“Fuck!” he snarled. “We fucking lost ‘em!”
Nails slowed the car down. “Sorry, Sarge,” he said. “But whatever they throwed at us… Shit!”
Lumler thought for a moment and then an idea came lumbering up in his mind.
“Keep goin’,” he told Nails. “South on Mass.”
“Whaa? Why? They gone, Sarge.”
“Just shut the fuck up and drive,” Lumler said. “I’ll tell you where to go.”
“You the boss.”
They pulled up in front of Santiago’s clinic about ten minutes later. There was no sign of the bike, but that didn’t mean much, thought Lumler; of course they’d hide the thing. Then again, maybe it was already a mile away from here and getting further every second.
Lumler grabbed a shotgun from the back seat as they exited the car and Nails drew out his .45 as they approached the building. It was a low structure, one story with only a few windows, and it was dark inside. Lumler led Nails up to the front door and peered past the glass panels and thickly welded bars. Nothing stirred.
“You think they’s here, Sarge?” whispered Nails excitedly. “You think?”
Lumler said nothing but the glare he gave the other man shut Nails up just the same. He tried the door and found that it was unlocked. Funny. This place, with all its valuable drugs and supplies, should be locked up good this time of night. Slowly, he opened the door and moved deliberately into the clinic. Nails, his eyes left, right, and out the back of his head, jittering like a squirrel, followed along.
A noise, a scraping bump, made Lumler stop short. Before Nails could say anything, he glared the man to silence and started toward the doctor’s offices, from which the sound had come.
It was dark back there where the moonlight didn’t reach, and when they came to the first office Lumler reached inside the doorway, felt around, and snapped on the bright overhead lights. Nothing, just a sterile-looking exam room, with padded table, chairs, and a shelf with a couple of boxes and jars.
Moving along, Lumler did the same for two more exam rooms. Again, nothing of interest. He was starting to relax a little, thinking that the noise was probably just a rat or something, and snapped on the lights in the last room.
Caught in the glare like he was paralyzed, eyes wide, mouth in a broad ‘O’, Santiago knelt in the corner of the exam room, just behind the stirrup table. Before him was a duct or grille of some kind, propped open, down which Lumler saw a pair of legs quickly vanishing.
“Hold it right there!” shrieked Nails, brandishing his pistol in both hands.
Seeing that Santiago wasn’t obviously armed, hands up and empty, Lumler brushed past him and quickly knelt and looked into the vent, but whomever had crawled down the shaft was already long gone.
Lumler stood up and looked down at Santiago. Nails, vibrating in place, his knuckles white on the .45, stood nearby in a crouch.
“We got one, Sarge!” he said, excited as hell. “Shit, we got one!”
Santiago looked up at Lumler. His expression was apologetic, regretful and tired, but his dark eyes sparkled as brightly as ever.
“Hiya, Doug,” he said glibly. “You uh, you come by for a check-up?”
Lumler didn’t say anything. Something deep in his ponderous mind was talking to him and, for the first time in his life, and at this unlikely moment, he decided to listen to what it said. For what undoubtedly seemed like a long time to the others, he stood and fingered the shotgun, clicking the safety on and off, on and off, and listened. Santiago just waited, hands laced atop his head, but finally Nails could take no more.
“What’s up, Sarge?” he said. “You OK?”
Lumler looked over at him. “Fine,” he said, flat as a pancake. “Just fine.”
“So,” said Nails uncertainly, “whata we do next? We takin’ him in, right? Or should we jus’, you know, take care of him right here?”
“Yeah, Sarge,” Santiago said sardonically. “Whatcha gonna do?”
Lumler frowned. He quit flipping the safety. He was done listening now and whatever it was that had stirred and risen in his mind had ultimately won him over. His thick reasoning processes didn’t allow for anything like a revelation, but whatever it was, it was right, in just about every sense of the word he could imagine, and right was right. Nothing else was.
Before Nails could react, Lumler whipped the barrel of the shotgun around and let the other PF man have it with both barrels. The gun, a riot model of a 12 gauge double barrel loaded with solid slugs, made an enormous boom in the small exam room. Nails, his face a study in surprise and confusion, was hit in the chest and neck. Blood and flesh splattered the walls, smoke wafted in the still air, and Nails, dropping his gun, slid shuddering to the ground to lie in a growing puddle of his own blood. In an instant, a loud, incredibly violent and gory instant, the man was stone dead.
Lumler busted open the shotgun, ejecting the two spent shells, and jacked two more from his pocket into the breech. Santiago still knelt before him, hands behind his head. Looking from the dead man to Lumler, his eyes were wide but unafraid.
“Holy shit!” he breathed. “You killed him!”
“Nice diagnosis, Doc,” said Lumler wryly. “Any further observations?”
Santiago slowly lowered his hands and shook his head. “You know what you just did? You know what’ll happen to you?”
Lumler shrugged, a small mountain shifting position. “Guess so,” he said. “But that’s only if they catch me.”
Santiago slowly grinned. “So that’s it? Now you’re one of us?”
Lumler considered his words. “You gotta make choices sometimes,” he finally said. “An’ sometimes they’re hard choices, you know? I guess I just made a pretty hard one.”
“I guess you did!” said Santiago, eyeing Nails’ oozing corpse. “But did you have to do that?”
“Yup,” said Lumler placidly. “Trust me, he would never have let me let you go. And he would never have kept his mouth shut. So yeah, I had to. Anyway, he was an asshole. He had it comin’.”
Santiago nodded gravely, got to his feet a little unsteadily, and glanced at the still-ajar vent. Lumler noticed and gestured at the aperture.
“Who was that?” he asked.
Santiago shrugged. “Friend of mine. Name of Stiletto.”
“Stiletto?! Christ, is that really his name?”
“Her name,” corrected Santiago. “And you can pretty well guess how she got it. But don’t worry, you’ll meet her soon enough, I guess. I mean, you do want to come with me, don’t you? Or are you gonna, you know, try it on your own?”
“Oh, I’m with you, pal,” said Lumler, shouldering the riot gun. “I mean, where else I got to go, right? Not like I can go back now.”
Suddenly the radio on Lumler’s shoulder went off in a burst of static and the tense, nasal voice of none other than the Chief himself issued forth.
“Sergeant Lumler, report at once! Repeat, Sergeant Lumler, your report is required immediately! Report!”
Lumler glared at the radio for a moment. Then he reached up and tore it from its velcro mount. He was about to crush it underfoot, maybe in some kind of stupid, defiant gesture, but then decided that it might be useful and instead simply switched it off.
“Fuck you, Chief,” he said to the dead radio. “Fuck you and the Governor and the whole goddamn thing.”
“Amen to that, my friend,” said Santiago, nodding and smiling. But then he abruptly frowned. “But it ain’t gonna be so easy, explaining you to the others. My other friends, that is. I mean, after all, you are—or were, anyway—the second in command of the PF! These folks aren’t exactly going to welcome you with open arms, you know?”