Change Order (2) "Get down on the floor!" Risen barked, but remained standing to watch the events unfold. To confront the gunman was a bold move by his estimation—especially for a drugstore cowboy. The madman reached out and pasted the barrel on the cowboy’s forehead, and he raised both hands in the air, in a you’re-the-boss gesture, with not even the slightest sign of panic. Risen was impressed by that too, but didn’t think it was such a good idea. "Come on, Paul, let’s just tal—" Risen’s jaw went slack. The noise was as deafening as it was succinct. Fragments of skull, blood and hair blew across the sneeze guard and the woman, moving everyone in the restaurant far from a hopeful world—where the whole thing could have just been a grand, ugly, tasteless gag—into the surreal. He hadn’t noticed his jaw had fallen open, nor stop to think that he was awfully close to the killer to still be standing up. This is not happening, he told himself. But the crescendo of piercing colors and screams made it impossible to deny. Everything was moving too fast—too fast to think, too fast to act. He turned again and shouted for his family to move to the emergency exit doors. Phillip was the only one still sitting in his chair, frozen in terror. Risen grabbed the boy and shoved him under the table. "Stay with your dad," he commanded. BOOM—BOOM The noise thundered twice again through the restaurant. Son-of-a-bitch! Risen stood up. He killed the redhead. Shit. Tell me he didn’t do that, Risen pleaded and looked up for an explanation, feeling disillusioned again, before forcing himself to inspect the woman more closely. She was alive! She was slumped over the salad bar, but still fighting. The man had her bent over on the opposite side of the salad bar, wrenching her head. Images streamed in from the first shot fired, and he remembered the blood on the salad bar guard was from the cowboy. He must have put two more in the air just to let everyone know who was calling the shots. As if all the screaming hadn’t done that. He checked again, this time noticing dust and smoke drifting from two holes in the ceiling. He still didn’t fully trust his eyes, so glanced around the room. People were in disarray, but he could see no one down on the floor, or bleeding. Men, old and young, women and children, all shapes and sizes, were frantically scrambling to the front doors, only to find a bottleneck. Bad move, Risen thought. The gunman would probably look there often, checking for cops. The lunatic turned attention that direction as Risen looked back—as if to punish him for the foresight—then pointed and fired directly into the crowd that was rushing away like a mindless stampede. Risen found his jaw had slackened again. A small boy went down against his mother’s hips then slid lifelessly around her ankles. She turned in delayed horror, ignoring her husband pulling on her arm, and watched the dark red spot grow on their son’s soccer shirt until it fully consumed the stenciled number on his back. Risen didn’t hear her scream. It was too much now. A force had started at his sternum and moved up and outward, freezing his rib cage in place, locking it into a solid mass that forbid the intake of more oxygen. He tried inhaling. He tried inhaling using every muscle from toe to nose, but managed only small, forced pants, and feeble fibrillation. The paralysis gripped him inside and out, halting his ability to breathe, to act, turning him to stone. Whiteness began to overshadow and blur the room, consuming light and sound as it moved inward from the perimeter of his vision, erasing everything real, along with the will to stand from his legs. They had not stopped screaming. He could see that—mouths open and frantic, and eyes as terrified as they were confused, still trapped in the vivid colors of their unforgiving reality. But he was sliding, sliding, blissfully away, to somewhere deep and comforting and far from the ugliness within these confines. There was nothing he could do anyway. The only clarity in the chaos was a small voice. Troy. A voice that reminded him of that timeless, sparkling kaleidoscope of hopes and dreams, and possibilities of transcending parental shortcomings —in the blink of an eye. Someone else had just lost a son. Slowly, with no warning, without knowing why, the threat of shock subsided as the noise and screams and panic came roaring back to full volume and color. Familiar blood supplied veins and muscles with the ability to move again, forcing his rib cage to expand and fill lungs with a deep full breath of rage. His head snapped to the gunman as blood pounded through his body with a clear mission. He dropped to all fours and directed his body toward the murderer, barely noticing something was tugging on his leg. He looked back to see Cousin David pulling on his boot with everything he had. "Kelly! Let’s get the hell out of Dodge, son!" he yelled. He