Neely Tucker - Only the Hunted Run

This part of the building, it had to open onto a drive of some sort, an alley. St. E’s was a century old. Canan Hall, it was built on the sloping, western grounds. This basement-its very architecture argued for there being a delivery entrance.

“The bodies,” he said aloud, finally. “The autopsies. They wouldn’t have brought the bodies up through the building. There has to be an exit off this room. Gotta be there.” Gesturing forward to the far set of double swinging doors.

Sly nodded. He moved to the rear set of doors, paused to look through one of the porthole windows, and slipped through.

Sully stayed by the base of the gurney, waiting. In spite of himself, he looked down at what had become of Lantigua. Forty-five minutes earlier, the man had been in charge of this particular universe. Now, look.

He heard the door swing open. He looked up to see Sly slip back into the room from the same set of double doors he’d just left.

But something was wrong. Sly’s features had gone wrong. Something was off. His nose appeared here and his eyes there and there was a sheen-

The mist, the sprinklers

– and Sly Hastings, the killer of so many men in so many places, kept walking and walking toward him and the gun wait what was coming up no Sly was looking at Sully with eyes lit from within but not making eye contact and-

“Sly? You find the ex-”

– the gun was leveling, the barrel the barrel deep and dark and unending-

Nononono not not not

– and the last thought to fly through Sully Carter’s mind before Sly Hastings fired three rounds from twenty feet away was that this is how his mother had died. Her killer looking into her eyes. The bullets slamming into her face, her forehead, scissors flying, knocked out of one of her shoes, crumpling dead onto the pathetic linoleum floor of her pathetic beauty salon in their pathetic town. None of it meant anything and never had.

BULLETS SPLIT THEair. He felt the pfftttt pffttt pfftt. It knocked him from his feet.

The world fell away. The back of his head hit the wet concrete.

After a moment, to his surprise, he felt little rain drops on his face. Mist.

He found he could open one eye. His head was turned to the side. Sly’s Air Jordans, right in front of him were smeared with bright red blood.

“You gonna want to get up,” he heard Sly say, sounding far away, like he was calling out down a tunnel.

It became clear, after a moment, that Sly was talking to him. He found that he couldn’t roll to his right, so he rolled left, flat on his back, the mist from the sprinklers falling onto his face, into his eyes. Sly was standing over him but not looking at him.

Sully, blinking, looked over to his right.

There, no longer breathing, not fifteen feet from the corpse of Eduardo Lantigua, sprawled on his back, his white jumpsuit drenched in blood, was the bear-sized bulk of Reggie Hastings.

His hair was thick with blood and specked with gore. He had taken one round to the forehead, just off center.

Sly dropped to a squat beside the body, rubbing a hand across one jaw, looking at the mess that had once been his uncle. The last link to his own generations, what he’d said. Sly looked wrong. He looked hollowed out.

Sully coughed. He worked a hand to the back of his head, a lump rising. “Jesus, Sly.”

Sly didn’t say anything. He leaned over and flicked at Uncle Reggie’s left hand. It still held a jagged sharp of iron pipe. “He come in the back door there. Must have been tracking us from upstairs. Holding a finger up to his mouth, telling me to be quiet. Coming up back of you.”

Sly, still looking at his uncle, the blood flowing across the concrete floor. It was mixing with the water from the sprinkler now. The mist, it was beading up on Uncle Reggie’s face, which was untouched below the eyebrows. Tiny dewdrops, clean, pure, little bubbles of absolution that held and then dissolved and ran.

“Thought you were a devil,” Sly said. “Said it the other day. Upstairs, he saw you come in again? Said you had talons coming out your sleeves. Claws.”

“But-”

“Didn’t mean, like a, a like, bad white person. He mean, like you had red eyes and could fly and possess people and shit.” He paused, still looking at the corpse. “Think. The world, you get up every day of your life? There’s winged things and people who can’t die. Fangs. They, all of ’em, can talk inside your head without nobody else hearing. That’s, you know, not a sentence. It’s everything you’re ever going to be, to have.”

Sully pushed himself up. He coughed again and looked at Uncle Reggie and Lantigua and felt like he was going to vomit.

“You, you didn’t have to do that,” he said, closing his eyes against the sudden vertigo.

“Didn’t do it for you,” Sly Hastings said, as tenderly as Sully had ever heard him say anything.

“I’m walking out of this place, the last time,” Sly said, standing. “Them back doors, you were right. Down the hallway, big double door.”

“It’s not locked? George, he forgot it?” He felt himself coming around, standing.

“Ask him, it’s his escape hatch.”

“Why you say that?”

“Because I just shot him. He was following Uncle Reggie there, ten steps back, like he was using him for a guard. Maybe he told Unc he’d get him out. Come through the door, looked real surprised to see me.”

Sully, jolted, whipped around. There was nothing, no one, just the shadows and the mist from the sprinkler. “Where-”

“Winged him,” Sly said. “Hit the floor, scrambled back out. Missed the next shot, him falling like that, and then he was up and gone.”

“Then, he’s, he’s-”

“Somewhere back thataway,” Sly said, nodding toward the darkened halls leading back into the asylum. “Which is why we’re going out thisaway. My experience with shooting people, they don’t like to get shot twice.”

Sully was still wheezing, trying to keep up. “Yeah, yeah, but…”

“But nothing. I ain’t studying this shit no more. Half the police, the fire department, they’re up there on King Avenue. You’n go up there, you want. But Lionel’s down the hill there, edge of Simple City.”

Simple City, it dully bounced across his mind. Sly, using the name for Benning Terrace, the housing projects just beyond the boundary wall of St. E’s, where he’d come of age-and where no one would ever say that they had seen him, this night or any other.

“I can’t,” Sully said. “Gimme that gat, you going.”

Sly turned. “Say what?”

Sully stood, woozy, the idea coming to him, making a fetching motion with his right hand. “The Glock. Gimme. George, he wants to flatten this whole place.”

“So?”

“Can’t. Can’t let him. There’s… there’s people still upstairs. He’s using me. Used me. To set this up.”

Sly shook his head. “This ain’t-”

“I don’t got time, brother. Come on. Come on now.”

Sly shrugged his shoulders and shook his head and underhanded the Glock to him.

“Hey shit,” Sully said, “don’t-”

“You not going to shoot him with that.”

“Don’t sell me short,” Sully said. “I got business with this little bastard.”

There was a blood trail.

Thick red drops, spreading on the wet floor, led back through the swinging double doors. This presented him with a problem before he was ready to consider it: Smash through on a dead run? Turn sideways and slide through? There was no way to tell where George was on the far side, whether he was deep in the bowels of the building or bleeding out just a few feet farther on. Sully came to the near left side of the doors, reached his right arm out and pushed the swinging door as hard as he could, then flattened against the wall.