Damn Him to Hell

his head out from wherever he’d been hiding. Once he’d ascertained he wouldn’t be shot, he kneeled down to check my bloody legs.

“Need to clean these out, but I don’t think you’ve been shot,” was his assessment.

I didn’t know if I should risk sending him with the patients to Andre’s now less-than-secret bomb shelter. We’d left all the IVs in the warehouse, so he couldn’t do much. I counted six gurneys down here. We’d left four behind, including Officer Leibowitz’s. Tim’s doing, I was sure. He had managed to rescue Nancy Rose, but he despised Leibowitz.

I handed the student my rifle. “If you’ve been in Afghanistan, you know how to use this better than I do. Shoot any rats coming over that wall.”

He checked the closet and found an automatic more to his liking. I left him to it.

There was no point in asking his name, much as I appreciated his aid. He was normal. I wasn’t. He’d go on to lead a wealthy suburban life. I was tied to the Zone in ways even I couldn’t understand. I needed familiar boundaries and people who accepted my weirdnesses.

In the bomb shelter, Julius was with Sarah and Katerina. He had turned almost as gray as Andre. He was a genial, gentle man. He shouldn’t be exposed to this shit. I hugged him briefly, just because, and he hugged me back before shoving me away.

“Keep an eye on Andre,” he said urgently. “He’s reached his limit.”

Okay, that was the second time today I’d been warned to look after the King of Cool. Except he wasn’t so cool lately. I didn’t really want to know what Andre’s limit was. I nodded and trotted off, not certain what to do next. Visualizing a helicopter to Hades probably wasn’t justified, but I thought I heard it still hovering. Andre and Leo were out there somewhere, waiting to take it down.

Milo met me in Andre’s kitchen. I picked him up and hugged him and let the sadness roll over me.

Maybe I should have kept the rifle. But visions of me shooting everyone who crossed my path while shouting Damn you! kind of put me off on gun toting. The tunnel collapse had been horrifying. I wanted to shut out the memory. I still didn’t know if I’d killed anyone.

I’d probably stand a better chance of not joining Satan if I stuck to commandments like “Thou shalt not kill.” My mother hadn’t brought me up in church, but I liked to read, and the Bible had acquired the status of an important, forbidden book in my rebellious youth.

Once I was upstairs, I heard the helicopter clearly. I’d lived in a lot of places but none of them had ever been a war zone, so I couldn’t distinguish between hovering and taking off.

Cautiously, hanging on to Milo, I watched out the front window. The big porch prevented me from seeing the sky. Andre and Schwartz could be anywhere, but the warehouse would be their goal. I studied the seemingly vacant block of buildings across the street. Not a sign of life inside.

I’d been drugged and kidnapped a few months ago. I had no burning desire to put myself in the unpleasant path of danger again by going outside to see more. On the theory that this house had an attic like Pearl’s, I jogged up the stairs, past Tim and Julius’s apartments, to an open door. I stepped into an infirmary more modern than the one in the tunnel—Sleeping Beauty’s abode, I assumed.

I set Milo down to explore. Not wanting to leave a trail of blood across the pristine floor, I took advantage of the hospital-like facilities. I hastily washed my legs, wincing as I applied alcohol on my way to the balcony.

Unlike Paddy’s hideaway, this attic was completely finished, with skylights and murals on the walls. Sun flooded in through French doors adorned with lacy curtains. They’d certainly provided Katerina with a happier abode than the usual nursing home.

With my legs pocked like the victims of a bad razor, I stepped onto the balcony and scrutinized the scene below. Two unmarked white vans rolled down the narrow alley behind the warehouses—did they carry the patients we couldn’t rescue? Milo wrapped himself around my ankles and kept silent watch with me.

I clenched the rail in alarm at the sight of two figures covertly working their way along the flat roof of an empty store on the far side of the warehouse. I glanced up, but the helicopter was well away.

If that was Andre and Schwartz, they were prepared to tackle any army left behind.

I wanted to believe the troops had departed with the helicopter and vans, but I wasn’t willing to wager my life—or Andre’s or Schwartz’s life. If there were soldiers left in the warehouse, I didn’t know them, couldn’t see them, and couldn’t visualize them into another dimension. But I really disliked the idea of Andre being involved in another shoot-out.

And Paddy and Julius were telling me to keep him from killing anyone. I didn’t know what was with that, but I was on board. No killing. I needed to clear the warehouse of enemy soldiers before anyone got hurt.

Just as my brain started to create an olfactory bomb of every nasty smell I could recollect, the plate-glass windows and front door of the warehouse burst into the street from the force of camouflaged troops crashing through them. A second later, the building went boom.

Oh, hell. Oh, shit. Frantically, I switched gears to protective mode. How could I save anyone from a bomb?

Remembering the pink iceberg I’d created to protect Ernesto, I pictured a safety shield between Schwartz and Andre and the exploding warehouse. Unfortunately, I couldn’t do two things at once. While I tried to protect Andre and Schwartz from erupting bricks and boards, the troops rushed straight across the street—to the house where I was standing.

I had no idea if the shield trick had worked. All I knew was that Andre and Schwartz had disappeared, and the menacing troops aroused a rage so red that it might explode my skull.

They’d blown up my friends!

No more doubt about guilt or innocence. I wanted to crush soldiers. I considered opening up the street to bury the enemy, only the med student and patients were in the tunnel under their feet. I tried imagining a wall dropping down around the house but nothing happened.

Shit. Not a fine time to learn my limits. Or even understand them.

Milo tried to shove me toward the door, but I couldn’t run away without trying to defend Andre’s home. This house offered the only other access to the bomb shelter and the patients. I’d already lost four patients, including Leibowitz. I had to protect the others. How did I keep out armed soldiers?

Before I could summon a solution, Andre reappeared. He crossed the roof of the office building beside the bombed-out warehouse, weapon in hand, working his way toward the front. Thank Saturn or his guardian angels, he was alive! Except he’d see the soldiers in the street any second, and war would ensue.

Shit and triple shit. The rage factor decreased enough for me to think again. How did I keep a lunatic from killing everyone in sight? I was operating on overload. Adrenaline coursed through my system like a hallucinogenic drug.

Justice. Concentrating so hard that I forgot I was a sitting target out here on the balcony, I shouted to the Universe, “In the name of Saturn, I command justice against thugs who blew up a building and attacked the injured. The punishment for such harm . . .”

I didn’t finish the sentence aloud but visualized the penalty. I was feeling mean, but the only image forming in my mind was that of big bad soldiers pushing baby strollers with screaming toddlers, changing dirty diapers, and singing incessant nursery rhymes for a week.

Damn, Clancy, is that the best you can do? I could almost hear Andre’s voice in my head. But it wasn’t easy balancing the scales of justice and trying to save lives—and maybe Andre’s soul—at the same time.

The acrid stench of the explosion still burned in my nasal passages and stung my eyes, but I grabbed the rail and watched the street for a miracle.

Andre released a hail of automatic fire from his position on the roof. I hadn’t visualized stopping Andre. Damn.

The troops in the street looked startled, broke ranks, and ran like rabbits—to a nursery school somewhere, if there was any justice in the world. Let them nurture instead of destroy for a few days.

Thank you, Saturn.

The red-rage juice drained out of me. Sliding to the floor, I couldn’t even look up to see if Andre had left bodies in the street.