Prospero's Half-Life (11 page)

He took a step
back to lean against the liquor table and saw that Ronnie was
getting up from his seat. Callie had her short fingers running up
through Annie’s thick hair and was pulling her in greedily. Richard
took a large drink of his rye and cola, feeling himself starting to
lose the plot. This was so far out of his usual frame of experience
that he felt like he was living another man’s life. His idea of a
wild night out, before this moment, had been having an extra pint
over karaoke; watching Callie and Annie make out (Annie’s bra had
come off and her breasts, perfectly curved and sloping just right,
were pressing into Callie’s more diminutive frame) was enough to
make his heart race away from him. His mouth felt exceedingly dry,
and the rye was not helping in this regard. The room seemed to
swirl around him, starting at the edges of his vision; if he hadn’t
mixed the drink himself, he would have sworn that someone had put
something in it.

“
Hey, girls,” Ronnie was saying, his pinched voice lewd, “if
you need a hard, real man to get in between you, just let me know”.
He waggled his eyebrows. “Or don’t”.

Class
, Richard thought primly, and
glanced back to where Mark was still sitting, his head hunched down
over that flip phone again. He turned away and watched the slow,
sloppy sex show unfolding before him for another minute before
turning his head back to look at Mark more sharply. A shock of
sudden fear ran through him.

It was such an
innocent act, especially in the situation. In a situation where
people drinking, having fun before the plague, a socially awkward
penguin typing away on his phone wouldn’t have elicited a second
glance. As it was, Richard had been lulled into accepting it for
quite a while. He stood, his heart pounding in a more leaden
fashion, and listened to his mind race while he watched something
that he would have considered a hot, tantalizing mess only two
short weeks before.

Who is he texting?
he asked himself,
his voice booming and hectoring inside of his head.
Who’s out there, where are they, and what is he
saying? More to the point...

He casually
straightened himself up off of the table and pretended to consider
the options on the liquor table instead. As he physically waffled
between Canadian Club and Crown Royal, he watched Mark out of the
corner of his eye. He refilled his drink, not really paying
attention to the amounts, and mixed it together. The clinking of
the stick and the turning ice on the inner surface of the glass
seemed overly loud to him, and he cringed inwardly at it.
Outwardly, he was calm, deliriously so.

He stepped away from the liquor table and with an enormous
effort at being casual made his way towards the window facing St.
Paul Street. After four steps he looked out of the corner of his
eye and saw Mark look up quickly and rise. He stiffened his neck
and pretended he hadn’t noticed.
Just keep
walking
he told himself, berating himself
into calmness.
Something is very wrong
here and if you want to survive this just keep
walking
. He picked up his pace a little as
he got within a couple of arms lengths of the window, pushing
himself like a sprinter.

“
Hey fuckface, where do you think you’re going?” Mark shouted,
his mouth seeming to bite off each individual word. “Party’s over
there, something about two chicks making out offend you, or
something?”

Richard was
really only barely listening to what he was saying; he was intent
on getting as much of a look at the street level as he could. As it
was, it didn’t take long to see what was going on down there. A
white pickup truck had pulled up haphazardly in front of the Chili
Pepper, its tires crunching over the ripened bodies of a few
unfortunates. There were two men in the process of getting out of
the cab, both of them armed: one of them was carrying some sort of
hunting rifle, the other a pistol of some kind. There were three
other men in the bed of the truck, armed with a baseball bat, a
long piece of copper piping, and machete, respectively. As he
watched this he felt Mark walking up behind him.

Richard’s
instincts took over. He whirled around with his elbow hooked, and
his fist seeking upward for what he hoped was Mark’s face. He
leaned into it, almost falling forward, and extended his elbow at
the last moment to catch Mark with the full force of his body
behind him. It wasn’t until the split second before his hand
connected with the lower-right side of Mark’s jawline that Richard
noticed the gun being pulled towards his temple. His eyes went wide
and pure animal fear drove him forward fiercely. A jagged bit of
jabber ran through his thought process, a mindless bit of unfolding
gibberish just as he thought that his brains might be blown out of
his right temple.

His fist
connected painfully with Mark’s jaw and he felt the unkempt stubble
on the man’s face prick into his knuckles right before Mark went
flying backwards. The blow seemed to have caught him completely by
surprise; his eyes rolled back to the whites and he went limp
halfway through the arc that took him to crash heavily to the
floor. Richard watched the gun leave Mark’s hand and go skittering
across the floor to strike the nearby corner of the room. It seemed
to go in slow time and he was already trying to steady himself and
then leap forward to grab it by the time it came to a complete
rest.

He crashed
into the corner, scrambling wildly to get a grip on it. He felt
it’s cold, businesslike grip enfold into his hand and he clumsily
spun around into an unsteady crouching position, holding the gun
forward with a white-knuckled grasp. Ronnie stumbled backwards,
“holy fuck!” coming out of his mouth in a strangled gasp. Callie
had leapt backward when Richard had punched Mark, and she had
knocked into one of the pool players. Her expression was shocked.
Annie stood topless with her hands in the air, her face pale and
fearful; it looked as though she were about to fall over. Richard
let her run through his mind for the barest of instants before he
decided on his course of action.

There was a
window directly opposite him, and he was running towards it before
he could even properly think about it. If they were going to come
in through the front of the building, they would have to go out
through the back. He just hoped that there was something to break
his fall on the other side.

“
Dude, what the fuck are you doing?” Callie screeched but he
ignored her existence. He saw Samantha goggle at him as he sped by,
and he turned his head to her as he went.

“
WITH ME!” he screamed, going hoarse to be heard over the
music. Joey Ramone was singing about going on down to Rockaway
Beach. Samantha jumped and began loping after him.

