Cyris returns his attention to the detective. I take the flashlight from Jo and point it into the cave. We could attempt an escape through there, but soon the batteries would die and we would become lost, navigating our way through the darkness either deeper into the earth or simply in circles around it. Behind us is only a bank of rocks and then the river stretching away. Ahead of us one lunatic looking down at another lunatic. Further to the right is the same path we followed, but there’s no way we could run through there keeping ahead of the shotgun.
It’s the river or nothing.
Though it’s not really nothing. It’s the river, or get shot where we’re standing.
Hell, chances are we get shot going for the river anyway. But it’s something.
Landry’s movements have slowed down, and finally, thank God, his screams die off. He’s lying on his side, attempting to hold his wounded knee with blood-covered hands. He holds his palms against it, trying to push everything back together, trying to help it heal with a grim determination that is about two surgeons and a lot of medical instruments short of being any good. He looks over at us and in his agony I can see him pleading for help. I can’t help him. He has dug his own grave and I hate him for putting us in there with him. His face and clothes are saturated in blood. There’s so much the rain can’t even start to move it.
Cyris points the shotgun at him and at the same time starts grinding his heel into the wounded knee. Landry’s eyes roll back in his head, but he keeps thrashing around, unable to pass out. I’m too afraid to move, too scared to take my eyes from this grisly display, too much of a coward to try and help. Jo’s grip on my hand tightens.
I step back, taking Jo with me.
Cyris looks over and yells something. It’s indistinguishable over the loud rain, so heavy now it almost feels like hail. He points the gun at us, his mind-reading skills on full display here. Though it’s not that great a trick because trying to run is the only option worth looking at. He steps over Landry toward us. We back away, getting closer to the river. We’re going to have to jump for it. We’re going to have to climb into the freezing cold water and do whatever we can to avoid rocks and drowning and pneumonia and gunshots. I don’t know if Jo has come up with the same plan. I know she hates water and I know she can’t swim. I also know she isn’t bulletproof. What she needs to do is choose one plan over the other, and really it can be simplified down to two choices: dying right now, or perhaps dying on our way into the water, or perhaps dying a minute or two down the line. Living is turning out to be a hell of a lot of work and the alternative is starting to look tempting. Giving up would sure be easier.
Cyris is grinning because that’s what guys like him do. The gun sways slightly as the wind pushes at him. The shotgun means he doesn’t need to be accurate-he can fire in our general direction and still nail us. I can’t see any way that he won’t pull the trigger before we’re in the water. I look down at Landry. He’s starting to move, but barely. But he’s looking up at me. The look on his face has changed. He’s no longer wearing the look of a man who is desperate for help. In fact it’s the opposite. He’s wearing the face of a man who’s angry. His jaw is clenched. He stares at me, and then he nods. A single nod that conveys his apology and an instruction. Like Cyris, he knows what I’m planning.
I nod back at him, knowing what it is he’s about to do.
He’s about to try and repent.
Cyris pumps the shotgun and we get ready to jump.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Well, fuck it. So this is the way it’s going to be. The cancer. . Christ, none of it even matters in the end. Coffin shopping and picking out a suit-it’s no longer his problem. This is the moment of truth. The moment where he gets to meet his maker and ask him the big question-what the fuck?
The pain in Landry’s leg is so raw, so intense, that at this point he’s actually welcoming death. Can’t be worse than this. His throat is burning from all the screaming, it feels like he’s swallowed gasoline with a Zippo chaser. The gunfire has left a high-pitched whine in his ears, which has eaten through to the core of his brain and is now eating its way back out. He can feel his heart slowing down. He’s losing it.
He doesn’t want to die. He’s made the biggest mistake of his life by coming out here tonight, and he’s going to pay for it in the biggest way possible. There is no going back. No do-overs. This is far from the justice he pictured hours ago, but in a way it’s justice nonetheless. He came out here with the thought that he was doing humanity a service. All he was doing was making a mockery of everything he believed in.
What a mistake.
How can he have been so stupid?
The cancer? The pills?
No. That’s just a bullshit excuse. It was the anger. That’s what made him stupid. He’s angry at the city because the Christchurch he grew up in isn’t the same Christchurch he’s been living in for the last five or ten years, and it’s certainly a far cry from the Christchurch he’s going to die in. So yeah, he’s angry-he’s angry because he has to see the depravity others don’t have to see. He got to see the dirty mechanics of the world, and now he’s gotten caught up in the gears.
He has wasted the last week of his life. He’s spent it dying when he should have focused on living. Of course none of that matters now, not out here, not in this shithole of a forest where years ago one of God’s assholes brought a woman out here to die, only to do it again a few years later.
His eyes are filling with blood. At least that’s what he thinks is happening. Maybe it’s the blow to the head he took earlier. Maybe the fall. There are shapes moving in front of him, and these shapes turn as red as the landscape he sees them moving across. Everything is wet. The gunshot wound isn’t enough to kill him, but the blood loss is. Trained paramedics couldn’t save him now. There’s no hope. Not for him. Maybe for Feldman and the girl.
He digs his fingers into the damp ground and twists himself toward Cyris. His killer is facing Feldman and the woman, the shotgun firmly in his hands. Landry uses his arms and his good leg to crawl forward. He starts to close the distance.
One of those shapes in the red landscape is Charlie. He grins. He guesses he’s on a first-name basis with the guy, now that he’s about to save his life. When he wanted to kill him, it was Feldman. Now it’s Charlie. He nods at Charlie, and Charlie nods back. Message received. He reaches into his right pocket. Charlie took the keys to the handcuffs, but not both sets. For as long as he’s been a cop he’s always carried a spare handcuff key in case his own cuffs were used against him. It’s a trick that Theodore Tate taught him. Of all people, Tate is the last person he wants to be thinking of right now. He curls his fingers around the key and pulls it out.
Unbelievably, his hands are steady. The key slots in on the first attempt. He undoes the left bracelet and leaves the right one attached.
He crawls closer to Cyris knowing this is the last thing he will ever do.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Cyris is shouting at them and Jo can’t make out the words. She’s too cold, too confused, and she’s pretty sure her hearing may be permanently shot. You never see that in the movies-you don’t see bank robbers and homicide artists getting doctor’s appointments to have hearing aids fitted. She glances at the river, but knows only drowning waits for her there. It looks black and cold enough to stop her heart, assuming it’s still beating when she hits the surface-which at this point is a big assumption. She should have trusted Charlie. Should have trusted herself because she wanted to believe him.
The policeman is crawling toward Cyris. He has nodded at Charlie, and Charlie has nodded back, and she’s pretty sure something is about to happen, and she’s pretty sure she’s too cold and scared to go along with the plan, but she’ll do her best. The policeman’s leg is a mess.