His finger was tightening on the trigger when Foster charged through the door.
It was all like a slow-motion dream to Shannon. He was staring up at Ramsey and he saw the gun and he understood what was about to happen and he couldn't do anything but pray and pray for God to let him die and then there was a bang and he thought he'd been shot but he wasn't and he saw movement and there was Foster in some vague, unfocused distance charging across the background of blue sky and tower tops, shouting words Shannon couldn't hear through the wind noise, holding his gun out before him in his two hands.
Then Ramsey was turning, his gun still pointed down at Shannon, and the blockheaded cop in the white waiter's uniform was whipping around toward Foster and lifting his gun. Shannon heard the first shot, not loud, a distant snap almost drowned by the hoarse roar of the wind and the walls rocking and shuddering. He saw the smoke and fire explode from the barrel of Foster's nine. Then the blockheaded cop was flying backward and crumpling to the floor next to Shannon's feet.
Then there was another shot, a blast echoing through the wind. Shannon didn't know where it'd come from. But then he saw the blood and flesh explode on Foster's shoulder and the agent's face contorted with pain and his body twisted and his gun flew from his hand as he went falling toward the sky.
Shannon blinked upward through swollen eyes and saw that it was Ramsey who'd fired, his gun trained on the spot where Foster had been, smoke curling from the barrel of it.
Foster now lay at the edge of the floor, inches from a break in the charred wall, an open space into emptiness, a forty-story fall. The agent was wounded, writhing like a hurt animal, trying to crawl away from the edge to recover the gun that had fallen out of his reach.
All in that vague, unfocused slow-motion-all beneath the hoarse, shuddering roar of the hot, gritty wind-Shannon saw Ramsey glance down at him from far above to make sure that he wasn't moving, that he was helpless there. And then Ramsey walked away, walked across the room to finish Foster off.
And a thought came to Shannon that was almost like a voice in his ear-that clear-the fi rst clear thought he'd had since Ramsey had started working him over: The gun! The blockheaded cop's gun!
Shannon looked up at Ramsey's back as Ramsey walked into the unfocused distance to kill Foster where he lay, and then he, Shannon, looked over at where the blockheaded cop lay on his back on the floor at his feet. And, sure enough, there was the weapon, the nine the cop had been holding-there it was on the floor not far away, so that Shannon realized that if he could only move, if he only had the strength to move, he might get the gun. He might get the gun.
Shannon understood that this was what he had to do, an un-looked-for chance he had to take. He did not feel he had the strength to move or that his body could stand the pain of moving, but he knew he had to. He did not think or pray. He was all prayer and all pain-unbelievable sickness and pain-as he began to curl his body toward the gun, moving his flesh as if it were a mountain of stone under which he was buried, moving it around by what seemed like inches at a time, over a time that seemed like hours. He still saw Ramsey in his peripheral vision, the gray back of him moving away toward Foster. And then Ramsey was gone, and Shannon thought there must be no more time left and that it didn't matter anyway because the pain was just too much, he could not move another inch, but he kept moving-another inch and another-because he understood this was what he had to do, an unlooked-for chance.
It was his left hand that was broken. He reached for the gun with his right, flinching with the agony of the movement but trying not to cry out. Suddenly he felt the wind again and the grit of the wind stinging his wounds. He reached the gun. He closed his fingers around it and began to lift it, his hand trembling weakly and the weight of his flesh and the weight of his pain crushing him down so that every inch of movement required more strength than he believed he had.
He squinted across the room at Ramsey and his vision cleared so that he saw the lieutenant standing over Foster now, lifting his gun to put a final bullet in him. Shannon could not bring his own weapon to bear fast enough. He could not stop Ramsey in time.
So he shouted out "Ramsey!" through the wind.
And he saw Ramsey, startled, spinning around, turning the gun quickly from Foster to point it straight at him.
When Ramsey heard the shout and turned and saw the blood-soaked figure bringing the gun to bear on him, he knew what was going to happen next, it seemed inevitable. All in a moment, he felt overwhelming desperation, rage, and terrible shame. A wild, silent cry of regret, a silent cry of yearning for his mother's comfort, tore from his guts and filled him. All in a moment, he saw: it was his doing, all his doing, and he was sorry for it.
Maybe that's why he hesitated just a fraction of a fraction of a second before he began to pull the trigger.
But it was too late by then. Shannon shot him.
It was a wild shot. The bullet hit only the fleshy edge of Ramsey's thigh. It didn't even knock the gun out of his hand. But the jolt and the searing pain made him stagger back a step and he tripped over Foster lying there and he staggered back another step and fell off the edge of the floor into nothingness and went down and down and down, screaming in helpless terror and sorrow for what felt like forever.
Shannon saw Ramsey fall back into the sky and vanish in a finger snap as by some terrible magic, and he understood that it was over. The weight of the gun and the pain overwhelmed him then. He collapsed onto the floor in a spreading puddle of his own blood.
He closed his eyes. He felt himself sinking away into darkness-death or unconsciousness, he didn't know which. Either way, he was glad-glad and grateful for it. It was over. He had done everything he had to do.
He let himself go and was gone.
EPILOGUE
IT WAS STRANGE to be back in the white room. For the first day or two, he was in a painkiller fog, and it was very strange. He hung suspended in the fog as if in midair, and the fog drifted by him, sometimes black and sometimes gray and sometimes full of present shadows or past faces he remembered. He saw the white room through the breaks in the fog for shapeless moments at a time, and he wasn't sure whether it was really there or he was dreaming. And when he thought it was there, that he was back in the white room again, he wondered if the rest of it had been a dream-the ruined city and the wooden angel and Teresa-everything a dream while he had been here in the white room all along.
Slowly, day by day, the fog thinned. He wafted down from the air and intermittently felt the bed beneath him. The sound of a door opening or footsteps on the floor would alert him and he would fight against the weighted haze, trying to sit up and see more clearly. He caught glimpses of men with guns. Different men at different times. One would stand over him with his thumbs in his belt and look down at him with a deadpan face. Another would sit in a chair against the wall and page through a magazine. Yet another would just sit in the chair and stare. Lawmen of some sort, standing guard.
There were other men, too, sometimes-and sometimes women: doctors or nurses in scrubs with stethoscopes around their necks. They fussed at him and shifted him on the bed and stuck needles into him. Sometimes they gave him water through a straw and he drank gratefully. When they spoke to him, they spoke as if he were an infant or a dog-as if he couldn't really understand or answer them. When he did answer, they always seemed surprised and a little resentful. Then he would be gone again and when he woke up it was all so hard to remember.
One day, he opened his eyes, and there was Foster. Same old narrow, bald, seedy agent in yet another cheap suit. Shannon squinted through sleep and saw him fidgeting in a chair at his bedside. He was wearing a blue sling on his right arm and Shannon remembered that Ramsey had shot him.