Andrew Klavan - Empire of Lies

And there was Serena in my mother's kitchen, too-there against the sink where my mother used to stand while she washed the dishes. I used to play on the floor by her feet when I was little, snapping together wooden men that were made to stand on each other's shoulders like acrobats so you could make pyramids and buildings out of them. They still made some toys out of good-quality wood back then. Later, they were made of plastic, and then they stopped making them altogether. Now, there was Serena, struggling wildly and helplessly in the grip of that shouting man in the cowled hood. I saw her face twisted and red and ugly in her rage and her mouth with flecks of spit on the corners of it, flecks of spit flying from it, the lips forming words that young ladies really, it occurred to me in my foggy state, shouldn't say.

The man on top of me was close and horrible, his stink in my nostrils as he tried to punch my face through my raised arm or snuck in punches to my sides and belly. Another man somewhere was trying to get a clean kick at me, kicking my rib cage hard, then trying to kick at my head. The teakettle whistle of the alarm seeped back into my consciousness, as if I had forgotten it and was just remembering it now. I thought in a sort of distant, disinterested way that time seemed to be passing very slowly, that the sixty seconds it would take before the alarm actually went off were going to last a long, long time. I thought by the time the thing really let loose and started ringing, by the time it alerted the security firm and the police, I would probably be unconscious, possibly dead. That deep fall into myself after the first blows to my head, all these impressions that had gone through my mind-all of it had taken no more than maybe a second, maybe two or three. And it was all getting slower and quieter and farther away.

I struggled up toward the world. I knew they would kill me if I didn't. They would kill me and take Serena, so I struggled up and, all at once, I burst to the surface. The shouting and confusion and the pain of the blows became loud and immediate as time sped up in a great sudden rush. A frenzied strength of panic went through me.

With a grunt, I lifted up on one side, spilling the man on top of me onto the floor. I got a weak punch in on him before the other son of a bitch stopped kicking me in the back and jumped on me and grabbed my arm. I reached back around with my other arm and grabbed his hair, pulled his face to me, and sank my teeth into his cheek. He screamed and pushed off my chest and tore himself away, leaving blood and flesh in my mouth. The other guy tried to get back on top of me, clawing at my face, but I elbowed him in the ear, knocking him away.

Jamal staggered up from the table, staggered to his feet. I glimpsed him from the corner of my eyes, heard his raw, hoarse orders amidst the noise.

"Get her out of here! Get the gun!" he was rasping. "Get her out. The gun. Under the stove."

The thug beside me immediately rolled over on his stomach and jammed his hand under the stove, feeling for the gun. I jumped on him, grabbed him by the collar, pulled him back. The other thug grabbed me and the three of us went to the floor again, grappling, tearing, punching, gouging at one another.

Something almost like quiet descended on the room then. The alarm went on whistling its warning and Jamal rasped orders. Serena let out strangled sobs and gasps as she fought to get free. On the floor, we were grunting and panting in our struggle. But most of the shouting was over now, and it seemed uncannily still. It was eerie; frightening. As if all this turmoil were going on unheard, unseen, unknown, in the midst of a vacuum, or in the one lighted place at the center of a vast surrounding darkness. It felt to me as if my mother's kitchen were floating in emptiness and space, and that, scrabbling and clutching and scratching on its fake brick linoleum floors, I was, in fact, battling for every piece of living territory left in all the world.

And I was losing the battle. The two men overpowered me now. They forced themselves on top of me. They held me down. I fought with one, our arms tangling and flailing. The other, meanwhile, reared up on his knees and shoved his hand into his sweatpants pocket, dug for something, came out with it: a folding knife. He worked to open the blade so he could sink it into me. At the same time, Jamal was trying to get around us to the stove.

"Hold him," he was saying. "Hold him!"-and his hoarse voice was very clear in the grunting, whistling silence. "I'll get the gun."

Over by the sink, meanwhile, the man who had Serena began to drag her out of the room. Her feet kicked out and she twisted in his grip as he pulled her backward across the threshold. I heard her shrieking through clenched teeth, the sound muffled deep in her throat. Then she must've realized it was hopeless. She cried out-wailed-in her rage and despair:

"No! Jason! Daddy!"

I threw the two thugs off me. It was easy. It really was. I don't know whether anyone will believe me or not. Even I look back at it and think my memory must be false or overblown. But the way it comes back to me: I heard Serena cry out, and all at once I was rising off the floor and the thugs were flying across the room to the left and right of me as if I were some kind of comic-book superhero and they my merely human foes.

In an instant, I was on my feet. I could see Serena already disappearing into the shadows of the living room. The man who was dragging her was already just a cowled phantom in the darkness behind her. I tried to go after them, but the two thugs I had thrown aside lunged at me again. I grabbed one by the throat and drove him down onto the kitchen table. The other came with me as I moved and I turned and drove back again, shouldering him hard into the counter by the stove.

I heard Serena wail my name one more time. I gave a guttural snarl in my desperation to reach her.

Then the alarm went off and every other sound was swept away.

Oh, it was a wild and clamorous cry-a hellacious clarion. It filled the kitchen. It filled the brain. The shattering din of it flooded the house and became the medium through which we moved. The very first blast of it was so overwhelming that it seemed to me everything froze-we all froze-and then went on only thickly, slowly, slogging through the noise like fugitives in a dream.

Once again, I tried to charge after Serena but once again the thugs jumped on me, dragged me back. I thought I saw the flash of the knife blade. But now Jamal was coming at us, too. The thought-pulverizing volume of the alarm must've panicked him. He'd abandoned his search for the gun. He was waving his hand urgently. His eyes were big and white beneath his hood. His shouts were lost beneath the siren, but I could see his mouth forming the words "Go! Go! Go!"

The two thugs tore away from the fight-so suddenly I staggered back a step. They rushed out the door, into the dark, into the living room after Serena. Jamal was right behind them. I tried to throw him aside or climb over him-anything to get by. But Jamal turned and harried me with punches, knocking me back against the sink. I grabbed his throat as he tried to get away, and he grabbed mine. For an instant-it could only have been an instant-we twirled around the room locked together like that, the siren screaming and screaming. Our faces were close together. The hatred in his expression was startling, shocking-as if a beast of fire had leapt out of nowhere into life.

And yet, I felt no hatred for him in return. I remember that clearly. Clutching his throat, spinning around the room in his clutches, I had no feeling about him in particular at all. The philosophy he stood for, the murder he may have done, the beating he had given Serena, even the mass slaughter he was planning-it was as if these were just sad facts of the world to me, symptoms of its soul's disease, like a leper's ugly sores or his contagion. I didn't hate the man for them at all. I simply wanted to destroy him-crush him, kill him, whatever it took-just do the job that had to be done and finish him so I could get free and rescue Serena.