Ken Douglas - Death Glitch

The officer went for his gun and the man in the store dove for cover.

“ Help me here,” Lila said to the other officer, who was out of the blue and white now.

“ Okay.” He helped her drag Black away from the entrance.

“ Get the car!” Lila said to Izzy.

“ For him?” the officer said.

“ I’m a doctor,” Izzy said, able to breathe now. “We can have in him the emergency room at Rogue Valley before you can have them roll an ambulance.”

“ We shouldn’t move him,” the officer said.

“ He’ll bleed out if we don’t,” Izzy said.

“ We should wait,” the officer said as two more blue and whites careened into the parking lot.

“ Now, officer!” Izzy fished into Black’s pocket, pulled out the keys. “The car’s there. Get it.”

Lila grabbed the keys, took off at a run.

“ Too late,” Black said, looking up at her.

“ It’s not too late.” A crazy thought struck Izzy. She looked at her skinned hands, remembering what happened to her the last time she’d skinned them. She turned Black onto his side, ran a bloody palm into his wound.

“ Hurts,” Black said.

“ What are you doing?” the cop said.

“ Checking the wound.”

“ Let’s go,” Lila shouted.

Izzy turned. Lila had pulled up behind the blue and white. To the cop she said, “Okay, help me get him into the car.”

“ I don’t think so,” he said.

“ What’s going on here?” It was an older cop from one of the other blue and whites.

“ She’s a doctor and wants to take him to Rogue Valley Emergency, but I don’t think we should move him.”

“ You trying to think for yourself?” the older cop said, “trying to second guess the doctor?” He looked pained. “Get him in the car!”

“ Alright, alright,” he said and the two cops got Black into the backseat as Izzy ran round to the passenger’s side. She pulled open the door, was about to get in, when Hunter thundered past her, taking the middle of the front seat.

“ Get in,” Lila shouted and Izzy did.

Lila hit the gas and they shot out of there.

“ Police,” Mouledoux shouted, but he didn’t step into the center aisle. That could be suicide. There were two dead feds, who knew how many others in the store and he and Peeps were the only ones armed. For right now, it didn’t look good. They could straighten it out, but by then it would be too late.

“ Throw out your weapons,” a deep voice shouted back. The Eisenhower woman was getting away and these jerk water cops were letting her.

“ They think it’s us behind this.” Sweat was running down Peeps’ forehead and from where he was in the aisle opposite, he looked terrified.

“ Yeah,” Mouledoux said.

“ What are we gonna do?”

“ I think we should throw out our weapons.” He went to his knees, pulled his piece, put it on the floor, slid it out into the aisle, giving it a healthy push down the center toward the exit.

“ I don’t like giving mine up.” Peeps pulled his thirty-eight to his chest, almost as if it were an infant.

“ Peeps, there’s dead people here. Those cops aren’t gonna be impressed by our badges. They want us to slide our guns away, then they’re gonna want us to lay out spread-eagled on the floor.”

“ We’re cops, for Christ’s sake.”

“ If we were them, we’d already be dead, so let’s not tempt them. Okay?”

“ Yeah, yeah.” And like Mouledoux had done, Peeps slid his thirty-eight down the center aisle, well out of reach.

“ We’re cops,” Mouledoux shouted again.

“ Step out, hand’s high.”

Mouledoux did. Peeps followed.

“ On the floor.” There were six, no seven cops Mouledoux counted facing them down from the exit. How bloody stupid, he thought as he dropped to the floor.

“ Move, move, move!” one of the cops shouted and Mouledoux saw them charging forward. In seconds they were on him, jerking his hands behind his back, cuffing them with cable ties.

“ My shield is on my belt,” he said as he was being hoisted to his feet.

“ Son of a bitch,” one of the cops said. “He’s a cop.”

“ That’s what he’s been trying to tell you!” Peeps tried to shake free of the two men holding him.

“ Let him go,” a plainclothes cop said.

“ You wanna cut these off,” Mouledoux said.

“ Explain.”

“ You just let the fucking shooters go,” Peeps shouted, agitated. “The two women and the black man.”

“ The big guy we helped into the car?” a cop said.

“ Probably,” Mouledoux said.

“ Shit,” the cop said.

“ Go back to the hotel,” Izzy said.

“ Not a hospital for Black?”

“ No, not right away.”

“ You know what you’re doing?”

“ I hope so.”

“ Me too, but why back there?” Lila said as she turned the car in the direction of the Marriott Suites.

“ We’re going to hide in plain sight. It’s the last place they’ll look for us.”

“ Gotcha,” Lila said. “Good thinking.” At the hotel she pulled the car into the same spot it had been parked in about fifteen minutes ago.

“ I’m guessing they’ve already figured out who we are and how stupid they were for letting us get away,” Izzy said.

“ Yeah, probably,” Lila said. Then, “Did you check out? Do you plan on us using the same room?”

“ No, I think the woman at reception might have recognized me. Besides, I was off the books and the people who paid for the room could show up at anytime.”

“ I’ll get us a room.” Lila started to get out of the car.

“ Wait!” Izzy said.

“ What?”

“ If you use your credit card, they’ll be able to track us.”

“ Please. I’ve got more IDs than you can shake a stick at.” She got out of the car.

“ Get a room near the back entrance,” Izzy said after her.

Lila didn’t turn around. She just raised her right hand and waved it as she walked away.

“ Right,” Izzy muttered to the dog, who’d scooted over into Lila’s place behind the wheel.

Lila stopped at a black XKE Jaguar, reached behind the passenger seat and pulled out an expensive looking grip. She slung it over her shoulder, then entered the hotel.

Izzy curled her fingers into fists, fighting an urge to bite her nails. It seemed like she’d been waiting forever when she saw Lila push out through the hotel doors.

“ How’d it go?” Izzy said, when she reached the car.

“ Fine.” Lila didn’t seem tense at all. How’d she do it? “I got us the room by the back entrance. Told the woman I was a heavy smoker and would be going out a lot.”

Izzy started the car, moved it to the spot closest to the rear entrance.

“ Coast is clear,” Lila said and the two woman helped Black, who was conscious and able to assist, out of the car, with the dog following. Lila keyed the back entrance and then the door to their room, 114, which was directly opposite the last room Izzy had been in. Inside, they led Black through the suite to the closest bed.

“ Blood’s gone,” Lila said as they eased him onto the bed.

“ Yeah,” Izzy said.

“ I don’t remember anyone cleaning it off.”

“ No, no one did.”

“ I understand why we couldn’t take him to a hospital, what with a couple dead cops back there, but it seems like we never really had to take him to one, after all. Did we?”

“ Doesn’t look like.”

“ So, when you rubbed your bloody hand into his wound, is that what did it?”

“ I don’t know. It’s just a guess.”

“ Darned good one, it looks like.”

“ Seems so.”

“ Sweet,” Lila said. Then, “I know you think hiding out here is a good idea and it probably is, but we have to do something about the car. I don’t think those cops got the tags, but they’re not stupid, they got the make and model and one of them is more than likely going to remember it’s got Nevada plates on it, so we should move it and I’m thinking we should drop it off by one of the used car lots up the street.”