Page 85 of Sinful Crimes for the Artistically Inclined
“Don’t you dare shoot Tareq!” Althea cried.
Percy frowned, held his aim a few seconds longer, then lowered it, looking for some sort of sympathy from the front of the vehicle. “You know, I just don’t want to kill him.”
“Who the hell is Tareq?” Joe shouted.
“The nice man from the hotel. You know, the one you thought I was going to execute.”
Joe’s eyes flared. “Nice man?”
“The cute one,” Althea put in.
“It’s hopeless,” said Percy. “I can’t do it. And it’s not like he attempted to kill me or anything. The man’s just trying to do his job, after all.”
“Who are you?” Joe yelled.
“It’s fine. I’ll just try smash…” He took aim, pulled the trigger, and the front window shattered, sending a web of broken glass across the vision of the driver. The car slowed at the shock, but still it came.
Percy blew out the other tyre, but still it came. “Fuck!”
A bullet from behind smashed Joe’s side mirror.
“Shoot Tareq!” Joe shouted.
“You’ve certainly changed your tune!” Percy yelled back.
The morning sun shone sharply on the passenger side of the car, obscuring Percy’s view of the shooter but for a dark silhouette, leaning towards its own window, with a gun pointed back at them. Percy launched a bullet through the skull of the silhouette, only knowing he’d met his mark when an appalling splatter of blood sprayed Tareq’s beautiful face.
But Tareq didn’t flinch in the least.
Percy focused on him as best he could on the bumpy road. There was an absence about him somehow. He drove, single-minded, relentless, giving no sense of the animation that had characterised him when Percy met him several hours prior. “Something’s wrong.”
Joe burst into a furious bout of nervous laughter as the car shuddered painfully.
“No,” said Percy. “There’s something—” Tareq rammed his car forward, slamming into the back of them. Their own car mounted the pavement, scraping along the wall.
Joe wrenched it back onto the street. “Just shoot him in the shoulder or something!”
“No,” Percy muttered. “I have a feeling it wouldn’t do any good. And I already did shoot him once, just so you know.”
“Not very effectively,” Joe grumbled.
“If you could just drive the car effectively,” Percy threw back.
“This isn’t a car, it’s a wreck! And we’re getting too far from the harbour. We’ll never make the boat.”
“Fine! The shoulder it is.” Then to Althea, “I did warn him, after all…”
Althea offered a slight nod, then shrank back, turning her eyes away from the expected horror. Percy raised his gun, shot twice, and successfully hit his mark with the second bullet. It plunged into Tareq’s shoulder with a spray of scarlet down the cracked windscreen.
Tareq drove on without the slightest response.
“Percy?” Joe called from the front. There was a complete and rare silence in the back. “Did you hit him?”
Percy watched a little longer, eyes locking with those once brilliant and bright, and now cold and lifeless, with no spark of recognition or humanity. “He’s not going to stop, Joe.”
“Then shoot him again!”
Percy climbed into the front. “Stop the car at the end of the street. Block the whole road. We’ll get out driver’s side, and you both do as I say. And I mean that. Don’t stop to question me once or we’ll almost definitely die. Joe, now!”
