The Deal (3 page)

The air was filled with the sound of glass
shattering and I could hear the angry voices of the officers inside
the cruiser. I quickly glanced at the dashboard clock, there was
now only twenty minutes left until the deal had to be completed or
I was looking at an eternal life of damnation.

‘
Don’t you dare try and pull away,
boy.’ I turned to see the passenger of the cruiser, an
overweight,
mustachioed
man with a bright red face,
struggling to reach for his service revolver. His
partner, on the other
hand,
was too busy trying to get the car
to start again.

It was as I watched him that I realized I
could still feel the soft purring of the Mercedes engine vibrating
through the chassis.

A quick glance through the broken windshield
and I could see the red and blue lights of the ambulance dance of
the nearby buildings like a cheap laser show as it continued on its
path to the hospital.

I realized I had to make a quick decision: If
I remained where I was I was busted and the deal would be broken.
If I put my foot down on the gas, sure I would reach the hospital
and the ambulance with my target, but I would also have these two
angry cops plus their backup to deal with.

I was damned if I did and damned
if I didn’t. But just when a sense of despair was starting to
creep
into
my gut, something sickening and
bizarre
happened.

The driver of the cruiser, angry and
frustrated at the lack of cooperation his vehicle was showing him,
turned the ignition key again. A low grunt, like an animal being
awakened from its slumber, emanated from under the hood of the
cruiser and then there was a flash so brilliant I had to shield my
eyes.

Within
seconds,
the air was
full with the sound of tortured screams. The sounds of men enduring
pain way beyond the imaginings of most people. When I could finally
open my eyes again I was greeted with the horrific site of the two
police officers engulfed in flames. The last thing I saw was the
anguished, pleading look on the
mustachioed
officers face and
then the skin on his top lip bubble and melt over the place where
his facial hair used to be.

I tried to reason with myself that
the whole thing had happened because of an electrical fault with
the cruisers ignition system, but in my
heart,
I knew fine
well that other, unseen forces,
were
at play and that made
feel even more
nauseous
than the site I had just
witnessed.

Either way, I simply did not have time to
dwell on how it all happened. All I knew was that one obstacle had
been removed, at least temporarily allowing me to carry on with
what needed to be done.

I offered no second glance at the burning
vehicle or its occupants as I put my foot down on the accelerator.
All I could think of was putting as much distance between myself
and the foul scent of burning flesh as possible.

Thankfully the Mercedes was still happy to
keep running for me, and so we sped off in the direction of the
ambulance and the hospital it was heading towards. There was no
doubt in my mind that it would not take long before more cops
arrived to find their friends charred remains, nor would it take
them long thanks to the wonders of CCTV footage to track me down at
the hospital.

I needed to finish the deal and
finish it quickly if I wanted to stand any kind of chance of making
a getaway. How ironic it would be, I thought, that I should
complete the
devil's
deal only to languish in prison
for the rest of my newly found eternal life. Now that would be the
true definition of irony.

The Mercedes roared to life once again as I
Pressed harder on the gas pedal. There was the briefest sound of
metal scraping against metal as my car freed its self from the
cruiser.

The Community General is one of
the smaller hospitals in New York, built primarily to serve the
local
neighborhoods
, which did not exude
wealth or status but in fact
were
at the lower rungs of the
ladder where no one would want to live. It was a squat looking
building made with more concrete than anything else. Its glass
windows, although brightly lit, seemed way too small like a pair of
ill-fitting spectacles.

There was a large parking area at
the rear of the building and a wide crescent area out front where
ambulances and other emergency vehicles could off-load the sick
and
wound
. A small patch of grass
sat
in front
of the concrete crescent with a large square
chunk of granite with the hospitals name boldly engraved in
it.

The ambulance carrying Mancini had
already reached the hospital and to my
dismay,
its rear
doors
were
hanging limply open.

As I drew closer I could see the
brightly lit interior of the vehicle was empty. Both the paramedics
and my target where already inside which meant I was going to have
to go public if I wanted to make the deal on time, which,
coincidentally
enough, had ten minutes left to go before it
would be broken.

Deciding that my car would be no use to me
regardless of what happened after midnight, I left it idling just a
few feet away from the ambulance.

As
I
was about to climb out
into the cold night air, and the blizzard that was accompanying it,
I reached over to the passenger seat where I remembered leaving the
.45 revolver, my trusted weapon of choice for most of the jobs I
took on.

My dismay grew when I quickly realized the
lethal weapon was no longer where I had left it. It occurred to me
that the jolt of the crash had probably sent it flying to the
floor, but a thorough search of the soft carpeted area around the
seat turned up nothing.

This night was just going from bad to worse. I
still had the golden bullet, handed to me by the dark lord himself,
safely tucked in my trouser pocket but it was no good without a gun
to fire it with.

Another thought did occur to me though as I
forced the door open and slid outside. All of the hospitals in the
lower Manhattan area always had armed guards. It would mean having
to get physical, but it was the only opportunity I had to obtain a
weapon I could use.

