John Sandford - Broken Prey

In the dim light, he couldn’t see who it was, but he thought it might be Lighter. Lucas shouted, “Hey,” and the man turned, and Lucas saw that it wasn’t Lighter, that he didn’t recognize the man at all. Then he saw movement on his right and pivoted and saw a flash, was hit hard in the left arm, taking in the boom , felt himself falling and jerked two shots in the direction of the flash and crawled back out through the doorway into the hall. There was crouching, combat-style movement down the hall and he shouted, “Help!”

Sloan shouted back, “Where are you?”

“Down here. I’m hit.”

“Ah, Jesus. .”

Sloan ran to him in the dim light; the smell of smoke was stronger now, and Sloan came up, Shrake a step behind.

“How bad?” Sloan asked.

The pain was coming on. “I think my arm’s busted. Left arm,” Lucas said. “There’s a guy in there to the right. At least a couple people down. I don’t think I hit him when I fired back.”

Shrake did a peek, then put his left arm through the doorway, with his face, ready to fire. Sloan was cutting at Lucas’s sport coat with a jackknife. “Let me see. . ah, man, you got a hole. It’s not bleeding too bad, but it’s right below your biceps, right in the middle.”

“Yeah, that’s what it feels like,” Lucas groaned. “I can feel a piece moving. . We gotta take this guy.”

“You’re out of it,” Sloan said.

“I can move okay,” Lucas said. He stood up, almost fell, propped himself against the wall. There was smoke now, another fire, the hallways clear except for a man at the far end, dragging a mattress for some reason. “Look: I’ll go back down and sit in the stairway, block it off. You guys gotta keep this asshole penned up, or take him. There’s somebody in there hurt.”

“You know who it is?”

“No. Could be Biggie,” Lucas said.

“That motherfucker,” Sloan said. “You go on. We’ll take him.”

“Get some more support up here,” Shrake said. “Jenkins went off with that crappie cop, they could hear something down on one.”

“Cell phone,” Lucas said. “I can’t use mine. .”

“Get your ass down to the stairwell,” Sloan said. “We’ll take care of this.”

Jenkins and the game warden, whose name was Deacon, saw the flash of the gunshot and moved slowly down the inside wall of the hallway, closing on the door. They found Chase sitting on the shoulders of a dead man, as though the dead man were a low stool, talking to a woman who had propped herself up against a wall. They could hear Chase’s voice before they saw him; a low chatter that continued between the brenk brenk brenk of the alarms. When they got right next to the door, they could hear his voice distinctly, as he talked over the racket around them.

“. . is dead, because if he wasn’t dead, he couldn’t stand it when I put my finger on his eyeball like this. But see, he doesn’t even blink. There’s still some blood running out, but that’s gravity, is what it is. Just like when you cut a chicken’s head off, the blood keeps coming for a long time, but the chicken is dead. Have you ever seen anybody do that? No? It’s pretty exciting. You get the chicken and you hold it by its legs, and you rub its stomach and it’ll get real quiet, then you lay the neck on a block and then really quick, chop, and the head flies off. If you let go of the chicken, the body will run all over the place without a head. It’s pretty funny, when you see it. .”

Jenkins risked a peek. The room was fifteen-by-fifteen feet and the man was sitting with his back to Jenkins, not more than seven or eight feet away. He was pointing a pistol at a woman against the far wall, who sat motionless, head down; she had blood on her blouse. Jenkins was not sure she was alive. He had to assume she was, though, and she was also directly on the other side of the man. If he shot the man, the bullet could go right through him into her. .

“That’s what people mean when they say that somebody’s running around like a chicken with its head cut off. . Anyway, this is what dead is. . when somebody puts his finger on your eyeball, you don’t even blink. I am going to shoot you when I’m finished talking, and you’ll feel all your blood run out, and then to make sure you’re dead, I will. . don’t move. Just sit there. Just listen, or I’ll pull the trigger. .”

Jenkins pulled slowly back, listening to the beat of the words, checked his gun, turned to the game warden, and put his finger to his lips. He stood upright, carefully slipped off his loafers, took a breath, then took a quick long silent step into the room, then part of another before the man began to turn. .

Jenkins fired a single shot down through the Chase’s skull, from a range of nine inches.

The game warden lurched through the door. Jenkins looked down at the dead man and said, “Fuckin’ amateurs.”

They both stepped over to the woman. She was a staffer and wore a black name tag that said Bea; she was alive, and she twitched away from him.

Lucas sat in the stairwell, waiting for Sloan and Shrake to make their move on Biggie. The shooting had trailed off-maybe they were running out of ammunition? Lucas tried to think of how many bodies he’d seen in the hallways. Six? Eight? Plus the three in the cage.

His arm hurt; not the worst hurt he’d ever felt, but it was bad enough. He was okay as long as he didn’t move. .

The brenk brenk brenk of the alarms suddenly stopped, and the silence was so shocking that Lucas got to his feet. . and could hear what seemed to be a general, hospitalwide wail, people hurting, people afraid. There was a thump from somewhere below, the sound of feet in the stairwell. .

Leo Grant didn’t know how long he’d been on the floor, but it had been awhile, he thought. He knew he’d been shot but couldn’t pin down the precise circumstances. His head wasn’t working quite right. .

He tried to push himself up, but his hands slipped. He couldn’t see well, but he looked at one hand, then smelled it, and tasted it. Blood, he was covered with blood. He couldn’t see very well, there was something wrong with his right eye. .

He tried again to push himself up, holding on to a window ledge. A door was open next to it, a battery-powered emergency light glowing in the ceiling. He stepped into a cell, then turned and looked at himself in the window-the mirrored inside of the one-way glass. Gaped at himself.

His right eye was gone. The side of his head was a mass of blood. . he put a hand to it. The eye was gone, and a piece of his eye socket, the outer rim. All gone.

Not much pain yet; a stinging, headache sensation, with little points of pain coming with each step. He started walking, not knowing exactly where he was, or what he was doing. Armageddon, he remembered that. He remembered going into the room with the pistols, and then. .

Had Chase shot him? He seemed to remember that. Chase had taken the gun and had shot him in the head.

“Crazy motherfucker,” he said. He dabbed at his head with his jacket sleeve. Crazy. . exactly crazy. Why hadn’t they thought of that? All the planning, why hadn’t they thought of the possibility that one of them might try to kill the others?. . But that seemed so unfair.

He was out of the cellblock now, down the hall, into the stairwell. He looked both ways: a half dozen safety lights provided hardly more illumination than the same number of candles would have.

He could feel the anger rising: he was supposed to be in on this. He was supposed to have a gun. They were his fuckin’ guns. They were supposed to walk down the hallways, shoulder to shoulder, taking who they wanted, letting other people live, people who begged good enough. Or maybe kill them even if they begged good enough, because it’d be fun to shoot the ass kissers.