JB24's Tales...of...Interest!

[JackBauer24]

Okay, guys. I posted part of a short story over in the About You thread, and I got some interesting responses, so I thought that I would start my own fiction thread. I'll post my stuff and you guys can go through and tell me how much it sucks! :eh: :lol: So here we go with Part One of the story I started posting over there (parts two through five to follow...the tale's too long for one post.
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Shots in the Dark


By JackBauer24



Part I

The harsh chill of Michigan's late Fall cut through me like a blade, heralding the coming of what was sure to be a long, cold winter. I shivered under my thick leather jacket. Sam better show up soon...

White dots began to drift into my vision, the earliest emissaries of a coming snowstorm. The TV weatherman had said that there was little chance for snow today, but the clouds I could see highlighted by the city's ambient light spoke of a much different story. Shivering again, I flipped up the collar of my jacket to cover as much of my neck as possible.

The street was nearly dead at this time of night, the silence broken only by the occasional passing of a car or truck. Nobody stopped. Not around here, not this late, which is why it was the perfect place for a meeting. The more wealthy citizens of the city stayed away from this area at night, terrified of the hoodlums and vagabonds they imagined hiding in the shadows. But ironically, the hoodlums and vagabonds they were afraid of tended to avoid this area as well; it offered little shelter for the vagabonds and the hoodlums were at home, protecting their ill-gotten goods from other hoodlums. Fear is the one thing that kept this city together: fear of one another. With fear keeping everyone out of this area, it was the perfect place for a late night meeting.

Blast it, Sam. Where are you?

I leaned back against the brick corner of the building with a grunt. From my vantage point, I could see for close to a mile in four different directions without having to turn my head more than ninety degrees in any direction. If anyone approached, I'd know.

Directly across from me, a pharmacy sat dormant, waiting the long hours before daybreak and its reopening. It was a franchise pharmacy, a carbon copy of every other location I'd ever seen. Its neon signs glowed on low power, casting a sickly pale red light across the lot.

Behind me, in the building I was resting against, was Elfman Books. It was one of the better used book stores in the area. Jim Elfman, the owner, was nearly eighty, yet he could still tell you something about almost every book in his store. Nice guy. I bought him lunch once.

Across the street on my left sat an ancient barber shop; the kind with the rotating candy-cane pole outside. The mechanisms inside this shop's pole had died probably twenty-five to thirty years ago. It was still a decent old shop, run by guys who spent their time in the summers talking about baseball and their time in the winters talking about football and hockey, and the rest of the time talking about classic film icons like John Wayne. Real men, not like the kind bred these days. It was one of the few places left where you could still sit and read a Playboy while you waited for your eight dollar haircut.

The last corner of the intersection was an old closed-down Episcopalian church. Some twenty years ago, the priest'd gone nuts, pulled out a gun and opened fire on his parishoners. He killed thirteen people before blowing his own head off. After that, no one wanted to go back to that church, calling it a house of Satan. No one was willing to pay to have it torn down, either, so it sat empty and unused ever since. I wasn't superstitious, but it gave me the chills just looking at it. I guess the cold wasn't the only reason I was shivering.

Dammit, Sam. Hurry up.

The snow began to fall harder; big, fat flakes hitting the ground faster and faster. It wasn't long before accumulation began to form in the cracks of the sidewalks. I glanced up at the sky, careful to keep my gaze away from the intersection's lone remaining street light. One look into that could destroy my night vision for the rest of the night.

Storm's comin'. Great.

A pair of dim lights appeared at the end of one of the streets. An approaching car. I squinted around the halos of luminescence to try to get some sense of the size or shape of the vehicle. A flash of blue on the top of the car caught my eye. Cop, I thought. I didn't bother moving. He was coming at me pretty fast; on some kind of run. He wasn't about to stop to question a guy leaning against a building, minding his own business, even if it was two in the morning. Still, I held my breath as he passed, just in case. He shot on by, not even giving me a glance. I let out a breath, taking a few heartbeats to allow my pulse to drop and the adrenaline to burn off.

A shot sounds in the night. Two shots. Three. No screams. They never had a chance to scream. The third shot had gone off before--

NO! Can't think about that! Can't let the focus of my mind drift there. Can't give the monster a chance to get out.

Goddammit, Sam!

I took a single deep breath, letting out all of my tension and anger in a long white cloud of steam. Sometimes, my mind wandered of its own accord into parts of my soul that should never be seen again. There are some things better left buried.

It's all about control. I could control my body, even to the point of being able to stay perfectly still long after most people would have started fidgeting. My breathing, my pulse; easily regulated.

But my mind? Uncontrollable. Even the highest level of focus couldn't catch everything. Couldn't stop my mind from drifting. I figured that it was some form of mild ADD, but it wasn't that my attention drifted to other spots in the area around me; my attention drifted to other spots in my mind. And the monster was always there, lurking at the edges of those spots, waiting for the cracked foundation of my sanity to crumble enough to let it free.

A low growl snapped my attention away from the monster and back to the here and now. Another car coming. I scanned the four arms of the intersection, searching for the approaching car. Nothing. What the hell? The growl continued, growing louder as the car came closer. Where is it? Where the hell is it?

There. To my left. A large shadow approached with the lights off. Silently cursing myself for giving away my night vision to the passing cop car, I turned toward the car. Lights off, they were either coming for me, or trying to sneak up on me.

Sam, is that you?

Suddenly, the growl became a roar as the car sped up and raced toward me. I didn't even have to think. My hand was inside my jacket instantly, grabbing for the SigSauer pistol hidden within. In another life, I'd been taught the proper way of drawing a gun. Don't pull your weapon unless you intend to use it. Safety off as you draw it. Short movements; the larger swing to reach gives your opponent more time to take you down. Don't hesitate.

It's impossible to know who fired first. It was almost simultaneous, the muzzle flashes blasting light into the darkness of the street. Tiny fountains of glass exploded outward from the windshield where my shots hit as their shots chewed into the bricks behind me.

Idiot! Aim, then shoot. Don't waste the bullets!

With a sickening thud, one of their shots connected, blowing a fist-sized chunk out of my thigh. I leveled my gun at the windows, trying to hit the shadowy figures inside. Don't waste your shots. Aim carefully and shoot with accuracy. I took careful aim and fired, ignoring the numbness spreading up from my waist. After two shots, I was rewarded by a cry of pain from the person in the back seat.

