One Blink From Oblivion (32 page)

Max’s face contorts into a look of incredible anger and anguish. He clinches his jaw hard and his fists harder. He keeps his nails drastically short but he can still feel them digging into his palms. He doesn’t blink or break eye contact with the killer.

“There it is! I knew there was a demon inside you just itching to get out,” Johnny Buckets gives Max a beckoning motion with his hands, “come and give it to me. All that pent up rage and guilt, use it, pour it into me.”

Although Johnny Buckets stands before him, all Max can see is the visage of his dead brutish father. Brooke’s body morphs into that of his dead mother and he is thrust back through time into a space he believed to be gone forever, for he had wrenched the life from that space and time with his own two hands. Yet here he was, reliving the horror of his youth.

With wild eyes full of hate and blurred by tears Max charges headlong and screaming at the freeway-man who opens his beefy arms wide in preparation to receive him. The two clash like mighty cymbals coming together in a crescendo, and the concussion seems to shake the very walls of the cold dank office.

For a while, Max gives as good as he gets. His overdrive of adrenaline kills the pain that the freeway-man inflicts on him with each crushing blow to his head and body. They trade punches, kicks, elbows and knees at break-neck speed. At first they appear an even match, with both mindless of the damage done to them but the force of the freeway-man’s punishing strikes begin to take their toll on Max’s muscles, joints, ligaments and bones. A hammer fist to Max’s collarbone breaks through the numbing effect of his body’s endorphins and he cries out as bone snaps in two. The blow drives him to his knees.

“Lesson complete boy. Too bad you won’t have a chance to use anything I’ve taught you here today.” Johnny Buckets pauses for a moment before producing a pragmatic smile, “Tell you what; since you gave it a good go I’ll let you decide. I can rip you in half now or I can turn you into a god, like me. Maybe you can look me up down the road and we’ll have us another round on more equal footing.”

Max, with head hanging low grips his left shoulder with his right hand. He has no fight left in him. He lifts his gaze just enough to see Brooke’s lifeless body in the corner. He has utterly been defeated. His inability to keep even one person that he held dear from harm is a failure too immense to abide. His hope no longer stands diminished; it has fled from him on angry wings never to return. 

“Kill me.” He utters with what little breath he has left.

Johnny Buckets shakes his head, “How disappointing.”

He grabs Max’s cornrows with one hand and lifts his head until their eyes meet. He places his other hand around Max’s throat.

“Until Hell then.” He says in his unnatural voice and tightens his grip around Max’s throat.

He will squeeze Max’s neck until he feels only the bone of his spine left between his fingers. At which point he will lap up the fountain of blood like a thirsty child at recess.

In his mind’s eye, Max replays all of his many failures throughout his short life and finds this to be a fitting end. Despite his best efforts, he never once was able to save a single person he loved. First, his mother died at the hands of the original beast –she may have technically taken her own life but his father may as well have put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger. Next, he failed his best friend. Not only did he steal the girl that Vinny loved but he didn’t even have the courage to end Vinny’s suffering with a bullet. Then came Brooke, a victim of this deranged animal before him, made to endure unspeakable horrors before her sweet flame was extinguished. Big Mama… how could he fail to save she who had saved him? If he had stayed home with her instead of selfishly going on this trip then maybe they would all still be alive. Brooke and Vinny might be safe somewhere in each other’s arms. All he can do now is hope to pay for the sins of this life in his next… a chance to wipe the slate clean.

Johnny Buckets’ hand –impossibly strong- tightens around Max’s neck and in moments, his air stops flowing, followed by the blood to his brain. The room closes in on him like a tumbling kaleidoscope of murk, systematically reforming itself with fewer and fewer pieces of light. Before total blackness comes, Max thinks he hears footsteps. He wants to turn and look but the power and will to do so have left his dieing body.

To the freeway-man’s surprise, he is hit hard in the chest and sent reeling back toward the window. His back batters the glass and sends jagged shards clattering to the pavement outside and the floor inside. He shakes off the blow and welcomes a new but familiar adversary.