responded with a violent yank and crawled as fast as he could towards the salad bar, staying low and out of sight. Had he been wearing shoes, Cousin David would have been holding one of them in his hands now. He could hear the gunman yelling obscenities, which he assumed, hoped, meant that the crazy man had not yet been successful in dunking the redhead’s skull in the soup urn. A few seconds of preoccupation that allowed him to flank the bar unseen. But in those precious seconds came a sense of urgency. She could be submerged by now! Do something, the voice in his head commanded. After rounding the opposite end he came up behind the killer and stood. She was still fending, but slowly losing the battle. Legs and arms fought for twice their mortal worth against a man more than twice her size. He was pushing her head mercilessly against the rim, singeing her skull like a brand, cursing her all the while. "Fucking whore!" the man ranted, and Risen wondered if it was true. She twisted her neck around and sunk teeth ferociously into his hand, but pain nor the blood oozing down seemed to have an effect on his determination. Risen thought he looked bigger now. Or maybe it was the gun. It was of no consequence now. He studied her face; crimson, etched with lines, veins, tears and fear. Now he knew. Now he knew what it would look like. He didn’t like it. She had one arm lodged against the man’s throat and the other straddling the pot in the fiercest of battles, her hair falling down and becoming drenched in the hot liquid. Risen grabbed the pot of soup at his end of the bar and ignored the tingling sensation that raced through his fingers. He strode up behind the killer. With sick precision, he poured it full over the flack jacket, targeting the puckered collar to make sure a good portion of the scalding fluid ran down his bare neck. The gunman had finally caught him in his side vision, but it was too late to stop the liquid assault. Risen stepped back as a guttural scream split the rising steam, and an even more insane expression covered the man’s face. The killer buckled, gasped, and then let go of the woman. . .gun still in hand. Risen had no immediate backup plan and realized that acutely, now that he was looking at a fury with a new target. But he did know it was now or never to do something. Quickly, armed with the empty soup pot, he charged the man. Deranged eyes were drawn to the pot cocked high in the air, giving Risen time enough to reach over and grasp the hand that was holding the gun. After locking it from movement he brought the full force of his right knee deep into the gunman’s crotch, and the killer wheezed as if his very soul had been knocked from him, letting the gun fall to his side as eyes rolled and lost focus. Risen stepped back and held breath, but hovered near. Giving birth to a child had to be painful. Getting hit by a bus had to be painful. But he would take his chances with those events concurrently, over that kind of pain. It wasn’t just a matter of if that son-of-a-bitch would fall to the ground, but when. But after two, possibly three seconds had elapsed, impossibly, the killer was still half leaning on the bar with a big hand gripped firmly on his weapon. He wasn’t moving in any one direction, but especially not downward, where he should have been. The big man just stood there, gun resting next to his side, staring back with a burning, confused glare. Strangely, everything slowed down for Risen. He could barely hear the noise, the chaos, and the screaming. He controlled all of that now. He had all the time in the world. If the man moved an inch, he would be on him—anywhere on him. Anywhere he chose. He looked over his left shoulder to the child being rocked hopelessly in a mother’s arms, while keeping the killer in the periphery of that picture. Then an unfriendly force turned attention back to the hobbled man—a man that had been served notice that he was within fate’s and fingertips reach. Risen glanced the gun hand, then the expression. Confused pain was the only way to describe it. He knew that look. Then the killer finally moved. . .forward. . .or was he falling? The luxury of time to make that distinction was something Risen didn’t have. Patricia Gilliam dragged herself from the salad bar, watching the stranger standing there as if he controlled all form of matter. He didn’t look scared, which didn’t make sense. He wasn’t quite as big as Paul, but more muscular, and with a celerity that belied that image. He moved fast—sinfully fast—for a guy with that kind of build. She looked back at Paul. His face was wrenched in stupefied pain, but he was still on his feet and still holding the goddamned gun! He was done. He had to be done. Then Paul inched forward. Or was he falling? She couldn’t tell. Her eyes shot to Paul’s gun hand. It was moving. . .up. No! Too late. By that time an eon had passed and the