The shooters withdrew into the car as it drove past. I figured that it was to keep from taking any more hits. The sedan, an ancient boat of a Cadillac, whipped around the nearest corner and took off down the street. Their lights stayed off, making it easy for the night to close in around it. I waited until the car disappeared into the shadows to put my gun back.

As I pulled my hand out of my jacket, I noticed a twitch. My hand jerked against my will as I swung it back around. What the--what's wrong with me? Then I felt it. A spreading wetness on my head that I'd written off during the fight as melting snow. I was wrong. My vision turned crimson and I started to waver on my feet. No wonder they sped off. They knew they got me. I'm dead. It's just taken a few minutes for my body to catch up. My shaking hands probed my skull, slipping and sliding in the slick blood. A hole the size of a cockroach, right above my temple. No way to tell how deep it is. Not that it mattered. You don't take a bullet to the head and walk away from it. With a sigh, I dropped to my knees, my vision dropping out completely as thing started to fade.

Damn. And tonight was going so well.

TO BE CONTINUED

[JackBauer24]

Part II
Incompetent pricks.

I grunted as I pulled myself to my feet, a long streamer of half-congealed blood dangling from my hair. Staggering drunkenly on the blood-and-snow covered sidewalk, I tried to get a handle on my situation.

They shot me. In the head.

Yet here I was, standing somewhat unsteadily in a pool of what should have been my gray matter. It just wasn’t possible, especially given the damage my leg took. That shot should have scalped me and removed a complete hemisphere of my skull.

The mere thought of my leg was enough to cause it to start throbbing. I glanced down. The hole was big enough to put a coffee cup in and my pants were already soaked completely through. I could feel a new stream of blood making its way down my leg to pool in the heel of my shoe.

Thank God it’s cold out, I thought as I pulled my scarf off my shoulders. It made a handy tourniquet. As I tied it around my leg, something moved inside the wound. I didn’t scream, despite every instinct that wanted to.

Bullet’s still there.

That wouldn’t do. Once I tied the tourniquet, the bullet would shift every time I moved my leg. The potential pain didn’t worry me, I could will that away as soon as it started. But a constantly shifting bullet could do some damage. I can’t afford that, not tonight.

My fingers are smaller than a coffee cup.

I dropped to the ground, sitting in a puddle of my own DNA. A sensible person would have headed straight for the nearest hospital, were they in my condition, but going to a hospital would raise some uncomfortable questions. Questions about how I got shot, which would lead to more uncomfortable questions about why I was at the intersection in the first place. I would have no answers to give them. They’d more than likely call in an officer to question me and he’d recognize the smell of burnt gunpowder on my clothes, which would lead to the discovery of my Sig. That would give way to an arrest for carrying without a license. Then they’d match the gun to four murders I didn’t commit and a whole slew of others that I did. And after I got tried and convicted for those crimes, there was always the potential for extradition thanks to a couple of interesting weekends I spent outside the country. And God help me if they were to bother to run my fingerprints during all that.

Yeah, this might not be the sensible option for a normal person, but I am most definitely not normal.

Actually digging my fingers into my leg didn’t hurt all that much, but when I wiggled around to try to find the bullet, it took all of my energy just to keep from screaming. Trying to will away a wall of pure fire exploding down the center of your thigh is a bit more difficult than I had previously thought. It’s entirely unnatural to have a pair of digits probing the insides of your traditionally sealed body parts.

It took a moment of nerve-wrenching twists to find the bullet and as soon as my fingertips brushed it, a tongue of electrically-charged agony shot up and down my body, igniting every inch of my skin like it was covered in napalm.

Ah. Hit a nerve.

The next few moments blurred into infinity as I struggled to get a grip on the bullet lodged into my leg. If I actually screamed, I’ll never know. But finally, with a sigh of relief so deep that it seemed to flow from the very depths of my soul, I pried the bullet free and tossed it to the ground beside me.

It had the effect of opening a dam. A pool of black-red blood poured forth, rolling down the sides of my leg and adding to the already large stain I sat in. I quickly wrapped the scarf around my leg and tied it tight to staunch the flow of blood.

The tourniquet tied, I sat there for several more minutes, my back resting against Elfman Used Books as the blood on the ground around me began to clot. The snow was falling hard now; big heavy flakes landed on my face as I sat there. I didn’t mind much.

A fresh trickle of blood slid down the side of my face. Huh. I’d forgotten that I’d been shot in the head. I laughed at that, giggling at the absurdity of it all. Which was a bad sign. Delirium setting in.

I sat there for several minutes, laughing at the night, wondering if it was possible to laugh to death, then laughing even more at the thought of that.

Ah, Sam. If you could only see me now.

I laughed harder. Perhaps laughing was good. Laughing kept the monster at bay.

TO BE CONTINUED...

[JackBauer24]

Part III
By the time I reached apartment 2R, I was done laughing.

My head was pounding with the rhythm of Riverdance and my leg was keeping time with it. It was a pulsing headache, the kind that makes you want to carve out your eyeballs and reach in and shake your brain until the pain stops. My head hurt and that pissed me off. I’d been shot and that pissed me off more. But what pissed me off the most, what got me angry to the point of insanity was the fact that I was still alive, which meant that I would have to deal with the implications of everything that had happened at that intersection. A very dangerous corner had been turned. It would have made thing so much easier if I had just died.

Time to start dealing with it.

I stopped in front of Apartment 2R, knowing full well that I was already under surveillance. The camera hidden in the ugly plastic fern in the building’s lobby had told me as much. Given the thickness of the dust caked onto the fern, the apartment’s management probably didn’t even know about the camera. Or they just didn’t care. In this part of the city, apathy was just a tool of discretion.

After waiting just long enough for her to get to the door, I knocked on the edge, near the doorframe. The door opened almost instantly to reveal her standing there, waiting. Vickie. My angel. My goddess. My savior. Body like a movie star, with eyes that could pierce titanium with the sheer power of a glare, hair that cascaded perfectly down her soft shoulders, and –

KRAKT!

-- one hell of a right hook.

I didn’t even have enough time to rub my jaw before she slammed the door in my face. Staring at the wood of the door, I raised my hand to my jaw to adjust it from the blow. I could feel the dried blood clinging to the side of my face; matting the three-day old stubble I hadn’t bothered to shave off. I must’ve looked like hell. Even through the door, I could hear her breathing, just waiting for me to turn around and leave. It wasn’t going to happen. I’d been hit a lot harder by much bigger people and not left when I was told. And I needed her help; she’d have to kill me to get me to leave. I knocked again.

