A Vagrant Story (47 page)

“Y-you planned all that?”

“Call it an extra benefit to a separate very good plan. Now, I’ll do away with the girl, apprehend you and be treated as a hero.”

“You were lying to me the whole time! You tricked me! No! There’s no proof. A drug test can‘t prove I killed someone! The police won’t believe your story.”

“They will when they test those clothes I gave you, the clothes I gave you to replace the ones you damaged in the fire. The ones you‘re still wearing now. Maybe they’ll find the DNA belonging to several of those women drenched into the seams. Maybe they’ll do a background check and learn that those trousers you’re wearing belonged to my second victim. She was about your size.”

“You won’t get away with this. I’m going to stop you.”

“Henry … you dressed up in woman’s drag because I told you to. What could you even begin to try and do against me?”

Sierra stabilised herself by leaning on the laundry bin. “It’s you … I remember hearing about you.”

“What’s that?”

“We were at Annette Lucille’s house. One of her neighbours told us a doctor kept visiting her shortly before the murder … that was you wasn’t it?”

No returning emotion told her all she needed to know.

“If you turn Henry over they’ll piece it together. Police will know you were visiting her before the murder.”

“That could be damning … a caring doctor visiting one of his many gravely ill patients … that’s such very damming evidence. What an awful person they‘ll think I am. I’m sure your story might be of more interest to them … the good for nothing pathetic bum who returned to the scene of the crime to see everything he’d done. You even brought your friends around to show them. That’s sick Henry. You’re sick.”

“Annette deserves better.”

“Don’t tell me what that woman deserves. With her husband dead she had no one left to truly care for her. Think about it … sure, I drugged her, tortured her, raped her, murdered her. But I was there for her. No one else came to visit. No one else stayed with her like I did. I was the nicest person she knew. That boring bitch had nothing better. I’m glad she’s dead and so is she.”

“She didn’t want to die … no matter how bad things were.”

“She didn’t want to give up. That’s not bravery it’s human arrogance. People are afraid of quitting. In truth people always want to die, every one of us … even you. Death is easy like that. She was my first. If she didn’t want it, I guarantee there wouldn’t have been a second.”

Henry stared the doctor down, shoulders slouched in rage. “It’s because you’re a coward. It’s bad enough you target women, but you couldn’t even start with a healthy woman.”

“I had to see if I could go through with it. I did. It worked.”

“Bullshit! Look at you! You can’t even chase two stupid bums without your drugs to keep you going! You’re weak! You didn’t choose a sick woman to see if you could actually go through with it. You did it because you didn’t want her to fight back. You were afraid … you were afraid that a strong target might actually fight back … then you’d be too damn scared to try again! You’re a coward.”

“Coward! Me? Careful what you point at others. Consider it … why do you think I chose you as my patsy? Look at you, you weak, pathetic, loner. A man so gutless he ran blindly into a burning building just to regain some sense of self-worth.”

Henry quietened.

“You see, I’m right. Fact is, I could have told you my intentions for you when we first met … and you’d be in this same situation now. You would have strolled straight out the hospital doors with your head wedged deep in sand. So many people out there wouldn’t be so gullible, but you ate it all up. I bet you didn’t even tell anyone what happened because you were so afraid. Don’t call me a coward, you wouldn’t be standing here if you’d ever grown a back bone.”

Henry flung his fist in blind rage. Too blind. He failed to connect with the target. The doctor had taken an effortless step back out into the hallway to dodge. For one instant he formed a cocky grin and seemed intent on continual gloating. All hint of confidence vanished when he began falling sideways, under force of an ominous silhouette bringing him tackling to the ground.

“Rum!” Sierra called.

The doctor reduced to the floor, Rum remained standing. The old man stood in the door frame, which he collapsed against.

Sierra leapt up to hug him, finding herself pulled cautiously back by Henry’s arms. “Rum, you’re okay!”

Gashed, bruised, panting and barely standing, the old bum stuck his thumb up. “Was … there … ever any … doubt. This guy … couldn’t even-”

Sierra and Henry couldn’t see it from the angle within the laundry room. It seemed a fist had jabbed him in the stomach. So the old bum slinked slowly to the floor, where the same hand lifted him back up. A second punched him in the face.

“What was that you said about gloating!?” the doctor roared.

Through the beating, Rum turned an eye to Sierra and Henry. No way they could get past with the two of them blocking the doorway. Drastic measures would be needed. Rum allowed himself to fall to the floor.

The doctor tried to pick him up, but Rum grabbed his hand and made effort to pull him down too. It didn’t work as well as he’d hoped, but it would work enough.

Rum sent out a groan sounding similar to the word, ‘run’.

So they did.

Henry squeezed round the doctor first with Sierra behind. The mad man freed an arm to snag the girl. So she struggled between Henry and the doctor, herself at the centre of a tug o’ war she could never win. Trying to free Sierra proved futile so Henry quit, deciding instead on the more tactical option of bashing the doctor in the side of the head. He didn’t dodge this time. He didn’t feel them either for that matter. Though Henry slashed out like an ant biting a rhino, the man didn’t have enough hands to deal with all three of their efforts combined, so he dropped Rum to deal with the nuisance known as Henry. That was a mistake.

Old Rum jumped on top the doctor’s back, wrapping arms around his throat and pulling him backward to the ground. Sierra still squirmed without give.

With the doctor partially subdued Henry traded his pathetic little punches to pathetic little kicks aimed straight for that pathetic little face of his. That was enough to cause a snarl on his face and two vengeful eyes to glare wider, so Sierra jammed her fingers in them. His hands snapped open, he let her go.

