Pestilence

1

Four o’clock in the morning, the man sprinted down the terminal, his heart pounding like a drum.

He glanced back once and saw the walls of O’Hare International pressing in around him. A bathroom was to the right, and he ran inside and went straight to a stall. He closed and locked the door and then climbed onto the toilet so his feet weren’t visible underneath the door. Sweat was pouring out of him so profusely that he could barely see out of his glasses, and he took them off and wiped them on his shirt.

His vision was still blurry, and he wiped his glasses again before he realized tears were obscuring his view. He thought of his wife and wondered what she was doing right then. He hadn’t had time to get her. And even if he could have, he knew she wouldn’t be safe. But leaving her back in Los Angeles might’ve been signing her death warrant, too. He didn’t know what the right decision was.

A couple of people were in the bathroom, and the sounds of their voices calmed him. But then he heard a set of purposeful and calm footfalls walk in, sending a shiver up his spine. He held his breath.

The footsteps grew closer, and he quietly slipped off the toilet and looked under the stall. A pair of black crocodile-skin dress shoes stood at the first stall. The door opened, then they moved on to the second stall.

The man got down on his belly. He was in the fifth stall. He crawled into the sixth and then the seventh. Someone opened the eighth and stepped inside. He couldn’t risk a confrontation. He looked back and crawled the other way.

The shoes got to the fifth stall, and their owner tried the door, which was locked. The crocodile-skin wing-tips stood quietly a moment before standing up on tiptoe.

As the shoes moved on to the next one, the man crawled over into the fifth stall. He had timed it well enough, he thought. He kept going. All the other stalls were empty up to the first, and he crawled until he got there and then got to his feet and peeked out. No one was around him, so he slipped out and headed outside, when a hand rested on his shoulder.

He spun around and batted the hand away, but a blow to his chest sucked all the wind out of him. Another blow flung him back against the sinks. He hit his head on the mirror, shattering it.

“No, please,” he begged. He thought of his wife, and the tears flowed.

The attacker held him by his collar as he cried. He was handsome and young, and he wore a black suit-not at all how the man had thought his killer would look.

“Do you want money?” the man said, sensing the killer’s hesitation. “I have plenty of it. Enough for you to retire on today. I can get it for you right now.” His glasses had flown off, and he could see only a hazy outline. “Whatever they paid you to kill me, I’ll pay you ten times more. Twenty times.”

“Do you know,” the man said in a calm, steely voice, “how many people you’ve put at risk?”

“What was I supposed to do?” he said, beginning to cry again. “Just lie down and die? Even a dog wouldn’t do that.”

“I wouldn’t actually care, except for one thing. You are a hindrance to my employer’s plans.”

The killer took out a pistol with a silencer attached.

“Wait! Wait. Please wait. You’re… you’re Ian, right? That’s what they call you. Ian. I know about you. I knew you were the one they would send after me. Ian, please, I have a wife. I have a wife, and that’s why I did this. I can’t watch her die.”

“You won’t.”

He pulled the trigger, and the man’s brains and bits of skull spattered against the broken mirror. Blood spread out in a lotus pattern behind him, and a red halo appeared to be hovering above him.

A toilet flushed, and Ian turned around to see an older black man standing at the stall.

“I didn’t see nothin’,” he said.

“That’s right. You didn’t.”

Ian shot him twice in the chest as he walked out of the bathroom. He took out his iPhone once he was in the terminal and opened a dossier. Inside was a list of names and locations, along with birthdays and current photos. He ran his finger across the name at the top: Norman Russell Stewart. His name and information turned to a light gray, then faded into the background. Six names were left on the list.

Ian tucked the phone into his pocket, then left the terminal.