The door opened a crack, held back by the chain I suddenly realized I hadn’t heard her lock. I must be slipping.

“Go away.” Even dripping with venom, her voice was music to my ears.

There were a few ways I could play this. Part of me wanted to break down the door and walk in, take what I needed and leave. Part of me knew that it wouldn’t be that easy.

“I need your help.” A plea would probably be the best way to start.

“Yeah, like I’m gonna actually help you after everything you’ve pulled. Do you know how many nights I sat here wondering—“

“I know. And trust me, I’m sorry, but right now there’s nothing I can do about that. I really need your help this time. It’s bad, Vickie. Real bad. And it’s only going to get worse from here.”

One of her disturbingly beautiful blue eyes appeared in the crack of the door. She eyed me up, looking at the head injury. I leaned back against the frame wearily.

“Come on, Vic. Please.”

The fraction of her face I could see betrayed no sign of emotion. No hint at what her decision would be. It was the most infuriating part about her; I could usually read people’s emotions, but Vickie was a complete blank. Impossible to read. Long ago, I’d vowed never to play poker with her.

“You’re hurt,” she said simply.

I nodded. “I was shot. That’s why I’m here.”

“Go to a hospital.”

“Not going to happen. You know why.”

Her eye vanished back into the room and I could hear a low, exasperated hiss. The moment of truth. I counted the seconds as she made her decision. If she said no, it would only make things worse. Manageable, but worse.

The door slammed shut. I sighed. Everything the hard way. I was suddenly aware of the weight of the SigSauer, pressing against my ribs with a sudden intensity. It would be so easy to use it. To feel the weight of the gun in my hand. To fire into the locks on her door and break in, forcing the situation. And if anyone called the police, I’d deal with it. Find a way to get out. Continue on with the night. Manageable, but worse.

With the swishing of a now-unlocked metal chain, the door swung open and she reached out, grabbing me by the shoulder. Her touch was electric; it grabbed every nerve ending in my body and sent me to a level of euphoria I hadn’t felt in a very long time. God, I’d missed you. My angel. Her touch blasted away all of the pain, all the throbbing. For a moment, it was just us; nothing else mattered.

Then it was gone. She tugged me inside and shut the door, letting me go as quickly as she had grabbed me. As I watched her secure five different locks, I could feel the pain of my injuries slowly returning. I longed for her touch again. To feel her –

“Go sit in the living room. I’ll be back shortly.” She brushed past me, her movements short and clipped. Anything she’d felt for me was long dead, or buried so far under bitterness and anger that she didn’t even know it was still there. Or maybe it was still there and I couldn’t tell. She was very difficult to read.

She vanished around a corner, not even giving me a chance to see her walk away. Maybe she didn’t want me to get the wrong idea about this trip. Strictly business, I smirked.

With her gone, it gave me a change to take a look at her apartment. I walked into the living room right out of the foyer, my leg dragging with a slight limp that I hadn’t noticed before. The apartment was nicer than I remembered: newer furniture, more expensive pictures hanging on the wall, even a bigger TV. The carpet I was dripping blood onto probably cost more than my car. How the hell’d she pay for all this? Not on her salary. Not unless she’d gotten a massive raise from what I remembered.

A fake fireplace adorned one wall. It looked fake; she hadn’t even bothered to dress it up to look real. Wasn’t her style. The mantle was nearly empty, just a pair of photographs and a bronze quill pen. I limped up to the pictures. One showed a smiling, happy family. The perfect American household: mom, dad, two kids under age ten, and a baby. Not hers. I recognized the people in the picture. They’d come with my wallet. Curious. It didn’t seem like her to put out a random picture just for the hell of it.

The second picture was a bit more startling. She was in it, actually smiling as she hugged some unknown man. Guy was small; easily a foot shorter than her. He had glasses perched on the edge of his nose and a tweed suit that my father wouldn’t have been caught dead in. Who’s this geek?

“I told you to sit down.”

I turned to see her standing in the frame of the door, a tray filled with tools in her hands. She was still completely unreadable.

“Didn’t want to get blood on the furniture.” It was an outright lie, but it would work.

“I can afford the cleaning bill.” Her right eyebrow raised a fraction, daring me to ask about it. She knew the curiosity would eat me alive. I tried not to give her the satisfaction. “Sit.”

“You’re the boss.” I was rewarded for my flippancy with a twitch of one of her eyes. A slight crack in the foundation. Now that the shock of seeing Vickie for the first time in an age was passing, I could get back into the game. The same game we’d played for years back when we were together. The same game that eventually helped to end our relationship.

I dropped onto the overstuffed leather couch against the far wall. It was more comfortable than anything I’d sat in for a long time. I could easily relax here, remote in one hand, beer in the other, watching her obviously brand new TV in the corner, with Vickie curled up next to m—

No. I left that life behind a long time ago. No point in fantasizing about it now.

She set the tray on the couch next to me, showing all of the metal surgical tools and bandages and gauze. I didn’t flinch. We’d done this before.

“Another barfight?” Some of the anger had left, her natural kindness returning to the surface. Maybe she did still feel something for me. Maybe.

“No. It was a targeted hit.” I spoke calmly, my voice not raising even when she tore open my pants leg to get a clear look at my wound. “Don’t worry. Bullet’s already out.”

She blinked once, then got to work cleaning the wound with peroxide. Stung like hell. Vickie was a nurse at one of the local hospitals. She knew what she was doing.

“A targeted hit? Like an assassination?”

“Yeah. They drove up, shot me, drove away. It was obviously a hit; they knew I was there and came to take me out. Lucky for me, they failed.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. These look pretty serious. You really need to get to a hospital.”

I grunted. The lecture was to be expected. I knew I was going to hear it when I decided to come here. “That’ll take too long. I’m going to find these people.”

“Did you get any of them?”

Now it was my turn to be surprised. She’d never asked me anything like that before. She hadn’t been interested. Before I even had a chance to open my mouth, she looked up at me, her eyes wide with wonder. God, I could just fall in love all over again right now…

“Uh…yeah. Yeah. I got one of them as they drove away. Heard ‘em scream.”

