Neely Tucker - Only the Hunted Run

A pause, this fucking fire alarm making him strain to hear.

“No, hey, seriously. What’s with the attitude? I’m up in the Speaker’s office, or area, or, um, whatever they call it. Down that hall. You listening now? I shot two guards downstairs, and look, I mean, sorry about that. They wanted to check my backpack, like I was straight out of St. E’s or something, you know? And they just couldn’t do that. Also, I shot some people as I went through the building. Maybe I shouldn’t have. That was probably wrong. But Barry Edmonds, you know him? The representative from Oklahoma? I had to kill him. It got messy. He’s right here.”

Dust, the tension, something, tested the end of Sully’s nose. He squinched his eyes shut to keep from sneezing. How far away was the shooter? Fifty feet? Sixty?

“I don’t know why you’re being this way. I really thought you guys would be here by now. Okay, so I’m sorry, I got to hang up then.”

Silence followed, some muttering, and then the sound of a match striking. A flare in the darkness and a sizzle. Whoomph whoomph , something flew by him, sparkling, and hit the tiled floor. It slid past him, sparks of red and white light illuminating the hallway. A flare. A roadway flare. Then movement. Scuffling sounds, a grunt, a zipper closing, a clatter, something hard and metal hitting the tile floor. Then, soft as a rose petal, footsteps.

Christ. He did not breathe. The steps came slow and steady. As he peered out the slit in the door-his one chance to eyeball the shooter-it dawned on him. His pen. His pen was stuck in the door, providing his narrow window. It would be sticking out in the hallway, knee level. Obvious now in the flickering light.

The footsteps came alongside him and then passed, the man’s body between Sully and the flare, illuminating him by backlight. The ponytail, that was the first thing Sully noticed. The man bent by the flare, the hair frayed and pulling loose. Sully breathed as slow as a swimmer.

The man reached out and took the bottom of the flare, holding it in his left hand, the light dancing around the hallway. He rose and turned back. Sully could pick out jeans and a black T-shirt, no facial hair.

Just for a second-a fraction of it-Sully thought the man looked over toward the bathroom door, at the pen jutting out. But then he underhanded the flare back down the hallway from which he’d just come, a sparkler spinning backward, throwing shadows that somersaulted and pinwheeled. It flew past the door until it clack-clacked on the floor and slid, coming to a rest far down the hallway.

When Sully looked back, the man was gone.

There was nothing. No shadow, no footsteps, no clatter. The hissing of the flare, the pale light fluttering down the hall, the sound of his own breathing. That was all. He kept an eye on the slit in the door. It was possible the shooter had flattened himself against the wall and was waiting for Sully to open it and step out, but he doubted it. If the guy had wanted to bang in the door, he would have already.

Still, standing up required planning. He leaned forward, off his ass and onto the balls of his feet, bringing his weight over his heels. Pressing down on them, raising up-a knee joint popped loudly on the gimp leg, making him hobble forward and cringe-he was on his feet.

Now. The door.

Two careful, contorted steps, like he was playing Twister, then he was behind it. Slowly, he reached down with his right hand to hold the pen stuck in the door opening. His left hand found the door handle. He eased up and stood back, pulling the door with him, sliding in his socks, until it was wide open and his back was against the wall, the door pressing against his nose.

Nothing. He counted to twenty. Nothing. Where is the fucking cavalry?

He came from behind the door. The ghastly reddish-white flare hissed. Briefly, he waved a hand into the hallway to see if it would draw fire. None. He slid out into the hallway, moving backward toward the flare, his eyes fixed down the hall where the shooter had disappeared. There was nobody and nothing. Just the flickering light, his breathing, the floor cool beneath his feet.

Sliding, taking his right foot forward, then bringing his left to catch up with it. Again. Moving in this way, he came past the flare. He swung his eyes to see the body that the killer had left behind.

“Oh, shit,” he whispered.

A man in a suit. On his back. The mortal remains of Barry Edmonds. Smears of blood on the floor. Duct tape wrapped around his ankles, upper thighs. Arms bound at his sides. A strap of tape across his mouth. The crotch of his suit dark, wet.

He had been shot in the upper right leg, but that was hardly the problem. Sully blinked and looked again.

A stainless steel ice pick was driven through each eye. The shiny handles, catching the gleam, were flecked with blood and gore. They stood up out of his head like two antennae. Viscous fluid from each eye slid down his temples, puddling on the floor.

“Sweet baby Jesus,” Sully whispered.

He turned and looked back down the hall, to see if the killer had reappeared. There was just air and empty space and, at the end of it, a dark sense of foreboding that something was just beginning rather than coming to a bloody end.

He had no idea how long he crouched there, but another clattering sound brought him out of his reverie. He whipped around. There was only darkness punctuated by-

Fucking cavalry, now they …

– bouncing bits of light coming at him. Too late, he knew. He turned and flung himself backward, tripping over Edmonds’s corpse, clamping his teeth, trying to get his hands over his ears before the concussion grenades detonated. The floor came up too fast and he took the fall full on the chest, eyes squinched-

Whoomp whoomp whoomp

– flashes of light and Sully felt his eardrums dimple in against his brain and his temples explode and blood spurt out of his nose-

Floor vibrations running blistering ears forehead arms legs dragging feet feet feet floor sliding

– and it dawned somewhere in the dark recesses of his mind, somewhere below articulate thought, that before he even opened his eyes, before they’d even finished dragging him down the hall, before he’d even asked anything, he knew that these SWAT motherfuckers or Navy Seals or Army Rangers or who the fuck ever had stormed past the shooter, that they had missed him, and that he was still free and loose and gone, baby, gone.

“I, I DON’Tknow.”

“Hair color?”

“Don’t know. I told ’em an hour ago I don’t know.”

“Dark? Light?”

“Are you thick?”

“The ponytail. Long and wispy? Short and heavy?”

“Sort of wispy. Sort of long. Christ, my head.”

The sketch artist dropped his hand away from the paper. “They told me you were a reporter.”

Sully looked up. He’d been holding his forehead in the palms of both hands. The headache, the nosebleed from the concussion grenades making him dizzy and nauseous in a wobbling sort of way, like you were drunk and fell over but still thought you were standing upright. A crust of blood still held on to his upper lip; he could feel it, flaky and dry. He scratched at it, elbows still on his knees, and eyed the man up again.

Black hair perfectly combed, a neat little mustache, thin. Wearing a black Windbreaker with “FBI” emblazoned on it big enough to be seen from space. Through the arced light coming through the tent on the grounds east of the Capitol, set apart at a little table and easel a few feet from the milling crowd of uniformed cops, federal agents, witnesses, and Hill staffers, the man was looking at him dull-eyed. Didn’t give enough of a damn about him one way or another to give him shit. Sully was just a cog in the machine that had information that needed to be gleaned and he wasn’t-what-gleaning.