Biofire, p.23
Biofire, page 23
“ What you want with her?” Wee barked at the man. To someone unfamiliar with his accent, it was garbled gibberish.
Standing stiff, the man stammered. “I-I-I’m sorry, but I…I don’t understand—”
“He said, ‘What do you want with her?’” McNolte repeated.
“I told you. She’s sick. She needs help. I’ve been looking for her for days.” He turned his head slightly toward Wee and raised his voice in the way some people do when speaking to a foreigner who has not yet mastered English. “Y-you can put your gun down. I’m going to leave, okay? And I’m going to take her with me.”
Wee stomped a foot and stabbed the sawed-off barrel of the shotgun into the man’s back. “I say you no fuck with my customers!”
McNolte turned to the woman, who continued to stare at the coffee cup. Trying to sound calm, he said, “Miss? Do you want to leave with this man? You don’t have to.”
Her eyes looked up at him, screaming silently. She moved her head minutely from left to right, then looked down at the coffee cup again.
McNolte looked at the man and smiled.
“You son of a bitch,” the man said, “I told you this was none of your—”
“ That’s it!” Wee shouted, stabbing the man harder in the back with the gun. “You no use that kinda language with my fuckin’ customers, asshole! Out! You get outta here now!”
The man reluctantly released the woman’s elbow and took a sideways step away from the booth, never taking his eyes from McNolte’s.
Wee poked him in the back again and again. “Hey! My place need paint job! You guts look pretty good on my walls You want me to do that? Huh?”
“I’m going, I’m going.” He glared at McNolte a moment longer, eyes silently declaring McNolte’s death, then stepped around him and headed for the door with Wee on his heels.
“You no come in here no more!” Wee yammered on at the top of his lungs. “I no feed you, I no pour you coffee. Know what I do? I blow you in half, that’s what I do!”
The man pulled the door closed hard behind him. Wee turned and went back to the counter, replacing the shotgun beneath it.
McNolte noticed the man in the brown suit at the end of the counter for the first time since the stranger had tried to pull the woman from the booth. The entire incident had taken place just a few feet from the man who, a little more than a minute earlier, had been calmly reading a magazine while eating his meal. Now the magazine was crumpled in his lap between both hands and his seat was turned nearly all the way around. He looked pale.
“Holy shit,” he muttered, voice trembling as he looked in McNolte’s general direction. “What…the hell…was that?”
“No problem,” Wee said, hurrying down the counter to stand in front of the man. He smiled, showing his crooked, yellow teeth. “You no worry about that. I give you discount onna chicken fry steak.”
The man looked at Wee for several seconds. “What?” he finally said, turning to McNolte. “What did he just say?”
“He says not to worry,” McNolte said, smiling. “He’s giving you a discount on the chicken fried steak.”
“Are you kidding me?” the man asked, doughy face slack. “He just pulled a sawed-off shotgun and—”
“It was nothing, really,” McNolte said, waving a hand dismissively. His heart was still pounding from the whole thing, but he was not showing it. “Are you new to the city?”
“I’m a salesman. I’m just passing through. I didn’t expect—”
“Well, there you go,” McNolte said. “This sort of thing happens all the time here in the big city.” He smiled. “But it’s all over now. Everything’s fine. And, hey, you got a discount for your trouble. Enjoy your chicken fried steak.”
The man did not return McNolte’s smile. He simply sat there looking as if he had just been struck hard in the back of the head with a heavy, blunt object.
McNolte looked down at the woman.
She leaned both elbows on the coffee-puddled table, pressing her face into the palms of her hands. Her shoulders moved up and down rapidly with silent sobs.
He slid into the booth facing her. “Are you all right?”
She pulled her hands away and her teary eyes darted all around, but never met his.
“Don’t worry, he’s gone,” McNolte said.
Her mouth worked as if trying to speak, but nothing came out for a moment. Then: “I’m fine. Thank you. For helping me, I mean.” Her voice was cold, sterile, with no sign that she had been crying.
