The Confessors' Club

SEVENTY-ONE

I swung my crutch like I was swinging for the moon, aiming high where I hoped was a head. I hit him with such force that the impact knocked the crutch out of my hands and slammed me back against the wall.

He shrieked, dropping his flashlight, but he didn’t go down. The black shape of him turned on me like a monster, stretching his arms out for me like giant bat wings. I pushed off from the wall and half charged, half fell onto him. We went down with me on top, beating at his face with my good right fist, once, twice, three times, until I connected with something small. It crunched. I’d caught his nose, shattered a bone.

Exhaling hard, whistling wet through his nose, he raised up his hands to flail at my head.

I had no strength; my body was on fire with pain. I had to get away. But his giant hands reached up and found my neck. I beat down at his smashed wet nose again. He pushed me off, rolled on to his side and then onto his belly, to get up, to kick at my head.

I clambered on his back, put a knee into the small of it, and grabbed the hair at the back of his head with my good right hand, to force him down on his chest.

He reared back to raise his knees to buck me off. I dropped my hands around him, down to the carpet to steady myself, and found aluminum with both hands. The crutch that had been knocked from my hands now lay perpendicular under his chest. Tugging at the crosswise crutch with both hands, I forced my knee deeper into his back. My gunshot arm and torn legs raged in pain. But to let up was to die.

He took in a great breath, raised his head and got his knees up, six, eight inches, contorting into the beginning of an arch, but it was no good. I had him pinned. He slammed down face flat on the carpet, except now the front of his neck lay on the crutch.

Pushing all my weight through my knee deep into the small of his back, I tugged the crutch hard up under his neck. Hot blood flooded down my left arm; my stitches had torn loose from my flesh.

His right hand fluttered up, weak, trying to loosen my grip.

‘Die, you son of a bitch,’ I heard myself scream to the body writhing beneath me. ‘Die!’

Something snapped loudly, wonderfully. The hand that had been flailing up to find me fell limp. I did not let up. I let the blood run hot down my left arm; I let my torn legs rage in pain. I tugged on both sides of the crutch until I could tug no more. And then I counted to a hundred.

Finally, I had nothing left. I fell off him and began to crawl out of my room. I could hear nothing but the frantic gasping of my own breathing.

At some point I tried to rise, at least up to my knees, to head down the hall, to find Amanda. Surely he’d found her first. But I had no strength. I slumped back to the floor and sort of rolled, kicked and crawled the dozen yards to the lobby.

There was a fire extinguisher mounted on the wall. And a fire alarm. I reached up and managed to pull the red handle down on the alarm.

Horns on, battery back-ups sounded down both halls. White lights flashed like lightning strikes.

I fell back; I could do no more.

‘Dek?’ Amanda’s voice sounded after a time, from far away. Her breath found my cheek, on the floor. ‘He’s here?’

She didn’t ask who; the blood running out of my torn left arm had already told her.

‘The Escalade,’ I managed to whisper. ‘Get us inside, lock the doors, drive us away.’

Surely the man could not be killed. Surely he was still alive.

She ran to get her keys, knelt to help me up, and half dragged me out the lobby door and across the parking lot to the Escalade.

‘Just lock the doors,’ I said, after I’d crawled up onto the seat. Bright white lights were flashing everywhere, under the eaves, on the walls, out through the windows from inside.

I passed out.