The firm steps are coming closer and with desperation in my hands and fear in my eyes that cause them to water, I rise, slink over besides the door and raise the wicked looking hammer to prepare for a surprise blow to the shooter. I unconsciously picture a skull getting with the hammer, breaking, the pouring of blood and bone.
He is nearer. Steps coming. Closer.
Then it stops.
He must be right in the door, looking in.
My head swims, but with a murderous resolves I swing around into the doorway striking the space where his head is likely to be. The hammer connects with nothing but air and I lose footing for a second while I feel incredibly stupid, and then when I see him, terror.
He is black, big. The top of his left skull is scorched, blackened and twisted skin in its placed flanked by what remains of his buzz cut. His left eye is a fluidic pulpy mesh that leaks messy tears down his cheeks. He regards me for a brief moment, light in his right eye, then he hammers the butt of the black rifle right in my face and I hear a sick, cracking noise and feel red seething pain. I taste blood, and my throat chokes on the thick liquid that has a strong tinge of iron.
I drop like a sack of bricks, not feeling the impact on the lobby floor. Instead, I am awash in the pain in my face and the blood in my mouth. The black man steps over me, checks out the lobby with a twist of his head and then screams something at me. I cannot really focus on it, since my skull really hurts, but I pick up the words bitch, and something in me thinks that is one of his kinder words. He leaves my sight, and I start coughing up the blood in my mouth. I touch my nose and recoils in grinding pain as I feel it is broken. The burnt, black man returns and points his rifle at me.
“WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU, BITCH?” he screams. His spit flies.
I try to reply, but only manage to cough up some more piles of blood.
I calm myself and try to reason with the obviously deranged man.
“Look, I’m sorry, but you shot at me.”
“I ASKED YOU WHO THE FUCK YOU ARE? DO YOU WANNA GET SHOT IN BRAIN?” His face is contorted in rage, and his bad eye leaks more thick fluid. There is a track of the grimy tears going from his eye to the top of his mouth. Something in me shivers with the thought of him eating his own infected matter.
“No, I don’t want to get shot. Please!” I manage to say, and I sound surprisingly calm and collected as I say it. As if dealing with this unhinged shooter has equaled my own levels of tranquility.
“My name is Jill Thompson. I’m from Chicago. I travel around and sell cleaning products; well I travel to vendors and demonstrate cleaning products.” I feel stupid as I say this, but I retain my calm demeanor.
He looks at me with his shiny right eye. A few seconds pass by, and it feels as if my words hang in the air and he is trying to use his one remaining eye to determine whether I am telling the truth or not.
“You a fucking cleaning lady?” He says with a sense of disbelief in his voice. “A fucking cleaning lady?”
I consider correcting him, but decide against it. His features and body instantly relaxes. Gone is the deadly readiness that had been there before. He even lowers his rifle.
He regards me again, and then starts laughing loudly, with a slight touch of mania in his laughter.
He calms himself after a good guttural laugh, and then looks at me with a pitying smile.
“Wow, lady, you got the shaft. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“What’s going on here?” I implore him, my own calmness now dissipated in worry and uncertainty.
“You’re fucking dead, that’s what going on here, lady.” He smiles again. He looks around one more time, takes the five steps over to the coke machine, rummages about in his jeans for coins and then gets himself a Coke. He uses the cold can on his forehead before opening it.
I look at his back, at his dirty white windbreaker. “Please, what is happening here?” Tell me?”
He turns around, sips and looks slightly content.
Look lady, they are gonna kill all of us here. Or those fucking things are. It doesn’t really matter, cause you might as well go back up to your room and hang yourself. Theyre gonna get you, you hear?” He looks unsympathetically at me.
“They sure as shit want me dead. Fuck the fact that they just posted me here themselves, they still want me fucking dead. But they ain’t getting me. Nothing with a fight, they ain’t.” his eyes glaze as he speaks. He is rambling, and I let him go on, hoping to salvage something from his broken words, from his broken mind.
“This is their thing, though I don’t really think it’s their thing, cause all the people disappearing and stuff, that must have been something else, cause they sure as shit didn’t go to the greenhouse. They all went of fucking east I think. Into the hills. And they were like fucking zombies man, all dead inside and shit.” He grows quiet, a defeated look on his face. “They are probably all dead now.”
I feel sympathy for this man even if I don’t understand what he is saying, even if he did break my nose, and yes, even if he did try to kill. He is a broken shell of a man and I feel a desire to help him. He has been through enough.
“It’s gonna be okay. I don’t know what you have been through but it looks to be a lot. But you don’t have to worry anymore, cause I called the police. They are going to be h…”
He instantly returns to his threatening body language and expression. “YOU DID WHAT?”
I retreat a few steps, holding up my hands defensively. “They said they were going to send someone. Look, it’s all right now!”
He sends out a sardonic burst of laughter. “You fucking bitch. YOU GOING TO GET THE BOTH OF US DEAD!!! DON’T YOU GET THAT???”
“I’M SORRY!” I yell, not knowing what else to say, to get him to call down again. However, I sense that it is all too late.
He grabs the rifle in his hands, peers out the windowless door. He seems to be searching the night sky. “Oh yeah, here they come. Here come your cavalry!”
And he is right, off in the distance I hear the low, low sounds of propellers slicing up the heavens into pockets of air.
The burnt man turns to face, wearing a particularly grim, mocking smile. “Look you can go out and have a happy little get-together with them boys, I don’t care. But whatever the hell you do, don’t fucking follow me, you got that? I’ll put a fucking bullet in you if I see you again! And with that angry threat, he disappears out the door, shards of glass twisting loudly under his black boots.
I am alone in the lobby, and somehow I feel even more alone than before I met the crazy burnt man. In the distance, I can hear the helicopter coming. Coming for me, as the burnt man said. I am utterly confused, not knowing what to make of everything. This whole situation makes no sense, and I am overcome with a wish to be on the road again, to be in Clarksville, Pennsylvania or Wompton, Idaho, pitching a sale to some mom & pop store. I tear up again, and my thoughts wander off to Antonia once again. I suddenly feel I should do as the soldier suggested that I should go and hang myself in the motel room; to be done with all the confusion and the hurt, with the past and with present. Then I focus on Antonia’s face and feel her hands on me again, I smell her hair and feel her lips and I start crying again. I am a mess of tears and blood. Suddenly I feel a great big surge of life go through me. I want to live. I WANT TO LIVE, I think and my tears stop and are replaced with a smile.
I want to live.
Wait for the helicopter.
Try to follow the burnt man.
Get your mace, carkeys, money and stuff in the motel room.
Run from the motel.
Hide.