Rush (21 page)

I say, ‘No, sir. I'm just a volunteer. How are you this morning?'

He speaks with a waver in his voice. ‘I'd like it if they turned the air conditioning up.'

He's kidding, or he has to be. It's almost cold enough in here to draw mist at my breath. I tell him, ‘I'll see what I can do about that. Is there anything else I can help you with? Not feeling a little tired? Don't want some pills?'

He's staring at me like maybe he suspects I don't really have any business here. I say, ‘Sir, aren't you tired? Do you really think that this is living?'

He stammers. ‘E-e-excuse me?'

I've raised my voice and some of the other oldies in the room have turned to stare at me. I'm saying, ‘Do you consider this living? Do you have complete control of your bowels, sir?'

‘I don't,' somebody else mutters.

I turn in the direction of the voice. I say, ‘You, sir!' like I'm a travelling salesman with a gimmick up his sleeve. ‘Are you tired of this existence? Being spoonfed and shitting through tubes? Have you had
enough
?'

‘Leave him alone,' one of the old women says. The age in her voice makes the order sound feeble and without meaning.

‘No,' I decide, pulling the gun.

Somebody screams. It's a high-pitched wail. Others moan. Somebody says, ‘Mother of God.' These people are too slow to bother running; their fear has them frozen in place.

There's a nurse standing in the hall behind me and she says, ‘Jesus, what are you doing?'

I turn to her, waving the gun casually. ‘Don't worry ma'am. I'm only here for people over the age of seventy.'

The old man sitting before me says, ‘I'm eighty-four years old.'

I swing the gun toward him. ‘Okay. Do you want to go first?'

He says, ‘Are you asking me if I want to die?' He's incredibly lucid as he says this.

I say, ‘You bet.' There's nobody in the world but he and I right at this moment.

He's staring up at me, eyes following the barrel of the gun to my hand, my arm, my shoulder, my neck, my face. He appears to seriously consider the matter, and he says with a sigh, ‘Sure. I'm old. Why not?'

That's all the encouragement that I need.

What's remarkable is the silence that comes from these people in the wake of the gunshot. There's blood
splattered on my face and hand, and I look calmly around the room and nobody needs to be told to shut up, nobody needs to be ordered to sit still. Even the nurse isn't moving. There's the sound of commotion in the outer hall, and people are coming to investigate the gunshot. Old people move slowly and I estimate I can get another body on the floor before the onlookers arrive.

I shout, ‘Who's next? Who's next? Step right up! Put your hands to-gether! Who. Is. Next?'

Nobody volunteers. I skip over to an old lady sitting in a wheelchair by the window, and I ask her, ‘Ma'am, would you care to dance?' I'm even extending my hand in a gentlemanly fashion with the gun behind my back.

She begs. ‘I have arthritis.'

I tell her, ‘I can heal you.'

I say, ‘Trust in me. I can show you the healing light. Hold my hand.'

Gingerly, she takes my hand. I extend my other hand, with the gun. I shoot her twice and she jerks in her chair, and when she's dead her hand is still in mine.

I turn to face the room. ‘Who else wants to be healed?'

One of the chess players raises his hand weakly. I say, ‘Hallelujah,' and shoot him from where I stand, pulling the trigger once.

I put the next two bullets into the old man I'd first sat and talked with. He's crying before I shoot him, but he's not crying because he's going to die. We're all going to die. He's crying because he understands the worthlessness of the life he's been living here. And this is when I free him with two pulls on the trigger.

I'm reloading the gun and everybody is standing motionless around the room, onlookers have gathered in
the entrance to the room. They've all fallen into some kind of stupor. This is truly an awakening. I'm stuffing bullets into chambers and one of the old men comes to his senses, and he whispers to another nearby, ‘Do you think we can rush him while he's reloading?'

I say, ‘No. No, I don't think you'll have time.' I snap the chamber closed.

The next six bullets are spent within twenty seconds. That's a bullet every 3.3 seconds. I can definitely do better. There are four more bodies on the floor leaking old blood that looks like motor oil, and the people around me are beginning to snap out of their trance as I reload again.

