Paul Cleave - Joe Victim

“Get back,” he screams. “Everybody get back.”

“Carl-”

He looks back over the car. “Fire some shots in the air,” he shouts. “Get-”

His car explodes right in front of him. He sees Kent ride the shock wave ten yards through the air, where she is thrown into a parked car, where she smashes the windshield and enters it. Only it looks like twenty yards because he’s riding the shock wave in the opposite direction. A lot of people are. Twisted metal. Smoke. Flesh and blood.

Then darkness.

Two explosions and Melissa tosses the second remote onto the floor. The padding against my wound is soaked with blood so I replace it with some fresh stuff, which will no doubt soak up just as quickly. I realize there are two holes, one in front and one in the back, right through the right-hand side of my chest. I can’t move that arm. I don’t know what’s been hit. I don’t even know really what’s in there. Bone and muscle and tendons, I guess, which means reconstructive surgery and physiotherapy or a future of having a gimpy limb. It seems too high and too far to the side to worry about lung damage, but I don’t know-I’m not a doctor, and nor is Melissa-so I worry anyway.

I get onto my knees and clutch the wall and the back of the driver’s seat and stare out the windshield as Melissa heads through the next intersection, then another, then turns right at the following one. Now we’re heading back toward the courthouse, only one or two streets over. Then she pulls over.

“Nobody is following us,” she says.

“Why are we stopping here?”

“Just wait a minute.”

“Why?”

“You’ll see.”

“Melissa-”

“Trust me,” she says. “I’ve gotten you this far, trust me to get you the rest of the way.”

“Who shot me?”

“It’s complicated,” she says, “but it was a clean shot.”

“How do you know that?”

“It was an armor-piercing bullet. It wouldn’t have broken apart on impact. It went through cleanly. Anything else would have made a small hole going in and a much bigger hole coming out.”

“Why are we waiting here?” I ask.

“We can’t be the only ambulance heading away right now,” she says, “because the police will be looking for us. We have to blend in.”

“What?”

“Trust me, babe, just stay patient. We’ll be out of here in a few moments,” she says.

“If you know it was an armor-piercing bullet, then you know who shot me,” I tell her.

“There was a plan,” she says. “It was the only way to get you out of there in an ambulance.”

“But you were getting me out because I was sick,” I tell her. “Did you know about the sandwiches?”

“What sandwiches?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I say.

“I was waiting there for you to get shot, but then that security guard came out and asked for my help because you were sick.”

I think about what she’s saying, but it still doesn’t make sense. “So you were working with somebody else, that same somebody who shot me. If you were getting me to the ambulance anyway, why did he still shoot me?”

“Like I said, babe, it’s complicated, but I’ll go through it all with you later.”

“But you knew what you were doing,” I tell her. “You said all that stuff to the nurse.”

“It’s the same stuff TV doctors say all the time. It was all showmanship.”

“You could have gotten arrested.”

A couple of ambulances speed through the intersection ahead of us, going left to right.

“It’s time to go,” she says.

She pulls away from the curb and we take another right and she pulls over again where the other ambulances are. We’ve circled our way around. There’s one blown-up car behind us now and one blown-up car ahead. She climbs out of the ambulance and makes her way around the back and climbs back in. She drags the dead woman across the floor, then reaches down for the man. She shakes him. “Come on,” she says, “what good are you to me asleep?”

He doesn’t respond. She checks his pulse. Then she shakes her head. “No,” she says, and I realize the guy has a good excuse for not responding. The best excuse, really. “He was going to help you,” she says.

“You killed them both?”

“I didn’t mean to. I guess I got the dosage wrong.”

“Who’s going to help me now?” I ask, pulling the padding away from my chest. It needs replacing again. “I’m going to die here,” I say, my voice getting higher.

One of the Grim Reapers I saw earlier, or perhaps a different one, is out there lying on the road. He’s not moving. His hood has been torn aside and half of his face looks gone, or it could be part of the makeup. I can’t tell.

“We need to go,” I tell her.

“Not yet,” she says. There are other ambulances pulling over in style with sirens going and with doors popping open before they’ve even rolled to a stop. People jump out and within seconds they’re working on people. Soon they’re going to be loading victims up into the back and taking off as well.

“Here, let me take a look,” Melissa says, and she crouches in front of me and puts one hand on my good shoulder and uses her other hand to start undoing my shirt. Despite everything I’m suddenly aroused and I put a hand around the back of her neck and pull her in for a kiss that she resists. “Not now, Joe.”

“I’ve missed you,” I tell her.

“I know. You’ve said already,” she says.

She closes the ambulance doors and moves back into the cab. She starts the ambulance and turns on the sirens. The streets are still full of people, but they’ve dispersed somewhat-the big groups breaking up into smaller groups, the smaller groups breaking up into pairs.

We take the same route as before. We drive south. Then we turn right. I keep expecting a hundred police cars to cut us off-men with guns, that Sunday morning a year ago taking place all over, only this time me without a gun or a Fat Sally. It doesn’t happen. We follow another ambulance. We stay in a straight line all the way to the hospital. Only we’re not going to the hospital because that doesn’t make sense. Except that’s exactly what we are doing. Instead of taking the ambulance entrance, she takes the public one. She turns off the sirens. We drive around the back into the parking lot. It’s full. She double-parks near a white van. I’m sick of vans. She kills the engine. She comes around and opens the back door and helps me outside. Sunlight floods us. Cars and trees and a machine to pay for parking, a picnic bench with a bucket full of sand next to it full of cigarette butts, a few empty coffee cups on the bench, but no people anywhere. Coffee break is over for everybody in the hospital thanks to Melissa.

Melissa fills up her rucksack with medical supplies. We start walking. Our target is the white van. I’m leaving a blood trail. She grabs keys out of her pocket and swings the back doors of the van open. She helps me climb inside.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “You were supposed to have help.”

“I don’t want to die,” I tell her.

“You’re not going to,” she says. “Just stay calm.”

She gets into the front seat. She looks over her shoulders at me.

“I’ve missed you too,” she says.

“I knew you’d come for me,” I tell her.

“I was pregnant,” she tells me. “From our weekend together. I had the baby. It’s a girl. It’s your girl. Our girl. Her name is Abigail. She’s beautiful.”

It’s too much information to absorb. Me, a father? “Take me back to jail,” I say, and finally I pass out.

Schroder can see the sky. It’s blue in all directions, a few clouds, one of them looks like a palm tree. One looks like a face. There’s a dark gray cloud forming close by. It’s smoke. From the car. He tries to move his head, but can’t. He can move his eyes. That’s a start, but a frightening one.