Brad Parks - The Girl Next Door

“Hey, what are…” McNabb began to protest, but I was out of the car before he could finish.

I heard the back driver’s side door opening up behind me, and McNabb was already in midroar: “… ass back here. Stop right there.”

But I marched across the narrow street to the sidewalk in front of 81 Summit Avenue, and just as I was about to turn around and face my end, it suddenly occurred to me:

What do I mean, die on my terms? Why am I waiting around for this guy to kill me? Run, you dumbass. Run for all you’re worth.

“Stop. I haven’t cleaned my prints off the gun yet,” McNabb yelled, as if this was somehow my concern.

No, my concern-my only concern-was putting more distance between myself and McNabb. I felt my right thigh muscle flexing, then my left. Strides one and two were a bit of a misadventure, as my dress shoes slipped on the wet pavement. Strides three and four went better, with my feet gaining traction, enough that the sides of my vision began blurring. I was starting to move. Fast. Hey, if I could outrun a bear, I could certainly outrun a fat lump like McNabb.

I looked for something resembling cover, but there was none. Summit Avenue was just this long, straight street with nowhere to hide. So I concentrated on making it to Chancellor Avenue, my best chance to find a cop, a hiding spot, something. My arms were pumping. My legs were churning. I was going to make it.

I heard another thunderclap, only it was even closer than the last one. Then something tripped me and I went sprawling.

Only it wasn’t thunder. And I hadn’t tripped. It was McNabb’s gun firing. And he had shot me in the back of the leg.

For a moment, I saw nothing but wet, time-worn asphalt in front of my face. I was down. I tried to scramble up but couldn’t seem to get my left leg underneath me. It didn’t hurt or anything. I just couldn’t make it move.

All I could do was roll over. The rain was pounding me so hard I was losing track of where it was coming from. Now that I was faceup, there was so much water gushing on me it was almost like I was trying to open my eyes under a running showerhead. I propped myself on my right elbow and used my left hand as a shield, just so I could see McNabb marching toward me, scowling and red-faced. My mad dash had gotten me all of three doors down from the Roth residence.

“You want to do this the hard way? You want to do this the hard way?” McNabb screamed, keeping the gun aimed at me.

I had no answer for him. I just lay back down and started to feel an otherworldly pain emanating from my left hamstring, like a bad cramp, only fifty times worse.

At least I had tried, I told myself, no matter how lame the attempt was.

“I told you to follow the script,” he bellowed, now standing over me. “How are you supposed to commit suicide with a gunshot wound to your leg? How is that in the script?”

He steadied himself with his legs spread wide, gripped the gun in both hands, and pointed it down in the direction of my head. I didn’t want to watch anymore. So I looked up at the sky and tried to concentrate on something other than the growing agony coming from my lower half. I found myself tracking individual raindrops as they fell into my eyeball from a seemingly impossible height, watching as they cascaded down through space that seemed curved. And I waited for the lights to go out.

* * *

I’ve heard it said the moments before death are slow ones, stretching out far longer for the soon-to-be-deceased than they do for anyone else. This, at least, is what those who have experienced near-death come back to report-life flashing before their eyes, tunnels appearing, that sort of thing.

But I wasn’t experiencing any of that. I just suddenly became aware the lights hadn’t gone out and the guy who was trying to kill me suddenly wasn’t upright anymore.

A large, fast-moving shape had barreled into the small of his back, sending his chest thrusting forward in a parabolic shape, his arms flying out at his side and his head tilting back. An explosion of air escaped from his lungs in a barely formed grunt. And then he disappeared.

I propped myself up on both elbows to look for him. But he was gone. All I could see was Lunky-Lunky! — and he had apparently executed an absolutely textbook tackle: head down, arms wrapped, body low for maximum leverage. He finished by landing squarely on top of McNabb, momentarily obscuring the smaller man. It was a quarterback sack that would have made any NFL Films highlight reel. McNabb had been thoroughly blindsided.

He wasn’t done fighting, of course. No, he was struggling against Lunky, wriggling and cursing and wriggling some more, trying to at least get himself turned over to face his assailant. But he couldn’t get any momentum. Lunky was so much bigger and stronger, he easily kept McNabb pinned, long past a ten-count. McNabb would have stood a better chance against a mountain gorilla. Lunky actually seemed to be taking it easy on the guy, like he pitied him.

I began opening my mouth to warn Lunky not to be too blase, that McNabb was armed. Then I saw the gun had come to rest a good ten yards away. McNabb had no more chance of reaching it than I did of standing up and winning Dancing with the Stars on one leg.

Lunky maneuvered into a sitting position atop his quarry, with his powerful legs keeping McNabb’s arms pinned. With one giant paw, Lunky smothered the side and back of McNabb’s head, keeping it pressed down into the street. Lunky could have kept McNabb there all night if need be, and McNabb seemed to resign himself to it. Either that or he had run out of energy for his struggle, because he was finally still.

The pain was starting to make it hard to think, so I lay back down and stared up at the rain some more. Soon, a head of curly brown hair was poking into my frame of vision and a very concerned-looking Tina Thompson was gazing down at me.

“Are you okay, honey?” she asked,

I wish I could report my reply had been something valiant, funny, touching, or memorable. But it was, in fact, a little more candid: “It hurts.”

“You’ve been shot,” she informed me, like I didn’t already know. “It’s okay. Tommy is here. He’s calling an ambulance.”

“Just hang in there,” Tommy said from somewhere in the neighborhood of my feet. “I’m on the line with 911 right now. They’re coming. The other good news is the EMTs will probably cut those ugly pleated pants off you.”

I may have attempted a smile, but I was aware it came out as a grimace. Tina was still looming above me, tucking a piece of hair behind her ears in a way that, even in my agony, I couldn’t help but find adorable. I wanted to be mad at her, really mad, for not believing in me, for bailing out on me in my time of need, for siding with the publisher over her own reporter-even if, as it turned out, she was sort of right about the whole thing.

But I just felt so grateful to be alive. There was not the least scrap of anger in me. Only relief. I let my lungs fill with air, then released it, then repeated the process a few more times. The air was wet but, I swear, it had a flavor to it. And it tasted delicious.

There was a moan-it was probably coming from me-and I tried to concentrate on breathing some more. And I also heard a voice that sounded like it belonged to Detective Owen Smiley. But I couldn’t be certain.

The rain was finally tapering off into a light sprinkle. After having been hammered by globules the size and weight of quarters, the smaller, needlelike drops actually were pleasant by comparison. Besides, it gave me something to think about other than my leg.

Tina had repositioned herself and was now kneeling at my side.

“Don’t die on me,” she said. “You’ve got a story to write.”