Resurrection Express (31 page)

Hartman smiles incredulously—like,
you’re really gonna do this, huh, buddy
? But he doesn’t say a word. I only hear his breath quicken. Another black shape comes over and pulls a small black canister with a stainless steel nozzle attached to it from a shelf near the block. Turns a little knob on the nozzle and lights the end with an Aim-A-Flame. The gas jet ignites and hisses to a bright blue.

“That’ll keep you from bleeding out. We’re doing this one finger at a time, just like your old daddy.”

I nod slowly.

The guy with the torch gets in close to us. He has a face like rocks busted apart. A neutral expression like nothing at all. I wonder if he was the man who cauterized my father’s wounds.

Toni is watching me. That’s all I really wanted, wasn’t it? To know she was still there. To have her back for just one moment . . .
even if what we once had is broken beyond repair. To know she still loves me . . .
though love cannot stay . . .

“That’s a good boy,” he says. “Feel that adrenaline pumping? It’s sweet, ain’t it? Just like the lady.”

He takes a long breath, leaning closer to her.

“Like steel roses, Elroy.
Steel goddamn roses
.”

I am filled with the smell of her.

It’s all I’ve had for years. It’s all I have now.

He licks his fat lips. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah. I’m ready.”

He raises the meat cleaver three feet above my hand. I close my eyes and concentrate hard on her. I take myself out of there.

To the place where I won’t feel this.

His voice slithers in my ears just before the blade whistles down:

“Oh, and by the way, buddy . . .
that’s not your wife
.”

14

00000-14

MAYHEM AND DEATH RAY

W
hat happens next is in less than three seconds: My eyes open and I feel my hand jerk out of harm’s way on instinct as I see the steel chunk down hard, right into the wooden butcher’s block, a micromillimeter from the spot where my index finger was waiting, and it almost seems like the blade sliced into me—I feel it cold and sharp against my skin—but that’s just the cool chill of the metal itself, and my eyes are wide open, looking right into Hartman’s, and he looks back at me in shock, landscapes of frozen insanity like dull yellow ice across his face, eyes like bloodshot diamonds beaming a mad burn, and I can swear I hear God yell, “FUCK YOU!” in a terrible, dying voice, and somewhere in the corner of my eye, I can see a bright red glimmer on the Weasel’s shredded wrist in one split second—a digital watch set to a twenty-minute timer, an old-school dogface trick, the count reading 00:00—and I hear something pulse in the room at the same time, a high mechanical
blipping sound
 . . . and I see Toni in the other corner of my eye, standing there unwavering, as if made from invincible steel . . . as the thunder and the fire comes like a giant fist . . . and I realize at the very end of this long, elastic moment that it’s not the Almighty saving our asses at all.

That wasn’t God yelling, “FUCK YOU!”

It was the Weasel.

With his final breath, tearing through wetness.

And then everything goes straight to hell.

•  •  •

B
oom.

The combo feels like a half pound of C-4 rigged to one of the big oil drums and it really rips up the place, sending fire and debris everywhere. The flash registers in my peripheral vision as an enormous white phosphor flash knocking over the giant construction crane and sending men scattering like dogs. A giant steel girder falls from above and smashes the two guys who were going to shoot Toni flatter than pancakes. It’s a shriek and a crash and a sharp shock of sulfur and twisted metal up my nose that snaps me wide awake and pings the chaos volume up to eleven. I stand in the center of a meteor storm, watching Hartman scream wordlessly as his entire world blows up. The bloody curtains around us catch fire. Gorillas ignite and shriek as they burn, bipedal torches.

My hand balls back into a fist and flies right for Hartman’s face. His shocked expression shatters as his nose explodes. The cleaver falls from his right hand and I grab his middle finger and break it. He chucks hard on his own blood.

This is the moment, David.

This is it . . .

