John Lutz: Pulse

The overturned van’s rear doors were still closed, though the roof was crushed and the wire-reinforced glass was gone from the back windows. A pair of orange-clad legs and black prison shoes extended from one of the windows, and a voice was screaming.

Inside the back of the van, Chad Bingham was cut and bleeding from the long shard of glass in Daniel Danielle’s hand. Daniel was bleeding himself, from cuts made by sharp glass or metal. Bingham’s scalp was laid open and his face was covered with blood. In the wild tumble of the van, Daniel Danielle had managed to wrench the. 25-caliber handgun from where it was taped to Bingham’s ankle. Bingham, with his outside-the-walls complexion, hadn’t fooled Daniel for a second.

Daniel held the small handgun against Bingham’s throat. Bingham’s legs were twisted backward, under him. The steel rail both men had been cuffed to had broken at the weld. They were free, though their wrists were still cuffed.

It was Daniel’s legs protruding from the van’s window. Both men knew the gun had hollow-point bullets and would kill easily and messily at close range. Daniel dropped the shard of glass, then used the hand without the gun and rubbed some of Bingham’s blood over his own face and into his hair. Both men had prison haircuts. Bloodied up as they were, they could be mistaken for each other. Daniel needed only a moment of mistaken identity, and he would act.

He dug the gun’s barrel into Bingham’s throat. “Yell that I’m dead, and you want outta here. Do it if you want to live,” he said to Bingham. “Don’t do as I say, and bullets start slamming around your insides.”

Bingham’s eyes rolled with fear. He knew Daniel’s reputation, and knew the killer had earned it.

“It’s me!” he yelled. “It’s Bingham. Daniel’s dead. Get me the hell outta here!”

All the time he was yelling, Daniel was kicking with his free lower legs.

It seemed a lot of time passed. He jabbed again into Bingham’s neck with the gun barrel. “Hey!” Bingham yelled, “Help!” While Daniel kicked.

Finally Daniel felt strong hands encircle his ankles, exert pressure. Pulling, pulling. As his body began to slide out of the van he stared into Bingham’s eyes and kept the gun pointed directly at his testicles. Bingham didn’t make a sound.

And then Daniel was free-like a cork out of a bottle.

“Thanks!” he kept repeating, as he faced into the wind and gained his feet.

“You guys okay?”

“We’re-”

Garvey shut up when he realized the mistake they’d made.

Daniel stepped close and shot him in the forehead.

Nicholson wheeled to run and Daniel shot him twice in the back of the neck. He fell and the wind rolled him a few feet and then lost interest. Daniel bent low into the wind and made his way back to the van. Bingham was still inside, curled up and playing dead. Daniel shot him in the testicles and Bingham began to wail. Daniel knew no one would hear even if they were nearby.

Still cuffed, he began his search for keys.

Five minutes later Bingham watched through the van’s distorted rear window as a limping Daniel Danielle disappeared into the rain and wind.

Within minutes the hurricane sweeping across the state hit the area in earnest.

Chad Bingham would later testify in his hospital bed that Daniel almost certainly died from his wounds or from Hurricane Sophia. There was no way he could have survived out in the open as he’d been, without any nearby shelter.

It was Bingham who died from his wounds.

New York State, June 2008

He couldn’t fly close to New York City, for security reasons. But the pilot, Chancellor Linden R. Schueller of Waycliffe College, made a slight detour so he could have a look from a distance.

His plane was a small twin-engine Beechcraft that, besides the pilot, could carry five passengers and their light luggage. It could range most of the northeastern states. But this was a short flight from Albany, which was where the chancellor had made the connection via rail, and a cab to the airport, where he’d left the plane. It was complicated but safer that way, using small airports and different modes of conveyance. It meant a less traceable course. But it also meant the chancellor had to take more care about what was in his luggage. You never knew what kind of security checks you’d run into these days, even with a private aircraft, a small airport, and a flight plan that kept him well away from New York City

Perilous times, Chancellor Schueller thought, and smiled. Absently, he ran his fingertips over the cover of his flight logbook. It was the softest of leathers. He didn’t really need the book now, considering his expertise on the computer, but he enjoyed touching it.

He pressed his forehead against the oblong Plexiglas window for a better view, then sat back in his seat.

Some city down there. How many people now? He wasn’t sure, and the figure kept changing depending on whom you asked, or which set of statistics someone wanted to choose.

Millions, millions…

There they were below, layered in tall buildings, moving in every direction above and below ground, in and out of vehicles. They represented every age, size, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious and political slant… The possibilities were limitless.

Out the window and behind the plane now was a blue and hazy horizon. The city was falling away like memories of yesterday.

Minutes and miles passed. The green earth was rising.

The chancellor forgot about the view and sat straighter in his seat. It was time to change his frame of mind, like slipping from being one person to another.

He throttled back and put the plane into a shallow bank, careful to keep the nose up. The sun caught the twin props and turned them to liquid light.

The plane dipped a wing as if saying hello to the earth, now much closer, then began a low, sweeping descent toward the green field below and off to the southwest.

Gravity asserted a heavier hand. Scraggly lines became roads. Glittering jewels became cars and houses. Water glistened in the sun like molten silver.

A narrow grass runway was visible now, a slightly different shade of green bisecting the field. Bordering the south side of the field was an arrangement of similar redbrick buildings connected by walkways lined with mature green trees. The buildings’ roofs were identical shades of gray slate. Chancellor Schueller thought it all looked like pieces of a child’s toy train setting. Everything but the train.

He would be a part of it shortly.

He would be home. Settled and sated.

For a while.

New York, the present

Macy Collins jerked awake. Unable to breathe in, to breathe out. That was because a rectangle of gray duct tape was fixed tightly across her mouth. The man straddling her had her nose pinched between his thumb and forefinger.

She panicked, screaming almost silently, thrashing her legs about so she could feel her heels digging into the grass and hard earth. He was seated on her chest, leaning forward so his weight was over her upper body and his legs kept her arms pinned to her sides. The heavy hardness of his knees had made her arms go numb.

He smiled down at her, then released her nose so she could suck in precious oxygen.

Her head cleared and she suddenly remembered everything and wished she was still unconscious, that she could die. She craned her neck and stared down at the red, raw flesh where her right breast had been, then up into his eyes that were as human as black pearls. When she looked away she noticed that he had an erection. Even after last night

…

He was so charming. Then he must have slipped something into her drink. Something that made her compliant enough to agree to a walk in Central Park at dusk.