Killing time

Part III

            Another night, another run. The sameness was broken by a splash of white on an otherwise black clad man, on either side of a dark tie, between two breasts of a matching suit jacket. The sight made David remember the guards in his mother’s kitchen in a way that made him realize that slowly, slowly he had been forgetting those memories all along. He changed direction after another two strides and pushed himself against an alley wall. He glanced in both directions, then peeked around the corner but the man was gone. Everything clung to the baseline of his beating heart, and David found himself stalking to hide away in the parking structure of a nearby office park, cowering. He waited, and then he waited some more. He waited until long after it should’ve been safe, then he climbed stairs to look down on the area around him, crouched down in the shadows, peering into the open darkness.

               Part of him expected to laugh about it later, to be elated that he had loitered in an empty parking deck for over an hour for no reason at all. And maybe without some months in a place like Charm City, most of him would’ve believed that was possible. But he could hear it, the little snatches of conversation inside the little microphones the guards in his mother’s kitchen.

               There wasn’t just the one man in the suit, looking around like he wasn’t looking around. There were several. They never met up with one another, but they were all encroaching on David’s hiding place. They moved as if directed by a careful and controlling hand. This was it. They thought he would fall on his face, fail because he had been set up for failure, undereducated and underequipped. The miracle of his work at the clinic had forced their hand, and now they were coming to take him back. To put him back in the cage. He hadn’t called so they had investigated. The ship captain knew where he’d made landfall, so it was just a matter of time. David thought about his savings account at the bank with the nice people in their offices. It always smelled like jasmine. David thought about a different savings account in a different city with different people in different offices. Every time, for the rest of his life.

               It frustrated him, and angered him, but not enough to kill again.

               “Target location confirmed,” he heard someone say.

               David’s heckles rose as he sunk down even lower, examined the area around him, an open garage space with no vehicles, a stairwell leading up and down.

               Movement in the stairwell stopped him cold. He said he wouldn’t go back, but what how far was he prepared to go? Two pair of footsteps, no three, and they were moving quickly. David could feel the adrenaline catching fire in his veins. They reached his floor and… kept moving.

               David blinked in surprise, quietly stepping over to the door of the stairwell.

“Target is on the roof,” he heard someone say.

Through the narrow window, he saw the men continue up to the third floor, the last of them removing a pistol from a side holster. David looked around again, as if it was all a trick. He checked and double checked, and every time he confirmed that they weren’t coming for him. The men in suits were there for someone else.

The simplest thing would’ve been to jump from the second floor, not to enter the stairwell at all. But it was easier to open the stairwell door, and walk out onto the landing. It was easier, and yet more difficult. The roof was up two floors, twice the distance, twice the amount of stairs that would lead him to freedom. There was no good reason he could think of to go up instead of down. No good reason.

At the top of the stairwell, several men were paused to receive orders. David couldn’t put sense to the words they were using amongst themselves, but he understood the concept of hunting. Their quarry was within their grasp, and they had overwhelming numbers, however their intent was not to kill. They were going to great pains to capture intact whomever it was they were after. David wondered about what kind of fugitive hunt this was. These weren’t police.

Then the men in the stair well walked out onto the top floor, and David stealthily followed them. He’d seen a movie like this once. Part of him was expecting to see a different version of himself, from the future, or the past, or an alternate reality.

What he saw was a giant. Since leaving the island, people’s description of David had changed, all reflecting how much smaller he was than the average American male. Several inches shorter, and less broad, it was something he was noticing more and more. The men in suits were taller than him, with bulging chests and legs beneath their formal wear. The individual they were after was to them as they were to David. He was wearing clothes not too dissimilar from the thugs from the alley, tough looking boots and military pants, a light jacket thrown over a zip up hoodie. All black. Things began to fall apart in David’s mind. Nothing made sense.

From his floor level vantage point, the man did not look cornered at all. His posture, even ringed with a dozen pursuers was unaffected. David strained to hear, but the distance was too great. He couldn’t know what they were talking about. He could not imagine someone defying what was so obviously encasement.

Then the wind changed, and what assaulted David’s nostrils made him clamp a hand against his mouth to suppress a snarl. He tumbled back into the stairwell and gripped the guard rail, grinding his teeth. He had never sensed such… rot. It reminded David of the family’s cemetery, what an open grave smelled like after a gentle rain. Deep, dark, dead earth. He knew, without knowing, that everyone on the rooftop had already died.

The gun shots shocked him back to his senses and he chanced another look, but he immediately wished he hadn’t been so curious. The scene was surreal. It was like watching a crowd of people running underwater, trying to evade a hungry shark, the lack of traction, the need to breath.

It wasn’t David’s intention to stay for the massacre, but he was there for the last body to drop, a perplexed man looking down into his empty holster, then raising his head to look around at all the prone bodies of his colleagues. He made eye contact with David there at the end, right before he was shot in the head from the side. He was shot three more times as he fell, and then his pistol was dropped onto his chest, still smoking.

David was angry but he couldn’t say why, which was a terrible sign. It had taken him years to understand that when most people became furious, usually there was something they could point to. Pain or frustration, powerlessness or grief. This was the other anger, the one David had avoided for a lack of control. But it had been building for longer moments than he acknowledged, and as always, disrespectfully tossed him over its shoulder and carried him off. There was a golden explosion in his vision and all his other senses were multiplied in intensity. His skin burned. His bones broke. And David Cruz was gone.