The gun was raised up as high as I could raise it, ready to come down into her skull.
The fear in her face was as deep as the hurting in her eyes.
She jerked, regurgitated over and over, turned her face away from me.
Her bile came fast, stained me, surprised me, and I tried to cover her mouth, tried to force her to choke and drown in her heated vomit. But I lost my grip and she turned her head, moved away from me. I rolled away from her and the grunts that came from her misery, left her gagging; that urgent move I made magnified all the agony I felt in an exponential fashion. Hands soiled with sand and bile, I didn’t let go of that gun. Kept that unloaded weapon in my hand, made sure it was out of her reach in case she tried to take it, in case she had bullets nearby and tried to reload it.
I reached for her, did my best to grab her with my good arm, that movement giving me anguish.
She rolled over in the sand, moved out of my reach. She struggled to get ahold of herself, failed, eyes glazed over, her expression miserable, her breathing sharp and sudden. The blood between her legs spread as sand and sea washed across her face and into her braided hair. Her mouth opened but no words came out. The strawberry blonde’s shoes had been kicked off her feet, were in the sand, on their sides like capsized ships. Her eyes searched for mine, her pain so deep and severe that it had stolen her ability to breathe, and without breath there was no sound, no cry for help, no warning others.
Jaw tight, I gritted my teeth, shook my head, every inhale a curse, every exhale the same.
Hawks. Had to get to Hawks.
No noises came from the main house, none I could hear over the sea and the singing frogs.
That was terrifying.
If Hawks was dead, I’d come back to the beach. If I had to crawl down the tile and drag myself across broken glass to get back to the white sands, I’d do that. My glare back told the strawberry blonde she didn’t want to see me again. If I came back I would drag her out into the sea. I’d put a plastic bag over her head. I’d do whatever I could do to kill her on these shores. I struggled to my feet, left the strawberry blonde gagging, dealing with her own agony, trying to get up and unable to shake away her pain.
She bled like she had been shot. Like she was dying. But dying wasn’t dead.
I moved by the woman, limped in the direction of the main house, clothes soaked and covered in sand, my weight tons, sweating profusely. I raised my leg to move up the tiled steps that led past the infinity pool, a pool that had a dead body floating in its deep end.
I limped into broken darkness . . . unarmed . . . the tile damp . . . sticky . . . pools of liquor on the floor . . . silhouettes down on the tile . . . not moving . . . not moaning . . . stilled bodies . . . clicked a light on . . . looked for Hawks . . . it was a gruesome sight . . . a sight that would’ve made a weaker man scream . . . blood by the gallon . . . more broken glass . . . pots and pans turned over . . . every concoction that had been made stained the floors and walls . . . most was on the floor in the kitchen . . . three bodyguards . . . steak knives in their throats . . . butcher knives in their chests . . . mixtures of boiled honey, broken glass, poison fruit, and hot sauce in two of their faces . . . faces that were no longer recognizable . . . silenced guns at their sides . . . red rivers came together and created crimson ponds around the weapons they had brought to this battle.
None of these corpses was the shell that had contained Hawks.
Not too far away from them was one boot.
It was Hawks’s boot.
Something inside of me sank, sank hard and fast.
I swallowed, prepared for a new surge of misery, agony that almost pulled me down to the floor. I struggled. Managed to pick up two nine-millimeters, both loaded, not fully, at least six shots spent between the two. Six shots meant Hawks could’ve been hit six times. From a glance I couldn’t tell if those shots had been put in the walls. My heart ached. Didn’t know if one of those shots had been a kill shot. Didn’t know if this was it, the last of that killing crew, or if there were a dozen more hired killers waiting in the wings. As long as Detroit was alive, there would always be someone.
This property had become a tropical graveyard.
I dropped the unloaded .22, let it crash to the tile.
Hawks. Had to find her.
During my next heartbeat, left arm tender and unusable, I used my right arm, stuffed one of the loaded guns inside the waist of my wet pants. I couldn’t open and close my left hand, not the way I wanted to, but it was good enough to pull the trigger on a gun. My left arm might have been out of commission, but my left hand would have to stay in this fight. It wasn’t until then that I paused. Not until then did I realize how much noise I had made, how much my panic had taken over.