“That could be helpful to report it to the police. I can have the hospitals checking for injuries—“

“No need.” I winced as she poked a threaded needle into the skin around my leg wound. “I know who they are. I know who I shot. When I heard them scream, I recognized the voice.”

“Who was he, Chris?” Her curiosity of my injury was a bit surprising. I wondered why she was interested. She used to just sew me up and let me go on my way.

“She. The one I shot was a woman.” I could feel the needle running through my leg as Vickie continued to stitch me up. The carpet below the couch was starting to turn dark red with the blood dripping off my leg. “Her name was Sam.”

TO BE CONTINUED...

[JackBauer24]

Part IV
Vickie finished sewing my leg up while I told her the story. I told her about how I set up the meeting with Sam, about the long night spent waiting on the corner, about the shooting itself. I even told her the truth about Sam. Well, a version of it, anyway. And all through my tale she worked in silence, but I could tell that she was thinking it through, considering it from every angle. I didn’t tell her about the delirium. She didn’t need to know every detail. After the story was done, we sat in silence for several long minutes.

She snipped off the ends of the thread and leaned back. “So what do you plan to do now?”

I sighed. It was a question that had been lingering in the back of my mind ever since I woke up on that street corner covered in my own blood. There was really only one course of action I could take, but I was reluctant to take it. Going down that road would mean returning to a part of my life that I had left behind long ago.

“Right now, there are hundreds of people out there with hundreds of reasons to want me dead. I’m going to put the right reason with the right person, then I’m going to kill them.” No point in dancing around the truth. He or she was dead the moment that Cadillac appeared on that street.

“The right person,” Vickie said, setting her needle down on the tray and picking up a thick towel to coat in peroxide. “How P.C. of you.”

“I’d be a fool to not count all the women who want me dead, too. At this point, they might outnumber the men.”

“Like me.”

“No, not like you. You don’t want me dead.” I hissed as she hammed the peroxide-soaked towel into my head wound. “You just want me to suffer.”

She began to clean out the injury, a bit more vigorously than was probably necessary. “I would call this suffering, wouldn’t you?”

“True, but they were aiming to kill. You never would have given that order. You’d have had them shoot me lower. Chest or limb shots. These guys expected their headshot to kill me. It just happened to be the one-in-a-million shot that left me alive.”

A wicked gleam appeared in her eyes. It was only a hint of our past together, the first that she had allowed since I’d arrived. “They think you’re dead. You’ve got an advantage.”

“I can’t make that assumption. There’s a chance that they already know I’m alive.”

“How?”

“There was a witness,” I lied. “He probably called the cops by now and if these people are who I think they are, they know what the cops know.”

She accepted this with a nod. The truth was that there had been no witnesses. The street was empty of civilians. But after I’d pried the bullet out of my leg and stopped laughing from the delirium, I noticed that they’d left someone behind. A spotter, no doubt left there to keep an eye on me and report back on anything unusual. He’d watched me from the sickly red parking lot of the pharmacy and as soon as he was aware that I knew he was there, he took off running. I went after him. Somehow, despite the injuries, I was able to keep up with him as he ran. He eventually stopped running. They all stop running.

When I caught him, I was shocked to see how young he was. I would have been amazed if he was over the drinking age.

“Who sent you?!” I had demanded.

He responded by trying to pull a gun on me. It was about the dumbest move he ever could have possibly made. I was already on the edge from the adrenaline and the injuries. That sent me over the edge. All my self-control. All my restraint. Everything built up over the course of the past three years had gone out the window. And when it was over and his skull was cracking under the force of my blows and his limbs were broken in several places, he gave me a name, only barely distinguishable under the sounds of the blood gurgling in his throat and his teeth rolling down the side of his face to clink to the ground. It was enough. It gave me a starting point. I decided that he deserved a reward for giving me that information. I took the gun he was dumb enough to pull on me and placed it under his jaw. The gun was such a weak caliber that it took several shots to finish the job, but I left him there with his brain spread out across the pavement around the remains of his head like a gray and pink crown. It was a message to anyone who came back for him. I’m alive and I’m angry. The monster was loose.

Vickie took the now-bloody towel away from my head, leaving me swimming with the memory of peroxide-induced pain reverberating across my forehead.

“You were very lucky. The bullet just grazed you. I think that at worst it bounced off your skull, but you’ve got a hard head. You’ll be all right.”

“Like I said, a one-in-a-million shot.”

She nodded and began to prepare a few butterfly bandages for the injury, explaining that it wasn’t bad enough to warrant stitches, but she still wanted to be sure that it closed properly. Less scarring. I told her that I didn’t mind the idea of another scar, but she insisted. As she placed the bandages, an uncomfortable silence descended between us. Nothing left to say except everything that we didn’t want to say. All the years. There were some good memories, but there were also bad ones. Practically all of our last year together is filled with bad memories. My angel, what the hell happened to us?

Finally, the silence grew too unbearable, the questions too pressing. “So who’s the geek?” I asked.

“Geek?” She began to pack up her tools and bloody towels.

“The picture on the mantle. Guy in a tweed suit.”

“Oh.”

Without bothering to answer, she stood up and carried her tray into the other room. I waited. It was déjà vu; she used to pull that back when we were together. I’d ask her a question she didn’t want to answer; she’d get up and leave. It used to infuriate me to no end. By now, I knew how to handle it.

She came back a moment later, just as I knew she would. Pretending as if I had never asked her about the tweed guy, she tossed a bottle of pills into my lap. “Tylenol. It should help with any headaches.”

“Vic,” I said with exaggerated patience. “The geek.”

“Don’t call him that.” Unconsciously, she wandered toward the mantle, keeping her back to me. “He happens to be a very smart man.”

“I’m sure. So who is he?” I stayed planted on her couch. Made the decision that I wasn’t leaving until I got an answer.

She sighed, picking up the picture. “He was a professor at the college near the hospital. Broke his leg and came in.”

“Aha. I get it. Florence Nightingale Syndrome. You fell for him.”

“It wasn’t like that at all. After he got better, he asked me out for a drink to thank me for helping him.” She set the picture back on the mantle.

“Then you slept with him.”

Her shoulders tensed and it was almost as if I could see her eyes flashing with anger, but she nodded. Each answer she gave grew slightly more painful for both of us. I wanted to stop, but I knew I couldn’t.”

“Where is he now?” I asked.

