Yea, verily, it is once again time to post a free novel one chapter a week! This year’s novel is THE BOUNCER. Enjoy!
28.
“Up!” Lisa said, her voice shaking and rough. “Move!”
I got my feet and felt dizzy. I hadn’t known Luis for long. I’d known his wife better, although I realized with a start that I didn’t know her name. I’d always called her ?Mrs. Quinones.’ I stared at his body for a moment, finding it impossible to believe.
Someone was tugging at me. I turned and found Jill, blood streaming down her face. She was pulling me towards the stairs, where Ivan was disappearing around the next landing.
“Gotta go!” she shouted.
I let her pull me for a few more seconds as I stumbled. Then, like blood rushing back into a sleeping limb, I found my feet again. This wasn’t a performance. I’d known that, I’d known that killers were here, but I hadn’t really known it. I’d spent so much time around gangsters, around people who kept telling you about all the violence they were going to do to you. Telling and telling and telling and never doing. Never actually doing it, because there were rules.
But now I’d broken those rules, and I was fair game, and for the first time I felt it.
Jill and I took the stairs backwards, guns up. We moved as fast as we could; the stairs were awkwardly spaced, and turned and twisted as we rose.
Down below, I could hear steps and furtive consultations. A single shot rang out—a double tap on Luis, whose blood was on my hands. Next to me, I could hear the rasp of Jill’s breathing, the sawdust sound of someone who’d been smoking or vaping every day of her life for twenty years.
The third floor hall was dark and crowded. Jill posted up by the landing and fired once down down the stairs to let them know she was watching.
“My place,” Ivan said, sounding remarkably steady as he hefted the bat. “Right over here.”
“No,” I said. “They’ll just trap us. Squeeze in from the fire escape and the hall. We go up.” I leaned towards him. “Go,” I said. I glanced at Tony. “You, too. This isn’t your fight. Luis is dead and I can’t have all of you on my conscience. Get inside, lock the doors, wait it out.”
“Up?” Lisa hissed. “What are we gonna do on the roof?”
Tony looked down at his feet, but Ivan set his jaw. “I never backed down from a fight my whole life,” he said. “I been fighting jerkoffs like these assholes since I was a kid. Fucking fascists who think they can push you around.” He spat on the floor. “I’m stickin’.”
Jill fired a shot down the stairwell. I looked at Tony. “Don’t be stupid,” I said.
He looked at Ivan, then nodded. “We’re getting you out. I’m not gonna hide behind my door while someone murders you.”
“Come on!!” Lisa shouted, heading up the stairs. “We gotta go!”
An explosion of gunfire peppered the plaster and wood near Jill, forcing her to dive to the floor. I lunged forward and grabbed her by the jacket, sliding her along the boards to me and pulling her up. The four of us ran after Lisa, rounding the landing on the fourth floor and pelting up the narrower steps leading up to the roof.
“Keys!” I shouted, digging them out of my pocket and tossing them up. Lisa snatched them out of the air.
“Which one!”
“Red tag!”
Holding the shotgun awkwardly under one arm, she picked out the right key and worked the lock. I crouched with Jill, sweating streaming into my eyes as I held the gun on the darkness below, watching for movement.
Two guys in dark hoodies suddenly stepped onto the landing. I squeezed the trigger without thinking. Jill unloaded three more shots, and both leaped backwards as if kicked, leaving bloody streaks on the wall behind them.
“Jesus Christ!” Tony shouted, giving the impression that this wasn’t what he’d signed up for.
Lisa shoved the door open with a bone-rattling creak. Jill slapped me on the back.
“Go!”
I turned and pelted up the stairs. Lisa raced through the door. I grabbed the key ring and twisted with all my might, snapping the key off in the lock. Then I turned and raised the gun.
“Now!”
Jill turned, staying low as she moved around me and through the door. I squeezed off a shot for emphasis, then turned and lumbered through the door, pulling it shut behind me with a click that seemed to shut off all the noise in the, leaving me in a vacuum.