Fall from Grace (29 page)

The area was completely open to the wind, with no buildings to hide behind, nothing to protect me. In normal weather, I could probably have walked the few kilometers to the strip mall area, broken into one of the businesses, called 911, and waited in the heated building for the police to respond to the break-and-enter call. But it was at least minus 20 degrees Celsius, not as cold as it could get in the dead of winter here, but it was enough, especially with the wind-chill. I would last an hour, maybe less, since I didn’t have my jacket, only a sweater, and no gloves or toque.

Where did I lose those? Did they take them off me? I wondered.

They must have, in order to make the cold work faster on my body. I still had a pair of long underwear under my jeans, but the odds were still against me surviving for long in the cold.

These guys had picked their spot perfectly. But first, I decided, those pricks in the front seat would have to get me out of the car, and they would have to kill me before I would let them do that.

The car stopped in the middle of the road and the driver popped it into park. “This is where you get out,” he said, without turning around so I couldn’t see his face.

I said nothing, just sat in the middle of the back, my arms crossed in front of me. I knew one of them had to get out and open the door, because the locks in the back couldn’t be opened from the inside. The guy in the passenger seat slipped on his gloves, and without saying a word, got out of the car and flung open the back door on his side of the car. “Get out,” he commanded.

“Fuck you,” I replied.

“I said get the fuck out.”

“Fuck you.”

“Son of a bitch!” He leaned forward, his hands above the door. “I’ll fucking drag you out of there!”

“Come and get me, you motherfucker! I dare you!”

He stopped and backed up a step. The driver gave a short guffaw, but did nothing to help his partner. “Hurry up,” the driver said. “You’re letting out all the warm air.”

The other one stood up straight and grabbed his belt to adjust it. It was the typical intimidation routine, but I wasn’t scared of him. I had nothing to lose. He placed his right hand down by his right hip, clicking open a holster. “Listen, you piece of shit! I’m sick of fucking bastards like you fucking up the world, so you get out of this car now!”

“Fuck you!”

He pulled his gun out, getting into the two-fisted stance seen on every cop show and movie since forever. He leveled the pistol at my head. “Get the fuck out of the car now!”

“Come and get me, you fucker!”

There was a short click, like someone turning a key in a lock, as he flipped off the safety. Then there was a longer, deeper click that echoed so loud in the cold, clear air that I flinched, thinking he had shot me. But he had only cocked the pistol.

His voice was a monotone hiss and his phrasing came out as several one-word sentences. “Get. The. Fuck. Out.”

The lack of emotion in his demand showed that he was ready to shoot me, but I didn’t care. I was already dead. I knew that. There was really nothing I could do about that now. I would either die on the backseat of this car, or freeze to death on the side of the road, and I decided that I wasn’t going to let them take the coward’s way. I wasn’t going to let myself go down easy. They would have to take an active role in my death, get actual blood on their hands, by shooting me. I spat at him and taunted him, trying to force his hand.

“Go ahead! Blow my fucking head off! Blow my fucking brains out! I don’t care! It won’t bother me, ’cause I’ll be dead, and even if you dump my body in the street out here, you’ll still have to explain the blood, brains, and DNA all over your backseat! Plastic can’t protect everything, and you can detail it all you want, but something’s going to be left behind. You should know that. Something is always left behind, and you’ll be fucked!”

The tip of his pistol dropped for a second, came up again, held for a second, and then dropped again, this time for good. “Goddamn it! Son of a bitch!” he shouted as he rose out of his stance. I let out the breath I was holding, my hammering heart starting to slow with the realization that I had won this part of the showdown.

“Fuck this shit,” the other cop said from the driver seat, and another set of mosquito-type stings struck me in the neck. Everything erupted in another blast of fire and jolt of agonizing energy. My body stiffened like a board, but this time the attack was much shorter, only a brief second, and I was released, my resistance destroyed. I was dragged out of the car, flopping like a fish, and left on the side of the road. Lying on my back. My body twitched in a series of aftershocks. Daggers of pain danced about my body, turning my skin inside out, it seemed. Arctic air, burning like acid, burst into my lungs and throat, as I gasped for breath.

My eyes blinked with tears as the pain dissipated, as my brain switched from its primitive mode into something more human. I saw that the sky was clear, the stars scattered across the dark night, and the moon bathing the air in a pale blue glow. There was no sound, except for the distant crackling of ice crystals in the air. The car was long gone, or at least I thought it was. I had lost all sense of time. But I couldn’t have been on the ground for too long, because I was still alive and the cold was tearing at me with more vengeance than the Taser. Still, I didn’t move. I just blinked and stared at the beauty of a clear winter sky.

34

Get up!

No.

Get up!

No. I don’t want to.

If you don’t get up, you’ll die.

I don’t care if I die.

Of course you do.

Get up!

No!

Get up!

Leave me alone!

You can make it.

I said, Leave me alone, Grace!

You can do it, Leo. You can make it.

What the fuck do you know, you stupid Indian? Did you make it? Huh?

Don’t worry about me. Worry about yourself. Get up. You can do it.

No. I can’t.

Yes you can. But only if you get up off this road.

