Jack O'Connell - Word Made Flesh

“Bring it here,” Kroger says.

Gilrein stands still, Alicia’s book hovering in the air.

Kroger lifts the knife from Wylie’s throat to her cheek and runs it along the surface of the skin as if brushing dust from a fragile artifact.

“Stop it,” Gilrein says, trying to keep his voice even. “You can have it.”

He takes a step forward and both Raban and Blumfeld swing into sight from the left and right side walls of the book stacks. Raban has an automatic in each hand. Blumfeld is leveling a Calico machine pistol, which he now rests on his shoulder as he extends a free hand to accept the book.

“Let her go,” Gilrein says, looking past the meatboys to Kroger.

“You,” Kroger says, “do not use this tone of voice with me, taxi-boy.”

“I’ve got your book—”

“Exactly, Mr. Gilrein, my book. My property.”

Blumfeld takes a step forward, but Gilrein doesn’t release the book.

“Take the knife away, let her go, and I’ll hand it over.”

Kroger looks to Blumfeld with raised eyebrows. He moves the tip of the blade back to Wylie’s neck as he stares down the aisle and says, “Mr. Gilrein, you are embarrassing yourself and you are annoying me. There are two guns pointed at your head and I have a knife at the woman’s throat. Now you give me my property or I will slice her open. And then we will deal with you.”

“It’s just a goddamn book,” Gilrein says.

“You did not read it, did you?” Kroger asks and it sounds like a genuine question. “All the time it was in your possession and you never opened it?”

Kroger shakes his head like someone’s disappointed father.

“You are a banal people,” he says in a lowered voice. “You did not even look inside. Do you know what that says about you?”

Gilrein tries to focus on Wylie’s eyes. He says, “You know you’re not the only one looking for it. You think you can really beat Hermann Kinsky on this?”

“Kinsky is an old man in dirty pajamas. His glory days are over. And this book means nothing to him.”

Gilrein makes himself say it.

“What does it mean to you, Kroger?”

“It’s a scrapbook,” the voice unfazed, maybe even amused, “of my former career.”

Everyone stays silent as the words take hold and when Kroger is satisfied with the impact of his announcement, he says, “Now give me my book.”

“And then you’ll let us go?”

Raban and Blumfeld actually turn and smile at each other, then the Censor of Maisel says, “No, Mr. Gilrein, then I kill you for being the weak and illiterate worm that you are.”

And as Gilrein starts to respond, Stewie Green steps into the aisle behind him and fires half a dozen rounds into Raban before Blumfeld can even raise the Calico. Then Green jumps back around the corner of the stacks, but Blumfeld begins returning fire anyway and Gilrein throws himself on the floor as the books on either side of him start to pop and burst and the echo of the assault takes on a ridiculous volume. Gilrein starts a spastic elbow-crawl to the end of the aisle. Blumfeld finally releases his trigger and flails backward until his spine is pressed against the end of the shelving. Kroger is squatting with his back against the far wall with Wylie pulled in front of him as a shield against a suspected blitz.

Gilrein pulls his Colt. Blumfeld repositions and tilts the gun down at him. Gilrein rolls around the corner into the next aisle as a crater is blown into the floor. He gets to his feet, starts to run for the end of the aisle when Danny Walden appears in front of him with a sawed-off extended, braced low for firing.

Gilrein goes back to the floor.

The sawed-off explodes, misses Blumfeld at the opposite mouth of the stacks. Blumfeld returns the fire and blows up Walden’s chest, then sights down on Gilrein. Gilrein gets off a single round, which goes high. He escapes the aisle just before it’s sprayed with assault fire, runs toward the stairwell, breaking into the open to try and get to the opposite bend of the room, buy himself a margin of distance and time to figure out just how many people are in the library and where they’re positioned.

But halfway across the floor, Stewie Green pokes out of a stack aisle and lets two blasts fly in Gilrein’s direction. Both charges burrow into century-old vellum and leather. Instead of diving for cover, this time Gilrein stops, extends arms and fires the last four rounds in his cylinder. One of them catches Green in the face and throws him over onto his back. An arm jerks upward, the hand quivers as if reaching for something, then falls back onto the chest.

Running for the nearest aisleway, Gilrein instinctively reaches into his pocket to reload and comes up empty. He thinks about going back for one of Raban’s automatics, but he hears movement along the outer rim of the wall, someone coming at him from the right side.

He stays low, walks to the edge of the aisle, sticks his head out and immediately back as a short blast of artillery pop ignites. Blumfeld wants to play with him for a few seconds before ending it.

“Mr. Gilrein,” Kroger’s voice, echoing from an indeterminate position, “step into the center of the room this instant or I am going to cut the woman’s throat.”

He does what he’s been ordered to do. He steps into the center of the room and stands still and waits. Blumfeld appears first with the Calico held high, up at shoulder level. Kroger follows, pulling Wylie along, an arm wrapped around her waist and the buck knife pointing in toward her navel. They position themselves across from one another, separated by the open mouth of the stairwell.

“The book?” Kroger asks.

Gilrein gestures back toward the aisle where the shooting began.

“I dropped it,” he says.

“Put the gun down,” Blumfeld says and Gilrein lets the Colt fall to the floor.

Kroger releases Wylie and walks to the aisle where his servant Raban has bled to death. He steps over the body, bends down to retrieve and inspect the book. And Bobby Oster steps from the shade of the exterior wall, his Smith and Wesson already extended and sighted, and shoots Kroger twice in the head.

Blumfeld panics and runs to his master and Oster, ready for the meatboy, now down on one knee and sighted on the mouth of the aisle, opens fire as soon as he appears. Blumfeld takes the assault in the chest and then the head, goes down backward, firing the whole time, the Calico blasting another shelf-load of books, tearing down the line of their spines, shredding binding and paper until at last falling silent.

Wylie crumbles to the floor and Gilrein runs to her. In a second, Oster appears in front of them with Alicia’s book in his hand. Gilrein ignores him, begins peeling the tape from Wylie’s mouth, expecting the echo of artillery to be replaced with hysteria. Instead, Wylie tips into his arms and he feels the noiseless sobbing, the quake of her body as it slides toward shock.

He goes to work on the tape wrapped around her wrists, ripping out tiny hairs as he frees the skin from the adhesive. Oster comes to stand in front of him, gun in one hand, Alicia’s book in the other. Gilrein sees that several bullets have passed through the volume.

“Hermann Kinsky,” Oster says, “is going to be pissed.”

Gilrein pulls Wylie into him, hugs her as tight as he can, and asks, “Now you kill us, Bobby?”

Oster shrugs, draws some air through his nose. The noise makes Gilrein look away.

“People disappear, Gilly,” Oster says, closing one eye, lining Gilrein’s head up along the barrel of the.38 and cocking the hammer.

Then he eases the trigger back into the cradle and lowers the gun. Gilrein stares up at him, still unsure of what’s about to happen.