Andrew Klavan - Damnation Street

Screaming again, he hauled Weiss to his feet. Holding him upright, he got around in front of him and raised one of his slack arms. Bishop bent his knees and pulled the arm over his shoulder. He brought the whole enormous body across his back, holding the arm with one hand and the dangling legs with the other.

Then, screaming wildly, he straightened, holding Weiss across his shoulders. His insides tore again. He felt hot fluid spilling inside him, spreading through him. He faced the fire on the stairs. The top steps were snapping and crumbling. Sparks were flying upward. The banister had become a line of bubbling flame.

Bishop charged up the stairs, up into the heart of the fire, carrying Weiss on his back. The flames surrounded him. The heat engulfed him. The smoke was everywhere, crawling over his hands, over his face. He lifted one leg and then another, climbing. His legs grew rubbery, weak. They wouldn't hold him. He fell to his knees. He rose again, screaming, lifting Weiss. The fire felt as if it would strip the flesh from his cheeks. He climbed. His guts bled inside him. He thought he must be dead already. He thought he must be a corpse animated by pure will.

He stepped on the top stair. It cracked. It caved in under his foot. Only the very bottom of the riser held. His foot came down onto it. He felt it bending with his weight. He had only another second before he broke clean through.

He drove himself forward into the door.

The door flew open. Bishop pushed through it, carrying Weiss. He was out-out in the upstairs room again. The room was ablaze. The whole house was burning. The night was blindingly bright with fire.

He turned, this way and that. The smoke was thick as mud. It smothered him like mud. He was lost in it. He couldn't see the door. He couldn't tell one direction from another. Black smoke was folding over him. Black unconsciousness was rising inside him.

It occurred to him that none of this was possible. It couldn't be real. It had to be a dream. But even then, in the impossible moment, with the black coming down over him and rising up inside him, he was struck with wonder by the fantastic appearance of a child.

He caught a glimpse of the child through the flames. He saw him standing in the chaos of smoke and fire, wonderfully calm, wonderfully still. It was a boy with red-gold hair and a beautiful face, all serene. Bishop remembered him from somewhere. He had seen him before as he had seen the demon truck driver before. It came to him then. The child was a character in a movie, some crap movie or other he had seen on TV. He had stayed up late one night, getting drunk on beer and staring at it. It was full of cliched images like this one, like this golden boy. He had watched the entire film. It was a complete piece of shit. He wished he had never wasted his time with it. Now he was stuck with this cliched kid, standing in the midst of the fire.

Well, maybe he wasn't real, Bishop thought, but there he was, all the same. He must've come in through the door. The door must be right behind him: the way out. Bishop went toward him, slogging across the blackness.

The fire clawed at his flesh. The smoke bore down on top of him. He staggered under the weight of the smoke and under the weight of Weiss. He went on, step by step, his knees starting to buckle. He carried Weiss to the child.

The child lifted his hackneyed and beautiful face. He lifted his white, white hand. Bishop held Weiss steady on his back with his right hand and held out his left toward the child. The child took hold of it. He drew Bishop forward, through the black smoke and the blackness inside him, through the flame and the flaming pain. Bishop gazed at the child, amazed and glad that he had come to him out of the crap movie. Then he looked up over the child's head. He saw the door. The door was a standing rectangle of white light. The child tugged him by the hand and drew him toward it.

The fire fell away behind him. The smoke and noise fell away. The door grew closer. The white light grew brighter, bigger. The white light surrounded him. The white light became everything.

Bishop opened his eyes. He didn't know where he was at first. He had come as if from light into light. He had been surrounded by that fantastic brightness, and now he was in the hospital room and the lights were on and Sissy was sitting over him. She smiled at him. She had a sweet smile. Tears were streaming down her cheeks.

Bishop tried to speak to her. It was hard. He hurt. He hurt a lot.

"Ssh, take it easy, Jim," Sissy whispered. Bishop remembered her voice and how tender it always was. "You're gonna be okay. You made it. You made it back to us."

Bishop tried to speak again. His mouth moved but he hadn't the strength to push the words out.

"It was close there, let me tell you," Sissy went on, her voice breaking. "We weren't sure you were going to pull through. You're a pretty tough guy."

Bishop tried to lift his hand to her. He couldn't. He must've moved it, though. Sissy looked down at it and put her own hand into it. Bishop was glad to feel her. The soft woman skin. The cool woman skin.

His eyes traveled from her face, up and around the room. Chairs, the bed rail, a silver tray, tubes, machines. It was the same hospital room as before. He had never left it. The house in the middle of nowhere wasn't real. The demon wasn't real and the child wasn't and neither were the fire and the whole business about carrying Weiss. Only the darkness had been real. The darkness and the light. And the tears-he could feel the tears rolling down his face onto the pillow. They were real too.

He was alive. That was the point. He was still alive. Maybe he had failed at everything, but whatever needed to be done, there was still time to do it.

He licked his dry lips. He squeezed Sissy's hand. He wanted to tell her how sorry he was, how terribly sorry. He had not gotten to Weiss. He had not told him about the Shadowman's plan.

"It's all right," she whispered down at him. "It's all right."

Bishop closed his eyes, exhausted. He would live. There was time. But it was not all right. It was not all right at all. He had not reached Weiss. He had not told him the plan.

Weiss was still out there-still out there, in the middle of nowhere-alone.

For him, in the end, it was a matter of seconds.

Weiss heard Julie's footstep on the path. That was the first he knew she was there. She was almost at the house, almost at the front door.

He sat stock-still in the armchair in the darkened room. The. 38 was in his hand, his palm sweaty against the grip. He held his breath, straining to hear. The footsteps drew closer. He knew the killer would have to make his move in the next moment.

Weiss sat still, sat still. There was no room for error. If the killer was still watching him, if he saw him leave the chair, it would be over. He had to go at exactly the right moment.

Julie's hard heels sounded on the paved path. Ten yards away. Then five. Then three.

Then a break in the rhythm of her step. And Weiss thought: now.

The killer moved.

The girl was only two strides from the door. She was lifting her hand to the knob. He had waited for this. People who are nervous or afraid of something look over their shoulders as they approach a door, but there is a moment when they have to open it, when they have to focus forward and they can't look around. That's the moment you can take them. He knew this. He had done it half a hundred times.

He was out of the car in a second, the 9mm SIG held lightly in his hand. He went up the walk behind her without making a sound. In his excitement, the silicone bodysuit seemed to weigh nothing; the fake flesh seemed to have become his own. He moved easily. He glided through the rain.