Sleeping Policemen (31 page)

He sensed rather than heard Vergil Gutman enter the bunker—the slow draft of displaced air, the subtle drop in temperature, as though an enormous shadow had fallen over them.

Sue's body stiffened against his. She screamed—a harrowing shriek that chilled his blood—and pushed away from him, her wrist slipping from his grasp. Her shoulder knocked painfully against him, throwing him off balance. He grabbed for her, felt her copper tresses slip through his fingers as she slid away, her back to the dank wall.

Gutman stepped out of the curtained doorway.

Strength at long last abandoned him and Nick slid to the floor, the scrape of the cinderblock against his jacket as harsh as Gutman's laughter. He tried to lift Evans's .45 and could not, his arm—

—
his
good
arm
—

—as useless as his father's legs.

Gutman grinned.

“Patience, my dear Mr. Laymon, is a virtue. And an essential in this sort of business, I fear. Take marksmanship, for example; it's all about patience. You must take the proper stance—like so.” He spread his massive legs, rested his weight comfortably atop them. He pointed the gun at Nick's heart. “Hold your weapon in both hands, your elbows slightly bent and your muscles relaxed, and then
squeeze
the trigger—”

“Please, no, don't kill him—” Sue, the words barely coherent, a rush of anguished sobs.

“Be still, Ms. Thompson. I'll get to you soon enough.”

“No, please, I'll do any—”

“Shhhh,” Gutman said. “Any last words, Mr. Laymon?”

Nick swallowed. He said nothing, his eyes focused only on Gutman's thick finger, wedged between the trigger guard and the trigger.

“No?” Gutman said. “Well, again let me express my sorrow that we could not come to an agreement, you and I. Perhaps in another life, yes?”

And now the finger whitened as Gutman began to exert pressure on the trigger. Nick closed his eyes.

“No please—” Sue began, and then the sound of her voice changed, a note of wonderment: “Finney?”

At first Nick thought he must have misheard her, his perceptions stunned, his mind garbled. But she said it a second time, triggering a feverish montage in his mind: Finney's hand closing over the bullet in the moment before Evans appeared at the trunk, the cruiser slamming headlong into Oscar and the building beyond, a glimpse of the trunk flying open in the rearview mirror.

Wild hope surged through Nick. Finney, he thought. Alive, alive—

Nick opened his eyes. Gutman towered over him, standing as he'd been standing since the beginning of time. A smile pulled at his lips; he shook his head. But Nick could see something else as well: the doubt that flickered in his eyes. Gutman swiveled and with the barrel of his gun drew back the black curtain.

Nothing.

Only the darkness of the room beyond, the occasional flicker of a faraway monitor. Nothing.

In that moment Nick realized that there would never be anyone there, that there had never really been anyone there. He was alone, utterly alone. His mother, his father, Alex St. Johns, Tuck, Senator Durant, Gillespie, Stillman, most of all Finney—gone, all gone. The universe yawned, showed him its aching emptiness.

There was only him.

Gutman turned back, shook his head, and said, “Alas, Ms. Thompson, I fear you are mistaken—”

The bunker roared with thunder, detonations bouncing between the gray walls, seeming to shake the room apart. Nick screamed and moved to cover his ears—to block out the clamor, the world—and discovered Evans's .45 bucking and spitting at the end of his arm.

The Pachyderm stood motionless in the doorway, a bemused look rising like a flush across his face, his right eye—now softened by a film of tears—meeting Nick's. His left eye was a gaping hole. Gore leaked down his cheek in a small runnel. The tumor that deformed his lower face had split open, a hash of tissue and blood. His immaculate suit was bloody, too, a moist welter of flesh and bone.

He remained motionless, staring with his one good eye at Nick. His gun clattered to the concrete floor. His lips quivered, parted slightly. A huge, pink spit bubble formed there and burst.

Slowly, after what seemed years, he toppled forward, like a great tree being felled. His body hit the concrete slab with an enormous, wet
smack
. The black curtain blew back a final time, revealing nothing.

Nick let go of the .45 and slid the rest of the way down the wall. Pain flared brightly, a storm-tide rolling in. His gaze fell on the arm folded in front of him, Finney's watch inches from his nose.

4:41.

From the other room, his father's voice:
Come home, Nick
.

Movement: Sue crawling across the floor, curling into the crook of his good shoulder, her ravaged hands clutched between her breasts. Gently, so gently, he closed his numb fingers over her hands. He thought to say something, words he had said to her only once before, that night in her moon-washed bedroom, when he knew she could not hear him.
I love you
, he whispered, and he didn't know if he had managed to say the words out loud.

Nick closed his eyes, focusing on the sound of Sue's breathing and her bandaged hand beneath his grip. A sound he'd been hearing for a while turned into a wall of sirens, an army of them. He wondered briefly whether the cops were coming to rescue them or to finish them, and then, as the waves of pain rolled through him with greater intensity, he found that he could not think at all.

Come home, Nick.

And so he surrendered himself to the black depths where pain could not reach him for a while, dreaming himself at last back into the Acura as it jolted over an endless series of speed bumps, the crash and roar of countless sleeping policemen, of Gulf breakers dragging him home to Glory.

About the Authors

Dale Bailey lives in North Carolina with his family and has published three novels:
The Fallen, House of Bones
, and
Sleeping Policemen
(with Jack Slay Jr.). His short fiction, collected in
The Resurrection Man's Legacy and Other Stories
, has won the International Horror Guild Award and has twice been nominated for the Nebula Award. You can find him online at
www.dalebailey.com
.

Jack Slay Jr. teaches English and servant leadership at LaGrange College in Georgia. In addition to the novel
Sleeping Policemen
, written with Dale Bailey, he has written short fiction for
Realms of Fantasy, Cemetery Dance, The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases, Talebones
, and other publications. He is married to Lori; together they have three sons: Kirk, Justin, and Reed.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2006 by Dale Bailey and Jack Slay Jr.

Cover design by Mauricio Diaz

ISBN: 978-1-4976-5063-3

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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New York, NY 10014

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EBOOKS BY DALE BAILEY

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