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I WAS ALREADY MOVING when he pulled the trigger. I was charging him from three paces away, so he had time to turn and shoot, but not really to aim.
It didn’t help. He hit me right in the torso from point blank range. A blast of volcano heat seared my whole midsection and a stabbing pain hit me an inch above my belly button and to the right.
The bullet must have passed clean through, I thought, because after that burst I only felt the wild, euphoric clarity of a dead man hopped up on a lifetime supply of adrenaline.
I was already moving forward, and the bullet didn’t stop me. It didn’t even slow me down. I hurled myself on Hauser like I was trying to smother a fire.
He tried to fire again and then to raise the gun and club me with it, but he was too late. I was too close. I punched the gun out of his hand, and it went skittering across the fake hardwood floors.
He was disarmed, but he wasn’t harmless. He planned to kill the girl, and he could do that while she was still tied up. I knew I was a goner, but I meant to take him out in heroic sacrifice. So, mid-tackle, I let him have it. I became a blur of flying fists and knees and elbows. I kept trying to punch his jaw, to knee his abdomen, but it was all just body parts slapping and thudding together.
I hit him high when I crashed into him, though, and he wasn’t ready at all. So we both went down in a pile, and I never stopped throwing punches. With my dying breath, I would—
I stopped when I noticed the whimpers. He wasn’t fighting back. He wasn’t even protecting himself anymore. He was gasping for air and moaning in pain.
“I got you!” I said, panting too. “I got you.” Then I pushed myself back off him and leaned against the bedframe. I sat cradling my midsection exactly like a guy in a movie would. It made sense, because it hurt so much.
I was surprised there wasn’t a lot of blood.
Hauser sounded disgusted as he asked, “Where the hell did you get blanks?”
Blanks? So the slide would close. It was a very story kind of answer. “Ben,” I said, “and Gross Carl his neighbor. God bless him.”
I poked my belly where I’d been hit. There was a bruise, and my whole midsection was tender from the gunpowder blast. But there was no bullet hole. I was in better shape than the Toyota.
The door boomed bang-bang-bang, and it sounded a lot like Derrick’s signature intro, but then a bullhorn bellowed, “County sheriff’s! Open up!”
Hauser couldn’t move. I climbed over him, uncareful where I put my hands and feet, and I know at least one knee landed in his middle.
He caught at my leg as I went past, meaty fingers digging painfully into my calf, but I kicked him in the shoulder with my free leg and tore away from him at the same time, and that was the last of the fight in him.
I pulled loose and stumbled over to the door just as the pounding started again. I ripped it open.
And there they were. My reinforcements. All of them.
I’d won.