal stood, grinning, stuffing another clip of bullets into his automatic.

It was then that I realized that there wasn’t anything wrong with my gun, and probably not even with my aim: only the bullets. The bullets I’d been given were blanks.

I noticed too that Suzie was screaming, screaming a strange sort of a scream. Soft, sort of, and to herself. Almost distant.

And Hal was bringing the automatic up toward me and saying, “Now get the hell over against that wall and wait.”

He’s not going to kill us yet, I thought. He’d been aiming after all, aiming to miss us. Just trying to scare hell out of us, I guessed. Which he had. But, Sweet Christ, he was not going to kill us yet! There was time, time!

Time, time if only I wasn’t so God Almightily scared, my stomach such a queasy mass of jelly, but I had to keep my guts from flying apart somehow.

“Hand over the .32, Smith,” Hal told me. Softly, as to a child.

I just looked at him.

“I want that .32, Smith.”

I managed, “Go fuck yourself, Hal.”

Hal showed me his teeth, two rows of hard yellow pencil erasers. He backhanded me. Blood crawled down my chin from a half-mashed upper lip. I fought the tears but some rolled out anyway.

“Cry, you little chickenshit.” Hal spat on the floor. “Now hand me the .32. I’ve got some slugs that’ll work in it okay.” He laughed down low in his throat. The laugh sounded like a foot stepping in mud. “You’ll see how good that .32 works with live bullets.”

In neon letters the word formed in my tiny brain: frame.

“The neighbors, Hal,” I heard myself saying. “What about the neighbors?”

Suzie, who’d stopped screaming sometime ago, said, “Do you seen any neighbors around to help us? He shot that gun off over and over again and do you see anybody?” Her voice sound flat, a mixture of shock and reconciled doom.

Hal said, “This place was done over, not long ago. Remodeled. Used to be an apartment house, then sat for years vacant. But they made it back into an apartment house, ain’t it swell? Only nobody moves in till next week.”

“This is a well-planned mess. You going to tell me about it or anything?”

“What’s to tell?”

“Look, Hal, you’re going to kill me in a while. Don’t I have a right to know why? Humor Suzie and me, chum. Just a simple explanation.”

He shook his head. “I don’t give a damn why you die or what you know. And I ain’t going to stand around beating my gums so you can die happy. Not that you’d understand any of it, anyway. Got it? Now hand me the .32 like a good boy and go over to the wall and stand with your hands behind your head. You, too, honey. Now move!”

We didn’t move an inch.

“Look, chickenshit, hand me that .32 or I’ll make things tough on you.”

“You don’t hear so good, Hal. I said go fuck yourself.”

“Hand it over!”

I swallowed hard, grabbed in as much air as I could, and heaved the .32 at his head. It caught him, and he pitched backward, the automatic firing into the ceiling. Bits of plaster and wood rained on me as I leapt at him. I had an idea of getting the automatic away from him, but mainly just wanted to kill him any way I could. Tried for his groin, couldn’t get there, went after the throat, both hands, got there, dug in deep, tore at it, saw my hands go white, my nails red. Hand, his hand, came up at me with a gun in it, I batted it away with my elbow, lost grip on his throat. Got a good knee in his groin, finally, he screamed, high, but slammed in my nose with the gun barrel, didn’t break it but blood gushed out, kept gushing. Automatic’s single eye stared me in the face, in the eye, left eye, death staring at me. Gun went off, as I jerked my head to one side, sparks in my eye, burning, as gun went off to left of me. Punched my fist into his face, broke a knuckle, sent in a knee to his kidneys that drew him into a screaming ball. I grabbed up toward his arm, he had gotten to his feet now, grabbed his wrist and twisted it around.

The automatic went off and caught him square in the face.

I looked up and saw his face. What had been his face.

Watched as he dropped.

Suzie had started in screaming, only not so distant this time.

I went over to try and comfort her, but couldn’t make it. Ran to the bathroom and puked. Puked till I puked blood.

Then wept.

I fell to the floor and buried my head in my hands and wept and coughed a racking cough and lay there in the puke and blood and tears and wished I’d let Hal kill me.

A few minutes passed and I began to snap out of it.

I struggled to my feet, bracing myself on the bowl of the head, and went over to the sink and washed up as well as I could. My upper lip throbbed and hurt and looked like yesterday’s meat. I ached where I’d caught one in the kidneys and my nose was too sore to even think about. My knuckle was puffy-looking and numb, and my stomach felt weak from puking. And there was a taste in my mouth, an awful clinging terrible taste, a mouthful of pus and cotton.

But all in all I wasn’t so bad off for what I’d been through. When I went back into the room I found Suzie staring at Hal’s body. She’d covered his face with a pillowcase.

She said, “Somehow he doesn’t seem... quite so very dead that way... you know?”

I didn’t say anything. There’s only one kind of dead, and that’s dead, but I didn’t say anything. I just picked up my .32 and went over to Hal’s body to get the live ammunition for it. It was in his left inside sportscoat pocket. The pillowcase slipped and I had to see some of what was left of his face while I searched out the box of slugs, but my stomach seemed to hold on pretty well. Not that there was anything much left for it to retch up.

“Suzie,” I said. Softly. Very.

“Yes?”

“You’ll have to tell me about it. Everything.”

“I know. They’re going to kill us, aren’t they?”

“Sooner or later.”

“What’ll we do?”

“Try and make it later.”

“How?”

“Well, they’ll be all over the neighborhood before long. Unless we stumble on a cruising cop first, we’re had. I doubt we make it out of this section of the city alive, not at this hour, with them after us. The streets’ll be deserted and we’ll be like the proverbial...”