like that until I was almost to the nightstand, but I never made it. I stopped crawling when I reached a pair of jogging shoes. With Angel's feet in them.
Chapter 29
I looked up and there was her snubnose .38 and above it her impassive face with the right side and top of her forehead swollen all out of proportion from my shovel blows. One eye was almost closed. She looked like a Neanderthal. Behind her the bedroom window was up and the curtains flapped in the freezing wind above the bed and there were muddy footprints on the sheets.
She pulled the trigger on the .38.
It was empty.
She knew that.
Bitch.
She whipped her hand around and whacked me on the side of the head with the gun, tossed it away, grabbed me by the coat and pulled me up. A network of pain went through my wounds and some new connections were found.
She kneed me in the nuts, tossed me backwards with a yell.
I hurtled through the open door and fell on my side in the living room behind the couch. Outside, I heard Soldier yell. 'Angel? Angel?'
I rolled and tried to get up, but she got me by the collar and picked me up and tossed me over the couch. I rolled on my back and she leaned over the couch and grabbed Howard by his coat and crotch, and more shoved than threw him at me. He landed on his stomach across my legs.
She started around the couch making deep strides and I kicked out from under Howard and got unsteadily to my feet.
'Watch her, watch her,' Leonard yelled, as if I might decide to go take in a little TV. When she came around the couch, she kicked at Leonard, who was doing his damnedest to get up, caught him a glancing blow on the head. But he wasn't her main target. He seemed for the most part incapacitated. And she hadn't forgotten me and that shovel.
She reached for me and I shot out a left jab and her head went back and her nose broke open and spouted blood. I hit her again, and again. Good jabs.
She stepped in and grabbed me and whipped me up and around and I fell back on the couch. She came down on top of me and I squirmed out from under her, caught her under the arm and twisted her on her back, straddled her and hit her with a hard left-right combination. Her face was nothing but blood now.
She slammed her forearms into my sides, sending tentacles of pain into my side wound. I fell back on the floor, trying but unable to scream. Next thing I knew she was on top of me, slamming me in the face with her fists. I couldn't think, couldn't get oriented, couldn't fight back.
Then something long and dark and sharp came into view and it pushed back Angel's head and blood ran onto my face.
Leonard had rolled across the floor and shoved the broken end of his stick into her right eye.
She stood up stiffly. The stick stuck out of her face a full four feet, but it was firm in her head. She didn't take hold of it. She managed to step over me and start toward the fireplace, but got her feet tangled in Howard's legs and went face down. Most of her body landed on the couch, but her head missed and the stick in her eye hit the floor and the back of her head cocked up slightly but sharply, stayed that way.
Then there was a thrashing at the living room window. Soldier had the shovel and was using it to knock out what was left of the glass. Before I could get up, the shovel pulled out, and he kicked out the frame, stooped, and stepped inside, the .45 in front of him. Leonard, still lying on the floor, reached out and caught Soldier's ankle before his foot was firmly planted, sent him stumbling forward, but he got his feet under him again and went past Leonard and caught his foot on Trudy's outstretched arm and fell all the way this time, and when he hit I rolled and fought the explosions in my body and chopped down on his wrist with the edge of my hand. His fingers popped wide like a startled starfish, and the gun went sliding, and he crawled for it, but I got him around the neck and tried to choke him. He made it up to his knees and I went up on my knees too, and I tightened my forearm around his throat and tried to squeeze the life out of him. He pulled a knife from his pocket and flicked it open one-handed and brought it up and slashed me at the crook of my elbow, but I didn't let go, so he did it again, and this time I did.
I scuttled toward the living room window on my hands and knees, saw Leonard lying there, finally too much out of blood to move, and then I twisted and got up on one knee and Soldier was there, slashing at my face. I caught the blade in my hand and the slash went deep in my thumb and scraped on bone. I tried to get my legs under me and get up, but something had finally gone really bad inside me, and I couldn't.
Soldier jerked the blade back and cut me again that way, but I didn't feel it right then, and I dove forward and put my head between his legs and grabbed him behind the knees and popped my head up and caught him in the balls with the back of it and snatched his legs out from under him. His head hit the floor hard. Real hard. I crawled on top of him and got hold of his knife hand with my good left hand, twisted his thumb back and made him let go.
I picked up the knife and put it to his throat. All I had to do was thrust and rip. Hadn't this goddamned out-of- state racist asshole tried to kill me?
He looked at me through those pathetic glasses and I thought of this gawky, sweaty-faced bastard as a kid with a father who slapped his ear into a cauliflower and had convinced him it was for his own good and that dear old kid-beating, wife-beating dad was a good man that demanded respect. And in that same fleeting instant I remembered that I had not gone to war because I didn't want to kill needlessly for a cause I didn't believe in. And here we didn't even have a cause. Just a sad fuck-up without any hope.
I got off of him and held the knife close and said, 'Roll on your stomach, Soldier, or I'll kill you.'
'Easy,' he said. 'I got a bad dog bite here.'
He rolled on his stomach. I cut his coat from the collar to the center of his back, then pulled the sleeves down so they caught at his elbows. I cut strips from his pants legs and tied his wrists. I cut the back of his pants open so
