John Barnes - Directive 51

Now the doors lay thrown down on the sidewalk, and the kids were bringing out the few overlooked items for inspection. Heather saw a couple jars of pickled jalapenos, some store-brand canned sauerkraut, and a few boxes of Hamburger Helper presented to the waiting crowd of women; there were few takers, except one lady filling a backpack. “You are all crazy, you can eat this stuff, and I’m takin’ all I can carry. They don’t have no big pile of steak and Cheerios hid back or nothing.”

Around the corner, Heather found a Rite Aid with its doors wide open; a tall, thin man in a store apron was painting on the window.

“Is there any disinfectant in there?” Heather asked him.

“Lady came by and got most of the rubbing alcohol and I think the hydrogen peroxide, another lady got the bleach,” the man said.

“Got hair-dye kits?”

He laughed. “Oh, man, now there’s a woman’s vanity. You want to stay a redhead while the world ends? Aisle Four D.”

Tearing open the hair-dye kits, dropping the soft bottles of peroxide into her pack, she thought, I must be a good person. I could shoot him and no one would ever know or care. Or maybe I just want to save ammunition.

Still room in the pack. She put a shoulder to the door of the pharmacy section, and grabbed three large jars of pills whose labeled names ended in -cillin.

She went out the emergency door, wishing that ALARM WILL SOUND had not been a lie, and ran past the row of cars with rotting, stinking tires, and a sour odor that she figured was probably gasoline going to vinegar. Okay, Lenny, now I’d sure appreciate it if it turns out you’ve been having the dullest afternoon of your life. She took the last few blocks at a trot.

The door of Lenny’s building was propped open. The doorman’s body lay behind his desk. The exit wound in his back was huge—shotgun blast, from the front, high up by the neck.

Staying drawn and ready, she closed the building door. No sense attracting more scum into the place. Heather ran up the stairs toward Lenny’s apartment, trying not to think about what she might find.

Loud voices through the fire door, but they didn’t sound close.

She pushed it gently, opened it far enough to slide into the empty hall. She crept along the wall toward the turn that led to Lenny’s front door.

Beside her, a broken door gaped; Heather saw a child’s bare, motionless leg sticking from under a sofa. The sight froze her; she had seen violent death, but this was a kid for god’s sake—

She heard a door open, down the hall, and slipped into the apartment. She reached out to touch the child’s leg, hoping—

“He’s dead,” a soft voice said beside her. A young woman, perhaps twenty years old. “My boyfriend’s son. They killed him and his dad. I hid in a closet. I feel bad.”

The voices in the hallway rose to a crescendo, and Heather made a shhh gesture and listened. Somebody named James was loudly welcomed by the group, and the leader, if that was the word, was explaining that “—from a neighbor bitch, she told us so we let her go after we done with her, there’s a cripple guy in there with like a generator and a frigerator and all that good shit, man, we could party the biggest bestest party anybody ever partied.”

“Burn ’im out.”

“Then what happens to all that good shit we goin’ in for, know what I’m sayin’?”

“Then just break the door down.”

“You see that little square in the door, there, just down from that peep-hole? That’s how Michael got shot, trying to take it down with his shoulder, and that cripple guy, he just pop that little square open, bang, shot Michael dead, man. He was our friend and everything and that cripple guy killed him.”

“See, if it was me, in there I mean, I’d just like spray down the whole hallway, and all y’all’d be dead, you know?”

“Maybe he’s low on ammo.”

“He shot back soon as we tried shooting through that door, so he ain’t all that low.”

I wish they’d all talk, Heather thought, because I’d sure like to know how many of them there are. But things won’t get better for waiting, that’s for sure. She turned to the young woman beside her and handed her a table lamp lying on the floor. “Was it those assholes that killed your friends?”

“Yeah.” The young woman’s voice was full of tears.

“’Kay. When my butt disappears through that door, start counting. At fifty, throw the lamp into the hall and scream—loud and a lot.”

“Fifty, throw the lamp, scream.”

“Right.” Heather scrambled through the door and down the hall to wait about three feet short of the turn that led to Lenny’s apartment, silently counting—

The lamp crashed into the hallway and the young woman screamed and wailed fit to fetch the dead. Heather held her pistol in both hands, chest high, drew a breath—

Blur around the corner. She squeezed the trigger, and the body fell sideways. Another man tripped and fell across him, and Heather shot him in the back of the head, then jumped across the hall for a view farther down the corridor. A man stood staring at the bodies of his two friends and Heather shot him in the chest; two more men, yelling “Don’t,” backed up in the hallway.

There was a brief, stuttering burst from behind them; Heather ducked sideways. It would really upset Lenny if he accidentally shot me. After the burst, Heather peeked, and saw the two men trying to drag themselves forward, their backs a bloody mess. She stepped into the short hall and shot each of the struggling men on the floor in the head; no point in their suffering, but no way to bring in a prisoner. She verified that the other men were also dead.

“All clear,” she called.

Lenny’s door opened; he was in his mountain racing wheelchair. She hadn’t realized how neatly the side bracket would hold a machine pistol.

“Glad you got here when you did,” he said. “They’d brought in the intellectual in the group, and he’d’ve figured something out.”

“I had some help—let me get her,” Heather said. She went back to the apartment, where the young woman still sat, stroking the leg of the dead boy.

“We never got along,” she said. “He was jealous about the time his dad spent with me. I wanted us to get along, but…” She was watching something a thousand miles away. “I guess we’ll never get along now.”

“I’ve got to talk my boyfriend into going to a safe place with me,” Heather said. “He’ll argue, but I’ll win. You should come with us. I think they’ll have room for you there too, and even if they don’t, you’ll still be somewhere safer than this building. Please come along?”

“I’d just be a drag on you.”

“You were a big help, setting off my diversion.”

“Because I could tell you were going to kill those guys and I wanted to help.” In the gathering gloom, Heather couldn’t really see the young woman’s face, just the shadow of her shape. “I was in the closet and I heard them kill Stan and Dennis. I heard Stan begging for Dennis’s life. They killed him anyway.”

“You helped me kill them all.”

“Didn’t bring Stan back. Or Dennis. Look, you guys just go. Please. I’ll just sit here till I think of something.” She turned and curled away.

The sun was going down fast. Heather said, “Just let me make the offer one more time—”

“No.”

Hope I have more luck with Lenny. She turned to go; Lenny was rolling into the apartment. “Stay with us tonight and see what you think in the morning.”

The girl looked up. “You’re the guy they were trying to kill.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry Stan didn’t come over to my place and bring you and Dennis. I asked him to.”