A Vagrant Story (48 page)

“Alex!” Sierra cried.

Henry lunged for the sledge hammer, quickly prying it from the doctor’s grip he held it aloft and thumped it into the man’s face. Though it felt to Henry like a deadly blow, the doctor merely fell down, grunting curses as he rubbed the pain away.

At once Henry dropped the hammer to lighten their load. Grabbing Sierra by the hand, they rushed deeper into the corridor of storage containers. With Sierra in arm, Henry rounded corner after tightly weaving corner. Though they had no place to run to, they couldn’t stop.

A damming roar signalled the doctor’s recovery. The sudden, and quickly nearing, tempo of crunching snow under foot suggested they‘d left a clear trail of footprints behind.

Perhaps it was the fear of the roaring that caused Sierra to slip. Henry caught her in time, pulling her back up. At that moment the girl’s eyes widened with hope when one sign of salvation appeared straight ahead.

There was a single frame glass doorway on the end of this straight, all tucked down here like a lone portal forgotten amidst all these crates. At that moment their movement hastened despite fatigue. In that same moment the crunching footfalls of their pursuer switched to thumping charges, booming in the quiet of this corridor like the last gunfire on the eve of a great battle.

The doctor’s sudden insistence triggered the pair into a greater sense of hope. If the door had been locked the man would have slowed, confidently taken his time, like he had for the basement access door. The door, they knew, would be unlocked.

With all hope they charged into it, and went straight through, tumbling into darkness until landing flat on a cold tiled floor. What light seeped through the window from the fog lights showed them enough of this cafeteria to get their bearings. At once they began barricading the door with tables and chairs.

With nothing but a sloppily formed pile holding it shut, Henry turned for the only other doorway in the room, a double door which should take them to the first floor of the main building. Henry grabbed the handle, and pulled, and pulled.

“It’s locked!”

“What do we do?”

The barricaded door began to rattle. In just one push, and one great bang, the makeshift barricade jumped a whole yard back. Henry ran to hold it shut.

“Hide behind the counter. I’ll … hold him off.”

“Henry?”

“You can’t do anything here … you have to-”

The barricade collapsed. The door swung open then that man burst in like an invader to his rival’s throne room. How Henry fell to the floor and crawled away only stood to amplify such an image.

His eyes settled to Henry down there on the tiles, crawling away in terror. He grinned at the man‘s futile state, switching his attention to Sierra who at once took cover behind the cafeteria cash register.

She attempted to hide behind what distance the countertop provided between herself and those arms reaching for her. She ducked back and dodged the snatching grabs for as long as she could. It wasn’t long. He snared her throat with one hand, and punched her with the other.

Henry, still reduced to the floor, lunged for the doctor’s legs. Hands wrapped round tight, he held and squeezed.

In utter passiveness, the doctor dropped Sierra to the floor then leaned down to lift Henry by the scruff of the neck. Holding Henry in the air, he stared into the little man’s eyes as if to contemplate delivering a worse thrashing as he had to the girl. The doctor smirked then merely tossed him away to the floor.

That trace amount of pity, for better or worse, wouldn’t last long. When the doctor did return attention to Sierra, he saw her lying there unconscious. She would wait there for him. His patsy wouldn’t.

Sensing an imminent change of heart, Henry crawled away desperately till his back pressed against those double doors. Shaken by this sudden contact Henry sprang up to tackle the doctor blindly.

Smack. The doctor walloped his face with something, something hard. Henry fell back against the door and for the briefest of moments flickered in and out of consciousness.

With his back again pressed against the only door between isolation and salvation, Henry watched as the doctor drew over him, standing but a foot in distance.

The doctor held that sledgehammer triumphantly in hand. “Remember this? You really should pick up after yourself, Henry. You‘d leave less incriminating evidence behind, that‘s for sure.”

Henry groaned a mindless defence.

“I have to admit it’s been a pleasure. Certainly, I’d hoped for the police to catch a live suspect rogue out on the streets, far away from here. At least this way I won’t have to listen to you cry about your innocence on the news day after day. The media won‘t get their live convict to boo and jeer, so I’ll give them a hero instead - me. Sure this is inconvenient, but at least dead men can‘t cry innocent. Goodbye Henry.”

The one some people called a dud craned his neck up without arm strength for defence. He watched as that mad man raised his shoulders on high, the top of that sledgehammer gleaming in darkness. The doctor inhaled for the final strike.

Henry prayed behind tightened eyes.

The room shook with a thunderous shriek. The shrieking charged greater and greater, reverberating throughout this room, throughout this floor, throughout this hospital until a great and powerful explosion of light stormed in throughout the room. All shrieking ceased into a slow fade until there was nothing, only light wrapped around the darkened silhouette of his tormentor.

Henry squinted against the ominous glow until he could see a figure walking toward him. Wrapped in the glow of pure light the figure stepped toward them with proud duress, confident ease and full understanding of this strange occurrence. The figure came closer, clothes hanging loosely, swaying robe like with his gentle walk. A beard waved in the light, gloriously swaying to right on an unknown wind.

The figure raised a hand, just one hand.

That was all Henry saw until the doctor’s legs crumbled and blood spurted from his lips. The light vanished by the time he’d hit the ground.