What’s the point, Grace? What’s the point?

The point is to live.

You didn’t.

I know I didn’t.

They don’t tell me how to live my life. Or how to die.

But I didn’t have a choice.

Sure you did. You could have stopped walking the streets. Cleaned yourself up. Gotten a real job.

It’s not that easy, Leo. And you know it. Besides, it wasn’t my fault. I was murdered.

So was I.

But you’re not dead yet. I was dead before I hit the ground. You aren’t. You can still get up.

But I don’t want to get up. I want to stay here.

No. You don’t. Nobody does.

You’re too young to know, but sometimes people do.

And I’m always going to be too young. But I know enough, I know that you don’t want to give up.

You don’t know shit.

What about your kids? They know you’re alive.

So what?

So stay alive for them, Leo. That’s the least you can do.

But I keep fucking it up, over and over again, so what’s the point?

You don’t want to end up like me. I’m dead, so what’s your excuse? What’s ours?

I don’t understand?

What’s your excuse for lying here in the middle of the road and not getting up?

I’m tired. I’m tired of it all.

But that’s still not an excuse.

But what’s the point of it all?

The point is to get up. Just do that and figure out the other stuff later
.

*   *   *

I got up. I sat up in the middle of the road.

There wasn’t too much in the way of windchill out here; it was worse downtown with all the high buildings to funnel the air into harsh gusts. But the cold still ripped into me, scratching and slashing at my exposed skin like jagged shards of glass. I was up, but I had to do something quick, or the weather would kill me right where I was. I couldn’t stay where I was, because I was in the middle of nowhere. I had to move. The strip mall area was only two or three kilometers away, so it was possible, but I had to fix things first before I did.

I pulled off my boots, undid my pants, and took off my jeans, placing them underneath my butt. And I took off the socks, followed by the long underwear. I ignored the cold that thrashed at my exposed legs, and pulled the long johns over my head—the lingering scent of urine and sweat seeped through the fabric—and tied the legs once around my head and a couple times around my neck.

The cold diminished the instant my head was covered and my face protected. My breath misted against my face. With eighty percent of body heat escaping through the head and face, I knew I now had a better chance.

Once my head was covered, I wasted no more time. I pulled on my jeans and slipped on my boots. I pulled the socks over my hands, and once I stood up, I shoved them into my pockets. I headed in the direction of the strip-mall buildings, using the feel of the concrete of the road as a guide, because I was blind. I tried not to think of the bone-chilling air, tried to ignore my legs. I was angry with the cold and my shivering body, and focused on one step at a time. One foot in front of the other.

I took ten steps but worried I might trip or walk into the ditch, so I peeked one eye through the pee-hole to see where I was. The buildings weren’t any closer, but I was still in the middle of the road. I wasn’t worried about my two assailants coming back, because they were cowards who had done their deed and were long gone. I didn’t worry about any traffic coming my way, because if anybody else came down this road, they would see me before I saw them, and I’d be saved. Nobody would drive past me in this weather.

My exposed eye started to tear, and my tears started to freeze, so I closed the pee-hole and continued walking. I walked twenty steps before I looked again; still no closer. Over time, I became comfortable with my sense of direction and less worried about walking off the road, so my steps increased between each look, to thirty, forty, fifty, seventy-five. The buildings seemed to be getting closer, but my tears that froze instantly made it difficult to see.

My body stopped shivering and the burning in my legs and toes faded until I could barely feel anything below my waist. Walking became more difficult with every step. I jogged a bit, but that only aggravated the remnant pain in my ribs from the time Jackie’s neighbor beat me. So I went back to walking. My shoulders and neck throbbed with the pain of keeping them hunched against the cold. Breathing was almost impossible.

I did make it to the strip-mall buildings, and even though I felt a brief gush of relief, I knew I was only halfway there. I had to get into one of these buildings somehow and I knew there were would be no unlocked doors. This was the industrial equivalent of the suburbs, and all doors would be locked.

The only way to get in was to break in a door, but the ones at the back were strong safety doors with no glass. The front doors were all glass, which I could probably kick in with my boots, but they, too, had another inner safety door that a tank couldn’t get through. The only breakable material was the large picture windows at the front of each business.

But these buildings were well taken care of, so there were no rocks, no large pieces of debris lying around I could use to smash a window. My pocket contained only my wallet, keys, and some coins, but the coins only clattered off the glass and fell to the sidewalk.

I thudded the side of my fist against the glass but it was like hitting a brick wall. The only reaction was pain in my wrist that radiated into my shoulder and almost knocked me flat. The glass was thick and the little sticker at the bottom right-hand corner told me it was “SAFE-T Glass, Industrial Strength Against Breakage.” I kicked the glass but it only vibrated slightly. I threw my body against it and the glass flexed and vibrated and bounced me back. I fell on my ass, but got up quickly, tore the long underwear off my head, and threw myself against the glass again.

“Break, you fucker, break!” I screamed, body-checking the glass over and over. It vibrated like a leaf in the wind but it wouldn’t break. I screamed like a karate freak and did everything I could, threw my body, kicked with my boots, drummed with my hands, but the glass only shook in response. It wouldn’t break.