Page 12 of The Undead

“If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you,” he told me. He wasn’t joking. “I don’t want to do that. If I kill you, I’ll have cops knocking on my door, and they’ll find out my apartment’s not where I live. That could raise a whole lot of ugly issues. No. Your death would be not be very helpful.”

“Kind of you to think so,” I managed to reply. Adam’s smile held nothing of humor in it.

“Kind? No. I can’t afford kindness, man—any mate than I can afford friends, unfortunately. But I think we can work around the obstacles. I have certain skills. I can block these last few minutes in your memory.”

“Even if I fight you?” I challenged—stupid, but I couldn’t help myself. He didn’t lose his smile.

“Even then,” Adam agreed, and something cold and sharp slid into my brain.

I leaped across the desk at him.

His hands fastened around my throat.

Snap,and it was all gone, and I was standing at the gurney looking down at the pale, shocky face of my wife. She readied up with her uninjured arm and touched my face.

“Sorry about this, Mike,” she whispered faintly. “Relax. It isn’t serious.”

“What are you, a doctor?” My voice was remarkably steady, and so were my hands as I wrapped one around her cold fingers and the other touched her forehead. It was only the rest of me that was shaking. My stomach felt as if I’d swallowed the contents of a silverware drawer, and the smell of her blood and the faint stench of cordite made me fed faint. “Gunshot wound to the right shoulder. Looks like a clean in-and-out, you got lucky, honey, no bleeders.”

Lucky didn’t half cover it, and she knew it. The shoulder was, TV aside, no place to get shot; she was lucky the bullet hadn’t hit bone. The mess that made was unbelievable. There was no way to tell about nerve damage yet. I took in a deep breath, then another. Maggie’s eyes were dry and feverish, but mine burned.

“I’ve got it, Doctor,” Sam Fikowski said, and pushed me aside. He was a neat little man, barely came up to my chin, and Maggie looked at him doubtfully. I smiled encouragingly at her, even though I wanted to scream. “Right you are, Bowman, haven’t forgotten everything I taught you, have you? Room four, nurse. Doctor, I’d appreciate it if you’d stay out of my way.”

I didn’t curse at him, which I thought was a major triumph of restraint. I stood there with Nick as Maggie was wheeled away into the treatment room, and I saw Nick looking down at my hands.

They were smeared with blood where I’d probed her wound. I felt a sudden urge to smash them against the wall, to let a little blood of my own, but I didn’t do that either. Unprofessional. People might talk. I just took the wipe that one of the passing nurses handed me and washed off.

The second gurney had paused nearby, surrounded by burly police with hard and unpleasant expressions. The pale, whimpering man let out a sharp shriek of pain when one of the ER doctors bent over him; the sound echoed uncomfortably in my ears. I stared at him without much comprehension, spreading Maggie’s blood from my hands to a crumpled damp rag.

“Fucking rat bastard,” Nick rasped. I looked at him and saw the savage rage in his eyes, not quite smothering the fear. “I shoulda left him to bleed to death.”

“He’s the one?” I asked. The towelette left cool streaks of alcohol on my hands. The one that shot her?”

Tucker. Yeah, his name’s Angelo.”

“The one you went to pick up this morning before he could skip town.”

“Just a snitch, nothing special.” Nick’s voice seemed too rough, too quick, but that might have been my own shock. “Until now.”

“I guess he was a little more prepared than she thought,” I heard myself saying. All I wanted to say was her name, over and over again. My stomach kept falling. Nick cast a murderous glare at the other gurney.

“The little bastard came quietly. I patted him down, but he had some pissant sissy gun stuck in his shorts and he got a shot off in the car before I could get him.” Nick shifted uncomfortably at the look in my eyes. “She’s gonna be okay, though.”

“I think so.” Maggie, Maggie, Maggie. When I get you home I’ll never let you leave again. “Have some coffee, Nick. I’m going to check. I’ll be right back.”

Behind me, the gutshot Angelo screamed again, a despairing wail of terror and rage. I stopped and looked back; Angelo’s pale face was distorted with pain, but his eyes were steady on Nick. And Nick’s were steady on him.

“I wish I’da killed you!” Angelo howled, and tears broke out of his eyes to drift down his waxy skin to his ears. “Bastard. Lying fucking bastard. I wish I’da killed you.”

Nick didn’t say anything, didn’t do anything. His eyes were like ice. After a long, long moment of Angelo’s sobbing, he smiled.

“You’re gonna wish it a whole lot-worse before I’m done with you,” Nick murmured. “Because if she isn’t up and swinging inside of a day I’m gonna chop off your fingers and feed them to you in the fucking applesauce.”

Angelo screamed again, under the brisk probing fingers of the attendants. His eyes rolled up in his head and he was, definitely, down for the count.

Sweet dreams, I thought numbly, and went to see my wife.

Leland saw me hovering and made a shooing gesture; I wasn’t sure if it was out of kindness or a wish to get me off her back. I stayed. Maggie answered Fikowski’s questions in a dear, steady voice that only turned blurry after they put the painkillers into her IV. He fixed her up with his usual speed and a touch more gentleness than was usual, then turned and saw me standing there,

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