Vinny stands between the freeway-man and Max, with blood dripping from his mouth and his eyes fixed on Brooke. His chest rises and falls repeatedly as a fury unlike anything he’s ever known courses through his veins.

“Play time!” the freeway-man grins wildly and heads for Vinny who is anxious to receive him.

Vinny absorbs the punches and claws at Johnny Buckets face in return. He may not be strong enough to kill him just yet but he can sure as hell rip his eyes out. The freeway-man catches on to the strategy and creates distance with a kick to Vinny’s mid section that drives him back. In a blink the freeway-man is behind Vinny and bear hugging him like a vice grip. Vinny can feel a rib break, then another. He is slowly being turned into a bag of bones, pulverized from the inside out.

Max rests at the feet of what appear to be two angry Titans above him. Through a thick haze of unconsciousness, he can see Johnny Buckets crushing the life out of the thing that used to be Vinny, maybe still was a little bit Vinny. He struggles to rise to his friend’s aid. His busted body does not cooperate. He settles on his right elbow and fights the desire to blackout completely. Above him, he can hear the definitive shattering of bones as Vinny’s fight comes to an abrupt end.

Max’s eyes cloud over and the death’s maw comes to gulp him down once more. This time he is greeted by a vision of Brooke slowly floating toward him. Her hair flows with the wind from her movement and she stretches a single hand out to Max as she approaches. Is it possible that he will not spend eternity in the devil’s fiery embrace? Could it be that God has seen fit to allow him entrance to his domain, while walking hand in hand with his one true love?

He musters enough strength to reach for her ghostly visage. He stretches his arm out, with fingers feeling at the air that precedes her. Just as his hand is about to join with hers she raises it away from his grasps. No doubt, the whole charade has been hell’s cruel joke. He is destined to always come close to what he desires most, only to have it snatched away again. Brooke’s ghost raises its hand higher and higher until Max can see his own image reflected in a jagged piece of glass clenched in its grasp.

Brooke brings the makeshift dagger down into Johnny Buckets throat and watches as rhythmic spurts of blood course from his jugular. He instantly drops Vinny’s disfigured remains to the floor and halfheartedly paws at Brooke with one hand while attempting to remove the shiv with the other.       

The scene brings Max sudden clarity and understanding. He prays once more to God, this time for a chance at redemption. God answers Max with a thin ray of light reflecting off a small shard of glass on the floor nearby. Max nods with understanding and reaches out for the shard.

Johnny Buckets steps over Vinny’s dead body and staggers toward Brooke. He has a firm grasp on the crimson blade that protrudes from his neck. He pulls it free and lets it clatter to the floor.

“Foolish of me to not kill you,” these words are gargled rather than spoken, “I was going to make you like me you ungrateful little bitch! Now I’m just going to feed you to the others outside.”

Brooke retreats slowly from the freeway-man. Her cheek is badly bruised where the freeway-man struck her earlier knocking her unconscious, her penance for attempting to warn Max. Brooke can hear the anxious wails of the infected down at street level. The broken glass and sounds of fighting must have drawn them in. She will jump to her death before she lets him get a hold of her again. She can hear glass crackle beneath her feet and knows she has retreated as far as she can go. A few more steps and he will be on her.

Max’s view of Brooke is obstructed by Johnny Buckets but he knows now that she is alive. He also knows what he must do. With great anguish and effort, Max quietly gets to his feet. Using the small piece of glass from the window he cuts a three-inch gash along the inside length of his left wrist. He pumps his hand until the blood begins to flow. The smell stops Johnny Buckets dead in his tracks. ‘It’s fourth down and I’m going straight up the middle.’ Max imagines the playing field that he will never again set foot on and breaks into a run. The freeway-man turns around just in time to see Max heading for him like a locomotive with throttle wide open. Brooke dives to her left and Max hits Johnny Buckets hard enough to crack the man’s sternum. He wraps his arms around him tightly, this time he’s going to ride him all the way down. His legs never stop pumping as he lifts the beast and drives him across the last few steps to the window. The remaining glass explodes out behind Johnny and the two of them erupt through the window behind it.