After the next six bullets are spent, one of them shattering the television, I hear sirens in the distance. I say, ‘Who called the cops? Dammit, they'll just spoil all the fun. Don't you realise?'

One old woman says, ‘This isn't fun. It's terrible.'

I say, ‘You there. What medication do they have you on?'

She starts to rattle off the names of pills, prescriptions, addictions.

I tell her, ‘That stuff is only going to numb you.'

I shoot her twice and say, ‘Take two of these and call me in the morning.'

By now I'm laughing.

The sirens are definitely closer. I face the old folks and say, ‘Okay. When the police come, this is definitely a hostage situation. I can't talk my way out of this without a hostage. Now who wants to play hostage for a couple of minutes?'

I have to choose, tic tac toe, from the show of hands.
‘You,' I say, pointing at an old man. ‘Need a little more excitement? Let's do it.'

I grab him and move up the hall and out to the lobby.

We're out the front of the building by the time the police turn into the driveway with their lights on and sirens howling. I fire shots at the cars and they pull to a stop a safe distance away from me. Pressed against me, the old man says, ‘This is the most fun I've had in a long time.'

I say, ‘It's the most fun your brains will have splattered against the wall if you don't shut up.'

He says, ‘Oh, yeah.'

The gun is empty, so I ask Harry—he's the old fellow—to fish around in the pocket of my jacket and get me a handful of bullets. I'd do it myself but I have one hand around his neck and the other is pointing the gun toward the police officers gathered behind their cars out on the lawn. Harry drops several bullets in my palm.

‘Thanks,' I say, and reload.

A bullet shatters a window behind my head and I decide to step back into the lobby for safety. I call out to the cops, ‘Jesus, what are you trying to do? Shoot me?'

There's a moment of silence before a voice replies, ‘Yes!'

With a shrug I'm muttering, ‘Fair enough.'

A voice on a loudspeaker calls out, ‘PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS.'

I shout, ‘Never!'

The voice calls, ‘SURRENDER OR WE'LL SHOOT.'

I yell, ‘I'll shoot this old fucker, I swear I will!' I've even got the gun pressed to Harry's head for greatest theatrical effect.

The voice calls, ‘WHO CARES? HE'S OLD AND HE'S GOING TO DIE SOON ANYWAY.'

I share a puzzled glance with Harry and they open fire again. It's moments like this that I hate having a six-shooter. For shooting sprees I really need something that can hold more bullets. I fire my six shots, shattering a window of one police car, punching holes into the door of another. I haven't hit anybody.

‘Harry,' I say. ‘Bullets.'

Reload. The cops are firing at us and there are bullets bouncing in the lobby. One of the bullets ricochets from a wall and smacks Harry in the leg. He cries out and goes down and I let him fall. He's wincing in pain and spilling blood onto the nice carpet.

I call around the corner to the cops: ‘You bastards! You shot the old man!'

The loudspeaker replies, ‘YOU WERE GOING TO DO IT ANYWAY.'

I shout, ‘That's not the point!'

This time the voice is curious. ‘WHERE'D WE HIT HIM?'

I reply, ‘In the leg!'

‘WE SHOOT TO KILL,' the voice says blankly.

There's a scuffling sound coming through the loudspeaker, and then a different voice comes on the horn: ‘WE DON'T WANT TO HURT YOU.'

Bullshit. I'm muttering, bullshit. I call to them, ‘Give me a minute. I'm going to surrender.'

‘THROW DOWN YOUR WEAPONS OR GIVE US A CLEAR SHOT!' the first voice yells.

I head back to all way and the rec room, leaving Harry bleeding and moaning on the floor. Everybody else
is gathered in the rec room, but they're careful to avoid the pooling blood of the dead. It's like playing hop-scotch.

I ask, ‘Is there a back way out of here?'

The nurse says, ‘Yes. There's a walking track out the back, leads through the trees.'

I nod before I break into a run. There are sounds of the police storming the complex as I push through the double backdoors and stand in the open air; it's started to drizzle. The walking track is paved and snakes across the lawn and through the trees to I don't know where. Regardless, I follow it.

I'm telling myself this would be the worst time to have a tumour blackout.