Pam appeared with a towel and quickly wiped the spilled coffee from the tabletop with one hand while filling the woman’s empty cup with the other.
“Can I get you anything else?” she said.
McNolte said, “Would you mind bringing my coffee over here?”
She patted his shoulder. “Do you one better. I’ll get you a fresh cup. Be right back.”
The woman stared at the cup until Pam was gone, then picked it up between both hands and sipped.
With quiet caution, McNolte said, “Um, I’m Neil McNolte. Everybody around here just calls me McNolte. Look, uh…if you don’t mind my asking, who was that guy?”
She still did not look at him and seemed not to have heard at first. Then she pressed herself hard to the back of the seat and muttered, “I should go.”
“Wait a second,” he said, “you don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to. But I really don’t think it’s such a good idea for you to leave here just yet. Whoever that guy was, he had a gun, and he seemed serious enough to maybe wait for you outside. So if I were you—”
“You don’t understand,” she whispered, bowing her head. “I have to leave. That’s all. I just need to go.”
She still twitched and fidgeted, and when she lifted her head again, her eyes shot here and there and back again, as if they were following a pinball bouncing around in a machine. Her eyes kept returning to the window to her right and the rainy parking lot outside.
McNolte looked through the glass to see if he could find whatever was catching her attention.
The single light in the lot had not worked since McNolte had been coming to Wee’s, and with the intense rain, there was little to see. Some cars hunched in the darkness and a few lights beyond the parking lot glowed blurrily through the watery glass; other than that, he could not make out anything in detail beyond the cracked sidewalk that ran beside the diner.
“I might understand your situation better than you think,” he said, smiling at the woman, although she did not seem to notice. When he continued, he was careful not to sound condescending or judgmental. “Look, I know of a place where you can get help.”
Her eyes snapped open wide and locked onto his. She stared at him for a while, then said, “What…what do you mean, help?”
“It’s a mission. It won’t cost you a thing. I work there. They’ll put you up and feed you. And there are people there who will help you with your addiction. If you let them. I had to. See, when I first got there, I was—”
“Addiction?” she spat bitterly. On the table, her hands curled into fists. “I’m not addicted to anything. You think I’m—oh, never mind. I’ve got to get out of here.” From beneath the rubber poncho, she produced a worn black leather wallet, opened it, pulled out a dollar bill and dropped it onto the table. Then the wallet disappeared into her poncho again.
“At least let me walk with you,” McNolte said. “I don’t mind admitting that your friend nearly made me crap my pants a few minutes ago, but I don’t feel right letting you leave alone.”
“He’s not my friend,” she mumbled as she counted out some change.
“Where will you go?”
She sighed. “I have no idea. I’ve just got to get out of here. Now that they know I’m here, I have to leave the city. Tonight. Right away.” She seemed to be talking to herself rather than McNolte. “I need some sleep. That’s why I couldn’t flame him, dammit. Just too tired, that’s all. Too fuzzy. I need some sleep.”
“Leave the city?” he said. “I thought you meant leave here. This diner. Why do you have to leave the city? Now that who knows you’re here? Who are they? And…did you say flame? That’s why you couldn’t flame him?” Noticing that questions were pouring out of him in a stream, he told himself to calm down.
She ignored him and started to scoot out of the booth.
Pam appeared then and placed a clean cup in front of McNolte and tipped the coffee pot over it until it was full.
“Anything else?” Pam said.
“I’ll buy you a meal,” McNolte said, speaking rapidly. “You can have anything on the menu.”
The woman stopped and looked at him suspiciously.
“No strings,” he said. “Just a meal. You look like you could use one. After that, you can do whatever you want. I just think you should wait in here for a while before going out.”
He wanted to keep her there, talk to her some more, try to get her talking, find out as much as he could about her situation, about the man wearing surgical gloves and mask. McNolte hoped to keep her there long enough to convince her to let him help her.
