Laying sprawled on the mattress was a malnourished woman, her eyes glazed and her body coursing with drugs. The prostitute made no attempt to cover her naked body and didn’t even acknowledge Sam at all.
Sam pulled the rifle up, aiming it squarely at the man, who cowered in fear. His thin, wispy hair was slick against his head.
‘Please. Don’t shoot me,’ the man begged, his flabby body reminding him of Chris Morton, a rapist who Sam had battered to a pulp over six months before. Sam eyed the ‘customer’ once more, noticing the wedding band he was desecrating around his chunky finger.
‘Get out,’ Sam demanded, shaking his head in disgust. ‘Now.’
The man nodded, weeping pathetically as he reached for his clothes which were balled up beside the mattress. Outside, the rain rattled the window, and the sirens grew louder, telling Sam he was rapidly running out of sand in his hour glass. With one final, sympathetic look at the violated woman, Sam stepped back into the corridor.
The fist collided with his cheek instantly, the impact sending him sprawling into the wall and dropping the rifle, the strap causing it to swing wildly.
Sam hit the wall, blood spraying from his mouth and he tried his best to focus. Everything went a bright, painful white for a split second when he suddenly regained control, quick enough to see another fist hurtling towards his nose. Quickly, he dropped to his left, allowing his attacker’s knuckles to crack sickeningly against the brick, the large, African man howling pain at the impact. Sam burst forward, ramming his shoulder into the man’s solid stomach, before rattling the attacker with a hard right hook. The man reset his footing, his eyes wild with murderous intent, and he pulled a knife from his jeans, slashing wildly as he approached.
Sam weaved like a boxer, watching the blade slice the air in front of him, before catching a swipe with his forearm and lifting a swift chop of his hand into the man’s throat. As his larynx closed, and he gasped for air, the attacker dropped the knife, both hands clutching his neck as he struggled to breathe. Dropping to his knees, the man gasped, and just as a stream of oxygen filtered its way to his lungs, Sam leapt forward, swivelled his hips and planted a ferocious knee into the man’s face.
His nose shattered.
A few teeth shot forward like blood-stained missiles.
He was unconscious before he hit the ground.
Sam let out a deep sigh, running his tongue against his quickly swelling cheek and tasting the warm, coppery blood still sloshing in his mouth. Spitting it out onto the filthy hallway floor, he cracked his neck, before pulling his weapon up once more. In the doorway, the plump business man, now dressed, looked on in shock. Sam, seeing the man’s fear at his fighting prowess, took a second to point at his eyes, before pointing at the man, mouthing, ‘I’m watching you.’
The man cowered, before running to the stairwell, allowing Sam a rare smile.
Following behind, he continued up the staircase, each floor welcoming him with a fresh stench of drugs and desecration. The second floor held no violent attacks, Sam clearing out each room and finding a couple with fresh needle punctures in their arms, vacant faces, and their veins filled with heroin. Shaking his head, he left, knowing that some people were beyond saving. As he continued to the next floor, he wondered what had led those poor people to that moment.
Did they suffer something truly horrific, like he did, and not know how to deal with it?
Or was it just a bad choice?
With a trail of dead bodies, and an even greater list of those he had injured, Sam was fully aware of the different ways people dealt with their grief. But as he cleared out another building that was a central point of crime that was rotting the country like a cancer, he tried to console himself with the notion that he was helping.
The wailing sirens on the street below laughed in the face of that thought.
Sam pushed the door open to the fourth floor.
Carefully, he swept both sides of the hallway with his gun, on high alert after the previous attack. One wall of the corridor had been stripped down to the bare brickwork, a plastic sheet crudely nailed atop it. The wind, which had crept in through every possible crack in the old building, caused it to flap loudly. There were no makeshift rooms on this floor, the punters not given access to the penthouse.
With reserved steps, Sam approached the open door, a puddle of blood welcoming him at the threshold. The room was bright, the lights burning brightly from the beams above and Sam cast his eye over his handiwork. Tiny, the large enforcer he had disabled at the door, was now unconscious, the pool of blood belonging to the bullet hole in his knee cap. The room was littered with drugs and money, the overturned tables had sent their riches scattering. Among the expensive debris was the motionless body of Riggs, his eyes still open, the side of his skull ripped apart by the impact of the bullet Sam had sent his way.
Another dead body lay among the fifty-pound notes, blood still trickling from the hole in its chest. Sam stopped for a moment and took a deep breath.
‘Sorry, Jamie,’ he muttered again, his words laced with self-loathing. As the screeching tyres of the police cars rounded the corner of the street, Sam scanned the room and saw the cowering body of the mystery man in the corner of the room, his knees tucked tightly into his chest. Sam marched purposefully through the carnage and as he approached, the man held his hands up in panic.
‘Please, don’t hurt me!’ he exclaimed, his face stained with tears.
Sam lowered his weapon and held his hands up, listening as a myriad of car doors slammed on the street below,
