The Enemy Inside

TWENTY-NINE

Who was it?” Alex came out of the room.

“DHL. Delivery from the office.”

“Open it,” said Alex.

Herman grabbed a knife out of the drawer in the kitchen, laid the box on the counter, and used the knife to peel back the glued-down tab sealing the end of the box.

The brilliant flash was blinding. The concussion threw both of them against the wall, where they lay dazed for several moments listening to the hissing sound as the gas filled the room.

The choking sensation was finally what wakened them. Herman came to, crawling around on his hands and knees, coughing, sputtering up green slime, feeling his way through the billowing fog until he finally fell over Alex who was just beginning to move.

Ives was in a panic. He couldn’t breathe. He struggled to his feet and tried to make it to the door. Herman had to restrain him.

Ives was pumping so much adrenaline that it took almost the full reserve of strength left in Herman’s body to bring him down. Alex clawed at him with his fingers, trying to get away, scraping the skin from Herman’s arm as they fought. They fell somewhere near the island in the center of the room. Herman knew it because he hit his head on the corner of the counter as they went down.

He felt around with his hand, found the open shelf and the weighty steel of the pistol, grabbed for it, and brought the gun down hard across the back of Ives’s head near the base of his skull. Even with this, the kid was still trying to get up. Herman knew he couldn’t fight him much longer. He was coughing trying to catch his breath. He was trying to yell at him to stop. But he couldn’t get the words out.

He hit him again, a glancing blow off his shoulder. Then one more time. The gun caught Ives near the crown of his head. He went down onto the floor hard and didn’t move.

Herman wondered if he’d killed him. But he didn’t have time to find out. The CS gas was overwhelming him. It burned his skin, scorched his lungs, and turned the sockets of his eyes into fiery liquid pools. He crawled on his hands and knees away from the front door toward the back of the unit, the ocean side.

He found a chair and threw it with all of his strength toward the light. The crash of glass told him he found his mark. The large picture window facing out toward the Pacific shattered. Shards of glass fell from the window frame up near the ceiling.

The pressure of conditioned air inside the unit forced enough of the gas out the opening that Herman could finally make out some details in the room. Through a veil of tears he could make out the lump on the floor, Ives’s motionless body lying there.

Herman stumbled toward the front door. He reached with his thumb until he found the safety, clicked it off, and pulled the hammer back. He swung the safety bar, dropped to his knees, and threw the door open as he went down onto his stomach.

The instant he did it, a volley of bullets ripped through the open door, the subsonic crackle of a silencer as the rounds slammed into cabinets in the kitchen somewhere behind him. A cloud of tear gas driven by the ocean breeze through the smashed window billowed out through the open front door. Another volley of shots, this time fired blindly, smashed into the doorframe above Herman’s head. Bits of concrete and drywall drifted down like flakes of snow.

Herman could see red. He thought it was blood in his eyes from the tear gas until it moved. It seemed to float among the clouds of gas running out of the room. It was no use trying to line up the sights on the pistol, his vision was a blur. Instead he took aim with both eyes open along the top of the pistol’s return, adjusted to fire low so he wouldn’t fire over the top, and squeezed off three quick rounds at the bottom center of the moving red object. When he wiped his eyes and looked again it was gone.

He crawled out through the open door along the balcony outside. A cross breeze cleared the cloud of gas enough for Herman to make out the lifeless body of the deliveryman lying on his back, still wearing his red shirt. A submachine gun was now strapped across his chest, the fat tube of a silencer protruding from the end of the barrel.

Herman got to his feet. He moved like a drunk and started to stumble forward. The moment he did, another volley of shots stitched the outer wall of the building a few feet in front of him. He looked over the railing down into the parking lot. All he could see was a blur, a hazy figure in the distance, what looked like jeans and a white T-shirt. Then another flash of fire from the muzzle of the man’s gun. Rounds ricocheted off the steel railing in front of Herman. Some of them splintered, sending tiny pieces of copper shrapnel buzzing into his body like burning wasps.

Herman wavered in a daze, standing there on the balcony, silhouetted against the building waiting for the inevitable. He watched the blue and white blur as it danced in the distance. He knew it was too far away for the pistol in his hand even if he could take aim, which he couldn’t.

He waited for the muzzle flash when suddenly a large white object streaked into the parking lot. It obliterated everything in its path like an eraser on a blackboard. It took out a small light pole, caromed off another car, and rolled like a rocket sled into the man with the gun. When it finally came to a stop, Herman’s eyes fixed on the white van that was coming to pick them up. They were late.