hand.
Officer Gilbert leaped to his feet, the red graze on his brow glowing like war paint. He had drawn his pistol and come up shooting. From her hunkered position, Julia could not see the killer, but the cop obviously thought he had a target. He rattled off six rounds as fast as he could pull the trigger. He was clicking through the paces of reloading before the sound of the last shot faded away.
She scanned the street. No civilians. Good. The closest businesses were a closed bookstore and an all-night Laundromat that appeared empty. She sprang up, the bead of her pistol's front sight hovering over the spot she'd last seen the killer. Gone.
The other cop, the driver, clambered out, falling on his hands. He yanked out his legs and stood with a dizzy swagger. He was pale, but Julia suspected that was his usual complexion: tall, skinny, mid-twenties, a shock of orange hair burning the top of his head. Blood pulsed from his mouth. It was a fighter's injury: he'd lost a central incisor, rupturing a small artery in the upper gums. Dazed, he bent into the cruiser and emerged with a shotgun. He pumped the slide, chambering a shell. He spat out a mouthful of blood and yelled, 'Whatcha got?'
'Gunman! In the car. I think he nicked me.'
Neither man showed a trace of panic or fear, just determination and a healthy measure of ire.
The killer popped up from behind the dash, fired, and disappeared. She felt the slug zing past her head.
Both cops let loose with a volley of thunderous shots, evaporating huge chunks of metal and dash and seat upholstery.
As if in answer, the assailant sprang up from behind the trunk, his laser-sighted weapon already leveled at them. Before they recognized his presence, he fired and vanished. The bullet shattered the window of the open driver's door and tore a hole in the chest of the orange-haired cop. He cried out and flew backward, knocking Julia to the ground and pinning her feet.
'Stinky! Stinky!' Officer Gilbert called. At least that's what she thought he said; it could have been 'Stanky' or 'Spanky.' The officer's name patch was no help: the bullet had ripped right through it.
Gently, quickly, she pulled her legs out from under him. He gritted his teeth, grimaced, rolled his eyes toward her. He looked so young. She got her legs under her and crouched down, ready to leap, run, or roll. With one hand she applied pressure to the wound; the other gripped her pistol.
Gilbert was already screaming into a microphone, stretching its coiled cord out the door as far as possible.
'Officer down! I need backup! Now! Now! Now!' He gave the cross streets. A female voice squawked in reply.
He dropped the microphone, bobbed his head up and down, high enough to see the wrecked car through his own broken windshield. 'How is he?' he asked, not turning to look.
'Alive. Looks bad.'
Stinky was holding on to consciousness by a thread.
Gilbert jumped, seeing something. He rose, thrust his arms over the roof, and fired three rounds.
And waited.
Nothing.
Sirens swelled in the distance, approaching fast.
A flicker caught Julia's attention, and she looked down. A red spot of light hovered on Gilbert's ankle.
'Move!' she yelled and leaped toward him, too late.
His ankle exploded as if from an internal detonation. Before the next event happened, she knew it would. The cop yelled and fell to the street. A red spot appeared in the center of his forehead, seeming to have already been there, waiting for him. The back of his head ruptured with the assailant's exiting bullet. The killer had calculated that maneuver with obscene perfection.
'Noooooo!' Moving low, close to the rear tire, she hooked her gun under the car and rapid-fired along the ground in the general direction of the assailant.
On the opposite side of the cruiser, a police unit roared onto Brainerd from a side street and squealed to a stop, headlamps illuminating her Taurus. The assailant fired at it from behind the trunk.
Brainerd filled with a kaleidoscope of lights as a half dozen cruisers converged on the two wrecked cars, three from behind her car, bathing the assailant in white light. He spun on them, shooting huge holes into their windshields. Doors flew open, cops beat it for cover behind their cruisers.
The assailant bolted away from the car, running for an alley between the bookstore and Laundromat. As he did, he shot at Julia. The red point of his laser zigzagged around her as bullets plunked half-dollar-sized holes in the cruiser's sheet metal and shattered the asphalt in front of her. The tire behind her ruptured. Holding her ground, she fired back. As his foot touched the curb, one of her bullets struck his shoulder, spinning him around. He glared at her, his eyes wild.
She froze. Only a second . . . less. But in that time, he leveled his gun at her. She didn't see but felt the laser center on her forehead.
A thousand banshees screamed—it took her a moment to recognize the sound of many guns firing at once.
The assailant, still glaring at her, spasmed as round after round tore into his body. Blood and gore sprayed out behind him. Store windows erupted. White powder burst from brick facades, so fine and abundant the buildings appeared to be smoldering.
He would not fall. He jerked his head to look at the police, at the muzzle flashes and smoke that marked his demise. He swiveled his gun toward them and returned fire. He seemed to be absorbing the firepower and hurling it back.
Julia rolled behind the cruiser, trying to press her body into the street. From this prone position under the rear bumper, she took aim at the crazed assailant. She'd heard of doped-up druggies, so numbed to pain, so high on artificial stimulants that it took a virtual army to bring them down. But this was something . . . different.
Later, every cop there would admit to their colleagues, their wives, or themselves, feeling the same sense of astounded terror, like waking to the realization that everything you thought about the universe was wrong. Despite the killer's uncanny ability to withstand horrendous injuries, nothing startled them so much as the unflinching concentration he displayed when he changed ammo clips. In the midst of an unceasing barrage of gunfire, he swung another magazine up to his gun just as he fired his last round and the slide locked open. The spent clip dropped away. He jammed in the new one with the ease and thoughtless habit of checking the time. Shattered and shooting, he had somehow kept track of his every shot, knowing the precise moment to change clips. The process delayed his shooting no more than a second.
The moment the new magazine was seated into the handle of the gun, his free hand dropped down to his belt, where another magazine was clipped. His hand stayed there, ready.
Then his chest erupted in a mist, and he toppled.
The quaking of guns ceased. Silence rushed in to fill the void like water into a new footprint; its presence felt heavy. All eyes watched the body sprawled across the curb. A sheet of blood fanned out on the sidewalk from the chest and shoulders; rivulets of it began snaking from under other parts—head, arms, legs—and flowed into the gutter.
Somebody coughed, breaking the spell; another cursed loudly. Then the air filled with the sound of guns being reloaded, magazines refilled, spent shells being kicked on the ground and swept off car surfaces.
Julia watched as three patrolmen cautiously approached the body, shotguns poised to continue the onslaught should the body so much as twitch. They were spaced well apart to avoid being slaughtered as a group.
A noise erupted from the killer. A melody. Lights appeared on what Julia had thought was another magazine clipped to his belt. It was the man's cell phone, and it was ringing.
The three cops instantly locked into combat firing stances.
The musical ring tone was a song Julia knew: Pink Floyd's 'Comfortably Numb.' After about ten seconds, it stopped.
One of the cops glanced over his shoulder, checking his comrades for guidance they didn't have; another