Brooke recovers from her dive and gets herself upright once more. She scrambles to the gaping hole where little more than a fraction of a second ago she stood ready to jump. She forces herself to look upon the aftermath below. Seven stories down Johnny Buckets lies flat on his back, covered in blood, with his leg folded unnaturally beside him. His back is apparently broken as well because his eyes flick about wildly in their sockets while not so much as a twitch can be seen from any other part of his body.

His own blood continues to spurt rhythmically from the wound in his neck, but it’s the smell of Max’s blood upon him that draws-in the biters. The sweet sticky fragrance of the human blood proves too much for the freeway-man’s brethren to resist. They descend upon him like sharks and create a feeding frenzy of his paralyzed body. He is fully conscious and hyper aware as he helplessly witnesses his entrails being ripped from his body.

Two floors below Max lies face down on one of the concentric square ledges that provide the outward framework of the building. Brooke turns to exit the room but pauses briefly next to Vinny’s body to thank him for his sacrifice. After a moment, she races out into the hall and down the two flights of stairs. She moves so frantically that she is scantly aware of her feet touching the ground. She enters the third office to the right and heads for the window. Outside and just to the left of the window she can see Max still lying motionless on the ledge.

Brooke looks for an implement to break the window and settles on a drawer front with the handle still intact. It takes a few blows but eventually the window breaks. Brooke uses the drawer to clear as much of the glass from the windowsill as possible. She climbs onto the ledge and grabs hold of Max. After pulling him inside, she rolls his body over and gently caresses his face.

“Maxy, it’s time to wake up. You’ve got to get up now, I still need you.” Tears paint Brooke’s cheeks like a misty window on a stormy day. “After everything you said to me tonight you have to come back to me. You and I deserve to be happy.
You
deserve to be happy. You can’t leave me…I love you.”

“Are you just saying that because I’m dieing?” Max’s voice is weak but real.

She did not imagine it. He is awake and smiling up at her. With his head still cradled in her lap Brooke folds herself around him, hugging him with every inch of her body.

“I love you,” she says with a kiss from her bruised lips to his bruised lips, “I love you more than eternity has time.”

“I love you too,” Max touches the bruise on her cheek gently, “now help me up. Big Mama is waiting for me.”

***

The freeway-man’s body –apparently quite palatable to his fellow infected- provides more than enough distraction for Max and Brooke to slip through a rear fire exit. Prior to their departure, Max insists on tending to Vinny’s body. But, before they do, Brooke tends to Max’s. She covers his self-inflicted arm-wound with the roll of duct tape that he earlier squirreled away in his pocket. It will hurt like hell when he removes it later-on but for now it should keep out the virus. Brooke fashions a sling for Max’s left arm from one of Max’s sleeves as well.

Max starts to speak and the words catch in his throat before he can release them. He hates that he needs to know what happened to her, but he must.

Brooke knows Max well enough that he doesn’t need to speak, “I’m fine Max,” she pulls her collar down to show a neck free from teeth marks, “he just knocked me around a bit.”

Max drops his gaze to the floor unable to look her in the eyes, “He said some things…”

Brooke hugs Max tightly around his neck, which causes him to grimace in pain.

“He never touched me in that way. You were always so close behind us that he never had a chance.”

“I’m sorry that I left you there in that alley. My ego got the better of me. It won’t happen again.”

Brooke squeezes even tighter and Max emits a soft groan. She releases him with an apologetic smile.

***

With Max’s injuries tended to, they turn their attention to their mutual friend. Tenderly they wrap Vinny in a tarp Brooke finds in an adjacent seventh floor office.

With wet eyes Max says some brief words before they take leave, “Vincent Neumann…Vinny, I want to thank you for showing me that there was more to life than grieving, that it was possible to live despite the pain. You were my brother and my friend. I once told you that you were like God in a way, you laughed at me at the time, but tonight you proved my point. You weren’t always there when I wanted you, but you were always right on-time.”