Looking for movement, I listened for any noise, hobbled. Water dripped from my clothing, each drop as loud as a gong, each granule of sand the same; my shoes squeaked. I moved at a snail’s pace across the tiled floor, a second silenced gun in my right hand, the business end pointed straight ahead. I followed a trail of blood, the pain in my heart a thousand times stronger than a jellyfish sting.
There was movement. A struggle in the darkness. Someone was a few feet away from me; the roar from the waves no longer swallowed that faint sound. Gripping the wall to maintain my balance, I rounded the corner, the gun leading the way. Two wide-brimmed hats were in the hallway. Another man was on the ground. His legs kicked in slow motion, white tennis shoes scrapping the tile, running in place, trying to get away from this firefight, or maybe he was chasing his dreams. A gun was in his right hand, a weapon I stepped on. My weight crushed his fingers, made him cringe, then I held the wall and kicked the gun away. That sound betrayed my position to whoever was waiting up ahead.
The man on the ground, he reached for me, tried to grab my ankle.
With a silenced
pop
I stilled his movement the same way he would have stilled mine.
I looked back, expected to see the strawberry blonde. Gun in hand, I
wanted
to see the strawberry blonde,
wanted
her to come after me,
wanted
to pull the trigger and finish her before she could regroup.
No one was there. Not yet.
In front of the dead man were bloody footsteps, a thin trail that led to the next corner.
Someone around that corner was breathing hard, trying not to be heard.
Could be one person lying in wait. Could be many.
I took the second gun out, held it in my left hand, a hand that didn’t want to work but had no choice. I leaned against the wall, let the wall hold me up as I inched toward that breathing, guns leading the way, spied back as I inched forward, my mind on the assassin I had left on the beach, knew she could rise up from the sands and come back inside this compound.
I had to move forward. I rounded that corner.
That was where I found Hawks.
In agony.
She was down. Her long hair was loose, as if it had been pulled free in a fight. Her blouse was ripped. A gun in each hand, both guns pointed at me, waiting, as soon as I turned that corner.
The jellyfish sting ached, the pain excruciating, but I was still moving.
She trembled, her eyes focused, relaxing when she saw it was me. Her guns lowered but weren’t put away. Hawks was anxious, her haunting eyes telling me she remained in battle mode.
I lowered my guns, my left arm appreciating that moment of rest. My right hand, that gun remained in shooting position while I glanced behind me. Nothing was there.
I limped closer to Hawks.
I was relieved. It didn’t show, my every movement frantic and agonizing, but that was how I felt.
Her eyes told me she felt the same way.
I held up one finger. That told her that at least one was left. I pointed back toward the beach, back in the direction I had left the strawberry blonde. Hawks nodded, then pulled her hair from her face.
Hawks grimaced; her agony showed in her sweaty face as she held up a fist.
That fist meant zero; none were left that she knew of.
We knew that didn’t mean all were disposed of, that we were out of trouble.
More could be on the way. More could be here.
Hawks had on one boot. The other foot was bloodied. One glance at her, remembering all the downed soldiers I had passed, told me all I needed to know. They had come and tried to catch her off guard. Maybe they saw a wounded woman, underestimated her. Or had demanded to know where I was, then fucked up and took their eyes off her for one deadly moment. She had stepped on glass during her battle. As long as we were trapped, the details of what had happened were irrelevant.
I gave Hawks my hand, tried to pull her to her feet, but my shoulder wouldn’t let me do that. Her belt was at her side. She tossed me the end with the buckle, wrapped the other end around her wrist, and I used my weight, found leverage, grimaced with agony, and pulled her back up to her foot. Her boot almost slipped from underneath her, and that simple move almost pulled me down to the tiled floor. A rush of agony made me stumble, but I held on, my groin on fire, flames erupting from my shoulder.
