"… is dead, because if he wasn't dead, he couldn't stand it when I put my finger on his eyeball like this. But see, he doesn't even blink. There's still some blood running out, but that's gravity, is what it is. Just like when you cut a chicken's head off, the blood keeps coming for a long time, but the chicken is dead. Have you ever seen anybody do that? No? It's pretty exciting. You get the chicken and you hold it by its legs, and you rub its stomach and it'll get real quiet, then you lay the neck on a block and then really quick, chop, and the head flies off. If you let go of the chicken, the body will run all over the place without a head. It's pretty funny, when you see it…"
Jenkins risked a peek. The room was fifteen-by-fifteen feet and the man was sitting with his back to Jenkins, not more than seven or eight feet away. He was pointing a pistol at a woman against the far wall, who sat motionless, head down; she had blood on her blouse. Jenkins was not sure she was alive. He had to assume she was, though, and she was also directly on the other side of the man. If he shot the man, the bullet could go right through him into her…
"That's what people mean when they say that somebody's running around like a chicken with its head cut off… Anyway, this is what dead is… when somebody puts his finger on your eyeball, you don't even blink. I am going to shoot you when I'm finished talking, and you'll feel all your blood run out, and then to make sure you're dead, I will… don't move. Just sit there. Just listen, or I'll pull the trigger…"
Jenkins pulled slowly back, listening to the beat of the words, checked his gun, turned to the game warden, and put his finger to his lips. He stood upright, carefully slipped off his loafers, took a breath, then took a quick long silent step into the room, then part of another before the man began to turn…
Jenkins fired a single shot down through the Chase's skull, from a range of nine inches.
The game warden lurched through the door. Jenkins looked down at the dead man and said, "Fuckin' amateurs."
They both stepped over to the woman. She was a staffer and wore a black name tag that said Bea; she was alive, and she twitched away from him.
LUCAS SAT IN the stairwell, waiting for Sloan and Shrake to make their move on Biggie. The shooting had trailed off-maybe they were running out of ammunition? Lucas tried to think of how many bodies he'd seen in the hallways. Six? Eight? Plus the three in the cage.
His arm hurt; not the worst hurt he'd ever felt, but it was bad enough. He was okay as long as he didn't move…
The brenk brenk brenk of the alarms suddenly stopped, and the silence was so shocking that Lucas got to his feet… and could hear what seemed to be a general, hospitalwide wail, people hurting, people afraid. There was a thump from somewhere below, the sound of feet in the stairwell…
LEO GRANT DIDN'T KNOW how long he'd been on the floor, but it had been awhile, he thought. He knew he'd been shot but couldn't pin down the precise circumstances. His head wasn't working quite right…
He tried to push himself up, but his hands slipped. He couldn't see well, but he looked at one hand, then smelled it, and tasted it. Blood, he was covered with blood. He couldn't see very well, there was some-thing wrong with his right eye…
He tried again to push himself up, holding on to a window ledge. A door was open next to it, a battery-powered emergency light glowing in the ceiling. He stepped into a cell, then turned and looked at himself in the window-the mirrored inside of the one-way glass. Gaped at himself.
His right eye was gone. The side of his head was a mass of blood… he put a hand to it. The eye was gone, and a piece of his eye socket, the outer rim. All gone.
Not much pain yet; a stinging, headache sensation, with little points of pain coming with each step. He started walking, not knowing exactly where he was, or what he was doing. Armageddon, he remembered that. He remembered going into the room with the pistols, and then…
Had Chase shot him? He seemed to remember that. Chase had taken the gun and had shot him in the head.
"Crazy motherfucker," he said. He dabbed at his head with his jacket sleeve. Crazy… exactly crazy. Why hadn't they thought of that? All the planning, why hadn't they thought of the possibility that one of them might try to kill the others?… But that seemed so unfair.
He was out of the cellblock now, down the hall, into the stairwell. He looked both ways: a half dozen safety lights provided hardly more illumination than the same number of candles would have.
He could feel the anger rising: he was supposed to be in on this. He was supposed to have a gun. They were his fuckin' guns. They were supposed to walk down the hallways, shoulder to shoulder, taking who they wanted, letting other people live, people who begged good enough. Or maybe kill them even if they begged good enough, because it'd be fun to shoot the ass kissers.
Now he didn't even have a gun…
He walked past the elevators to the stairway, opened the door, and started up the stairs, hands clenched to his face, trying to hold his head together.
BIGGIE CALLED, "I got four of them in here. Gonna kill them one at a time. You ready? You want to count for me?"
Sloan said to Shrake, "I'm going."
"He'll be ready for you, shooting at the doorway," Shrake said.
"I don't give a fuck, I'm going. Too many bodies," Sloan said. "Tell me when," Shrake said.
"Now"
They went at once, and just before they got to the door, Shrake vaulted ahead, crossing the opening in an instant; there was a reaction flash and a bullet pounded itself into the wall oppisite.
Sloan peeked, saw Biggie across the room, alone. There were no hostages, just the two bodies in the outer room. Biggie now with his hands up, gun on the floor, smile on his face.
"No, no, no, no!" Biggie shouted, "I'm all out. I give up."
Sloan did another peek. Biggie stood there with his hands above his head. "Sloan? That you?"
Sloan turned the corner. "Yeah."
"I quit."
"Yeah, right, Biggie," Sloan said, and he shot Biggie Lighter twice in the heart. One of the slugs went cleanly through, shattered on the wall, and fragments of it ricocheted around the room. A piece of hot metal like the ripped-off rim of a dime hit Sloan in the lip and hung there, protruding from the skin. Sloan peeled it off and flicked it away, tasting the blood in his mouth.
Shrake nodded, "Good shooting."
LUCAS HEARD THE BOOM of the gun, turned his head that way.Then he caught the movement coming up the stairwell, turned back, and saw a man coming toward him. The man's head was a mass of blood, and he seemed to be trying to stanch the bleeding with his hands.
Lucas said, "Just sit down, the doctors are…" and the man jumped at him, screaming, grabbing Lucas by the broken arm, and Lucas screamed back, swung awkwardly with his.45, and then they both went down the concrete stairs, rolling over and over each other.
Grant, or Roy Rogers, or whatever the fuck his name was. His face was shattered, but Lucas recognized the good half. Grant was soaked in blood, holding to Lucas's broken arm with one hand, swinging with the other, screaming incoherently. Lucas hit the stairs upside down, tumbled, Grant falling over him; he squeezed the trigger of the.45 involuntarily, and the flash lit the stairwell and the surprise and the pain from the broken arm and the recoil pulled the gun out of his hand and he heard it clattering down the stairs.
Grant was underneath him now and they turned again and Grant was on top, scrambling, and Lucas pulled him down and they rolled across the landing and Grant smashed Lucas in the nose; blood flooded into Lucas's mouth and he sputtered, came up close to Grant's face, sprayed blood into Grant's good eye, and they were turning again.