Stefan Petrucha - Dead Mann Walking

“I waited and waited and waited. You were a police officer. Your friends were police officers. They wouldn’t believe you did it. They’d help you. But she was so much like my mommy. Mom did the exact same thing to my daddy, drove him away, then drove my stepdaddy away. Your wife had the same hair, the same eyes; sometimes she used the same words, so I had to keep watching. I wanted you to do it. I kept hoping you would. I was rooting for you. Even when I saw her fucking your boss, I didn’t act. I thought maybe it was just a onetime thing. But when it happened again and again, and I realized how much she liked it because she was hurting you . . . well, then I knew I was right. I knew you’d be left all alone . . . like me. I don’t believe in destiny, but it sure was lucky , don’t you think?”

Something skittered in the darkness behind me, breaking the spell. It could have been an echo from the heads, a leaking pipe; it could’ve been nothing, but Turgeon thought it was me. The shadow moved again. He was moving toward it, toward me.

“I took thirty pictures and sent you the best. After I e-mailed it, I had to move fast. I’d timed your commute. Twenty-two minutes, and of course you’d be speeding.”

He was six feet away.

“I came in through the living room window, took your baseball bat from the closet. She was in the kitchen. I was very good. When I hit her the first time, she only just started to be surprised.”

Four feet.

“I hit her on the side of the head, but she fought. Even when she went down, she was still conscious. I had to keep going. I had to make sure she wouldn’t scream.”

Three feet. Judging from the shadow, his head was angled not at me, but at the darkness where the sound came from.

“She scratched and kicked and clawed. She called out for help, but only once.”

Two. He should have seen me by now, but he didn’t see me. I was a thing.

“She didn’t call for you , though. That’s how I knew this was the most right thing I’d done since my own mommy.”

I was a thing, and he wasn’t a shadow anymore. As he came around the corner of the pillar, I saw his lips moving. “ ‘Tom,’ she called out, ‘Tom!’ ”

A wave washed over me; I thought it was nausea, or the electric syrup, but it was rage, stronger than any chak was supposed to feel. Before the sick feeling could kick in, I rushed around the far side of the pillar, thinking I’d be behind him.

He whirled too quickly. All at once there was some distance between us and I was facing the open blades. They snapped closed as I hobbled back, pinching a tiny piece from my neck.

My foot slipped sideways, off the broken ankle. The basement spun. Next thing I knew I was on my back. The capsule flew into the back of my throat and I nearly swallowed it.

Turgeon opened the blades and came forward.

I coughed, trying to hack the vial back into my mouth. The pain in my mouth got into a fight with the pain in my ankle over who’d get me killed first. I put my palms and my good foot to the floor and pulled myself away, moving backward like a big, sickly, hobbled spider.

My right hand hit something heavy, a two-by-four. It was full of nails. I knew because one pierced my palm when I grabbed it. It stung, but that didn’t stop me from swinging. I slammed Turgeon in the calf. He screamed, again looked like he would cry, then stepped back. I swung again, hitting the clippers hard enough to make them clamp shut.

Nail still through my palm, I wedged the wood under my armpit and forced myself to standing. This time I didn’t run; I lurched forward, toward the opening blades. I didn’t give a fuck about my head anymore.

Turgeon shivered with glee at the sight of me. He had the blades open and out, half expecting I’d run straight into them. Instead, I swung the board again, knocking the clippers away. Then I grabbed his shoulder, crushed the vial between my teeth, and sprayed green poison and glass shards right in his face.

His egghead doused in the oily liquid, he pulled away, sputtering, and rushed into the darkness. I could feel a small bit of the viscous stuff clinging to the insides of my cheeks. I shut my mouth, in case he needed another whiff, and, using my two-by-four crutch, hobbled after him.

I heard steps, then silence, then that skittering again. What was he up to? Crap. I glanced back at where the clippers had fallen. They were gone. Dead man or not, he had them again.

How much longer until two minutes were up? Could he still get me? I had to hide and wait him out. I stepped along, no longer sure whether my foot was attached or I was walking on leg bone.

When I passed by one of the plastic sheets, something moved right behind it. Thinking it had to be him, I whirled, pulled the sheet away, and exhaled the last of the poison.

Only it wasn’t Turgeon. It was Misty.

Somehow she’d found me, even down here, even in the dark. She gasped when I surprised her, took a deep breath, then smiled when she realized it was me, not knowing I’d just killed her.

Maybe it was the deep breath she took, but the VX seemed to work on her a lot faster than I thought it could. A few seconds later, her eyelids fluttered.

32

“Misty.”

Her lips parted, but without a word, she fell. Too shocked to catch her, I threw myself onto the cold floor beside her. A long, stringy trail of saliva dripped from the side of her open mouth.

“Misty?”

I’d already exhaled most of the gas. There was only a little left, not even a full dose. Maybe she’d be okay. Right? She had to be.

I slapped her hand, felt her forehead, pulled back an eyelid. Her pupil was a pinprick, a distant black star surrounded by hazel. I said her name a few times more. She started twitching. I couldn’t tell if she was responding or having some kind of seizure.

I hooked my arms under hers, pulled, and half crawled. After what seemed a million years, we reached the dolly. The timer was beeping its little head off, like an oven screaming that the cookies were ready and about to burn.

Fuck it. I grabbed the round plastic thing and jabbed the first button. I thought the next thing I’d see would be a flash followed by a whole lot of nothing, but the beeping stopped. No ka-boom . If only everything else were that easy.

I pulled the bomb off the dolly and yanked Misty on. My right foot was no longer good for much except dangling from my ankle by a flap of skin and muscle, so I grabbed the handle and hopped as I pushed. As we moved, I listed and groaned just like a zombie should.

After all, that’s what I was, right? A grade-B monster.

The wheels wobbled, crunched on plaster, loud now that the vacuums were off. I pushed Misty from shadow to light, shadow to light. At the end of the maze, I pounded the elevator button like it was Turgeon’s head. He had to be dead by now, but nerve gas had been too good for him. I should find his body and use the cash he’d given me to bring him back just so I could kill him again. For Lenore. For Misty. For Nell, Frank, and Colin.

For the hell of it.

By the time the doors opened, Misty didn’t look like she was breathing. I wheeled her in and slammed the button marked ER. The door didn’t close fast enough, so I pulled it, so hard I nearly took it off its guide. Stupid. Fucking stupid. If I’d broken it, we’d have been stuck down here.

The car jerked, then moved up, slower than a snail. Misty looked still. A kind of body memory kicked in. I pressed on her chest three times, held her nose, and blew into her mouth. It was CPR, but at the time I didn’t remember the initials or what they meant.

How had she found me? Of course. I’d called her on the phone, and she tracked me through the GPS in it. I was sorry she had talked me into getting the damn thing. Did she bring the cops? No. They wouldn’t have let her in here at all. The phone, where was it? Back in the parking lot. I searched for hers, but couldn’t find it.