Ryan Jahn - The Dispatcher

Beatrice rushes to her side and works to pull her and the desk up. It takes some doing, but she manages it. Maggie rubs at her elbow with her free hand. She thinks of pulling out of the handcuffs and grabbing the gun from the floor and running out of here. She knows her daddy is here, but she cannot just sit and wait to be saved. She waited trapped in the Nightmare World for a long time, and it was the longest night she has ever known, the longest night, she hopes, she will ever know, and she will not sit and wait ever again.

‘I’m sorry, Sarah,’ Beatrice says. ‘I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry.’ She strokes Maggie’s hair and pulls Maggie’s head to her fat belly and presses her head against it. ‘I’m sorry.’

Maggie pulls her head away.

‘Just leave me alone.’

‘You’ll feel better when all this is over,’ Beatrice says.

‘I don’t want to talk to you anymore.’

Beatrice wipes at her eyes. She walks to the window and looks out again.

‘You shouldn’t say things you don’t mean.’

‘I do mean it.’

Beatrice looks at her once more, and then turns back to the window. She simply stares out into the fading light of evening.

Maggie looks down at her wrist and tries once more to pull her hand through the cuff. It slides fine until the meat of her thumb, and there it stays no matter how hard she pulls, the metal digging deeper and deeper into her flesh.

Frustrated, she hits the top of the desk with her free hand. The other end tilts into the air and slams back down. It is loose. Eyeing Beatrice to make sure the woman is not looking at her, she pushes up on the desk. She lifts the top of the desk as far as it will go. Two of the screws have been stripped from the fiberboard underside. Maybe by the fall. She can almost slide the cuff wrapped around the desk right off. She doesn’t have to free her hand. All she has to do is pull off the top of the desk. She just has to get the final screw out, and she can slide the cuff right off.

Beatrice is still staring sadly out the window. Maggie is stung by another pang of pity for her. Her face just hangs there looking so lonesome. Even after everything there is a part of her that wants to give Beatrice the love she so obviously needs. But Maggie cannot love her. Maggie cannot even like her. She can only feel a strange combination of pity and hatred.

She pushes up on the top of the desk, trying to pry it loose.

Henry lies prone on the roof of the high school. He squints down at the car on the street below, but has seen no movement for some time. He has no idea what they’re doing back there. His arms are cramping. He’s not going to be able to lie like this much longer. And their silence is making him nervous. They cannot just wait there forever. They have to do something. Why aren’t they shooting back? If they were returning fire he might be able to locate them and finish them off. Just one or two shots would be enough. Then he would know where they were-and when they popped up to shoot again that would be it.

Maybe he already has finished them off and that’s why they aren’t moving. Except he knows better than that. That’s the kind of thinking that will get him into trouble. If he lets his guard down he’ll get himself killed.

‘Can you see anything?’ he says to Ron, who is behind him, crouched down on one knee, rifle at the ready.

‘No,’ he says. ‘What the fuck are they waiting for?’

‘I dunno,’ Henry says. ‘But I don’t like it.’

That’s when he sees the driver’s seat slide forward and tilt toward the steering wheel.

He sees movement behind it-an arm reaching into the back seat, he thinks. It’s hard to tell for certain. But it is movement.

Inhale. Hold the breath. Take aim. Steady.

The world is a storm but he is its eye.

Exhale.

Squeeze the trigger.

Ian hears the bullet slam into his car and flinches, but Diego does not. Diego simply reaches into the back seat and comes out first with the rifled Remington 11–87 and the sawed-off Remington 870, and then with the.308 and the duffel bag in which the boxes of ammunition are stored. Ian pulls the duffel bag toward him and unzips it. He tosses Diego the shells for the.308. Then pulls out shells for himself and gets to loading the two shotguns.

Once they’re loaded he slides to the front of the car and looks around the bumper trying to spot Henry, trying to spot movement of any kind. He knows the shots are coming from across the wide street, and from the north, and from a good distance, by the sound of it.

‘Where are you, you son of a-’

He pulls his head back quickly and a moment later there is the sound of a gunshot and the dirt three feet behind the place where his face was kicks up a cloud of dust, and a few pebbles from the ground throw themselves against the right leg of his Levis.

‘They’re on the roof of the school,’ he says. ‘About fifty, sixty yards away.’

Diego nods. ‘What do you want to do?’

Ian closes his eyes a moment, thinking. He did not want to get Diego involved in this way. He did not want to ask of him what he is about to ask of him. Even now he wishes he had talked Diego into heading back to Bulls Mouth. If Diego was not here he would have to think of something else. But Diego is here. He opens his eyes and looks at his friend. This will change him. What he is about to ask of his friend will change him forever.

‘How’s your long-distance shooting?’ he says.

Ian sits on his haunches behind the Mustang. To his right Diego is readying himself for a run toward what once was a hardware store. If he can get behind it, he can make his way in relative safety to the top floor of a three-storey hotel called the Jackrabbit Inn about three hundred yards further on. From that vantage point he should have clear shots at Henry Dean and his brother on the roof of the school.

‘You ready?’ he says.

Diego nods.

Ian exhales and his exhalation turns into a deep cough. Liquid gags up from his lungs like muddy water from a well-pump and he spits it to the asphalt between his feet. Tears stream down his face. He leans his head against the car fender before him and spits once more. His chest is throbbing with pain. Last time he tried to do this he was shot. What is it they say about doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results?

‘One,’ he says, looking toward Diego.

‘You sure you’re-’

‘Two,’ he says, cutting off the question.

Diego nods briefly. The nod tells Ian that he accepts that as an answer.

‘Three.’

Diego takes off running.

Ian jumps to his feet, swinging the shotgun up and into the crook of his shoulder, and he fires at the roof of the schoolhouse. The pain is incredible. Concrete explodes less than a foot below the place where Henry is crouched. A white shell flies from the shotgun, arcs in a blur through the air, and hits the asphalt to his right. He fires again and again and again. Both Henry and his brother drop down, becoming invisible from this angle.

But Ian remains standing, squinting toward the school, watching the flat line of the roof and waiting.

Blood runs down his sweaty belly from the hole in his chest, which is throbbing with pain. His breaths are quick and shallow, as he can manage nothing but shallow breaths any longer. Any time he tries to breathe deep it turns into a painful coughing fit. He knows what is happening. With the tube removed from his lung he is drowning in his own blood. It is beyond a feeling of drowning now; it is the actual thing.

A flash of movement from the roof of the school. He fires. Concrete explodes.

The movement ceases.

Ian glances behind him.

Diego is out of sight.

Good. Black dots are swimming before Ian’s eyes and he doesn’t think he’ll be able to remain standing much longer.