Marcus Sakey - The Amateurs

Mitch. His friend, his doppelganger, the flip side of his coin. His partner in defeat. Alex could see in his eyes that the man was beaten. Mitch, who always had a plan. Beaten. Slowly, like his body was a wooden puppet under someone else’s control, his friend bent down to retrieve the black duffel bag from the floor.

Alex looked over at Johnny Love. His former boss’s hair was slicked back, but a clump had come loose and stood at odd attention. His smile was as slippery and self-satisfied as a television commercial lawyer’s. “I told you, kid. You don’t fuck with me.”

Mitch reached a shaking hand forward. Picked up one of the bottles. Slid it into the bag.

It was happening. It was really happening.

They were going to let these two assholes walk out with chemical weapons. They were going to put them in the bag politely, hand it over, and wait for Johnny to shoot them.

Or, maybe worse, wait for him not to. For him to walk away, and let them wonder when they would hear about sarin gas in a high school.

No.

Maybe they would be safe if they did nothing. But they would never be OK. They had to fight. Maybe it would cost them everything. Their lives. But it would be a cause worth dying for.

Mitch put the second bottle in the bag.

Alex gently slid one foot to the floor, shifted his weight, counting on Victor and Johnny to be watching Mitch.

If only they had a weapon. He remembered throwing the guns in the river, the heft of each and the plunk as they splashed into dark water. He would have given his arm to have one of them now. For a weapon of any sort: a knife, the baseball bat Jenn kept under her bed. A weapon, one little weapon. That was the only thing that was holding them back, keeping the odds from being even. A weapon-

Mitch put the third bottle into the bag.

Holy shit.

Alex would have laughed if it wouldn’t have slowed him down. Instead he slid off the stool, turned to grab it by the back, spun hard, and hurled the thing at Johnny.

It was a clumsy throw, awkward and overfast, and Johnny sidestepped easily, raising the pistol. But dodging had distracted him, and Alex put everything into a lunge, his shoulder down, feet scrabbling on the tile floor, the clean and perfect rush of motion, his insides piano-wire taut. He was going to tear Johnny apart, rip the smarmy fucker into pieces with his bare hands. Payback for a thousand minor indignities and one unforgivable sin. For Cassie.

The pistol in Johnny’s hand spat flame twice.

There was a sticky feeling like a thin finger poking through his belly, like a yellowed nail scraping through his intestines, and where it touched was agony beyond fire, and his feet were still moving, his momentum carrying him forward as he realized that he had been shot, that Johnny had hit him at least once, maybe twice, and that the gun was steadying again, centering on him, and everything disappeared but the gap, the horrifying gap between him and Johnny, six feet, five, the man so close he could almost see the pores on his nose-

Another explosion.

Alex staggered, his feet starting to tangle. His belly burned and his fingers were numb and his shoulder felt weak and he realized he had his tongue stuck between his lips and was biting it, and then he reached Johnny, the fat fuck’s face gone shiny. The pain was unreal, whirling and sharp, a spinning saw blade in his chest, ripping and tearing, and it took all his strength to lift his arms and clamp them on Johnny’s shoulders, then slide them around his back, to squeeze the man to him like they were dancing, Johnny’s aftershave sharp and chemical, mingling with the boxing-glove stench of his own sweat and a coppery smell from his chest, Johnny pinned with the gun between them, and then there was another explosion, this one muffled, and Alex felt part of his chest rip out his back and fly free and wet, and knew he was going to die.

It was OK. It was for Cassie.

He just had to do one thing first. One more thing.

He had to trust Mitch.

IAN SAW THE FIST COMING, couldn’t do anything about it, tried to close his mouth but only managed to get his tongue caught between his teeth as the blow hit. His head yanked sideways, white and black bursting. His fingers started to slip, and he made himself hold on, hold on, and he prayed that Jenn understood.

And then he heard the sound of the front door opening and knew that he had won.

“Fuck!” The man rose fast as a snake. With the last of his strength, Ian grabbed his calf. The man spun back, wound up, and unleashed a vicious kick. The foot exploded into his ribs with a crunching sound, and Ian’s grip broke. He flopped back on the floor, strength gone. His eyes were closed, but he heard the man stand up, his fast footfalls down the hall. But he had bought her something. Maybe enough.

For a moment, he just breathed, every inhale agony. Then he heard steady footsteps. He opened his eyes, saw the man standing above him, shaking his head, a smile on his lips. “That was your big escape plan?”

Ian tried to speak, coughed, blood and bile mingling in his mouth. He turned sideways and spit it on the floor. Looked back. “Yep.”

“The money isn’t here?”

“Nope.”

“Well, I give you credit for heart, brother. But you really are a fuck-up, you know that?”

Ian coughed again. Stared at the barrel of the gun. “Yeah.” He smiled through broken lips. “But I’m working on it.”

A finger moved on the trigger. There was a loud sound.

And then there was nothing.

MITCH’S HANDS WERE SWEATY on the plastic. His brain felt like a prisoner, walled away and forgotten as it screamed and threw itself against the bars of its cage. Every breath felt stolen.

He put the third bottle in the bag, aware of every sensation, the way the zipper grated against his wrist, the cool of the plastic leaving his hand, the pressure of the edge of the bar against his stomach. Victor was smiling, a wolfish, ugly grin. The look of a man winking at you as he fucked your girlfriend.

Then there was a squeak and a scrambling beside him, and his head whipped around to see Alex in motion, a bar stool hanging in the air like it was on wires, the big man surging forward at Johnny and his big chrome pistol. It lasted forever. The chair didn’t fly, it drifted, no kin to gravity, turning slowly, a play of light gleaming off the polished wood back. Alex was a freight train in slow motion, power and energy moving through jelly, shoulder down. The gun drifting lazily as Johnny took a step sideways to avoid the stool.

The sound was incredibly loud and terribly familiar. It jolted him, shook that secret center of him that was all he really was. The part that wore the rest of him like clothing.

A gunshot, just like the one he had heard in the alley, when he sighted down the barrel at the man on the ground and pulled the trigger.

A second blast followed, and a third. They sounded crass, unnecessary. Alex took the shots like a charging boxer tagged by jabs, slowed but not stopped, his body rippling where he was hit. And then he was on Johnny, had the man pinned in a bear hug, and Mitch wanted to howl, to scream his friend’s name.

The fourth shot was muffled, and a piece of Alex’s body blew out the back of him to spatter on the bar.

The moment broke like a mirror.

Mitch had the last bottle, felt the heft of it, light for so much death, but heavy enough in his hand. He turned to Victor, saw his mask crumbling. The man stood directly opposite him, a dark shape against the rows of glowing bottles, whiskey and tequila and vodka and gin standing side by side like soldiers. He thought about jumping the bar but saw Victor’s hands moving, realized he must be going for a gun. Thought of dropping to the floor, into the safety of a child hiding beneath a bed. Thought about rushing to help Alex, and turned to do it, only to see a twisting mass of bodies, Alex and Johnny, spinning and sliding and falling. Tumbling toward him. Somehow Alex, shot more than once, had kept hold of Johnny and yanked him toward the bar, the two of them embracing like lovers.