The storage room door opens and a man wearing a flak jacket and carrying what looks like machine guns runs in, barrel pointed at us all. Mark, Galt and Loogie all put their hands up in the air.
Allie points the gun at the guy and screams, “You can’t ignore me!” Her hair looks like Medusa snakes and she’s caked with filth.
They all ignore her, though.
“Drew,” Mark says with a sigh. “About time.”
“Hey, man,” Drew snaps. He looks like the epitome of a soldier from the movies, all short hair, heavy brow, and complete concentration. “We did our job.”
“That you did,” Mark snaps back as he looks at me. He drops his hands and crouches down to me.
I can’t stop staring at the lightbulb. The long, fluorescent lightbulb. It’s soothing, even as my body throbs and pulses. Pain isn’t pain any longer. It’s just existence. It’s who I am.
Mark’s filthy, anxious face hovers over me. His hands touch me gingerly.
“Medic!” he screams, like he’s in a war zone.
I guess we are.
“Right here, sir,” Drew barks as a groups of uniformed paramedics fill the storage room carrying what looks like a surfboard with straps.
“Jesus, that was close,” Galt says, clapping Mark on the back. No one is smiling. He turns and gives Loogie a resigned look. His eyes skitter over to Frenchie, whose head is sunken in, like a rotten pumpkin.
“We’re gonna have to file a metric fuckton of paperwork on that one,” Loogie mutters to Galt, motioning toward Frenchie’s dead body.
“WHAT IS GOING ON?” Allie shrieks. Her gun floats between Drew, Galt and Loogie. Suddenly, they aren’t ignoring her. Drew’s hand goes to the trigger of his gun, but he doesn’t point it at her.
I’m watching all of this with eyes that are looking anywhere but at Mark.
“Put the gun down, honey,” Chase says from the top steps of the storage door. “Please. Allie, it’s over. It’s over.” His voice is steady, like he’s gentling a crazy horse.
“But what’s Galt doing here?” she asks in a trembling voice. “He’s trying to kill you! He wants you dead! And why did he kill Frenchie? And—” Her eyes roll in the back of her head. Loogie grabs her before she falls.
Her fainting unravels Chase, who rushes to her side. He slips on a small patch of congealed blood.
“What the fucking fuck?” he screams. He cradles her head in his lap as he looks around the room with frantic eyes. Then our eyes meet.
“Carrie. Carrie, what did he do to you in here?” Chase’s horror looks misplaced on his tough-guy face. “Your face. Your shoulder. The scratches, the…” He moves his hands in a shaky way over Allie’s sleeping body, then looks at El Brujo’s dead body. “What happened in here?”
Between his reaction and Mark’s warm hands on me, I realize it’s okay.
I can let go.
And so I do.
The world fades out.
I am done.