John Katzenbach: The Madman

Doctor Gulptilil was hovering over Lucy's bleeding form, as two paramedics worked over her feverishly. One finally managed to get the bleeding in her leg stifled with a tourniquet, while another worked a plasma drip into her arm. She was pale, hovering on the edge of consciousness, trying to speak, but unable to find words that would work past her dry lips and beyond the pain. She finally gave up and allowed herself to drift in and out of reality, only peripherally aware that people were trying to help her. With Big Black's assistance, the two paramedics maneuvered her onto a stretcher, and lifted it. Two gray-suited security guards stood to the side, uncertain what to do, awaiting some instructions.

As Lucy was wheeled out, Gulp-a-pill turned to the Moses brothers. His first instinct was to loudly insist on an explanation, but then, he decided to bide his time. Instead, he merely asked: "Where?"

Big Black stepped forward. His white attendant's jacket was streaked with blood from trying to staunch Lucy's wounds. Little Black was similarly marked.

"Down the basement," Big Black said. "C-Bird and the Fireman went after him."

Gulptilil shook his head. "Goodness," he said, under his breath, but thinking that in truth the situation demanded obscenities far worse. "Show me," he demanded.

The Moses brothers led the medical director to the basement door. "They went into the tunnel?" Gulptilil asked, already knowing the answer. Big Black nodded. "Do we know where it comes out?"

Little Black shook his head.

Doctor Gulptilil had no intention of following anyone through the dark pit of the heating tunnel. He took a deep breath. He was reasonably confident that Lucy Jones would survive her wounds, despite the savagery with which they had been delivered, unless loss of blood and shock conspired to steal her life. That was possible, he thought, with professional detachment. At the moment, though, he didn't care much what happened to her. But it was abundantly clear to the medical director that someone else was likely to die that night, and he was already trying to anticipate the trouble that was likely to cause him. "Well," he said with a sigh, "we can speculate that it either emerges in Williams, because that is the closest building, or else travels back to the power plant, so those locations are where we should look." Of course, what he did not say out loud was that those destinations assumed that Francis and Peter successfully emerged from the tunnel, an assumption that he was not completely willing to make.

In the darkness, Peter fought hard.

He knew he was injured severely, but how badly was just beyond his understanding. It was as if each piece of the battle he was fighting was separate, distinct, and he tried to concentrate on each individually, to see if he could put together a defense that was whole. He could feel blood throbbing from a wound in his arm, and he knew that the weight of the Angel was bearing down on him. The pistol that he'd gripped so tightly had disappeared, easily knocked by the force of the Angel's assault into some black corner, gone from his touch, so that now what he had remaining to fight with was solely a desire to live.

He punched out hard, finding flesh, and he heard the Angel grunt, then followed it up with another blow, only to feel the knife slash at his arm, digging in sharply, furrowing his own skin. Peter shouted out some sound that wasn't a part of any language other than that of survival, and kicked as hard as he could with his feet. He battled against shadow, against the idea of death, as much as he did against the killer who was pressing him.

Locked together, blind and lost, the two men tried to find a way of killing the other. It was an unfair fight, for time and again the Angel was able to plunge the knife down, discovering purchase in Peter's body, and the Fireman thought he was going to be sliced to pieces slowly by the repeated blows. He lifted his arms, warding off strike after strike, kicking, trying to find some vulnerable spot in the utter black of the moment.

He could feel the Angel's breath, feel the man's strength and thought he would be no match for the deadly combination of the knife and obsession. Still, Peter fought hard, scratching, clawing, hoping for the Angel's eyes, or perhaps his groin, something that might give him a momentary respite from the knife that chopped at him. He thrust out his left hand, and it grazed against the Angel's chin, and in a burst of comprehension, knew that the killer's throat would be close by, so wildly he reached and suddenly felt skin and he closed his hand, choking the man who was trying to kill him. But, in the same instant, he felt the knife suddenly penetrate into his side, digging past flesh and muscle, searching for his stomach, hoping then to turn and rise upward and destroy his heart. Pain sheeted over his eyes, and Peter half gasped, half sobbed at the thought that he was going to die right there, right at that moment, in the darkness. He could feel the knife searching out death, and he grabbed at the Angel's hand, trying to slow what seemed like an inevitable march.

And then suddenly, like an explosion, an immense force seemed to slam into the two men.

The Angel groaned, knocked sideways, his grip on Peter suddenly halved, and the killer spat wordlessly in rage.

Peter did not know how Francis had managed to assault the Angel from behind, but he had, and now the young man clung to the killer's back, furiously trying hard to wrap his own hands around the Angel's throat.

Francis was shouting some great war cry, high-pitched, terrifying, one that combined all his fears and all his doubts into a single immense song. All his life, he had never fought back, never battled for something more important, never taken a true chance, never understood that this moment was either to be his best or his last, until this very second. And so he threw every ounce of hope into his fight, slamming his fists into the Angel's back and head, then grappling with the killer, trying to pull him back, off of Peter. He used every ounce of madness to buttress what muscle he had, letting every fear and rejection that he'd ever experienced fuel his battle. He gripped the Angel with a tenacity born of desperation, unwilling to let either nightmare or killer steal from him the only friend he thought he would ever have.

The Angel twisted and shook, struggling terribly. He was trapped between the two men, the one wounded, the other crazed with fear certainly, but more driven by something larger, and he hesitated, unsure which to fight, uncertain whether to try to finish the first battle and then turn to the second, which seemed increasingly impossible beneath the rain of blows Francis threw. Then he was stymied, when Francis suddenly grabbed hold of the Angel's arm, and twisted him backward. This abrupt change loosened the pressure that the Angel was putting on the knife in Peter's side, and with a reserve of strength that seemed to well up from some hidden spot within him, the Fireman seized hold of the Angel's hand with both of his own, neutralizing the pressure on the knife blade, arresting its drive toward his own death.

Francis did not know how long his own strength would last him. He knew the Angel was stronger in many ways, and if he was to have a chance, it would have to be right at that moment, right at the start, before the Angel could direct all his attention to him. He pulled as hard as he could, investing every bit of power he had in the desire to free Peter from beneath the Angel's figure. And, to his astonishment, he succeeded, at least in part. The Angel twisted back, off-balance, then slammed back farther, so that now Francis was caught beneath his body, under his back. Francis tried to wrap his legs around the killer, and he hung on with deadly determination, like a mongoose biting down on a cobra, as the Angel tried to find a way to beat off Francis's grip.