She turned back to me and for an instant, her defenses were down and I could see the real Vickie. The strength, the determination, the stubbornness were all gone. It had all been a façade, an illusion to fool the both of us into thinking that nothing had changed over the past few years. She was afraid and tired of years of guilt and secrets. She wanted someone to help her, to take her and hold her and tell her that everything was going to be all right.

“With his wife,” she said.

“Ah.”

My goddess is gone, I thought. Her strength had always been the one thing I could look to as a constant, the one thing that I knew I could come to for help when I was at my lowest. It was one of the reasons I came to her apartment after being shot. She had always been my rock. I realized with a mild sadness that I couldn’t offer her what she needed. Not anymore.

There wasn’t much that I could think of to say. “Well, I’m sorry.”

Her defenses slid back into place instantly and she was back to her normal fiery, strong self. But we both knew that it was just an illusion. Remnants of a past that was long gone.

I stood up and adjusted my jacket, then made sure that my leg was wrapped up tight in her gauze. “Thanks for the pills.”

“You’re just leaving?” Her expression and emotions were back to a blank slate. Impossible to read yet again.

“Yeah.” I felt for the weight of my gun, pressed up under my arm. “I’ve got work to do.”

TO BE CONTINUED...

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And that's all for what's written of this part of the story...tune in next week for part V, and post your comments on the first four in the meantime!

[JackBauer24]

Part V

My Chevy sedan purred quietly as I sped away from Vickie’s place. The snowstorm I’d sensed coming was in full swing now, dumping buckets of white powder on the city. It reminded me of some of the nightclubs I’d visited back in the eighties. With the Tylenol holding some of the pain of my injuries at bay, I could finally think straight and get a handle on the situation.

Sam was the key.

The meeting we’d set up was obviously just that: a setup. A trick to get me out in the open, where I’d be vulnerable. She knew that I would pick that intersection. It was in a part of the city where I would feel safe and where no one would pay attention to a late-night meeting. Of course, with the crime that the area was known for, no one would notice another drive-by shooting in the middle of the night. After the shooting, they would get away free and clear and I’d become just another victim of inner-city violence. I had to admit that it was a sound plan, save for one flaw: I was still alive. Granted, an inch to the wrong side and I’d still be back on that corner, but it didn’t change the fact that I survived and I was ready to go after them.

Vickie had been right; I did have an advantage, but it wasn’t that they thought I was dead. It was that I had shot one of them. I shot Sam. Dying or simply injured, her next move would be the same as mine: to find somewhere to get patched up. As soon as word got around that I was still alive, she’d try to find somewhere to hide, because she knew that I would know her role in the shooting and I would come after her. But no matter where she hid, I’d find her. I was very good at finding people. She was the key. When I found her, she’d lead me to the people who were really behind this shooting. Then the fun would begin.

I’ll do whatever I have to do to find her, I decided. No matter what.

Something inside me, some vestige of my former life, balked at the idea of possibly killing my way through this conspiracy. It went against every instinct I’d been trained to follow. But this wasn’t a world of black and white anymore. This was wrong and more wrong an sometimes you just had to do whatever it would take to survive. This was kill or be killed and if it meant that I would have to go on a goddamn bloody warpath to keep myself alive, I would gladly do it. Self-preservation is an instinct that no training can erase. They’d gotten more than they bargained for when they attacked me. The monster was loose and nothing short of a nuclear detonation would stop it now.

A shot sounds in the night. Two shots. Three. No screams. They never had a chance to scream. The third shot goes off before anyone wakes up. An assassin in the dark. Awful way to kill someone. Necessary, but awful. At least, I was told that it was necessary. But then the unthinkable happens. A nightmare straight out of the most frightening horror movies, except it’s real and it’s happening right in front of my eyes.

He’s still alive!

I grimaced, forcing my attention back on the road. The monster was already out. No need to relive its birth.

A small dark building loomed ahead. There were no signs to indicate what was within; it didn’t need any. Everyone knew what that building held. As I rolled to a stop along the curb in front, I checked the glowing blue numbers of the dashboard clock. Four-thirty in the morning. Well past closing time. It didn’t matter. He’d still be there. He never left.

I thought back to the spotter, that poor dumb kid I’d left back at the intersection with a brain volcano around his head. He’d given me a name. John Gilbert. It was a starting point. It was now right in front of me.

The dark building was a small bar owned and operated by sixty-eight-year-old John Gilbert. It was a cop bar and an outlaw bar and a bar where businessmen could get drinks as they plotted the next corporate takeover. Everyone was welcome and everyone was safe. It was all due to a small sign that hung down in the entrance to the bar. The sign, an ancient piece of weathered cardboard, was unchanged since it was created nearly forty years ago.

Anyone who enters this bar officially comes under the protection of the house and its owner, John Gilbert, during the entire time they spend within its walls. No harm shall come to them during their time here.
John S. Gilbert, Sr.

John’s Law was a simple declaration, the entire meaning behind the bar’s existence: this is a refuge center for all. No one who enters needs to fear that what they’re running from will catch them in here. John Gilbert’s personal statement of protection for all of his customers. The bar was an asylum for anyone with something to run from. All were welcome, even police officers, the very people that many of the bar’s patrons were running from. Police were welcome on one condition: that they acknowledge that their authority ends at the bar’s threshold. Gilbert was the law here. To everyone’s surprise, this was a draw to officers rather than a deterrent. The bar was the one place that they could go to and not have to be a cop. Everyone was safe there.

It had been thirty-five years since anyone challenged John’s Law. With everyone who witnessed John handling that challenge either dead or sworn to silence, only rumors and gossip remained of that particular night. The nicest of the rumors said that he threw a man out of the bar by his crotch. The more extreme covered anything from massive gut-spilling to John single-handedly preventing a return of the late-sixties race riots. No matter what the truth was, from that moment on everyone knew never to break John’s Law.

The bar was called Sanctuary and that’s exactly what it was.

I found no solace in the fact that I was headed in there. The kid had given me Gilbert’s name. It meant that he was somehow tied into my shooting. Something told me that he didn’t want me dead, that there was more to it than that. Either way, I had to know.

I locked the car door behind me and slowly walked up to the Sanctuary. The bar closed at two in the morning, but Gilbert rarely left. He’d be in there. Probably still cleaning up from a long day of booze and business. Only one way to be certain. I stopped in front of the door and knocked twice.

