Blake Crouch - Locked doors

From portside I could see the carnage up in the observation lounge. Two silhouettes leaning against each other, the glass behind them splintered and shimmering red in the early sun. Wind gusted and the window collapsed, glass raining on the deck.

Closing the breech, I peeked over the hood of the old Dodge.

Maxine and Luther were helping Rufus to his feet.

I aligned Luther in the sight, pulled the trigger twice.

Luther looked in my direction, his raven hair windblown and twining about his bonewhite face, the gunshot echoes fading fast across the water.

He fell.

His parents knelt around him, Maxine lifting his shirt.

I could hear Luther talking.

Then his mother roared, struggled to her feet with the shotgun, and started for the truck, eyes soulless, raging, Rufus trailing after her.

I scrambled toward the stern, passing the navy Honda again, a single bullet through the window, the driver shot through the cheek while he slept.

I heard the shotgun cocking, glanced back between the railing and the cars, saw Maxine leveling the barrel on me.

I rolled behind the Honda.

The twelve gauge boomed, pellets shattering the windshield, chinking on the metal. As the old woman pumped the shotgun again I made for the sternside steps and climbed to the rear entrance of the observation lounge.

The door stood open.

Row of seats in the middle, more along the windows.

Dead couple on the left.

Still sitting upright.

Shotgun blasts to the face.

Obliteration beyond all reckoning.

Another facedown on the floor, heavy sluglike smear where they’d tried to crawl.

The pink sun brilliant through the fissured glass.

Quiet now save for a few idling engines and the sound the bow made ripping through water, the ferry moving with its own deteriorating momentum.

I peered down through the glassless windows, saw the Kites rounding the stern. In five seconds they’d be climbing the stairs.

Rufus dropped bullets on the deck.

I rushed toward the front of the lounge.

The Kites’ footfalls on the steps now.

As I reached to open the door it swung back.

Luther faced me, smiling and unscathed, his Windex breath warm on my nose.

“You’re a lousy shot, Andrew,” he said as his mother entered wheezing through the back of the lounge.

I tried to punch him in the throat.

He caught my fist and I was tumbling down the steps.

I lay dazed on the concrete deck, my head throbbing, left arm sprained or broken.

The Kites came down the stairs.

Luther grabbed me under my armpits, dragged me to my feet.

They surrounded me at the starboard bow, backed me up against the railing.

The wind cold and blasting.

Everyone squinting in the sunlight.

Maxine aiming the shotgun at my stomach.

Rufus at her side, one arm around her shoulder, the other holding his jaw.

Their son stepped toward me.

“What’d you think, Andrew? No hard feelings? We all just go our separate ways?”

“Wasn’t necessary to kill everyone on-”

“Couldn’t have you borrowing someone’s cell phone, having the police waiting for us at the dock. You killed these people, Andrew. No one would’ve died if you’d let us go. Now we’ve got a little swim ahead of us, so…”

I noticed Orson’s bowie knife in his left hand, thinking, So that’s how I end.

“What about Violet?”

“She’s amazing,” he said. “I look at her and think maybe she’ll make me different.”

It happened so fast.

Engine revving.

Screech of tires.

Heads turning.

Luther and I dove out of the way as the Chevy Blazer clipped Rufus and Maxine and slammed them into the railing, Violet gunning the engine, the tires pressing the crushing weight of the Blazer directly into Sweet-Sweet and Beautiful.

She shifted the vehicle into park, pinning the Kites solidly against the railing.

Stepping out, she lifted the shotgun from the deck.

Luther back on his feet.

Running.

She shouldered the twelve gauge.

He leapt over the portside railing as the shotgun bucked and boomed.

We dashed over.

Violet pumped the shotgun, trained it on the water.

“Where is he?” she asked.

“I don’t see him.”

The ferry was still drifting, the spot where he’d gone in falling farther and farther behind.

We ran back to the stern, leaned over the railing.

“You hit him, right?” I said, scanning the churned water in the ferry’s wake.

“I’m not sure.”

The light gleaming off the chop made it difficult to see but we stood watching, the water reflective and glimmering, a smashed liquid mirror catching all the colors of sunrise.

“Andrew,” she said finally.

“What, you see him?”

“I hear sirens.”

I hurt everywhere as I followed Violet to the bow, the Kinnakeet foundering seventy-five yards off the soundside shore of Hatteras, bottomed out on a sandbar.

The sky filled fast with daylight, the sun halfrisen from the sea.

Sirens wailing in the distance.

We approached the Blazer.

Violet stopped at the bumper, Rufus pinned at the waist, head resting on the hood, Maxine glassyeyed and fading, struggling through sodden inhalations.

I reached into the Blazer and killed the ignition.

Violet let the steaming barrel of the twelve gauge graze Rufus’s mouth.

Her eyes were glacial.

“I’m not going to ask if you know what you took from me.”

Her finger fidgeted with the trigger.

“All I want to do is cause you pain.”

“Do it,” he croaked.

The shotgun clicked.

Violet looked down at her trigger finger, incredulous, as though the digit had acted apart from her will.

“You took everything from me.”

She pressed the barrel into his face, pointed across the deck-a floating battlefield.

We could see three dead from where we stood, the crewman, the captain, and the passenger Rufus had executed.

“Why did you-”

“Because we could,” Maxine hissed, unable to produce anything louder than a whisper. She expelled a long breath, eyes enameling with death.

Her chin fell forward onto the grille.

Eyes rolling back in her head.

“Beautiful,” Rufus rasped, trying to turn his head. “Beautiful!”

I told him she was gone.

“Don’t you say that to me. You don’t…”

The old man closed his eyes and whimpered. His left hand was free. He reached over, felt his wife’s paling face, stroked her disheveled white mane.

“My joy,” he murmured, eyes redrimmed and leaking, voice strained, deflating with suffocation.

His last breath came like a sad sigh.

A half mile up the sound, blue lights flickered near the docks.

Violet looked so tired, so much older than a week ago, her clothes a shamble of ripped and soiled fabric.

“Violet.” The detective gazed up at me, pushed her dirty yellow hair from her green eyes, the sunrise lending false warmth to her pretty broken face. “I have to go.”

She dropped the shotgun, sat down on the deck, buried her head in her arms.

“You gonna be all right?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“They’ll take care of you.”

“Just wait a second.”

“I can’t.”

Leaning down, I kissed her forehead.

“Take care of your baby.”

And I headed for the starboard railing. It was a four foot drop to the water. I straddled it, glanced back at Violet-the tiny blond sitting at the bow, staring off toward the distant commotion on the docks, an eerie silence settling over the ferry, all quiet save the Stars and Stripes flapping from the mast.

I looked down into the dark water.

I jumped in.

The pain was exquisite.