priest on his knees, mouth shut, breathing hard.
“Get up!” Keith snarled.
But Danny did not get up.
“You can give it but you can’t take it? Get up!”
Danny was in a different place, and his sorrow left no room for modesty. His muscles were strung like cords; his fists were white.
Keith cursed and started for me, and only then did my mind return to my own horror. He was going to strap me down on the table. They were going to torture me in front of Danny.
Keith’s hand grabbed my arm and I cried out. It was only a single outburst of terror, but that simple tone silenced Danny’s heavy breathing.
The emotions ravaging Danny could not find words for expression. They were felt, not described except by approximation. Like a ravenous beast with ferocious fangs, they tore into his heart. His mind told him that he was breaking down. That, confronted by the torment of the one he loved as much as God loved her, he’d finally snapped.
He had been her savior and yet now he would not save her, and the truth pushed his pain deeper into what could only be insanity.
A cry sliced into his consciousness. Renee’s.
He felt the last tether of emotion snap and he watched it drift away, like a balloon with a cut string. Immediately, a simple awareness awakened in Danny’s being. Finally, he’d stepped past his thoughts and emotions and found himself simply and profoundly alive.
But there was more. Awareness, not thought, occupied him. Awareness of light and love and a profound peace. The anger and sorrow and fear were behind him, chased into hiding by the very fabric of something new in his consciousness.
Pure, unadulterated surrender to what was. To God.
His eyes snapped wide and he saw Renee, and in that moment he was aware of what he must do, not through a process of thought or reason, but through simple consciousness, rooted in the very fabric of creative power and being.
He would not punish. He would save.
I jerked my head up and saw he’d become a different man. A switch had been thrown deep in his mind, and the Danny I once knew had come back to life.
His head was lowered and a look of stoic confidence left his face plain. He moved suddenly, without uttering a single sound, hurling himself forward.
The strangest thoughts overcame me then, seeing him in that state, an impossible mixture of horror and pride, a brew of anguish and exhilaration. He was throwing himself away to save me, you see? His love for me surpassed even his most sacred vow never to harm another man again.
He was now beyond reason, reacting only out of desperate love. There were seven armed officers in the room and Danny had only his hands, but if there were a hundred he would have done the same.
Twenty feet separated my priest and me, and he rushed in like a lion, head low, eyes fixed on his prey.
Danny was halfway to the table before the first shot rang out. I saw the impact of the bullet as it struck his thigh, but it only knocked him sideways for one step and he was still rushing, undeterred, mindless of his own wound.
Then Danny was in the air, hurling himself over the table with his head forward like a battering ram. His left hand snagged the edge of the table as he flew, and in that single motion he did two things: he tipped the table up to give me a semblance of cover, and he crashed into Keith. I saw and heard it all as I fell backward with the table on top of me.
I saw Keith take a desperate step in retreat.
I saw the crown of Danny’s head slam into his face, saw Keith’s head snap back.
I heard the bridge of Keith’s nose crack as Danny’s full weight slammed it up into his brain.
Keith was dead before he hit the ground, and Danny was sailing over his falling body.
I don’t know if Danny planned every move or if it came to him reflexively, but by the time he landed, he was in a roll and halfway to the guards in the near corner.
The closest CO already had his rifle up and was firing. If he’d been a hunter accustomed to taking down charging rhinos, his shot might have hit Danny, but it missed the rushing target.
“Fire!” the warden was screaming at the other guards. “Kill him!”
But it was all happening too fast, and the guards must have realized they would be shooting directly at the other guards.
Danny struck the correctional officer’s chest with the palm of his right hand and sent him crashing back toward the two at the door, jerking away the man’s rifle as he flew.
The captain had pulled out his sidearm and finally managed to get a shot off toward the corner. It clipped Danny’s shoulder and smacked into the forehead of the guard behind him.
Danny came up with the rifle already in full swing. The first of the two remaining guards by the door threw up his arm and tried to duck under the weapon but failed to avoid the blow. The rifle clipped the top of his head before striking the second guard squarely on his temple.
I lay on my back, head twisted, watching it all from the ground, thinking it was all impossible. There were too many men with guns aimed at Danny! He’d killed Keith and disabled three of the seven armed men, but Bostich and three others still had their sights on him, and surely one would find its mark!
And then one did.
A shot crashed from my left and Danny lurched forward as a slug slammed into his back. Bostich had taken a second shot.
Even when things happen so fast, or maybe especially when they do, certain images and thoughts are remarkably clear. When I saw that second bullet hit Danny I knew that he was going to die defending me.
I shoved the table away and screamed. “Danny!” I was still on my back, and the table was off of me, but it blocked my view of him. Frantic, I rolled to my side and clambered up to my knees. “Danny!”
He was in a pile of three bodies, and he’d already pulled one of them over his own. Two bullets smashed into that body before Danny rolled away and came up on one knee with the rifle at his shoulder. His jaw was fixed and his dark eyes showed no sign that he was even aware of the wounds he’d taken.
It’s crazy, I know, but such a surge of respect and pride flooded me that for a moment I couldn’t cry out, though my mind was shrieking.
Danny’s first shot took Bostich in the forehead and slammed him backward onto his seat. His second chased the first, like a rolling thunderclap, toward the guard in the far corner past Bostich. The bullet struck that man’s shoulder and spun him around. The man’s rifle crashed to the floor.
Danny shifted his aim and held the weapon on the warden.
“Drop them!” he shouted.
His order rang through the hard yard. There were two more guards in two opposite corners, one to Danny’s right and one to his left. He kept his eyes on Marshall Pape’s ashen face, keeping the other two in his peripheral vision.
For a count of three, no one moved. They had all just watched Danny take down five men in under fifteen seconds, and they were probably rethinking their allegiances. The doctor stood back, hands half-raised.
I was on my knees, staring at my Danny, who knelt, bleeding from the wounds in his side, back, and his thigh, and I waited for the end.
“Lay your weapons down.” Danny’s voice was even now. Almost regretful.
The two guards gave the warden the courtesy of looking at him, but with Danny’s rifle on the man, they needed no further encouragement. First one, then the other lowered the barrels of their rifles.
Danny stood. “On the ground.”
Their rifles clattered to the concrete.
A surreal quiet settled over the room. Randell rose to his feet, eyes wide and on Danny. Slowly, the others rose with him.
The warden’s face began to settle. A smile crept over his mouth as he stared down the length of the rifle