After a few minutes of running I decide it's better to veer from the track, so I dart between the trees, leaping fallen logs and crushing clumps of twigs and dead leaves under me. Low branches are slapping me in the face. I stop running where the treeline ends. If this were a cartoon there would be skidding sounds as my legs slide forward and I roll my arms in an effort to stop. I hear waves crashing far below me, and the sky opens right up in front of my face and I'm standing at the edge of a cliff that drops away to the ocean. From where I'm standing I can see right along the coast, I can see stretches of beach and cityscapes further in the distance.

I stand there with my arms dead at my sides, chest heaving. There are the sounds of police officers moving through the bush behind me, and I hear them call to one another. A gull swoops down before me, hovering for a moment on the wind. Then it drops toward the water.

The police burst through the bushes behind me, and I turn to face them with my hands up. I'm doing my best
Fugitive
impression as I say, ‘I didn't kill my wife!'

This is the part where Harrison Ford leaps from the stormwater drain and plunges to what seems his certain doom.

I figure this is a trick that Spencer would appreciate. Of course, my gun is going to get wet. And there's the matter of being battered against the rocks to consider. But I'm going to do it anyway. Freefall, I mean.

I'm toppling over and for a moment my mind is utterly serene as I plummet.

It's just like skydiving, but you know this time there's no parachute to save you. The distance isn't nearly as great, and the world rushes up to meet you like a slap in the face.

One moment I'm seeing the tiny white crests of waves, the next I am feeling their salt spray on my cheeks, the next I am hitting the water like I've been hit by a bus, and then I'm submerged, floundering beneath the surface, the sudden sound of rushing wind and waves gone and only the sound of water in my ears. I can't feel my legs or my arms.

I'm sinking. The surface is there above me, I can see the warm glow of sunlight in a wash of light blue, but all I feel is the increasing cold of the depths as I sink, and I see the blue grow darker, deeper around me.

My arms won't move to save me. My legs can't kick to the surface.

If I weren't the Narrator, this would be the part where I drown. So my lungs don't fill up with cold salt water. I can't drown because I'm invincible, and all I do is wake
up coughing and sputtering on a sandy shore somewhere, and I've still got the gun clutched in one blue and shivering hand.

 

It's dark by the time I make my way back to Spencer's. My clothes are dry but my feet are like I've been living in a trench. With the socks soaked through my soles are wrinkled and reeking. I've thrown the gun away sometime on the way home, I don't remember when. It was useless. So were all of the bullets in my jacket, and I emptied them along the streets, dropping them like Hansel and Gretel drop breadcrumbs.

I come through the unlocked door into the dark house, and it sounds like nobody's home, but actually Spencer is in the bedroom fucking Sophia. I wonder sometimes how she doesn't snap. Physically, I mean. She's like a twig, this girl.

How can Spencer stand to feel those bones jutting against him, so close beneath the skin? She's nothing more than a bag of bones with a nosebleed, this girl.

I collapse in the living room, curled onto the floor. My heart is still beating like it's ready to burst and I wish that I could sleep, but when you're riding a high like this there's no way you can sleep. It's like insomnia. I prise myself from the floor eventually and go to the kitchen. I'm pacing restlessly back and forth through the house. My feet seem to move in time to my heartbeat, which seems to move in time with the rhythmic grunts and thrusts coming from the bedroom.

When Spencer is finished he wanders naked into the kitchen for a drink, and I'm standing there in the dark,
dishevelled and wild. Opening the fridge, he says, ‘Jesus, man. What happened to you?'

I tell him that I jumped off a bridge. ‘You know, for fun.'

Spencer is nodding. We're grooving to the same music now, he's thinking.

‘I can't sleep,' I tell him. ‘I have this problem sometimes. Haven't slept for days. I used to count sheep. Well, not sheep. I used to imagine a zoo, you know. And count the animals. It lulled me into rest.'

Spencer thinks it over and he says, ‘That's a good idea. Where'd you come up with that one?'

I tell Spencer the story about how my father used to take me to the zoo when I was younger, back before he died, back before I knew how to read. My father would read the plaques for me, describing each individual animal, telling me about what they ate, when they slept, where they originated. My favourites were the reptiles, because they seemed the furthest from human, so cold and relentless. We always went to see the reptiles.