We took our wounds down the hallway, Hawks with a gun in each hand, hopping on one foot, me with a gun in each hand, groin ablaze, using the wall to stay upright. Two crippled soldiers on the move.
Had to get Hawks situated. I poured alcohol over her bloodied foot, her muffled curses and tense face screaming that it burned like hell. Then I found rags and struggled to help her wrap her foot.
Hawks was taken care of for the moment, but she was in too much pain to move.
I struggled, pulled my shirt open, exposed my left forearm, where the jellyfish had attacked me, hoped it wasn’t a Portuguese man-of-war—if it was there was nothing I’d be able to do to stay alive long enough to make a difference. Hawks held her guns, became my guard as I moved as fast as I could, tried to move without panicking, had to move and watch out for the enemy.
The jellyfish sting, adrenaline couldn’t mask its pain.
Couldn’t use fresh water; the change in pH could release more venom. I searched, looked at all the shit we had pulled out of the cabinets. The wound begged me to rub it, but I didn’t. Alcohol. Spirits. Ammonia. Urine. If it wasn’t a common jellyfish sting any of those remedies would make the venom release and do what others had failed to do.
A jellyfish sting could finish what Detroit had started.
Shivered. Had to deal with this now. One pot was left on the stove. The one I had put on the stove. The one that didn’t have broken glass and honey and poisonous fruit. Water still boiling. I made my way to the pot, poured that boiling water on my wound, water that felt like liquid fire, wanted to scream, teeth tight, trying not to black out, felt as if I was going into shock.
I took a few deep breaths. Poured the rest of the hot water on the injury. The wound had to be neutralized before I went on. And the tentacles had to be removed. Had to keep my good hand from touching the tentacles or that would be like getting stung again. I refused to let the agony from the hot water slow me down. The empty pot dropped on a dead man. His body stole the noise before it rolled away to the tile. I grabbed a fork. Dug the tentacles out of my body the best I could. Then I dropped the fork and picked up a steak knife, used its edges to dig in my skin and remove any leftover nematocysts.
Sweat rained from my forehead; my own salt blinded me until I wiped it all away.
Tried not to panic. I needed baking soda, needed ice, needed antihistamines, something in the diphenhydramine family, the irritation strong and demanding, but I’d have to let my skin remain irritated until I could find something on the level of Benadryl. In this moment my dying was nothing.
With that done, I was going to hobble back to the beach.
The woman with the strawberry blonde hair, I had a bullet with her name on it.
But when I made it to the back door and limped to the end of the infinity pool, she was gone.
The footprints in the sand showed me her escape route, showed me she had stumbled, fallen, crawled, made it to her feet, stumbled again, did what she had to do to get back toward the waters.
More weapons or people could be in the direction she had gone.
I backed away, used a column as a shield as I searched for her in the night.
I didn’t see her. Her capsized shoes were no longer in the sand.
I waited. Listened.
Not too far out I heard the rumble of a motor. She had made her way to a dinghy—not the one we had stolen, that one was in the opposite direction. The stars above highlighted her escape. The waters rocked her, made her a bobbing and moving target. I raised the gun at an angle, above the dinghy, fired until it was empty. With the second gun, I did the same. Fired up at an angle, tried to make bullets rain down on her. The kick from the gun gave me agony, but I didn’t stop shooting, hoped to hit her with a lucky shot. The wind, the distance, the movement of the dinghy, each shot had a one-in-a-million chance of being pulled downward by gravity and finding a target made of flesh and blood.
Still, I tried.
If I didn’t hit that runaway assassin I wanted to wound the dinghy, pierce that floating inner tube, kill her horse, make it sink into the bowels of Davy Jones’s locker. On the main island she would call for backup. Or people were there, stationed at that post, waiting just in case I was chased back to the docks.
Clouds moved in, stood between me and the stars, a new level of darkness arriving abruptly. With darkness came rain that was as warm as piss.
I hobbled back to the main house, found Hawks hopping around on one foot, using counters and bar stools to keep her balance, her broken-hearted belt back on, that belt now a holster for both of her guns.