Special Agent Peter Johnson stood frozen in the doorway of Room Three for an eternity of anguish, unable to breathe or blink or even move a muscle. His keen eyes took in everything, every nuance of horror, and every last detail of unspeakable, awful, irreversible reality.
His wife and their baby were dead. More than that, they had been brutally murdered. He couldn’t believe that a tornado could so neatly disembowel a woman and hurl her fetus against the wall.
After arriving at that grim conclusion, he realized that his own life was over as well, even though he was still alive. He even began breathing again, but it didn’t seem right. He couldn’t feel anything, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to.
There was a noise, somewhere down the darkened hallway beyond the nurses’ station. His training kicked in and he reflexively drew his .45 longslide Colt Automatic, turning to the sound as he backed out of the patch of moonlight formed by the open doorway. He stood in the dark and listened, watching for any movement.
Beyond the station, Zamba Boukman was in the nursery with Devlin, pushing on the damaged door to hold it open so that he and Devlin could step back into the hall.
The door groaned in its twisted frame, loud in the surrounding silence. There were other sounds, but they were further off, of people screaming in panic and calling to each other. Sirens in the distance were becoming more distinct by the moment as they drew ever closer.
Devlin took a last look around the nursery. Zamba’s bloody voodoo dagger was clutched in his fist, ready to strike, but all the pink and blue bassinets were empty. The nurses, doctors, and orderlies on the floor had scooped up every last infant and fled down the emergency stairs in the moments after the tornado passed.
He could see them now through the shattered windows, gathered with everyone else on the front lawn below. Police and fire trucks were coming down the highway. It was time to leave.
Devlin and Zamba stepped into the dark hallway, heading for the emergency stairwell at the far end of the hall. Devlin didn’t want to take the main stairs. The steps were much wider and they were still intact. Heroes and rescue personnel would likely be coming up that way instead.
Johnson saw Devlin and Zamba silhouetted by the light coming through the window of the emergency stairwell door. The dagger in Devlin’s hand swung into view as he walked.
Johnson leveled his Colt and drew a bead on Devlin’s back. He was a master shot, and after what he just saw in Room Three, he was begging for any excuse to fire.
“FREEZE!”
They paused in the darkness and glanced at each other, before Devlin turned around to face Johnson. Outside, the clouds came up, the moon slipped out of sight, and the icy stabs of moonlight coming through the open doorways quickly faded to black.
All three of them were barely visible now in the inky darkness. The long hallway was punctuated by the pool of dim red light over the nurses’ station, midway between them. Johnson couldn’t see their faces; both of them were backlit by the stairwell light.
He firmed his stance and took careful aim at the one with the knife. Johnson was left-handed, and sighted with his left eye while he squinted his right one nearly closed.
“Drop your weapon!”
Devlin ignored his command and strode directly toward him, an angry, purposeful advance. He quickly passed through the pool of red light, which illuminated his murderous scowl for a fleeting moment.
Johnson winced, doubling over in agony as a flash of searing pain shot through his left eye. In the instant that he saw Devlin’s face, his cornea had been burned; he could feel it. Hunched over in agony, he tilted his head to the left and sighted as best he could with his right eye.
Devlin was a dark silhouette once again, barely fifteen feet away and closing fast, raising the dagger.
Johnson peeled off six rapid rounds, a series of thunderous explosions in the confined space. He knew that he would essentially be deaf for the next several seconds. It only compounded the surreal quality of what he saw next.
The tight group of .45 slugs punched clean through Devlin’s upper torso. Any one of them would have knocked a human being off their feet, no matter where the bullet struck. That’s what a .45 round was designed to do, and that’s why Johnson packed a Colt. Because .45s didn’t throw bullets, they threw sledgehammers. The way he saw it, if he was going to shoot someone he wanted them to drop.
But Devlin kept on coming without a moment’s pause, and as he did he began to laugh. Johnson clearly heard it, even through his temporary deafness.
The red light behind Devlin streamed through the six bullet holes in his chest, and as he moved in for the kill the tiny beams of bloody red light swept over Johnson’s astonished expression.
Johnson dropped to his knees, his hand cupped over his damaged left eye. With his one good eye, he could see Devlin’s black boots approaching. Immobilized by pain and bewilderment, he waited for the blade to strike.
Four cops were charging up the main stairwell behind Johnson, their revolvers drawn. They heard the gunshots, and were more than ready to drop anyone who messed with them.
But Johnson’s ears were ringing, and he only dimly noticed their footsteps behind him. His mind was fully focused on Devlin, but as he stared at the black boots just a few feet away from him, they suddenly vanished.
A moment later, the cops came onto the floor behind him. They saw him huddled on the floor, his left hand over his eye and a .45 in his other hand. No one else was around. They leveled their revolvers at him.
“Don’t move, buddy!” the sergeant warned him.
“I’m FBI!” Johnson gasped.