The floorboards squeaked as someone approached the door. The peephole darkened when they got close enough and I could feel the cold shiver I always got when someone sized me up. I stepped out of the view of the peephole.

A small speaker next to the door crackled to life and a gruff voice came through under the static. “We’re closed.”

I hit the TALK button. “Open up, John. I have to talk to you.”

There was a long pause on the other end. It was a gamble; I was betting that he would recognize my voice and that he wouldn’t turn me away the moment he heard it. After all, I still didn’t know the nature of his involvement in my shooting.

The silence continued just long enough for me to start feeling the unnatural tugging of the stitches in my leg, holding the gaping wound closed. The snow started piling up on my shoulders, drawing an involuntary shiver. Dammit, if John doesn’t open up, I’m not sure what else I can do.

“Okay, James. Come on in. It’s open.” The speaker went dead.

I gritted my teeth and pushed the door open. I should have known better. The Sanctuary’s doors were never closed to someone in need, even after business hours.

The bar’s lights were dimmed, adding a spooky aura to the atmosphere in and around it. I could barely see Gilbert, already back behind the counter. He was huge; at least six and a half feet tall, with more than fifty-five years of bodybuilding and hard work behind him to give him a body of pure muscle. His hands were bigger than my head and he could probably lift me as easily as I would a child. Definitely a man you wouldn’t want to get on the bad side of. Of course, it took quite a bit to get on his bad side.

“It’s Christian, John. Not James,” I stated simply, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice.

He stopped at the counter, turning just slightly. It was just enough to let me see the mischievous glint in his eyes. “Right. Christian. Take a seat in one of the booths. I’ll be over in a minute.”

I stepped over to a nearby booth and took a seat facing the door I’d come in. It was an old habit. Never put the exit at your back. If possible, keep your back to a wall and don’t let anything come in behind you. The saying was true. Old habits do die hard.

John came back a moment later, a pair of mugs in his hand. He slid one in front of me and took a seat across the booth. “House special. Drink up. You’ll need it.”

“Yeah, but can I afford it?”

He grinned, a wide split in the middle of his shaggy beard. “That’s a question you’ll have to answer for yourself.”

I sniffed the drink cautiously. The fumes rising out of the mug were enough to singe the hairs in my nose. I set it back down. Uh, maybe later.

“So, what brings you here, Christian?” He took a massive swig of the House Special. I could see his cheek twitch in pain as the fiery liquid burned its way down his esophagus. Another reason put the drink off until later.

“I think you know.” Have to play this on the safe side. Gauge what he knows. “Why don’t you tell me?”

He nodded. “Okay. You were shot. Someone drove up and shot you.”

“Right. They tried to kill me.”

A small smile formed, half-hidden by his beard. “If you say so, Christian.”

“They shot me in the head. That’s a pretty big indicator that they were trying to kill me.”

“Usually, yes.”

I leaned forward. The games were starting to grow thin. “What do you know about it, John?”

He sighed. “Every day, hundreds of people come through my bar. They conduct business in here. Sometimes, they ask me to help. I always say no. But I do hear things.”

One of his massive paws dropped onto the table and slid toward me. When he pulled it back, he left a small slip of paper behind.

“This will help you find what you’re looking for, if you need to continue looking.” He looked up, his gaze boring into my skull. “But my advice to you is this: don’t pursue this. Do yourself a favor and let it go. Trust me, James. You won’t like where it goes.”

I picked up the paper and unfolded it. On the inside, in John’s unique scrawl, was an address. As soon as I read it, a ball of ice filled my stomach. It was the worst possible address I could imagine. I looked over to John, a question just hanging from the edge of my tongue, waiting for me to breath and allow it to come tumbling out. He just smiled back.

“Drink up, Christian. It’s going to be a hell of a day.” He slammed the rest of his drink back, swallowing it all in one massive gulp.


. . .


I got back to my car a few minutes later, thanking John for the drink that I hadn’t even touched. I was too shocked to even think of drinking it. The address was burned into my brain, a glowing series of letters and numbers that I could see every time I closed my eyes.

That son of a *****.

The kid I’d left back at that intersection had been smarter than I’d given him credit for. He knew that it would take time for me to reach Gilbert, given my injuries. He knew that Gilbert would have information for me. Hell, he even knew what information Gilbert would give me. The address. The address that the kid at the intersection knew would take all night for me to get.

It was that same goddamned intersection.

I should have known. I should have been more aware of the events that were unfolding around me. I should have realized the truth behind the kid and the shooting.

He wasn’t there to make sure I was dead. He was there to make sure I was alive.

I’d only been unconscious for about twenty minutes, which wasn’t enough time for them. He ran to get me away from there. He certainly had enough time while I was ripping the bullet out of my own leg to call his superiors and ask them what to do. They needed more time, so they got more time. They sent me on a wild goose chase so that I would be occupied while they finished whatever it was they were doing. They knew that by the time I found my way back to them they’d be ready. Gilbert had hinted at it and I’d been too stubborn to see the truth. Being shot at and being killed were two separate things. It was no accident that their shot to my head “just” missed me. You don’t take a bullet to the head and walk away from it. Not unless they want you to.

I felt like a fool. I’d been played from the beginning and I was still being played. They wanted me to walk into their trap completely unaware that I was in fact coming to them. The most irksome thing about it was the nagging truth that I couldn’t avoid. The simple fact that I knew they’d been counting on all night. No matter what I did, no matter how I tried to fight it, there was only one thing I could do.

They want me to walk into their trap. That’s exactly what I’m going to do.


TO BE CONCLUDED…

[nefertiti]

I still like it... excellent work.

[JackBauer24]

The final part, of Shots in the Dark is here!

Part VI


Fell deeds awake: fire and slaughter!

spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered,
a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises!

Despite being an avid reader in recent years, I was never a big fan of classic literature. It wasn’t that I was somehow biased against it; I’d just never had a use for it. But there was something stirring about Theoden’s speech to the Rohirrim in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings that stuck with me even now, more than a quarter-century since I’d last read it. It usually came back to me before I began a mission, a silent battle cry to those I was about to face. It had been years since that quote floated to memory, but it seemed especially appropriate now, given the site of my next battle.