Several feet
from the window he had a vision of slamming full on into the glass
and knocking himself out. He turned as he ran so that his shoulder
would be the first thing going through the glass, and he lowered
his head so that he was going into his charge. He’d seen the form
in an action movie, or was it a football game? He wondered stupidly
about the banality of the question for fifteen milliseconds and
then hit the window. The glass shattered forward on impact,
catching the lowering sun at a perfect angle and causing a thousand
points of light to burn themselves into his vision. The window
splintered around him in a stretch of time that had the consistency
of molasses, and then he was through, into free fall.

TEN

The Chili Pepper was a bar with a rather unsavoury tradition
in the city’s lore. It was one of those locations that go through
various owners in regular succession. Some young entrepreneur would
pick the spot, intent on making
the
hotspot nightclub of the crowded bar district, and
buy the spot off of the beleaguered owner. The place was nice
enough inside, if a little tawdry, and anyone with a bright spot
for design and a flair for self-promotion could make a go of it. A
problem invariably arose, however: an attempt at creating a hip
atmosphere for a fashionable young crowd in a blue-collar town
always invited cocaine, and the steadily growing cocaine problem
would cause worsening offshoot-problems that would inevitably lead
to the young entrepreneur becoming the beleaguered
owner.

One of these
offshoot problems was a lack of availability of funds for
maintenance. Once the young entrepreneur was spending a lot of time
pulling back lines in the downstairs office with specific patrons,
money for things like replacement glasses, dishwasher repair, and
pool table re-velveting begins to mysteriously disappear. So, if
one of the thick, older windows were to be broken by a university
kid amped up on coke and draft beer throwing chairs, the
replacement pane would not be to the same quality as the original.
It would likely be much thinner, less resistant to the elements,
and more likely to become completely shattered upon the slightest
impact.

When Richard
threw himself through this cheaply-acquired pane of glass it did
not give much resistance. He tumbled through and landed roughly
onto his side two feet below on the other side. He lay there,
stunned for a moment, and then stumbled his way to his feet.
Instinctively he brushed himself off with one hand, gingerly trying
to avoid embedding chunks of glass into his hands. He looked
inside, trying to look for Samantha. He hefted the gun up and
pointed it up to the sky as he peered within; he’d never held or
fired a gun in his life, and he didn’t want to accidentally fire
off a round when he couldn’t see. The light level outside was still
shockingly brighter than it was inside, and he blinked furiously,
trying to force his eyes to adjust quickly.

“
Samantha!” he yelled. When she did not appear right away he
turned his head to look for potential escape routes off of whatever
surface he’d landed on. He appeared to be on top of the kitchen,
the ceiling of which was two or three feet lower than the part of
the building he’d just leaped from. There looked to be a parking
lot on the other side, eight or ten feet down. He steeled himself
to jump down, and looked behind himself. He was frantic for
Samantha to come. He could hear fearful exclamations coming from
inside; the party had been rudely, jaggedly interrupted. Ronnie was
shouting something down the stairs inside and then, like a bell in
the distance, he heard Samantha pleading with one of the women to
come with her. Richard gritted his teeth and prepared to jump to
the parking lot.

Samantha came
leaping through the window and Richard caught her eyes for the
briefest of seconds before taking the jump down to the parking lot.
He crunched into the ground with a painful creak in his knees and
pitched forward, slamming his face into the rough pavement. His
face and palms felt as though they were on fire but he forced
himself to his knees. Samantha landed beside him, wavering but
staying on her feet. She reached down quickly to pull him to his
feet and they began to run across the parking lot with urgent
speed.

There was an
alley leading out of the parking lot to their left and they took
it, their feet grinding and crunching on the grit and debris that
littered the ground. From behind them there were angry shouts,
issuing from near the hole that they’d just come through.

“
What the hell is going on?” Samantha panted, resting against
the wall of the alley. Richard ground to a halt reluctantly and
eyed the other side of the street with some trepidation. There was
a furniture store and another parking lot, one that lead back a
very long way into some trees. He very badly wanted to be off
across the street and into those far-off trees and their
life-giving camouflage. His knees were shaking and he felt like he
might throw up at any moment. The messenger bag around his neck
felt like a millstone, and he seriously fought an urge to rip it
off of his arm and throw it against the wall.

“
Bunch of guys with guns, Mark was texting them,” Richard
replied, panting as well. His heart was heaving and he regretted
skipping the gym as much as he had before the plague hit. “They
weren’t looking to play friendly, that’s for sure”.

“
Mark had a gun to your head,” she noted, sounding confused.
Richard hefted the gun again and grinned weakly. The thing was a
lot heavier than he had expected. “He was planning on killing you,”
she continued. “Just like that. Do you think...”

Richard began
to edge towards the mouth of the alley, trying to listen for
footsteps coming from nearby. He wondered if they would give chase
directly, or if they would try to flank them. There were so many
factors he didn’t know, he realized.

“
Do I think what?” he asked, distracted.

“
Do you think those women are all falling into a trap right
now?”

“
Probably”

“
They’re going to...” she trailed off, not wanting to vocalize
her suspicions. Richard nodded impatiently.

“
Yes they are,” he said decisively, “and if you don’t want them
to do it to you, too, we should go now”.

Samantha shook
her head and Richard looked at her incredulously.

“
No, we have to go help them”. Her voice was urgent,
passionate. Richard felt a sharp upward thrust of fear come out of
his stomach.

“
No way,” he disagreed, vehemently. He pointed across the
street to the line of trees in the middle distance. “We’re going
that way. Now”.

Samantha
opened her mouth, shocked, but before she could voice her opinion
on that another shout came from behind them, louder this time.
Richard whirled around and saw that two of the men had come through
the broken window. To his dismay, he saw that it was the men with
the guns. There was a piercing female scream from inside the
building; someone had just realized what was happening.