When the Buick quit on him, Louis snatched up his pistol from where it had fallen into the floorboard and he opened his door and slogged out into the bean field, trying to get up enough momentum to run.
I still held my pistol in my hand. I opened my door and stood up into the field. The air was raw and wet and I could smell the mud I was standing in. That field ran all the way back to a dim treeline on the horizon. I looked into that long, empty distance, and then I looked at Louis, huffing and grunting but not really going anywhere, not even started on crossing all that field. I sat down in the mud beside the car.
The police cars were peeling down off the levee. They stopped at the edge of the field, their lights still flashing. I watched the officers jump out, all zipped up in their brown coats, and one of them hollered to us. I reared back and threw my gun into the air toward them. It didn’t go very far.
They wanted me to get up and walk toward them with my hands on my head, but I sat where I was. I did get scared they might shoot me, so I lay back flat on the mud.
I quit listening to them and just lay looking up at the low, white sky. There was nothing in it. The sky did not look like something that was deep. I thought something inside me was going to die, and I laid my arm across my eyes. Out on that river island, I went down on a bed of crackling summer vine.
When they got to me they were still yelling at Louis, who was somewhere out there on the other side of the car. They got me over on my stomach and I saw the old white-haired man in the bunch, who I’m guessing was the sheriff, look over in Louis’s back seat. “Oh man,” he said and ran the back of his hand across his mouth. He opened the door and kneeled in.
Two of the deputies stripped my coat off me and got me handcuffed and started hustling me through the mud toward the patrol cars at the levee. I was shivering. Behind us they were still yelling at Louis.
The deputies shut me in a patrol car, where it was dry and warm. The radio was hissing softly. Out the window I could see Louis, a little ways out in the field beyond his car. He wasn’t trying to run anymore. He was standing, facing the men who watched him from behind his car. They all had their guns drawn. One of them had a rifle laid across Louis’s hood and was looking at Louis through the scope. While I was watching, Louis made like he was going to raise his pistol and when he did, puffs of smoke went up from the car and there was a cluster of pops. Louis sat down in the field, then jammed his shoulder into the mud. His neck was twisted so that his faced turned up to the sky. But I think he just fell that way.
The radio squawked clean and crisp, and I laid my cheek against the window glass. A deputy was approaching the patrol car. More than anything right then, I wanted to thank him for keeping that car warm.
Edward Lee
ICU
From 999
It chased him; it was huge. But what was it? Me sensed its immensity gaining on him, pursuing him through unlit warrens, around cornerways of smothered flesh, and down alleys of ichor and blood...
Holy Mother of God.
When Paone fully woke, his mind felt wiped out. Dull pain and confinement crushed him, or was it paralysis? Warped images, voices, smears of light and color all massed in his head. Francis “Frankie” Paone shuddered in the terror of the nameless thing that chased him through the rabbets and fissures of his own subconscious mind.
Yes, he was awake now, but the chase led on:
Storming figures. Concussion. Blood squirting onto dirty white walls.
And like a slow dissolve, Paone finally realized what it was that chased him. Not hitters. Not cops or feds.
It was memory that chased him.
But the memory of what?
The thoughts surged. Where am I? What the hell happened to me? This latter query, at least, shone clear. Something had happened. Something devastating...
The room was a blur. Paone squinted through grit teeth; without his glasses he couldn’t see three feet past his face.
But he could see enough to know.
Padded leather belts girded his chest, hips, and ankles, restraining him to a bed which seemed hard as slate. He couldn’t move. To his right stood several metal poles topped by blurred blobs. A long line descended... to his arm. IV bags, he realized. The line came to an end at the inside of his right elbow. And all about him swarmed unmistakable scents: antiseptics, salves, isopropyl alcohol.
I’m in a fucking hospital, he acknowledged.
Someone must’ve dropped a dime on him. But... He simply couldn’t remember. The memories hovered in fragments, still chasing his spirit without mercy. Gunshots. Blood. Muzzleflash.
His myopia offered even less mercy. Beyond the bed he could detect only a vague white perimeter, shadows, and depthless bulk. A drone reached his ears, like a distant air conditioner, and there was a slow, aggravating beep: the drip monitor for his IV. Overhead, something swayed. Hanging flowerpot? he ventured. No, it reminded him more of one of those retractable arms you’d find in a doctor’s office, like an X-ray nozzle. And the fuzzed ranks of shapes along the walls could only be cabinets, pharmaceutical cabinets.
Yeah, I’m in a hospital, all right, he realized. An ICU ward. It had to be. And he was buckled down good. Not just his ankles, but his knees too, and his shoulders. More straps immobilized his right arm to the IV board, where white tape secured the needle sunk into the crook of his elbow.
Then Paone looked at his left arm. That’s all it was — an arm. There was no hand at the end of it. And when he raised his right leg...
Just a stump several inches below the knee.
Nightmare, he wished. But the chasing memories seemed too real for a dream, and so did the pain. There was plenty of pain. It hurt to breathe, to swallow, even to blink. Pain oozed through his bowels like warm acid.
Somebody fucked me up royal, he conceded. The jail ward, no doubt. And there’s probably a cop standing right outside the door. He knew where he was now, but it terrified him not knowing exactly what had brought him here.
The memories raged, chasing, chasing...
Heavy slumps. Shouts. A booming, distorted voice... like a megaphone.
Jesus. He wanted to remember, vet again, he didn’t. The memories stalked him: pistol shots, full-auto rifle fire, the feel of his own piece jumping in his hand.
“Hey!” he shouted. “How about some help in here!”
A click resounded to the left; a door opened and closed. Soft footsteps approached, then suddenly a bright, unfocused figure blurred toward him.
“How long have you been awake?” came a toneless female voice.
“Couple of minutes,” Paone said. Pain throbbed in his throat. “Could you come closer? I can barely see you.”
The figure obliged. Its features sharpened.
It wasn’t a cop at all, it was a nurse. Tall, brunet, with fluid-blue eyes and a face of hard, eloquent lines. Her white blouse and skirt blurred like bright light. White nylons shone over sleek, coltish legs.
“Do you know where my glasses are?” Paone asked. “I’m nearsighted as hell.”
“Your glasses fell off at the crime scene,” she flatly replied.
Crime scene, came the bumbling thought.
“We’ve sent someone to recover them,” she added. “It shouldn’t be too long.” Her vacant eyes appraised him. She leaned over to take his vitals. “How do you feel?”
“Terrible. My gut hurts like a son of a bitch, and my hand...” Paone, squinting, raised the bandaged left slump. “Shit,” he muttered. He didn’t even want to ask.