distance was closed with the resounding conviction of steel doors. Jesus, mister! Give him a chance! She cried silently, wild-eyed, and with not one earthly concept why that thought ran through her head. But somehow knowing it wouldn’t have mattered if she could have screamed it out at the top of her lungs. The stranger already had a left hand iron-clamped on the gun hand again, and the other clenched on Paul’s scalp—and was still in motion. You don’t have to move anymore, mister! Just hold him in place! But god, he was just too fast. Paul’s arm struggled to raise the weapon. Quit fighting him, Paul! Can’t you see what he is? She watched as icy, black-hearted eyes masked in blue monitored every movement of Paul’s body. She watched as Paul’s head was suddenly pulled down to meet a knee driven viciously upward, while Paul’s only chance—his gun—was kept at bay. She heard the grunt as the knee plowed through Paul’s face, then watched as his head was released as casual as if throwing trash away. She heard the crack of bones, or cartilage, or something awful that sounded like eggshells, then watched his head snap back while a mist of blood spurted from the corners of his eyes. He was falling back, arms spread wide, eyes open but drowsy, with all the anger carried into the restaurant gone from his face. The gun finally came flinging out of his hand, as if in slow motion, and seemed almost to linger in the air in front of her. She wanted to grab it, to stop it from spinning and taunting; to make it go away. Then it was gone. The damned thing somersaulted into the soup kettle she was almost drowned in, at the same time Paul’s body pitched heavily to the floor in a puff of sawdust. Then it was quiet. It was over! How strange the quiet was, with only the heaving of her breath and the muffled sobs across the room. It was over. Dazed and wrecked, she looked down at the two dead men and the blood of both on her dress. She didn’t get much time to address that emotional myriad. The stranger was coming at her, and she searched his face and got nothing as he put his hands on her shoulders. She suddenly found herself glad he was near, to catch her before she collapsed like a used-up rag doll. She needed to hold onto to someone, anyone. He swiped her to the floor, sending her flying to land between her dead men. She was stunned and blinked rapidly, looking up, trying to make it change, to make it go away. But the nightmare wouldn’t end. He showed no sign of pain or emotion, nor of being human. He simply plunged his hand to the bottom of the pot with no indication that he could tell the difference between tepid and scalding. And there it was again! He whipped the gun once with a downward snap, dislodging a pea from the barrel. He then pulled back the slide with thumb and index finger and released it crisply, as if he had done it a million times. Cantraz had taught him a quick release decreases the likelihood of jamming. The chambered bullet ejected, and a new, clean round was slammed into place, sending a sharp clack throughout the restaurant—indicating the night was not yet over. He spun around and moved downward like a dark bolt from the heavens, drilling his knee—the one that had just sent cartilage shards into Paul’s frontal lobe—hard into the prone man’s chest. Patty watched in horror as the stranger seized a clump of Paul’s hair and snapped the head up, then back, with some mad, methodical agenda. What’s he doing? she asked herself in the madness. Risen now had the jaw slackened enough to cram the entire barrel in. And he did just that. All the way to tonsils, clipping off front teeth in the process. The quiet rage owned him now, coaxed him, and told him it was okay to pull the trigger. It had taken him this far. "Your turn, son-of-a-bitch," he hissed and pulled the trigger as a firm hand intercepted his shoulder. "Kelly!" He thought he recognized the voice, but remained fixed with a finger halfway home on the trigger. "Son, he’s dead. He’s real, real dead," David said firmly with a familiar southern drawl soaked in resolve, hoping to break through. That didn’t seem to be working. "Goddamnit! He’s dead—it’s over!" he yelled into the blank face, too afraid to shake his cousin, but did anyway. Then waited with clenched teeth for a moment to go by that could decide the balance of all moments there forward. Senses sputtered through the haze and the shouting as he looked down to see—almost as if in someone else’s hand—a gun! But it was his all right. And both were covered in the convicting, reddish-brown muck of vegetable soup. He slowly released pressure off the trigger and allowed David to pull him away, never in his life having felt so totally, utterly exhausted. He could have laid down right between the corpses and slept. Instead he turned to the redhead who was staring back with a look of terror in her eyes like he had never seen. She finally got the