She relaxed a little, put her hands back on the table. “All right,” she said. “I’m…pretty hungry, so I’ll take you up on it.”
“Can we have a menu, Pam?”
After delivering the menu, Pam disappeared again. McNolte said, “If you’re in some kind of trouble, I’d like to help. In any way I can. I don’t know what that would be, though. You’d have to tell me.”
She shook her head as she looked over the menu. “Thank you, but there’s nothing you can do for me. Aside from the meal, I mean. I appreciate that.”
“Well, maybe you should talk to the police.”
Her head snapped around and she glared at him with heat in her eyes. “Listen to me. No police. If there are no strings attached to this meal, fine, but if you want to help me, then after I leave here, do not call the police. Don’t tell them about me. Please. I’m begging you.” Her voice softened as she spoke until she was whispering.
Pam returned to the booth, her order pad ready. “Do you need another minute?”
“Yeah, stay right there,” the woman said.
As she looked over the menu again, McNolte turned his head toward the window when he saw movement in his peripheral vision, then did a double-take when he saw the tall, slender man who had been in the diner only minutes earlier, still wearing his surgical mask and gloves. He stepped in front of the window and faced them, pulling a gun from beneath his leather coat. But it was not the same gun he’d had earlier. This one was much bigger.
McNolte glimpsed the retracted stock of the automatic weapon, and that was all he needed to see.
He reached across the table, grabbed a fold of the woman’s rubber poncho, and pulled so hard that he grunted with exertion as they both headed for the floor, with Pam caught between them.
A heartbeat after that, the gunfire started and the sound of shattered glass cut through the night.
17.
Racing with Bullets
* * *
The first scream came from the man in the brown suit at the coffee counter as shards of glass rained through the diner in a furious storm. Short bursts of rapid, thick popping sounds came from outside the shattered window.
McNolte was on the floor, his fist still clutching the woman’s rubber poncho. Between them, beneath his arm, Pam lay on her side making small sounds of panic in her throat, struggling to turn over onto her hands and knees. A moment later, all three of them scrambled clumsily over the grimy floor, staying low, bellies scraping the dirty Formica. McNolte and Pam made their way toward the nearby restroom in an unspoken agreement, as if they were following some kind of instinct.
Pam worked her way ahead of them, with McNolte and the woman right behind her, his hand still clutching the rubber poncho. Somewhere in his confused and terrified mind, McNolte realized that the woman was simply wriggling over the floor in a wild panic with no destination in mind and was simply going wherever he pulled her.
The restroom was small and cramped, but McNolte knew there was a window in there that opened on the opposite side of the diner from the gunfire. He hoped it was big enough for each of them to get through.
Pam screamed as the automatic gunfire continued, but groped desperately for the restroom door.
More windows shattered.
McNolte heard Pooky release a long, garbled cry that sounded like his last.
Wee began to jabber in his native tongue, outraged at the attack on his establishment, and he fired his sawed-off shotgun once. His voice was silenced after an abrupt, gurgling cough.
More glass shattered and rained down on them, and pots and pans clanged in the kitchen as they scattered over the floor.
Pam reached the door of the restroom first and reached up for the knob, her hand slapping over the door’s surface of paint that was peeling like old skin. She gripped the doorknob, turned it and pushed the door open.
McNolte followed her in, pulling the woman inside behind him, dragging her like a sack of potatoes as he stumbled to his feet, but remained hunched over. As soon as her feet were clear, he reached out and slammed the door shut, staying low.
It was a tiny cubicle of a room with a toilet on one side and a sink on the other; no mirror, just an old dented aluminum paper towel dispenser. A window on the far wall was set about eight inches below the ceiling. McNolte did not know how to open it, or if it opened at all—judging from the way the restroom always smelled, he guessed it was not designed to be opened—but he planned to get through it.
