Ryan Jahn - The Dispatcher

Sounds of feet on gravel stepping quick.

Ian rolls onto his side to see what’s happening.

Henry Dean is helping his wife Beatrice into a green Ford Ranger pickup truck. That seems like it should be impossible. Henry was just standing on the gravel aiming a gun at him and a curl of white smoke was slipping from its barrel. It doesn’t seem like he should have had time to go inside and get his wife and bring her outside and put her into their truck. She is crying and her right foot is covered in blood and a skin flap hangs from her ankle.

Ian blinks.

In the next moment Beatrice is sitting in the truck and the door is shut and Henry Dean is halfway up the steps leading to the house.

What’s happened to time? Someone broke time.

I need my gun. I can get him if I can get to my gun.

He rolls in the other direction. It hurts and the sharp points of stones dig into his back. He looks for his gun. There it is, just over three feet away; within reach, if he’s lucky. He puts his arm out toward it, fingers stretched. His fingers touch it. He pulls it toward him. Then wraps his hand around it. He rolls back toward the house.

Henry Dean is now dragging Maggie out the front door of the house. She is pale and thin and her nose is bleeding, but it is Maggie. His daughter. She’s so grown up. Practically a woman. And that man with his hand clutching her wrist stole her from him and stole her childhood.

Ian raises the gun in his hand.

But Henry Dean sees him and pulls Maggie to him and lifts her and uses her as a shield. She tries to pry his hands away, but cannot manage it. Blood drips from her nose and onto the man’s large arms.

‘You gonna shoot your own daughter, Hunt?’

Ian tries to aim at the man’s legs, to shoot them out from under him, but his hand is too shaky, and he is afraid of hitting Maggie. He would never forgive himself for that.

The man walks toward him, using Maggie as a shield, and once he’s close enough, he kicks the gun away.

‘Help me, Daddy! Daddy!’

She reaches for him and a bloody snot bubble grows in her left nostril and pops. Tears stream down her face. Her teeth have blood on them.

Ian reaches for her.

‘Baby,’ he says. ‘My Maggie.’

But then a boot swings toward him at great speed, a blur of motion, and kicks him in the face. Hello, darkness.

He comes to to the sound of that punctured-tire wheeze. That strange sound of air leaking from his chest. The pain is greater now, overwhelming. Something in his chest feels closed off. Like a door slammed shut. He cannot seem to breathe.

His eyes are open and staring at the back tire of his car. Rust and splattered mud. And beyond his car is Chief Davis’s car. And in Chief Davis’s car is a radio. He turns over on all fours. He grabs the rear bumper of his car and pushes himself to his feet. Chief Davis’s car is only twenty feet away. If he can get to it everything will be fine. Thompson is working the phones and if he can get to the radio everything will be fine. He takes a step and his knees buckle and he falls. First to his knees, then to his side.

Thompson is working the phones.

He has a phone.

He reaches into his pocket for his cell phone. He can feel it. He doesn’t need to get to the car. He can just call nine-one-one. He’s never been on this end of an emergency call. If he can get Thompson on the line everything will be okay.

Everything will be fine.

Henry throws Maggie into the truck and gets in after her. She looks through the back window at her daddy. She hasn’t seen him in forever and there he is. He’s lying on the gravel. He’s on his right side and his chest is bleeding and his head is tilted down to the gravel and red blood is flowing from his nose and down his face and his eyes are closed. He isn’t moving at all. His right arm is stretched out before him. It’s flat on the gravel, palm up. Several feet from it is a gun. Maggie wishes he would pick it up and shoot out one of the truck tires. He could still stop Henry. Unless he’s dead. He isn’t moving.

‘Sit down, you little bitch,’ Henry says. He grabs her by the shoulder and shoves her down into a sitting position.

The truck roars around in a half circle, spitting gravel, and heads out of the driveway. Past a man with no face. A policeman with no face. She can tell by the uniform that he’s a policeman, but he has no face. And past another policeman whose chest is a red bowl filled with a thick black liquid that can only be blood.

‘Henry, I’m bleeding,’ Beatrice says.

‘I know it, Bee.’

‘Why am I bleeding? What happened?’

‘Not now.’

‘But why am I-’

‘Not now. Just hush up. I need to think.’

The truck screeches out to Crouch Avenue, burning black rubber onto the ancient gray asphalt as it hooks right.

‘But why am I bleeding?’

‘Would you shut the ever-loving fuck up?’

‘Oh,’ Beatrice says. ‘Okay. Sorry.’

She looks out the window.

Maggie looks down at Beatrice’s right ankle. It is sliced open and pouring blood. The blood is pooling on the floorboard. It makes Maggie sick to look at, but she can’t look away. She almost escaped.

‘Fuck,’ Henry says.

Maggie looks at him, but he’s staring straight ahead.

In another five minutes they’re headed west on Interstate 10.

Diego rolls down the driveway, dread heavy upon him. Based on the call Ian made, things went bad, very bad, and he’s anticipating some ugliness. But a moment later, as he rounds the last turn in the driveway and is facing it, he knows he wasn’t ready for it. He was not at all ready for this kind of ugliness. There’s an ambulance on the way, but he radios for a second before he steps from the car.

Chief Davis lies on the blood-soaked gravel with a missing face. The fingers on his left hand twitch spasmodically, but Diego cannot tell whether the man is conscious and trying to accomplish some goal or if the movement is merely the result of his dying brain emitting a last few electric impulses before going silent as stone.

A few feet beyond him lies Bill Finch. He is flat on his back. His chest is concaved and filled with blood, air bubbles rising from within him and popping on the dark surface. His open eyes stare at the blue sky. The wide open blue sky, lighted by a white sun.

He does not move at all.

Nor does Ian, further down the driveway, lying on his back with a cell phone in his hand and a bullet hole in his chest. His eyes are open, red-rimmed slits in a pale face translucent with exhaustion and clenched into a grimace. He is looking at Diego. Beside him, in a pool of blood, lies a dead dog.

‘Ian, what the hell happened here?’

‘I think they’re dead.’ Barely a whisper.

‘How are you?’

‘Not. . dead.’

Diego nods, then walks toward Chief Davis and looks down at the man. His face ends just below his upper lip in a line of shattered teeth like the serrated edge of a bread knife. Diego could toe the roof of the man’s mouth if he wanted to. He does not want to. The skin on the upper part of Chief Davis’s face has been wiped off completely, and one eye is gone, replaced by a steak-red hollow, half-filled with black liquid. The other eye, brown and alive with fear and pain, shifts toward Diego, and Diego has to fight the urge to step back from him.

‘Ambulance is on the way, Chief.’

A gurgle from the hole at the back of his throat. A slow ooze of blood runs down onto his neck and is soaked up by the collar of his shirt.

‘You’re not gonna die.’

Another gurgle.

Chief Davis’s eye twitches left, toward his hand. His ring finger twitches.

‘Betty knows you love her, Chief. I’ve got to check on the others.’

Diego steps away from him. He walks to Bill Finch, and though he’s never liked the man-he stole a friend’s wife-he likes the blank stare he’s throwing at the sky even less.