Page 61 of Antihero
I’m on the ground when the feeling comes back. Charlotte is half on me, her breathing ragged. I see the blood. Her abdomen. She took the bullet for me.
“Fucking hell, Charlotte, why’d you do that? It’s a little late for heroics, woman.” Goodry is cocking the gun again.
“Don’t,” Charlotte gasps out, stopping for a shaky, pained breath as she turns on her hip to face him. “Don’t do this.”
Goodry is lifting his arm once more. He’ll shoot again, getting me if he can, her if he can’t. He can take all the shots he wants. James is wailing. He reaches for his father, tugging on his gun arm.
“Useless imbecile!” Goodry screeches, a hand clapping onto his neck, shoving James so he falls onto the rotted wooden planks and lies writhing and crying. “As useless now as you were then!”
He dismisses his son before fixing his eyes on me again. I’m an ant to him, I realise, to be crushed under his boot. “Enough of this.”
This will be it. He’s aiming, squeezing the trigger.
Then, Dr Goodry goes flying, letting out a strained yell as he’s pitched forward, falling down into the basement with us, crashing through debris, cracking planks by one of the pillars. But he’s not alone.
“Tristan!” I gasp, voice laced with relief. He’s alive. Charlotte is sitting, trying to kneel, her blood pouring over her hand.
Tristan fell awkwardly, and is limping to a stand. I can’t see a bullet wound, but there’s blood darkening his pants leg as he tries to stand and falls against the wall with a pained yell. The mask has fallen away. He’s just Tristan again. The side of his head and his temple are dark with blood thats clumped in his hair. A trickle runs down the side of his face, like his head struck a brick or stone when he fell.
He turns to Goodry. The doctor has scrambled to grab the needle, but that won’t stop Tristan. We all know it. The doctor tries to crawl away, dragging himself over slick splinters and blackened nails. He’s near the stone pillar, reaching out as though he could reach it and drag himself up with a hold on it.
“Stop!” I shout to Tristan as he moves to follow and finish this. He does. Because Goodry has the needle. He doesn’t have the gun. James does.
James straightens, bringing the gun up from the ground where it dropped as his father was tackled. The nozzle is shaking as he lifts and aims. Straight at Tristan. He’s too close to miss this time. “Shoot him, boy!” Goodry wails. Tristan stills.
Charlotte is the one that speaks to him. “James.” He looks to her, unsure, eyes cutting to the blood pooling under her, drops of rain pattering into it. “James, you don’t have to do what he says. You know it’s wrong. You knowhe’swrong.”
“But he’s…” he starts to argue, a child, forever a child, stuck in his mind. Not a Gina, not a Molly, but hurt and changed nonetheless.
“I know what he is,” Charlotte cuts him off, gently, her voice masking most of the pain. “But… remember what you said to me, that time in Feston? You said your father was so cruel to you. That you feared he hated you?”
James nods, snivelling once. He uses his sleeve to wipe rain from his eyes, snot from his lip. “I remember, Miss Charlotte. You stopped to speak to me when I was…” here he glances at his father, as though fearing recrimination. “I was sad.”
“Yes,” Charlotte says, “Do any of us hate you, James?”
James wavers, glancing between us all, as though trying to recall a time we’d been cruel to him. I’d thought poorly of him, and I regret that now. My ungenerous assumptions, my using his simpleness to my benefit. But such nuance, James doesn’t see. Goodry curses at him, and the gun lowers further.
“You need to stophim,” Charlotte implores.
Tristan is struggling to stay standing, favouring one leg, swaying a little as the trickle of blood from his head reaches the side of his throat. Then James slowly turns towards Goodry. The utter shock on the doctor’s face is sweet to my eyes. But not for long.
In desperation, he lunges for Tristan. Charlotte holds a hand out towards James, stopping his reaction, his finger too tight on the trigger. I shout. But Goodry has his arm wrapped around Tristan’s throat. He has the needle in his hand.
“Shootmethen, boy!” He taunts. “Get us both!”
“No, don’t!” I scream. Not again.
Tristan, not one to be a hostage, throws himself backwards. Goodry’s back connects with a wet, hardthunkagainst the stone column. Goodry lets go with a wail, and Tristan sprawls forward, splashing into a puddle. He grunts in pain as he hits the ground, flipping onto his back to face Goodry, as the doctor, face red, in pain and anger, lifts the needle, about to fall on him.
I won’t get there in time to stop it.
And then the stones wobble. They’ve born through so much these many years, but now, by the impact of his body or divine intervention, they finally crumble.
If they’d fallen a moment earlier, they’d have taken Tristan too. A moment later, and neither of them.
The breath thumps out of Goodry as six feet of stones the size of my head strike him in the back, two at first, then more, cascading, twisting and pushing him down to the ground. The blocks break Goodry, piling atop him as Tristan scrabbles backwards.
Silence. The rain even seems to ease for a moment, like a held breath.
