I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention, a sixth sense dilating my awareness to something darker and more primitive than failed romance. The air shifted. I could hear them now. Two pricks, no more than twenty feet behind. The sound of silence broken like an anticlimax by this sudden influx of steps that weren’t there a moment ago. I didn’t dare look back. Not yet. The uneven footfalls crept closer, flooding me with violent perception.
Twenty feet away. They were moving together, side by side, a good sign they weren’t strangers to each other—and a bad omen for my short-term future. At least my instinct for self-preservation wasn’t a relic of the past. It was still alive. Still sharp. Though I wish I had something sharper than my fists.
Instinct. Two men. Four feet. Fifteen feet away. Now they were in sync. The sound of their footsteps flattened out, an uneven drumbeat bouncing off the slick concrete. Boxed in by fluorescent rivulets of rain dripping down the concrete walls. Confrontation was certain. Eyes straight ahead, I don’t dare look back yet.
10 feet away. A quickening pace, my quickening pulse, filling the alley with noise, like a threat that had found its voice.
I could feel my pupils dilate. In another moment, I’d find out if these two hired killers had something in their systems that made them more dangerous—or if they were just ordinary goons on a bad job. Either way, I wasn’t about to make it easy.
Time expanded in that singular moment. The ultimate clarity that only the threat of annihilation can bring. Four feet. The distance closed like a tightening noose, their presence wrapped around me, heavy, suffocating. They were close enough now, close enough to hit. I already felt the familiar rush of adrenaline spiking. Nausea, fear, all-consuming anger. I wonder if it would match whatever junk these two goons were likely jacked up on.
My resolve hardened, and so did the steel cage around my heart.
In a half-second, maybe less, I ducked low and slunk back with fluid grace, the furtively practiced movements of a predator. I was behind them now. Two men, sure enough. I rose fast, a shark from the depths.
Fight or flight? My instincts were working overtime. The first man was turning around. Too slow. I saw the dense object in his hand. I had no weapon. But I didn’t need one. I was already moving, fists clenched into blunt, punishing balls of muscle and fury. With a sickening thud, I clapped my weapons with wiry force against both ears. He crumpled to the ground like a wet phonebook, traces of blood already dripping down his cheeks.
The second guy swung around to face me, eyes wide with shock, his gun already rising to meet my gaze. Too fucking slow. Without thinking, I grabbed a pipe from the body of the first goon, turning it into a makeshift club. Didn’t even know how it ended up in my hand. Maybe that was instinct, too.
I swung the pipe with everything I had, knocking the gun from his hand. The metal clanged against the pavement, and the gunfire erupted in a vicious, deafening burst, like a dragon spitting fire. I felt the burn as the bullet grazed my left shoulder.
A flesh wound, a fucking flesh wound. Either the kid was firing a warning shot, or he completely shit the bed. This kid, frantic now, grasping his gun hand to his chest, the fingers bent and busted where they once grasped his weapon, neutered; neutralized.
Blood traced my arm, warm, sticky. Mine. This realization threatened to overcome me, apoplectic, like flaming ice. A vision of utter devastation, enough to kill the dinosaurs, more than enough to kill this kid. Pure hatred overflowed me like venom. I wanted to crush this person before me, and I was beginning my barrage. A pipe to the left thigh, bringing him down. A knee into his lower chin, crushing the jaw upwards, teeth shifting, maybe shattering.
He was on his back now. Blood mixing with the rain, falling harder with a consistent patter. Raining blood? I had to double-check, but it was just rain now, falling from the sky, like God’s witnesses. I hesitated, investigated my wound again. On the brink of murder.
I looked into his eyes. Even as I raised the pipe, fully willing to give in to the idiotic violence that screamed at me in muted, pulsating shouts, like blood dripping from my ears, I looked into his eyes.
I looked into his eyes.
My hand started shaking, poisoned with adrenaline, copper-tasting blood, wiring on the fritz. I could hear this predator-turned-prey slap his hands on the ground as he pathetically tried to drag his busted leg in the direction furthest away from me. I became conscious of my clenched teeth, cracking under the pressure of my indecision. Sobs wracked from the kid in front of me. Snapping me out of the purple haze of amphibious self-preservation. I could feel my knees shaking.
The best fortune this kid ever had in his whole miserable life was in that one moment. His eyes. Wide, frantic, desperate. The honesty of pure fear written there for all to see in the universal language of domination and dominated. The kind of fear that meant regret. All the bad decisions of a wasted life leading to a botched job, ending in what else but total obliteration?
I had him. I hated him. Then I saw him.
The pipe dropped to the ground, robbed of its terrible momentum to crush his skull plate into shattered blades of bone that would tear straight down into the blood vessels of his half-formed cerebrum. No hemorrhaging, no spider-webbing of veins, no slow shutdown of non-essentials. No death rattles in an empty, filthy alleyway, bordered by windowless monoliths standing like blind voyeurs or bored accomplices.
He was done. But I didn’t finish him.
I looked down at the first guy. An unsettling amount of blood from his ears. A concussion, if he’s lucky…but still breathing—thankfully—though I couldn’t tell if that was a blessing or a curse. But the kid, he was crying. And I was too tired for this.
I could already feel the adrenaline flatlining, flattening me. Despite my relief, my anger was still there. I wouldn’t kill this kid. Hell, I would even call him an ambulance. That would come later. First, he was going to answer my questions.