courage to move again. She rolled over to her dead cowboy, tears boiling up. "I warned you, Roger. I tried to tell you!" she screamed, shook her head vigorously, and clenched his shirt before laying her head on his blood-covered chest and sobbed. Risen watched the crumpled pair for a moment, briefly considering an attempt to console her, but stood up and walked past them toward the small limp figure. Uncle Bob stopped him before he butted in to that misery. "Hold on there, son." Big hands gripped his shoulders, as powerful in their resolve as the voice was in sorrow. "There’s nothing anyone can do for the little fella," he choked out with an honest shake of the head. He could have broken free, but shrank from the task. Instead, he sank listlessly into a hard chair with that sick, burning pang returning to his stomach, looking blankly though the windows at the blue neon sign: "Spurs Off." He noticed something tugging at his hand and looked down lethargically to see Uncle Bob pulling. The gun—he was still carrying the damned thing. He let his uncle take it, then felt the throbbing pain; burning, pink, and fouled, it now reminded him of the deed. He gulped, blocked out the pain, and stared off numbly while senses tried to make sense of it all. Muffled sobs were scattered here and there, but it was mostly quiet, and he wondered why the police hadn’t showed up yet. People were comforting one another between their own sorrow, but they were doing something else while they hugged and trembled together; they were all staring at him! The stranger in dark clothes sitting slumped in a chair in the middle of what was a battle zone a few seconds before. Confusion weaved its way back into his thoughts. What did you want me to do?...wait for him to shoot someone else? He took a heated breath and was about to stand to protest that collective, unspoken opinion. A bald-headed man with a large handlebar mustache, holding a Stetson hat next to his side, from across the room, spoke up. "God bless ya’, son. . .Ever’body, that’s a real hero," he shouted. And then, as if the evening could get any stranger, someone started to clap. Then another. And another until it seemed everyone joined the collective wave of self-serving appreciation at the expense of a small limp figure being held in its mother’s arms. His anger turned to astonishment then back to sorrow as he turned attention to the group of people huddled over the small boy; the boy that had made Troy talk to him. Is this really happening? he asked himself, turning for solace in the blue neon sign that had seemed to try to warn him, in vain. People clapping. People crying. People confounding him. The boy’s mother looked around in desperation and anger, and Risen could see it coming, praying that ultimate frustration would somehow not seek him out. "Stop! Stop it! My baby’s dead! Can’t ya’ll see that!" she screamed against the crowd, scanned the room, then finally locked sights on the man slumped in the chair, to his fear. "What took you so long? What took you so goddamned long-g-g-g..." The last word trailed off into a convulsive cry, as he cringed, watching her body heave uncontrollably over the boy as everyone stopped and murmured their foolish regrets. He recognized that look, too. He had seen shades of it in the mirror many times. He closed eyes and dropped his chin to chest. She was right. It shouldn’t have taken so long. He remembered now—he couldn’t at first. The strange white light wouldn’t let him! Then his body came on like a tornado cut loose from an angry sky. And he didn’t even know why. But that hesitation held the highest cost. He wanted to tell her how sorry he was. How he knew that pain. But there was nothing he could do now to change any of that. The paper would mention it tomorrow, to be gasped over and talked about in melodramatic tones with a cup of coffee in hand, tones about how cruel the world was getting to be. But they wouldn’t know. Really know. They’d live in that distant land of feigned concern and Styrofoam coffee cups until it jumped off the black and white pages and came up and bit them in their melodramatic ass. But he knew. He knew a family had been shattered, a lineage maligned. He knew all about that before tonight. And in that strange inexplicable moment, he became possessed. He needed to hear their voices, desperately. He stood abruptly, ignored the stares, and strode through the sawdust to hit the double glass doors hard, palms open, arms determined, past all the spectators, all the misery, all the confusion, and some of the guilt. That determination was met equally with the barrel of a Mosberg riot shotgun pointed at his face, being held firmly by a stout, barking black man in a dark canvas jumpsuit that carried the large yellow letters: SWAT. The phone call would have to wait.
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Copyright © 2000 Kevin Kenny |