Rum grabbed the doctor, holding him still. Henry stopped kicking. The way was clear and it was time to make a move again. This time they didn’t need Rum bellowing orders for them to take the hint. Hand in hand, he and Sierra darted through the new opening almost immediately.

By time they left his sight, old Rum had been upturned. The beating started and ended with Rum left lying in a bloody puddle. He would not get up again.

The doctor’s damning echo rolled down the stone corridor. “Stay dead!”

***

Legs worn to the strength of jelly, Henry stumbled into the wall. Sierra, no longer so tired having carried herself less, stopped to offer reassurance.

“Move it you bloody pussy! Get us to the boiler room.”

Henry nodded with a replenishing gulp of his throat. “I-It’s … down here … I think.”

All this time they’d been running and now more than ever tiredness overwhelmed them. The basement layout caused it. How every corner rolled on with the same cavernous monotony, broken only by the odd fork on the end of another straight path. It looked as though this hospital had been built atop some ancient temple ground. Except this one came dotted with the occasional loosely stacked crates and odd slop bucket spilled along the side. As they ran these surroundings continued to repeat like the background reels of an old cartoon. It would take a creaking shriek to bring them to a startled halt. The noise pierced through the dull sound of silence. It came from the pipes above them. They were warping with sudden heat like the pipe system in a decrepit mansion.

“The power’s back on!” Sierra said.

“It’s just the heating system. See, the main lights haven’t even come back on yet.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means we need to find that boiler room.”

“Sort of waiting on you for that.”

Henry rested his hand on the wall, gasping for breath. “I know but … I was barely conscious at the time. Memory’s a little hazy.” He let his eyes follow the sound of creaking pipes running along the roof above. “The heat’s coming from the boiler room … we can find it by following the pipes.”

Sierra followed his eyes. “That sounds like a plan.”

Another sound pierced the hallway. This time nothing mechanical but the sound of a man wailing in a running fit. Not a wail of pain, fatigue or even remorse. It was a call of rage, pure hate storming their way.

The path of pipes proved true. Reefing open the heavy bulk of the boiler room door, the pair hurried through, quickly barring it shut with a broom handle.

Sierra at once fell back against the door, sliding to the floor. She wheezed and panted in some hope of rest, like Henry who did the same by sitting atop a blanketed crate.

Henry gazed round the room in tired haze to remember the way. A small glow from the coal fuelled boiler tinted the room to some degree, though it still lay mostly shadowed. It was somewhere in that shadow, amidst the interwoven pipes running from along the ceiling down into the floor, where he’d woken from his drugged induced state before. Even without light to see, he was sure this was the same boiler room. The fire exit should be somewhere in that shadow. No sooner did he stand up to investigate did the boiler room door rattle on an awesome bang. A thump, that rattling turned to thumping. Each boom seemed powerful enough to fling the door open. The bangs increased as thumps and punches became replaced with kicks and knees. Then they changed for something else entirely, something heavier being slammed into the door. The broom handle jumped in tune with sounds of cracking wood.

Spurred by these sounds, Henry grabbed and pushed Sierra into the shadow, where he charged like a human battering ram. They hurdled, almost blind, through the darkness, bumping into pipes and continuing till touching what he assumed to be the fire door. He pushed the bar down and opened into a flurry of snow.

They entered outside, into a tight side alley lined with boxes. It was the same one Henry remembered from before, with the same high wall to the main street on his left. Except now snow filled the grounds. Crates he might have used to leverage his way over the high wall lay sheeted half to the brim in snow. Henry at once tried to claw them free.

Realising the small window of time, Sierra shook Henry’s shoulder till he turned to her with desperate eyes lacking all common sense. It would take the thrashing bang emanating from the boiler room to really snap his senses awake.

“I got out this way before,” he whimpered. “We need to stack the boxes so…”

“Not this time. Come on.”

Sierra lead the way, limping instead to the right, out the alleyway and into the rear storage yard. In her haste she slipped on her dodgy leg, finding herself saved in Henry’s arms. Once again Henry carried both of them.

There came a sudden boom of slamming steel, sounding even over the howling wind. It seemed the doctor had proved successful in his effort to open the boiler door. With their slow pace it would take him but moments to catch up. Knowing that did little to hasten their fatigued pace.

Still, they limped and gasped their way till their aimless escape brought them to rows of shipping containers. They enveloped the area in neat single file rows, forming laneways between each like mazes of steel with no centre to speak of.

On the threshold to one of these tight lanes, Sierra tripped. Henry attempted to catch her but instead fell under her weight.

“My leg!” Sierra shrieked.

Henry checked the problem. She had tripped on a plank of wood left carelessly tossed to the ground. By time Henry mustered strength enough to lift her, a grim shadow fell over them both. The doctor stood above, a foreboding grin on his bloodied lips. The width of his shoulder blocked the entrance to this narrow lane between the containers.

“Henry, get out of here! Leave me.”

“I‘m not leaving you.”

“Please, Henry … run.”

Henry clenched his teeth as if to block out her words. Sneaking a glance to that plank of wood Sierra tripped over, he conjured thoughts of grabbing it. If only the opportunity were there he could smash it over that tormenting face up there. But it wouldn’t hurt much anyway, he needed something harder. He needed the doctor’s own weapon.

The doctor looked wryly at the sledgehammer in his hand. “Something got your eye? I don’t think it’ll do you any-”

He froze in his mocking on hearing a distant yelling smothered by the wind. It dimmed in and out from under the howling, appearing then disappearing. It sounded like a man’s voice calling from high up above, a man named Alex.

It drew their attentions high up to one of the top windows of the hospital, where a distant shape of a man hung out over the window’s edge to see down to this yard below. He seemed unaware of the lack of coherency granted by the noisy wind yet yelled at them all the same. And all the same, it did the trick.