I crouched in the shadows that hung between the aisles of Elfman Used Books, listening to the heavy footsteps of the building’s sole remaining sentry. Getting inside hadn’t been difficult. They were expecting me to come in through the front, so the back was left relatively unguarded. Just two braindead sentries with guns that were far more powerful than they could handle. They were easy to take down. Only one sentry was left, a backup in the event that I somehow figured out how to sneak in through the back and somehow figured out how to take out those two idiots. He wasn’t much smarter than the first two. He was a heavy smoker; I could tell by the difficulty he was having as he tried to breathe and walk at the same time. Worse, he was wearing thick steel-toe boots that thudded every time he took a step. Between the breathing and the boots, it was child’s play to remain hidden as he paced.

More than thirty minutes had passed since I killed the power to this building. The smoker was starting to relax, eager to accept the lack of electricity as a normal power outage, rather than some kind of intruder. I saw no reason to shatter the illusion. Some men I’d know took joy in scaring their quarry in the dark, letting the quarry know that they were there and that there was nothing the quarry could do about it. Those men were all dead now. I had no desire to join them.

When I left the Sanctuary, it didn’t take me long to figure out what to do. I’d immediately headed for a small storage building where I stored my supplies and took special care to make sure that everything I needed was in working order. There could be no mistakes. If I was going to get out of this alive and with the answers I needed, I was going to have to do this the right way. My way. I knew the how and some of the who of this trap, but I had to find out the why.

By the time I got back to the godforsaken intersection I’d been shot at, the sun was just starting to rise. The snowstorm that had been pounding my car mercilessly ever since I left the Sanctuary had abated, leaving only occasional flakes to melt on my windshield. The clouds remained, highlighted by the rising sun and adding an odd gloom to the city. A dreary and depressing morning was dawning.

A quick recon when I arrived had revealed the trap. Several figures huddled behind the brick wall that surrounded the pharmacy’s parking lot. They were just waiting for me to walk up to the bookstore, where a pool of my own dried blood still clung to the sidewalk. I had to disappoint them.
Now sitting inside the bookstore, I was in position to spring their trap.

As patient as I was, time was not on my side. The sun was still rising and was starting to show through the windows of the bookstore. It wouldn’t be long before I’d lose my shadows.

The footsteps approached, growing louder as the guard neared my aisle. Can’t wait any longer. Gotta take him now, quickly and quietly, I thought. A sword day, a red day, ere the sun rises! He started to pass the aisle and I struck.

I grabbed him from behind, one hand pulling him close to me as the other flicked the trigger on my six-inch-long switchblade. Before the sentry could even open his mouth to scream, I had the tip of the blade pressed against his lower eyelid, threatening him to move even just an inch.

“Hi there,” I breathed, my voice dropping into a deep rasp. “My name is Christian Wilder and I am very, very angry.”

I waited for this to sink in. As close as I was, I could feel his heart pounding inside his chest. He was utterly terrified. Good.

“Now, those men at the pharmacy, they’re waiting for me to show up, aren’t they?”

“Y-yes,” he stammered.

“We both know that’s not going to happen. I’ll tell you what. Answer my questions truthfully and I’ll let you go to them. You’ll live. But if you lie to me…” I pressed the blade down a little harder, drawing a line of blood along its razor-sharp edge.

“No! I won’t—I won’t lie!”

“Good. First question. Were you in the shooting last night?” I enunciated every word, spitting out the question like a curse.

“Y-y-y-yes!”

“Then tell me this: is Sam Turner alive?” Now it was my heart’s turn to start pounding. I wasn’t even sure what answer I wanted to hear.

“Yes. She’s alive, b-but she’s hurt. You shot her in the shoulder.” Even frightened half to death, there was an accusing tone in his voice.

“You’ll have to forgive me if I’m out of sympathy for her. You people were trying to kill me, which leads to my next question. Why? Why were you trying to kill me?”

“N-not trying to kill you. Trying to hurt you.”

That at least confirmed my suspicions. There really was something else going on here.

“Why?”

“Don’t know. They didn’t say.”

“Who? Who didn’t say?” I tugged him closer, forcing the blade in deeper.
He kept his mouth shut. Trying to protect someone or trying to come up with an answer that wouldn’t get himself blinded. It didn’t matter.

“Who are you working for?” I snarled.

He raised a single shaking hand. I tensed, half-expecting him to try to attack me. But once his hand got up to his shoulder, it stopped moving.

The first rays of light were breaking through the grit and grime on the store’s windows. My patience was gone.

“If you can’t give me answers, you’re no good to me!” I dug the blade in, cutting through his face right down to the cheekbone.

“Wait! I’ll tell you!”

“Your last chance. Who are you working for?”

“Th-th-th-th…” He was starting to shake so bad he couldn’t speak.

“The who?” The answer was so close. The names of the people behind this were just balancing on the tip of this worm’s tongue. I couldn’t lose them now!

Finally, his raised hand twisted to point over his shoulder, behind us. “THEM!”

“What?!” I whipped around, just in time to see a pair of dark silhouettes standing behind me. Before I could blink, a pair of metal clips lanced out of the nearest silhouette and struck me in the back.

“What the hell?”

The clips twitched once and everything went dark.

. . .

The first thing I noticed when I regained consciousness was the acrid stench of burned flesh. My scrambled brain tried frantically to piece together what had happened. Nervous system collapse. Loss of consciousness. Burned skin. A taser, then, I concluded. It must’ve been cranked to full power or I’d have felt the jolt of electricity.

“You can open your eyes now, Mr. Wilder. We are quite aware that you are awake.” The voice belonged to a man somewhere outside the fog of disorientation that filled my brain. He spoke with clear enunciation, his diction precise. Some hint of an accent; it was hard to tell what kind. British accent maybe, or perhaps a light Irish.

Slowly, I pushed aside the fog and found my eyelids. Blinking away the spots of light that dazzled my vision as soon as I opened my eyes, I tried to focus on the room around me. Bookshelves surrounded me, cramped quarters even for a small bookstore. Must be the basement.

I was tied to an ancient wooden chair, my arms stretched behind me so tight that they threatened to rip out of their sockets if I twisted wrong. I tried anyway, hoping that the ropes would break if I applied a little force. They didn’t. I screamed.

“Don’t bother. You’re not going anywhere.”

My attention snapped up to the newest speaker. Hidden by the shadows, this one leaned against the bookshelves, staring down at me with the same expression as a child torturing his first bug. Smug son of a *****. He wasn’t the one with the accent. His speech was slurred, but recognizably American.

