Paul Cleave - The Killing Hour

Cyris laughs again, then raises his gun, tracks the barrel up and down Landry’s body, and hovers it over his leg. He narrows the distance, resting the barrel on Landry’s right ankle.

“Pick a limb, pick one, a limb, a limb.”

Landry tries to pull his leg away, but Cyris stands on his foot, then repositions the gun so it touches the policeman’s head. Landry stops moving. The rain is pouring heavily down in our little neck of the woods and small droplets of mud splash onto Landry’s face. They look like chocolate tears. Cyris moves the gun a few inches away from Landry’s head and fires it into the ground.

None of us are expecting the shot, except Cyris, so Cyris is the only one who doesn’t jump. The mouth of the cave seems to swallow a lot of it, but the sound is still enough to feel like my ears are going to start bleeding. Landry starts rolling around, the handcuffs making it difficult for him to push his hands against his ears. He can manage to cover only one ear. The other he pushes into the ground, but to his credit he doesn’t make any sound.

But that’s all about to change. Cyris pumps the shotgun and pushes the barrel into Landry’s leg right behind the kneecap.

“Wait,” I shout out, which is stupid because I don’t owe Landry anything, but at the same time I can’t stand here and watch him get taken apart.

Cyris doesn’t wait. This time when he pulls the trigger, Landry starts screaming right away. The gunshot and his pain echo around us, the gunshot is high-pitched and slowly starts to fade, but the screaming doesn’t. The screaming sounds like it could go on forever. Landry tries to sit up, tries bringing his knee into his belly so he can curl his arms around his leg, but the leg won’t bend because the knee joint is a pile of raw nerves and slivers of bone. I can’t help it, but I stagger back, crouch over, and start to gag. Jo is doing the same thing.

Landry’s concussion has become the least of his worries.

His fate is the least of ours.

Cyris says something, but I can’t hear. The rain steals away his words and my ears are ringing from the gunshot and, aside from that, Landry is still screaming, still pushing his hands against his wounded leg. I feel bad for him. Bad that he’s seen so much in his life and has now become victim to it. He’s become victim to his own anger, but it’s his anger that brought us all out here, so sure, I feel sorry for the guy-but I hate him even more than I feel sorry for him. His screams grate at my eardrums. I wish Cyris would just finish him off. He’s going to-there’s no way any of us is getting out of here alive-so the best we can hope for is a quick death. If anybody wants to be heard over Landry’s screams, they’re going to need to yell at the top of their lungs.

Cyris seems to realize this and he walks over. I stop gagging. So does Jo.

“Who’s next? Which one of you isn’t really real? Huh? I want to know.”

God, he’s crazier than I thought. “Leave her out of it,” I shout.

“Why? She’s the meat and potatoes,” Cyris says.

He moves toward Landry, walking backward so he can keep his eyes on us.

I look at Jo and she looks back. “I’m sorry,” I say. It doesn’t seem enough to offer her, but it’s all I have. I reach out for her hand. She takes it. Her hand is cold and it’s the first time we’ve held hands in a long time, not just six months, but longer than that.

“I figured you would be,” she says. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry too. It doesn’t help, though, does it?”

Cyris returns his attention to the detective. I take the flashlight from Jo and point it into the cave. We could attempt an escape through there, but soon the batteries would die and we would become lost, navigating our way through the darkness either deeper into the earth or simply in circles around it. Behind us is only a bank of rocks and then the river stretching away. Ahead of us one lunatic looking down at another lunatic. Further to the right is the same path we followed, but there’s no way we could run through there keeping ahead of the shotgun.

It’s the river or nothing.

Though it’s not really nothing. It’s the river, or get shot where we’re standing.

Hell, chances are we get shot going for the river anyway. But it’s something.

Landry’s movements have slowed down, and finally, thank God, his screams die off. He’s lying on his side, attempting to hold his wounded knee with blood-covered hands. He holds his palms against it, trying to push everything back together, trying to help it heal with a grim determination that is about two surgeons and a lot of medical instruments short of being any good. He looks over at us and in his agony I can see him pleading for help. I can’t help him. He has dug his own grave and I hate him for putting us in there with him. His face and clothes are saturated in blood. There’s so much the rain can’t even start to move it.

Cyris points the shotgun at him and at the same time starts grinding his heel into the wounded knee. Landry’s eyes roll back in his head, but he keeps thrashing around, unable to pass out. I’m too afraid to move, too scared to take my eyes from this grisly display, too much of a coward to try and help. Jo’s grip on my hand tightens.

I step back, taking Jo with me.

Cyris looks over and yells something. It’s indistinguishable over the loud rain, so heavy now it almost feels like hail. He points the gun at us, his mind-reading skills on full display here. Though it’s not that great a trick because trying to run is the only option worth looking at. He steps over Landry toward us. We back away, getting closer to the river. We’re going to have to jump for it. We’re going to have to climb into the freezing cold water and do whatever we can to avoid rocks and drowning and pneumonia and gunshots. I don’t know if Jo has come up with the same plan. I know she hates water and I know she can’t swim. I also know she isn’t bulletproof. What she needs to do is choose one plan over the other, and really it can be simplified down to two choices: dying right now, or perhaps dying on our way into the water, or perhaps dying a minute or two down the line. Living is turning out to be a hell of a lot of work and the alternative is starting to look tempting. Giving up would sure be easier.

Cyris is grinning because that’s what guys like him do. The gun sways slightly as the wind pushes at him. The shotgun means he doesn’t need to be accurate-he can fire in our general direction and still nail us. I can’t see any way that he won’t pull the trigger before we’re in the water. I look down at Landry. He’s starting to move, but barely. But he’s looking up at me. The look on his face has changed. He’s no longer wearing the look of a man who is desperate for help. In fact it’s the opposite. He’s wearing the face of a man who’s angry. His jaw is clenched. He stares at me, and then he nods. A single nod that conveys his apology and an instruction. Like Cyris, he knows what I’m planning.

I nod back at him, knowing what it is he’s about to do.

He’s about to try and repent.

Cyris pumps the shotgun and we get ready to jump.

Well, fuck it. So this is the way it’s going to be. The cancer. . Christ, none of it even matters in the end. Coffin shopping and picking out a suit-it’s no longer his problem. This is the moment of truth. The moment where he gets to meet his maker and ask him the big question-what the fuck?

The pain in Landry’s leg is so raw, so intense, that at this point he’s actually welcoming death. Can’t be worse than this. His throat is burning from all the screaming, it feels like he’s swallowed gasoline with a Zippo chaser. The gunfire has left a high-pitched whine in his ears, which has eaten through to the core of his brain and is now eating its way back out. He can feel his heart slowing down. He’s losing it.