Pam stood, hands trembling as they raised to her mouth, her pudgy fingers curling over her lips. Her eyes widened slowly, as if something horrible were occurring to her.
“Manuel,” she hissed. Then she screamed, “My God, Manuel!”
McNolte remained hunched over, ignoring Pam for the moment as every inch of his body tensed, waiting for the first bullet to hit him.
“Come on,” he said, breathless from the adrenaline rush brought on by the gunfire, which went on and on outside the restroom door. “We’ve got to get out that wind—”
Several bullets punched through the bathroom door and McNolte flattened himself on the floor, pulling the woman down with him and crossing his arms protectively over her head.
Pam made a curt yelping sound as she fell back against the wall beneath the window.
McNolte craned his head around to look behind him. Pam had collapsed to the floor with her head and shoulders leaning against the wall, neck bent sharply, a stunned expression on her face. A dark red smear marred her white blouse just below the crest of her right shoulder, and blood ran from a small hole in her upper arm about two inches below her short sleeve. She started to get up even though she had been shot twice.
“Stay down, Pam!” he shouted.
The bullets kept coming in bursts, splintering the old door, sending bits of wood and old, peeling paint through the air like little missiles. McNolte heard the window shatter behind him.
After several seconds of bullets punching through the door and wall, McNolte realized that, while the gunfire continued outside the closed door, no more bullets were coming into the bathroom. McNolte got to his knees and pulled the woman up with him.
Pam was already on her feet and staggering toward the door, left arm outstretched in desperation, fingers splayed, while her right arm flopped limply at her side. She did not seem to notice.
“Manuel!” she cried.
“Pam, don’t go out there,” McNolte said. “Get away from that door, dammit. We’re going out the window.”
But Pam stumbled onward, apparently unaware of her wounds. She clasped the doorknob between both hands and struggled with it, muttering, “Manuel, oh, God, Manuel, my God, please, Manuel…” Her hands slid over the aluminum knob at first, then caught and turned it. She pulled the door open so hard, it slammed against the wall with what almost sounded like another gunshot.
“Pam, don’t go out there,” McNolte shouted.
She simply did not hear him as she lumbered out of the bathroom shouting, “Manuel? Manuel! Are you all right? Manuel?”
The gunfire continued.
“Son of a bitch,” McNolte muttered as he hurried over to the toilet and stepped up onto the edge of the bowl. As he stood there precariously, left arm leaning against the wall above the toilet, he lifted his right leg high. Muscles that were no longer as limber as they used to be protested with pain, and he groaned quietly as he kicked the jagged edges of broken glass from the edges of the window.
It was while he stood there, a couple of feet above the floor, that he noticed he was sweating. At first, he thought it was natural under the circumstances. But it was not natural at all. Large sections of his shirt were soaked with sweat and clinging to his body. His palm, pressed against the wall as he kicked the glass spikes from the window, began to slip over the tile because it was so sweaty. And his head…the inside of his head…began to tilt ever so slightly. Or was it the room that was tilting?
Time passed sluggishly. Concentrating hard on the task at hand, he finished kicking out the glass as dizziness overwhelmed him. One moment, he was leaning his hand against the wall, and the next his left cheek was flat against the cold, moist floor of the bathroom, and the breath had been kicked out of his lungs.
Bones aching from the fall, McNolte got up on his hands and knees and saw drops of sweat fall from his face and neck to the floor. One drop of blood joined them from a small cut in his lower lip.
He looked over his shoulder and saw the woman crouching in front of the sink. She stared at him with gaping eyes wild with fear.
Waving toward the window, McNolte said, “Go! Go! I’ll be right behind you.”
She got up on the toilet quickly, leaned over the edge of the window with arms hanging out, then dropped her feet from the toilet. The toes of her sneakers kicked the wall as she pulled herself through the window clumsily, feet rising higher and higher, kicking and kicking, until they slipped out the window.
There followed the muffled sound of her body falling onto something wet and pliable.