Henry rubbed his eyes to focus then looked up to see the one who saved him. The light almost gone the figure came to full form, and that glorious beard of his stumbled quite promptly from its pedestal. No longer did that beard sway gloriously on the wind, it merely lay in tangles, gritted solid so it merely stuck out that way. The robe wasn’t so much one, so much as it was a long grey coat reaching down to the knees. Then there was that face with nothing glorious to speak of, nothing unusual save the oddly familiar pattern of scabbed burn marks covering one side of his face, hiding somewhat behind that sickly blondish grey beard of his. Familiar indeed.

The frail, gracelessly postured man rubbed his eyes as if only woken. “It’s you! Like you know, I mean it’s you again! It is you? Or isn‘t it?” His voice came slow and slurred, like some poor evolution of an Irish accent.

A smile found its way creeping across Henry‘s scabbed lips. It quickly broke into a light fit of laughter. “I-It’s you again. I can’t believe it’s you!” he returned.

It was him - that man. They’d met once before on a subway train. He was a senile old hobo who made them feel so uncomfortable as to force them to change carriage. The same senile old man Henry and Alex later found laying in a ditch and summoned an ambulance for.

“It’s you!” Henry began to laugh. “They brought you here!?”

“Sure did!“ the old man replied enthusiastically. “Say … who’s your friend here?” The ragged old hobo indicated the doctor plastered to the floor.

“Just some guy.”

The old hobo cocked his eyes at Henry, who now sat hunched into himself in hysterical laughter. “Looks like you got some serious issues there, like you know.” And with that the hobo too began laughing for no apparent reason. No apparent reason was needed to laugh.

From behind the countertop, the downed Sierra began to stir back to her feet. Leaning on the counter for leverage she peeped over to witness a far different scene from the one she’d left. The doctor downed to the floor … Henry and some strangely familiar old man laughing, almost manically, over the unconscious body.

“Did … we win?” Sierra muttered.

Henry stopped laughing, as the hobo did in kind.

“Why me?” Henry said. “Why does all this have to happen to me? God hates me.”

“Probably,” the hobo stated with little purpose.

“Where did that light come from anyway?” Henry asked.

“Fog lights outside. Power came back on y’know … guess  it must have overloaded the lights, like you know.”

“Really?” Henry sighed peacefully. “Wait … how did you get in here?”

“Fell asleep after eating … guess they forgot about me.”

“Lucky. Don’t suppose you know another way out of here?”

“You’re leaning on it.”

“It’s locked.”

“No it isn’t. Y‘gotta push it.”

The old hobo demonstrated by pushing the door in. It swung open and Henry fell back to the floor.

Laying flat on the cold tiles, Henry couldn’t help but laugh. “A push door!”

Chapter 35

Their tormentor subdued, the four tramps were gathered together and taken back to one private room set specially for them. The room certainly looked nicer than those they’d previously experienced. Unfortunately they had trouble reeling in the luxury of it all. They didn’t know whether it was a gift for heroes, or the holding cell for criminals. For all they knew that mad man waited in a room just like this, with his friends of staff at bedside asking all the questions he wanted them to ask.

At least they felt safe knowing the police were on the scene. Even though they made no formal introduction they did show up briefly to snatch Henry away for questioning. Their choice in suspect could only mean they gave the doctor his say first. The lack of security on their room suggested they weren’t taking it all as seriously as he might have hoped … yet.

Sure they could have clicked the television over to a news channel for information, if the police hadn’t taken Henry, the only person capable of standing under his own weight. They questioned the ethics of leaving three bed stricken patients in front of a TV with the remote on the other end of the room.

Sierra’s leg hung suspended in a cast. It would strain her neck just to see half the television screen. Alex remained in the same state. Now he refused to admit his clear exhaustion after his relatively minor, yet pivotal, rescue attempt. Rum’s wounds ran so deep they required little explanation.

In their waiting they spared little effort relishing that rarest of luxuries some people called a heating system. In this warmth they could hide under the soft bed sheets which these days felt so alien to them, and by all means to anyone forced into this hospital. The restored power, and therefore the television, set the cherry on the cake. Amidst it all, their came an all round feeling that jail mightn’t be so bad for one day of this comfort. And in this frame of mind they began to miss the old novelties they used to have. And on that frame of mind the thought of jail became ever more worse.

All those comforts came for the most part in vain. It’s difficult to make the most of anything when mummified stiff to a bed. To Sierra and Rum, thick sheets were no more than added strain. Television, with all its benefits, became nothing more than noise and irritating flashing lights. Alex enjoyed it all none the less. The mindless allure of the television screen provided a safe distraction from the less than positive chatter of a certain old bum.

“We’re screwed,” he’d say. “Cops ain’t gonna listen to us.” And so forth.

In time the door clicked open. Henry came slumping into the room like the living dead, plonking himself on a stool at the end of Sierra’s bed. For some time he sat there in silence despite all the gawking eyes.

Then he’d sigh and say something like: “We’re screwed. The cops will never believe us over a doctor.”

Rum leaned over the side of his bed to grab his coat from the floor. Pulling a cigarette from the pocket, he placed it to his lips, lit it, and said, “The hell’s up with you? Alex is sick as fuck, Sierra’s legs are buckled and I’ve got the shit beat out of me three times straight, and you look the worst out off all of us!”

Henry drew attention to the hospital robe he was now wearing. “The police took my clothes … even my glasses. The doctor told me the clothes he gave me belonged to one his victims. They must know. They trust his word and not mine.”

“They have to examine both sides,” Alex stated.

“You so sure?” Rum said. “From what you told me this guy’s obviously done some serious forward planning. Those cops are probably sitting in some interrogation room nodding their heads to every word he says.”