Someone shoots at me and I feel the bullet just above my head, as I swing Hartman by his arms, using his own weight like a battering ram. He crashes into the confused gorilla who’s doing the shooting and they tumble together like bad lovers, into the rack of gear. The gorilla’s gun clatters along the thundering, quaking floor. The torture harness holding the Weasel’s shredded remains tilts and falls on what’s left of Marcie. Hartman makes a lot of almost-human noise, gurgling in bloody backwash—just like every one of his victims. The thugs still scattered in the burning room are way past confused now, wondering what the hell comes next.

And that would be the rest of the Weasel’s C-4 package.

Franklin makes a dive for the floor, as everybody spins on another giant explosion—the big one. It rips the world in half. Knocks everyone down hard. Oil drums are tossed and tumbled. Toni is the only one standing now.

She stands in the center of the inferno.

It seems impossible, but the scent of her still reaches me through the sharp pings of fire and metal and burning gas in the room—as if she is above it all.

And I love her for it.

That’s not your wife.

Panic fire breaks out among a few of the men as they try to gain their feet, but they don’t have anyone to shoot at and they end up doing a lot of damage to each other. I can see Franklin somewhere in the chaos, screaming at us to run out the way we came in, hard metal raining down in black chunks, the whole place self-destructing.

I don’t follow him.

There’s something I have to do first.

Hartman.

You son of a bitch.

Come
here
 . . .

•  •  •

H
artman has his hands up as I crawl over to him. A chunk of the ceiling lands one foot from his head, shattering the concrete floor. He doesn’t even notice that. He only notices me. And he chokes on his own blood as he tells me to stop. But stopping is not something I feel like doing right now. The world tilts again and trembles as I yank him halfway to his feet and look him right in the eye. I’ve played this moment a thousand times. It’s never as sweet as you think it will be.

But it’s enough.

“We’re there,” he says, and his voice is garbled and drowned. “You and me, buddy . . .
we’re finally there . . .”

In hell, he means.

We’re both there at last.

I stand in hell with David Hartman, beating the crap out of him.

•  •  •

T
here’s a myth that the bigger you are, the harder it is to hurt you. It’s one of the first things they debunk in the dojo. Fat guys are really simple to mess up. This particular fat guy breaks in every spot I hit him. His jaw, his ribs, his teeth. It all goes real easy for a few seconds, but he surprises me with a block to my fourth blow. Puts all his forward weight into a lunge that throws me off balance. I stumble back and my legs go out from under me. The ground comes up in a violent shudder as another blast kicks off in the room, fire pluming up and vanishing in the concussion of a powerful wave. He stumbles back into the fallen butcher’s block. Yanks the cleaver out in a clumsy move and comes at me with it. Screams my name. Screams that I’m a bastard. I don’t hear him over the roar of the explosions.

And then a gunshot shatters his right kneecap, dropping him in front of me.

Toni, aiming the pistol with unshaking hands.

My love.

But he said she’s not my wife.

You twisted freak
—of course you would say that.

I see the animal grace of her, the cruel elegance, all flowing from her eyes as she finds the killer instinct, fighting to be herself again. It’s everything I remember, and something else on top. An even newer version of her, seething in the dark with the rest of us maniacs. My head pounds in time with the explosions.

That’s not your wife.

Hartman goes down in a pulpy sprawl, the meat cleaver hocking into his own shoulder as he falls. His garbled scream thrums hard in the room, which explodes again with thunder and flames. Her next shot goes in his other knee. Bone shards and blood clots detonate ten feet in every direction, and he looks up again, begging her not to kill him. She takes three steps forward. She hovers over him, point-blank. She bites her lower lip, this time with confidence. She is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen when she does that.

And then he looks up at her and I see something I’ll never forget.

Fear in his face—absolute, endless fear.

I realize that this was what I was looking at before, when I thought I saw the purest shape of his madness, shimmering in a bloody reflection. He wasn’t insane in that moment. He was afraid. Terrified.

Like he is right now, in the final second of his life.

Staring into the eyes of my wife.

And I can almost hear her voice:

We win, after all, David.

