Neely Tucker - Only the Hunted Run

George was limping toward him, slowly. “You can’t reach the timer or the wiring, Sully. Forty-five seconds. You’re going to die in here, you don’t leave. You can do something for our mothers. You’re the last one.” Sounding exhausted.

Sully dropped the barrel of the gun and pointed it at George’s good knee and pulled the trigger. He flinched, expecting a detonation, but heard only a click. The Glock did not kick. He pulled the trigger again and got the same dry-firing snap.

The thing was empty. That was what Sly had been trying to tell him.

“God-”

He saw the open O of surprise and fear curling up at the edges of Harper’s mouth give way to open-faced confusion, the features twisting, the eyebrows coming down, and then George bull-rushed him, plowing into him with a lowered shoulder.

Sully’s knee gave way, the force of the tackle knocking him backward, gun flying out of his hand, hitting the wall beside him. His shoulder crashed into the double doors, knocking them wide open. They both stutter-stepped outside, into the rain, an awkward dance pair, and then Sully fell, his ass hitting the pavement before his head snapped back, cracking against it. George grunted and rolled off him. Sully blinked, vomit bubbling in his throat. George was up, running back through the doors, pulling them closed behind him.

Sully fought to get to his knees. The revolving lights of the police and ambulances and fire trucks spun at the far end of the building, the vertigo returning. He stood and careened sideways, nearly falling, nausea sweeping over him. He righted himself and lurched back to the doors.

They were locked.

“George!” He bellowed, tugging at the handles. His hand, wet, slipped. He wobbled backward, struggling for balance, pinwheeling his arms, and then he turned, seeing the free-floating forms of the patients in their white jumpsuits wandering the grounds, in the grass, aimlessly heading this way or that, the lights of the city off to his right over the river, and then he got his feet under him and he was staggering downhill, down toward the cemetery and the dead and he tripped and fell face forward, the mud and soaked grass rushing up at him and then the world blew up behind him, the sad lost dead world of George and Frances Harper and Reggie and the nameless rest, the dark orange flames billowing high into the night.

“JOSH, BUDDY, EASEup on the throttle.”

The boy, his unbuckled life jacket loose around his shoulders, was bringing them up the Potomac late in the afternoon. Washington lay to their right, Virginia to their left. They were under the Key Bridge, easing up to the Three Sisters. There were a dozen other boats, half of them yachts, party music thumping from the decks, anchored in the river, this little canyon between the bluffs, the houses way up there, the cars on the George Washington Parkway. The light in August fell from the west in a descending haze, the sun dropping behind the hills, the day feeling worn out from the heat, the humidity, half the river falling in shadow, half still in the amber light. Late on Sunday afternoon, Josh’s last day in town, the weekend after the horror show.

“I’m barely going .”

“The wake, brother. Let’s not rock it up on the other guys. Go to port here, get us in the shadows, drop anchor.”

“Which one’s port again?”

“We been over this. How many letters in ‘port?’”

“Um, four.”

“How many letters in ‘left?’”

“Four.”

“You at the helm and facing forward?”

“Yes.”

“Well then.”

Alexis, sitting beside him on the back bench of the boat, gave him a playful elbow in the ribs. “Be nice,” she hissed.

“‘So which direction is left?’” Sully whispered back, imitating Josh’s high voice. Then, louder, to Josh, “Star student. Kill the throttle. Here.”

Josh did, and the motor, which had been a low thrum, cut to silence. They drifted, a breeze coming, them passing from sunshine into shadow. Josh went to tend to the anchor. Alexis pulled her knees up to her chest, still holding her beer bottle in the left hand. She had his Saints jersey pulled over her two-piece, her concession to the season starting, her show of excitement about their trip to see them play in the Dome in October.

“Wow,” she said, “chilly in the shade.”

“So,” he said, leaning back in the seat, putting his right arm around her shoulders, “you’re taking the photo editor job.”

“For a year, anyway,” She yawned, getting sleepy now, the sun, the skiing, the heat, the beer. They’d been out all day. She leaned her head over on his shoulder. “I like it. I like sitting in place for a while.”

“And you, this spring, telling me to get my ass back abroad.”

“Meant it.”

“Mmmm.”

“A break every now and then, you know. Not the worst thing. Facials. Workouts at the gym. Yoga.”

“Christ. Yoga.”

“Started. Who knows.”

He turned his mouth to her ear. “If you stay here,” he whispered, looking up at the bluffs on the Virginia side, “I’ll keep you next to me. Safe.”

She looked up at him, her hazel eyes flecked with green, her body warm against him, legs crossed at the knee, this living thing , allowing herself, he saw, to be as vulnerable as a woman of her life and experience could be. She was going to complain. He felt her body tense. She was going to good-naturedly tell him to bugger off, their version of flirting. But then he felt, under his touch, her body relax, release. It passed between them.

She took her eyes off his and looked over the river. The yellow golden light there, on the D.C. side. He felt her breath rise in her lungs, her chest, and let go.

“I know,” she whispered. She raised her head, then bopped it lightly against his chest, her hair wet against his skin, against his scars, as softly as a cat leaping from couch to floor.

His phone rang. It was up by the wheel. Josh looked at it, picked it up, and underhanded it back to him. “Unknown number,” he said.

“Why did…” and Sully caught it, left-handed, against his hip. He ordinarily would ignore it, but with the story finally on 1-A today, the centerpiece, the whole sordid family epic of George and Frances and St. E’s, the place that had killed them both, maybe it was Eddie calling him from his home line, something urgent.

“This is Carter,” he said, putting some attitude behind it.

There was a series of clicks and hisses, some static down the line.

“Mr. Carter?” a voice finally said.

He recognized Lionel’s voice before the second syllable of the first word. It jolted him off the vinyl seat, a quick step forward, moving to the front of the boat. The temperature, the air, it cooled over his shoulders. He put the phone tight against his jaw.

“Hey now.”

“You know who this is?”

“Sure I do.”

“Then let’s don’t fuck around,” Lionel said. “I’s calling to let you know I was taking over from the previous administration.”

“Really now.”

“He say to tell you he retired. He say, he’s just a building owner now, runs his apartments. Not into the life no more.”

“I have to say,” Sully said, “I am not shocked to hear this.”

“He say to tell you don’t be calling him no more.”

“Not surprised about that, either.”

“Don’t come around, neither. He say that, too.”

“Okay.”

There was a beat.

“So, like, whatever. I got no beef with you, mister.”

Sully found himself nodding. “Ditto.”

“You need to know something, you call me, we see what we can work out.”

“I’ll, I’ll be seeing you, Lionel,” he said, clicking off the call. He tossed the phone on the front seat of the boat. Should have thrown it into the river, that’s what he thought. People finding him when he didn’t want to be found.