There was a slight tingling of fear running
down my back as the snow hit and melted against the soft skin of my
stubble coated face. I think this was due to the fact that there
was no certainty I would be able to get a good enough shot off to
kill this so called minion of Satan. I mean if a bullet straight to
his forehead isn’t going to do the job then another one is less
likely to make much of a difference.

I reconciled with myself that there wasn’t
much point on dwelling on that rather large problem, since if I was
unable to make the deal on time then it would all be for nothing
anyway and I would end up in the place no human ever wants to go,
experiencing the kinds of torture that only the devil himself could
dream up.

The heavy scent of disinfectant was
accompanied by a gust of warm air as the automatic doors to the
accident and emergency area of the hospital slid open revealing a
tired and bedraggled looking nurse behind the reception desk and
just a few homeless looking men dotted around the waiting
area.

As with most
hospitals,
everything looked clean and
germ-free
and there was very
little noise except for the sounds of someone being rushed to one
of the operating
theaters
for emergency surgery. I could
hear surgeons bark orders at their nurses and the clanging of a
metal bed carrying the patient himself as it was hurtled down the
hallway at breakneck speed.

What worried me as I stood there
letting in the cold and glancing around, was that I could see no
sign of a security guard. There was always at least one standing
guard near the main doors,
usually,
some guy who was more
inclined to hurt people than heal them.

‘
Can I help
you,
sir?’ Her
voice sounded as tired as she looked, and I could tell the nurse
behind the Formica coated desk would happily accept any chance to
get rid of me.

‘
Yes,
I
was involved
in a car crash just a few
minutes ago. My uncle Jim Mancini was in the passenger seat and the
paramedics have brought him here.’ I quietly prayed she did not
know about the bullet hole
in
his head, although I saw no
reason why she wouldn’t, after
all,
it was her job to know
these things.

‘
Mr.
Mancini is on his way to
theater
three. Just
head down that hallway there and you’ll find him.’ She may have
looked like a woman who had been awake for far too many hours but
her eyes
were
strangely alive and full of knowledge. It was
like she knew exactly why I was standing there
in front
of
her.

I followed her trembling finger as it arched
towards the hallway to my right. I gave her one last glance,
thanked her, and then made my way in the direction I had heard the
cacophony of sound a few seconds ago.

I still had no gun, but I somehow
felt like that wasn’t going to be a problem. Sure enough, as I made
my way down the hallway, the
fluorescent
lights almost
blinding in their brilliance, I could make out the padded jacket of
a security guard. As I got closer I noticed that his stance was
relaxed, and he was leaning against the wall.

He was outside the first operating theatre. He
was a tall black man with a large frame and demanding presence. I
was perfectly capable of fighting and had taken down foes larger
than myself but this guy was going to take a lot more time and
energy than I was in possession of at that moment.

The hallway offered no means of
hiding. There
were
no recesses in the walls, no
shadowy nooks where I could sulk until I had formed a plan. Worse
still, there was no way of creating a distraction other than simply
walking up to him and that seemed like it was going to be my only
viable option.

I was going to have to try and
hit
him
and hit him hard if I even wanted to just stun
him enough to grab his gun. I was just a few feet away from the
edge of the corridor where the hulk was waiting when an idea
suddenly occurred to me.

Heart pumping hard in my chest, I
reached into my trouser pocket and tightened my grip
on
the golden bullet. If this thing was meant to destroy a demon
and no special gun was required then that meant there was something
in or on the bullet which could help me beat him without a
gun.

Or it could just be the devils way of a cruel
joke. One last laugh at my expense before he came to take me away
and leave his so called friend free to be dispatched by a more
capable hit man than me.

Only one way to find out, I reasoned as I drew
closer to the guard.

‘
Hey,
man.’ I said, moving until I was less than a foot
away from the massive man beast of a guard.

His huge head turned to look down at me and
for the briefest of moments his expression was one of anger but it
was quickly replaced by surprise as I slammed my fist with the
golden bullet encased in it upwards and into the underside of his
chin.

There was a brief sound of skin being torn,
kind of like a sheet of paper being ripped from a writing pad, and
then the crack and squelch of bone, muscle and tendons being ripped
from their casing. Blood squirted in all directions from his
damaged arteries, soaking the walls, floor and even me, as his huge
head danced in the air for the briefest of moments before hitting
the ground with a thud.

Stunned, I ignored the small river
of blood streaming down my face, and watched the remainder of the
guards’ body first drop to its knees and then fall flat
onto
the floor, blocking the way for anyone who could not climb
over him.

I looked at the small, golden bullet in my
hand. It seemed to glow brighter than it had done earlier when I
took it from the man the world not only despised but respected out
of pure fear.

It took a few moments for me to
recover from my awe of what had just happened, but the constant
reminder that I was on a time limit forced me back
into
reality. I had probably only minutes left before the deal
would be broken.

Keeping that in mind I continued on down the
hallway, leaving the headless corpse of the security guard behind
for some other poor soul to discover, which I assumed in a busy
place like a hospital wouldn’t be long at all.