And that’s that.

His head caves with a wet crack as the last bullet in the gun strikes him right between his eyes, spewing in a chunky-pink fantail of blood. Each one of those chunks is thinking of her. He falls flat on his back, twitching. I almost lick my lips when the life runs out of him. Almost. I don’t get off on it, not like he does. I never did. Just needed to watch him die.

I promised you, my love.

I said I would kill him for you.

I stand next to her and we watch him die together.

•  •  •

W
e follow Franklin out of the place. The back rooms we came through are still not on fire yet and we barely make it as the whole
warehouse behind us fills with rolling hell. Franklin stops just long enough to grab a tiny revolver and Glock 30 automatic off the dead scarecrow in the corridor. Behind us, the storm rages on and I hear people screaming. I hate that sound.

A whole goddamn lot.

Toni grabs my hand. “Come on, we’ve got to move.”

She is strong and fast when she does it, pulling me to safety.

She is my one true love.

That’s not your wife.

•  •  •

T
oni insists on getting as many of the women out as we can.

Franklin screams at us that the place is coming down fast and we don’t have time for this, but Toni screams back at him and she’s mighty damn convincing.

Her voice, stronger now.

The real her, coming to the surface, as the world explodes.

I look at her and I see so many things.

That’s not your wife.

We pull the girls from their burning shantytown and Toni tells them all to run like hell. The fire turns into a thundering beast which eats the entire inside of the building, punching against the walls to be free. The smoke begins to seep through the windows in a ghostly glimmer and I hear glass shatter.

•  •  •

J
ust outside the fence near a cluster of trees, we hold our position and watch the last few women come streaming out. Most of them are shrieking like little girls. There’s some life still left in them as they bolt. I guess that’s a good thing. Twenty or thirty of them cower in the glade with us, scared out of their minds. The rest take off into the darkness, bound for wherever. I hope they have someplace to go.

Toni huddles with the ladies near us.

Tells them all it’s going to be okay.

I see the lines in her face illuminated by the pulsing yellow light of the fire, listening to her voice as she speaks to those poor lost girls, and she amazes me. Her face is hard like stone now, the trace of the broken little girl I saw before almost banished. Like someone hit a switch and made her a new woman, just by showing her something really awful—by giving her the chance to blow away the man who broke her, shoot him right between the eyes. She’s still holding the gun she killed Hartman with in both hands. The dull metal captures the pulse of the burning building, shimmering. I look at Toni and my heart does strange things.

“He said you’re not my wife. What did he mean?”

As my words come at her, I hear something else explode.

Fire lashes violently through the roof, crackling, hissing.

I glance over at the three vans in the loading dock. The Mexicans we duct-taped inside there can’t scream for help, but the fire won’t get to them. Not just yet anyway. When the cops show in a few minutes, they’ll pay for being garbagemen. They’ll say it was all someone else’s fault. And no one will believe them.

“He was crazy,” she says.

Her voice never wavers, not for one moment.

Her voice is deep and strong.

Cruel in her elegance.

Elegant in her regret.

Everything I only saw in faceless silhouette before this moment, brought into terrifying relief.

But . . .

“What happened in there?” I say. “What did he do to you?”

“I have to get my head together,” she says. “They had me drugged for a while. I can tell you more when I’ve had a chance to think.”

I put my hands on her shoulder.

She’s still caught in some kind of warp—but she’s pulling herself up from it like a champ. She’s strong, and I can see that strength, emerging a little at a time. Hartman couldn’t really break her, could he? He was toying with my mind, wasn’t he? Saw my psych reports like Jenison did, and he wanted to hurt me—wanted to make me bleed in my heart. Make me doubt the ground under my feet and the shades of my destroyed life. This is his revenge from beyond the grave, the son of a bitch. That awful, lingering doubt. His last words before the killing stroke.

That’s not your wife.

The roses in my head sear me, white-hot.

She bites her bottom lip softly, flames reflected in her eyes.