Behind him, sitting on another ancient wooden chair, was the guard I’d interrogated. He was rocking back and forth, murmuring something to himself as he held a towel to his eye. The towel was soaked through with blood. As I watched him, he moved the towel just enough so that I could see the damage. I winced; when they shot me with the taser, I twitched. Poor ******* was going to wear an eyepatch for the rest of his life.
The smug American in front of me continued to watch me, so I returned the favor. Dirty blonde hair, slicked straight back. Small round metal-rimmed glasses. Cheap suit. I already disliked him.

“You should consider yourself lucky, Christian,” he said, his voice raspy from years of booze and cigarettes.

“And why is that?”

“You’re still alive, unlike poor Mr. Elfman.” He tapped his chest. “Heart attack. Couldn’t take the stress.”

Slimebag, I thought. The old man didn’t do anything to deserve that.

“What do you want?”

“To talk. Let’s just talk.”

“About what?”

He shrugged. “I dunno. How about baseball? You like the Tigers?” When I didn’t respond, he continued. “Me, I’m a Red Sox fan. Can you believe they actually won the Series this year? I tell you, the money I coulda made if I had known…but hey, nobody’s psychic.”

What the hell is this guy’s game? “What do you want from me?”

“Not one for small talk? I like that. I like a man who gets right to the point. Alright, I’ll tell you what I want.”

He suddenly lurched forward, grabbing the legs of my chair. Instinctively, I tried to back up, even though I knew that there was nowhere for me to go. “I want it.”

“’It?’” Wonderful. Why couldn’t I be attacked by sane people?

“It! The monster! It’s in you and I want it!”

I smiled, trying to be as patronizing as I could. “We’re a bit attached at the moment.”

He nodded over my shoulder. Another man came into view, tall and thin and carrying a pair of weathered manila folders. He was the one with the accent; he had to be.

The tall guy looked at his first folder. “James Walsh. Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Aged thirty-four. Killed in action in 1989,” he stated calmly.

He tossed the first folder onto the ground. I watched it fall with a sinking feeling settling in deep in my stomach. How did they find it? Where did they get this information? Who the hell are these people?

With a grim smile, he looked down at the next folder. “Christian Wilder. Petty criminal. Aged forty-nine. Killed in a drive-by shooting in 2004.”

He tossed this folder onto the first and looked right at me for the first time.

“The only decision you have left to make is this: who do you want to be tomorrow?”

I swallowed. “What the hell are you planning?”

“Tabula rasa, Christian. A blank state. Forget what Bob said about your so-called monster. I am giving you a chance that most people never get. You will be reborn again. We will do this all for you with only a few minor conditions that I know you will have no problem fulfilling. It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

Oh, God. I thought back to the day before, to the moment I’d set up the meeting with Sam. To what I told her. I’d been sick of the lies. Sick of the constant hiding, the fear of discovery, the life wasted in the shadows for the past fifteen years. I can’t do this anymore! I’d shouted. I can’t be Christian Wilder anymore! And then Sam, caring Sam, had said, Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything. All you need to do is pick a place for us to meet and I’ll get things started.

The sinking feeling in my stomach lurched and I wanted to throw up. All of it. Everything that had happened over the last eight hours—it had all been my fault. All I had wanted was to go back to being James Walsh, family man and upstanding agent of the United States Government. I should have known that it was impossible. And I should have known what Sam meant by “get things started.” They weren’t setting a trap for me. They were waiting for me. If I hadn’t been so stubborn, so insistent on finding out the truth behind the attack, I’d have gotten the truth right away. Now…I wasn’t so sure I wanted it.

The tall man watched me process this information, his gaze dispassionate. “Christian Wilder is dead, whether you like it or not. Who are you going to be now?”
. . .

An hour later, they dragged me outside. I didn’t fight. The sun was up; the long night that had begun on this very corner was over. The harsh chill of Michigan’s late Fall cut through me like a blade, heralding the coming of what was sure to be a long, cold winter. This time, I didn’t shiver.

THE END

[nefertiti]

Excellent... I had to read in bits and pieces today (off my rocker....:lol: today) but don't think I missed a line. Well done.

[JackBauer24]

Whoops. I guess this is supposed to be tales of interest. Haven't had much time to add any more tales, but I have been re-writing the last one I posted. Here's a passage:

It was the fourth corner, the northeast corner, that was the main reason that people stayed away from this intersection, even if they didn’t know it. Sure, the other buildings cast distorted, frightening shadows and had crevices that could hide almost anything, but it was this last building that really scared everyone away. The last corner of the intersection held an old, closed-down Episcopalian church.

Mr. Elfman had told me the story. Some twenty years ago, the priest in that church went crazy. Began hearing voices. The voices convinced him that his parishioners were all the spawn of Satan, so one morning he locked the church’s doors and sealed them all inside. As the skies above darkened with a coming thunderstorm and the police began to circle the building, the priest took the pulpit and held mass for one last time. Babbling in a strange language described as a perversion of both Latin and Germen, he declared all of their souls to be cursed and they must be released from their damned bodies. He pulled out a gun and open fire on the parishioners, killing thirteen people before he ran out of ammo. Unable to complete his religious duty, he flung open the doors to the church and released his captives, screaming in a high-pitched voice “FLY! Fly away, minions of Lucifer!” Once they were all gone, he sealed himself back inside.

When the police finally broke in and found him, he was spread out, lying naked in the middle of the church. All of his blood had been drained and collected in a long series of buckets that formed a crimson crown around his head. Every. Last. Drop. He was left there on the floor with his arms and legs spread. The most confounding thing is that no one could find any sign that anyone had remained in the church with him and no one could figure out how he drained the blood from his own body when he was completely alone. After getting some late night warrants, the cops began to dig around in the church and found a hidden passage under the building. In that passage, more than two-dozen bodies rested in the same state as the priest, buckets and all. Some of the bodies dated back to the late 1800s. With that grisly discovery, the city sealed the church up. No one dared to go near the building, calling it a house of demonic possession. No one wanted to pay to tear it down, either, so there it sat to this day. I wasn’t a superstitious man, but that old church gave me chills just looking at it. I guess the cold wasn’t the only reason I was shivering.

Dammit, Sam. Hurry up.

[Cydon]

I like it!!

[JackBauer24]

Uh, can a mod move this into the new folder?