This time I laughed. “You’re something else, Sondra Belov.”
“As are you, Larry Gibson. And I was wrong, too.”
“About what?”
“When I say you are like other men, I was wrong. You are not like them. If they say mean things, they not apologize. You do. You say you are sorry.”
“Well, I am. And I do apologize. I shouldn’t have said all that.”
“Once we get out of here, you buy me big dinner and we make it up to each other after—in bedroom. Does this sound good?”
“Sound good? It sounds
Smiling, Sondra squeezed my hand again. Suddenly, it was like falling for her all over again. Even after everything that had happened, her smile—that perfect, beautiful smile—had complete power over me.
And that was all that it took to suck me back in.
I no longer felt pain. No longer felt betrayed.
Instead, I felt hope.
Women will do that to you—make you feel things that you shouldn’t.
nineteen
Hand in hand, side by side, we crept into the corridor and let the darkness envelop us. The hallway wasn’t much to look at. From what little I could see, it was in the same run-down condition as the rest of the machine shop. The pitted, brown floor tiles were warped and peeling up around their corners, revealing the grimy, dried paste beneath. The cinderblock walls were cracked and covered with mold. Once our eyes had adjusted to the gloom, we were able to see that the corridor didn’t go far. On the left side of the hallway was an old time clock, along with an empty rack where employees had once kept their timecards. The clock hands were forever stopped at three in the afternoon. Quitting time.
The right-hand side of the hallway had three doors. Two of them led into the men’s and women’s bathrooms. We explored those first. Both restrooms were empty of their fixtures. Exposed PVC plumbing stuck out of the walls and up from the floors. The copper pipes had long since been plundered. The walls were covered with fading graffiti. Most of it looked like it had been written a decade ago, referencing politicians and pop culture who were no longer relevant. The crude slogans reminded me of the men’s room at the Odessa, right before we’d found Sondra hiding beneath my Jeep. Already, that seemed like a million years ago. I suddenly felt old and weary. Not tired. Not exhausted. Fucking
The smoke was tangible now. I still didn’t know what was on fire, but I didn’t think it was the building. The air tasted like soot. I wondered how much longer we could breathe it. My eyes and nose were starting to burn.
“Come on,” I said. “No luck here.”
The third door opened into a break room. There were some round tables and a few chairs, none of which looked safe to sit on. Three dusty vending machines stood against the wall, one for soda and two for candy and junk food. All of them were empty of their contents, but otherwise seemed to be in decent shape. I wondered why the vending machine company would just leave the machines here, and decided that maybe they hadn’t. Perhaps the machine shop had owned them instead. An old bulletin board hung on the wall, clinging precariously by one remaining hinge. The board’s cork was slashed and torn in some spots. Yellowed bulletins were still pegged to it— OSHA and MSDS procedures, safety regulations, policies for Equal Opportunity hiring and sexual harassment. All were things that no longer mattered to the men and women who had once worked here. With luck, those employees had gone on to other jobs after the machine shop shut down, and had new OSHA procedures and safety regulations to follow. The alternative was as depressing as our dismal surroundings. Unemployment in early twenty-first century America—a living death in a world where even the telemarketing jobs had gone overseas and the only work you could get was through a temp agency. No room for pride or dignity or a fair day’s work for a fair day’s wage. The stock market rose in direct relation to your fall. You were better off dead.
But I wasn’t ready to die yet. I still had a job, hopefully. At this point, it was the only thing I still had going for me. That—and Webster, if Animal Control or the landlord hadn’t taken him after the shootings. I suddenly missed my cat very much, and wondered what he was doing right now. Was he hiding in the apartment, watching the CSI guys and wondering when I’d be home? Was Webster hissing at them in annoyance, demanding that the intruders at least have the courtesy to feed him before they left?
My sigh was heavy. So was my heart.
“What is wrong?” Sondra asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just thinking.”
There were no windows in either of the bathrooms or the break room, and no exit doors either. There was no way out, except maybe through the basement. I figured the chances were good that there were no exits from there, as well. We were trapped.
“I don’t know,” I muttered. “I don’t know what to do.”
Sondra suddenly grabbed my arm. Her long fingernails dug into my skin.
“Ouch,” I cried. “What the hell is that for?”
“Listen,” she whispered. “I think I hear something. A footstep?”
I held my breath and listened. My ears weren’t ringing at all anymore, but there was no sound. If the cops had stormed the building, we’d have known they were there. The silence meant that we were faced with the alternative.
Whitey was coming.
Thinking quickly, I took Sondra by the hand and led her behind the soda machine. It stuck out from the wall, leaving a narrow crevice wide enough for both of us to squeeze into. Sondra’s breasts and my belly both pushed against the back of the machine. It was a tight fit, but we made it. The space between it and the wall was filled with dirt and spider webs. I held my breath, trying not to sneeze when the dust tickled my nose. The soda machine’s power cord had been cut, exposing naked wires. I hoped they weren’t live. It would really suck to get electrocuted before Whitey could kill us himself.
Out in the machine shop, the back room’s door crashed open. We heard it slam against the wall. Sondra jumped. I reached down and squeezed her hand again, making sure she stayed silent. I waited for someone to shout, ‘Police!’ and listened for the sounds of radio static, but instead, there were only footsteps. Familiar footsteps. Calm, slow, assured footsteps. The sound of nice dress shoes on concrete. A sound that filled me with dread and resignation. The sound of death.
We stayed motionless, barely breathing, and listened as the footsteps came closer. Whitey searched the back room and then entered the hallway. His footsteps stopped for a moment. I imagined him standing there, staring into the darkness, grinning. Could he smell us? Smell the blood on our clothes? Smell our fear? I remembered what he’d said to Sondra when we were hiding with Yul in the warehouse—that he could tell where she was hiding, that he could sense her baby. I’d chalked it up to bullshit at the time. Figured it was just an attempt to psyche us out, force us to reveal our location. But now, knowing what I did, I wasn’t so sure.
I’d never believed in the supernatural. Well, not completely anyway. Pennsylvania Dutch powwow magic and Appalachian folk healing were one thing. Demons and monsters and psychic powers were something else entirely. Powwow, when you boiled it down, was nothing more than herbs and alternative medicine, combined with a little bit of good old-fashioned religion. Some of the ingredients in your average powwow spell were also available at the local health food boutique or in the organic aisle at the grocery store. Monsters and things that go bump in the night—they weren’t so easily explainable or obtainable. They had no root in reality. I didn’t encounter them on a daily basis, therefore, they didn’t exist. But despite my feelings and my disbelief, a monster walked among us. A corpse, fueled by hatred or obsession or something else, that wouldn’t stop until we were dead. I’d seen the proof with my own eyes. Call him a zombie, call him possessed, call him whatever the hell you wanted to, but the fact remained that Whitey Putin was still stalking us when all laws of medicine, science, and simple fucking logic dictated that he should be lying down dead.
If Whitey had the superhuman ability to do those things—to stay alive with half of his head blown off, to slaughter policemen while they pumped him full of lead, to survive blood loss and mutilation and major organ
