Flight

Four

“WAKE UP, KID; COME ON, it’s time to go.”

I open my eyes. I’m lying in a hospital bed. No. I’m in a motel-room bed, a small and cheap and filthy motel room. A room where a million ugly people have done a million ugly things. There are stains on the walls, and you don’t even want to guess what caused them.

Why am I in this horrible motel room? Well, I did one of the ugliest things a person can do, right? I just shot up a bank full of people. How could I have done that? I think about that man who didn’t think I was real. Maybe I wasn’t real. Maybe none of it happened. I pray to God that it didn’t happen.

But I remember the bank so clearly. I can hear the screams and smell the gunpowder. No nightmare can feel that real, can it?

I want to vomit.

I once read that twenty or thirty people jump off Seattle’s Aurora Avenue Bridge every year. And I’m sure that all of them probably changed their minds about suicide the moment after they jumped. Let me tell you, I feel like one of those jumpers. I feel like I jumped off some kind of bridge and changed my mind too late to save any of us.

But why am I alive? Did I really survive a bullet to the brain?

“Damn it, kid,” a man says. “Get up, we only have a few minutes.”

I don’t recognize the man’s voice. I sit up in bed and see him sitting on the other bed. He puts on his shoes. He’s a serious white guy, maybe forty years old, wearing a blue shirt and blue jeans. He’s fat but strong-looking at the same time, like a professional wrestler.

He’s also got a pistol in the holster on his belt.

A cop.

I’m not dead, but I am under arrest. But how could I not be dead? I felt that bullet crash through my brain. I saw white light. And then it went dark. And I don’t mean asleep dark. I mean shot-in-the-brain-until-you’re-dead dark.

But I guess they saved me. Some amazing doctors and nurses must have saved me. They saved the life of a killer. I wonder if it makes them mad or sad when they do that. I wonder if I deserve to live. What the hell was I thinking? What kind of bastard am I? I’m just another zit-faced freak with a gun. Man, I had no idea I was this evil. And then it makes me wonder. Do evil people know they’re evil? Or do they just think they’re doing the right thing?

I think about Justice. I think he fooled me. I think he brainwashed me. If he was so righteous, why wasn’t he in the bank with me?

He’s free and I’m trapped.

That bullet must have done some major damage. I hope I still have a face and complete skull. I reach up to touch the bandages. But there are no bandages. And there’s no blood or scars or any other disgusting head-wound shit. I don’t feel any pain at all. In fact, I feel stronger than ever before.

I don’t understand what has happened. I survived a bullet to the brain. And I’m in a motel room with a cop.

“Where am I?” I ask the cop.

“We’ll both be in a shit storm if we miss this meeting. We fell asleep. Come on. Get up, get your stuff, and let’s go.”

“Where are we going?”

“Jeez, Hank, shake the sleep out of your brain and get moving.”

Hank? Did he just call me Hank?

“My name isn’t Hank,” I say.

“Quit fooling around, Hank, you’re getting me mad.”

“Quit calling me Hank.”

The cop stands and walks over to me. He leans over me and stares hard at me. His breath smells like beer and onions.

Yes, I’ve had quite a few ugly smelly guys lean over my bed. I get the urge to punch this cop in the crotch.

“Are you still asleep?” he asks.

“No.”

“You’re in one of them waking dreams, aren’t you?” he asks. “Like sleepwalking or something, right?”

He slaps my cheek lightly. Then slaps me harder.

“Did that help, Hank?” he asks.

“You call me Hank one more time,” I say, “and I’m going to kick your ass.”

He laughs, pulls me off the bed and to my feet, and shoves me across the room. I trip over a pair of shoes and bump the back of my head against a mirror.

“That’s police brutality!” I shout.

The cop just laughs. I’ve always been good at making cops laugh. But I’m not trying to be funny this time.

“I just got shot in the brain,” I say. “Are you trying to kill me?”

He laughs again, grabs a holstered pistol off the table, and hands it to me.

“Okay, soldier up, funny guy,” he says. “We got real work to do.”

I am stunned. I am the psycho teen who shot up a bank filled with people and a cop just handed me a gigantic freakin’ gun! A.357 Magnum! At least, I think it’s a Magnum. I don’t know guns much, but I’ve seen this one in the movies.

I turn around to look at myself in the mirror. I expect to see me pretending to be Clint Eastwood. But instead I am looking at a face that is not my own.

Huh. Isn’t that something?

They must have done plastic surgery on me. That bullet must have taken off my face. And so they had to take my zitty teenage Indian mug and replace it with a handsome white guy’s face.

Yes, I am looking at a very handsome white guy in the mirror. His hair is blond. His eyes are blue. His skin is clear. This guy hasn’t had a zit in his whole life. And this guy is me.

Isn’t modern medicine amazing?

“Wow,” I say to the cop. “I really like my new face.”

He just stares at me.

“It’s like that movie with John Travolta,” I say. “The one where he switches faces with Nicolas Cage. I didn’t know that stuff was real.”

The cop’s face changes expression. All of a sudden he looks a little confused. And worried. “Did you have a stroke or something, Hank?” he asks. “You’re not talking or looking right.”

I can’t figure out why he keeps calling me Hank. Well, maybe they changed my face and my name. And so I look down and realize I am shorter than I used to be. In fact, I realize I’m about six or seven inches shorter than I used to be. I’m a short guy now, but I have a lot more muscles. My arms are huge. I have the face and body of a bodybuilder white guy. I am beautiful.

Jeez, I should get shot in the brain every day.

I suddenly get an idea. I reach down and check the size of my groinal region, and I realize that I’m different down there, too. I am a big guy in all sorts of ways.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” the cop asks me. “I’m calling this off if you’re not okay. It’s too dangerous if you’re not okay.”

“No, no, no,” I say. “Everything is good.”

Of course, I’m lying. I don’t know that everything is good. I am very confused.

“Tell me you’re okay,” the cop says. “We’re not leaving this room unless you say you’re okay.”

“I’m okay,” I say.

He believes me.

“Good. Good, partner, let’s go kick some butt,” the cop says, and tosses me a wallet. My wallet. I open it up and see a gold badge. My badge. And then I pull an ID card out of the wallet and look at the photo. It’s me.

Well, it’s a picture of a guy with my new white face. But that ID says that this face belongs to a guy named Hank Storm, and that he’s thirty-five years old, and that he’s an FBI agent. Yep, a federal agent. A supercop.

“I’m Hank Storm?” I ask the other cop, who must be an FBI guy, too.

“Yes,” he says. “You’re finally awake. Jeez, Hank, you really had me worried there. All right, let’s go save the world.”

I put on my shoes and follow him out the door.