Paul Jones - Towards Yesterday

“Jim,” she cried, eating up the remaining ground, her lungs burning as she sucked in huge gulps of the smoke filled air.

He was curled into a tight ball when she reached him, his arms crossed tightly against his chest and his legs drawn almost to his wrists. His shirt was black and dirt encrusted, his trousers torn and shredded. An ugly three-inch gash ran from his forehead through singed hair towards the top of his skull and a steady sheet of blood ran down the left side of his face, gathering in a pool on the floor next to his unconscious body.

“Oh no,” she breathed, falling to her knees beside him. Grabbing Jim’s shoulders, she shook him gently, pleading with him to look at her, “Jim! Please.”

Jim turned a smoke blackened face toward her, streaks of white skin visible only from the tracks left by the tears spilling down his face. She saw his eyes were terribly bloodshot as they focused on her. He was badly injured, but at least he was alive.

“Dead,” he said through cracked, blood-caked lips. “They are all dead.”

Glancing into the room that was now completely filled with smoke, she saw the orange flicker of flames dancing like fire-imps, and she knew Jim was right. They were all dead in there.

Mitchell, Belkov, Horatio, all gone.

“Stand up, Jim,” Rebecca ordered, as she slipped his arm over her shoulder and her own arm around his back. “We need to get you out of here.” Grunting with the effort, she stood up. Holding Jim as firmly as she could, she staggered with him down the corridor.

Security would surely be here any time now but she had to get him out of reach of the choking smoke that was billowing from the burning room and filling the corridor. She half-dragged half-lifted Jim in the direction of the corridor leading to the receiver room, away from the choking smoke. Perspiration popped on her forehead and began to drip down her face, stinging her already smoke reddened eyes.

Jim lapsed back into unconsciousness and his body suddenly became dead weight. Rebecca collapsed to the ground with him, wincing as his head thudded dully against the cold floor.

Willing herself to stand, she wiped the perspiration from her eyes, grabbed Jim’s wrist with both of her hands and began pulling him the final few meters to the junction of the corridor. Once around the corner she let go of his wrist and dropped to her knees while she gathered herself, chugging in deep breaths of the cleaner air.

The gash on Jim’s head was open again and the blood was flowing freely down his face in thick rivulets. His right eye was badly swollen and a bruise the size of her hand was beginning to form down the left side of his face. Worse, his chest was rising and falling shallowly. She had to do something until the emergency crews got to them, had to stop the bleeding. She looked around frantically for something to staunch the flow.

Of course, she thought to herself as she pushed herself up to a standing position. Rebecca began running back in the direction of the transmission room; throwing a hand over her mouth and nose as she picked her way through the rapidly expanding smoke. Clear of the smoke, she sprinted the last few meters to the one place where she knew there would be a first-aid kit.

Rebecca rushed headlong into the women’s bathroom. She headed to the cabinet at the end of the room. Throwing open the doors she saw an empty space where the first-aid kit should have been.

“Damn it!” she yelled. Then she remembered. She had used the kit to fix Jim’s hand the day of the Church team’s arrival. She must have left it in his room. No time to run back and get it, now. Besides, she knew where there was another one.

She ran from the woman’s bathroom to the next-door down. Pushing it open, she rushed into the men’s-room.

He had heard the explosion as a hollow boom that shook the floor, rattling dust from the overhead acoustic ceiling panels, and sending it falling gently to the floor like snow.

Tony Gallagher rose from his perch in the men’s room stall, a satisfied smile spreading across his face. He opened the door with a creak of dry hinges and stepped out into the glare of the overhead lights.

Making his way past the porcelain urinals, he took the brown overnight bag from under his arm and set it down on the sink, leaned against the unit with both arms extended and stared deeply into the mirror that ran the entire length of the wall.

He was tired of this disguise. It was time for a change. Unzipping the travel bag, he pulled out a straight razor and set it on the counter-top followed by a tin of unscented shaving cream and a face towel.

In Europe, they called straight razors ‘cutthroat razors’, an apt name for this particular instrument: A rigid steel blade hinged to its case by a small steel stud. The blade folded out of the black pearl case, which formed the handle when the razor was open for use. One slip with this thing could slice open an artery and leave you bleeding to death on your bathroom floor. No wonder they were no longer in use, replaced years ago by the ‘safe’ razor and then by the electric razor and finally by Insta-Shave cream. He had found it at a flea-market antique stall in Kansas, its rugged build and ability to turn something as mundane as shaving into a skill, immediately appealed to him.

Pushing the plastic plug into the sink’s drain, he activated the water faucet and watched as it rapidly filled the sink with warm water, steam rising ponderously into the air. Splashing the water onto his face, he squirted a large glob of shaving cream from the can and smoothed it onto his lower face, ensuring he covered his entire beard. Then, with one final look into the rapidly misting mirror, he picked up the straight razor and began to hack off his facial hair.

Rebecca flew into the men’s room, slamming the door back on its hinges.

Fixed to the furthest wall, past the stalls and urinals, was the glass cabinet containing the first-aid kit and medical supplies she was looking for. The washbowls were obscured by the toilet cubicles and as they came into sight, she was amazed to see the broad back of a man bent over the sink, his head dipped down toward the basin, his lower face mostly obscured by white foam.

“Thank God,” she yelled to the man’s back as she rushed to the cabinet. “There’s been an accident. People are hurt. I need all the help I can get.”

The man reached for the green towel resting on the counter and began mopping away at the residual shaving cream covering his face. She could make out his blue eyes as his reflection stared at her from the mirror, the rest of his face obscured by the towel like some Bedouin nomad.

She opened the glass door and grabbed the med-kit.

“Didn’t you hear the explosion?” she asked, as he finished wiping away the foam from his face, those intense eyes still fixed attentively on her. Reaching out she touched the man’s arm and said with as much patience as she could muster “You’re with the crew from the Church aren’t you? Are you hurt?”

He let the towel drop to the floor, revealing his newly shaved, grinning face in the mirror.

“Hello Rebecca,” he said, his voice holding back a barely restrained chuckle. “Remember me?”

At first, the man’s identity made little impression on Rebecca. There was a sense of someone from her past, an inkling of recognition. His voice sounded familiar. His pink, freshly shaved face regarded her with an almost benevolent smile.

And then the mask dropped away from him and everything flooded back to her.

He was her nightmare. It was him . He was her killer .

A mewling whimper slipped from Rebecca’s lips as she took a stumbling step backward. Her eyes widened in shock, and in what seemed to be time distilled down to its finest component, she began to turn and run. The very air around her had suddenly become molasses, her movement reduced to a slow-motion movie.