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Jack thought he could feel the bullet pass over his head, or in time, that is what he convinced himself. He looked up, stunned to find a cop pointing a pistol at his head.
“Drop the chain!” the man yelled at him.
He dropped the weapon to his feet and looked down at Colten. The man was beaten. His face gushing blood from his mouth, his nose.
With the fight over, the full pain came back into Jack’s body and he fell too. His face felt swollen and throbbed at the rate of his slowing heart. His side felt shattered. He didn’t know how he had been standing a moment before. Jack could feel his body going into shock, the stinging agony washing over him with each passing second.
Red walked up to the pair of bloodied pugilists. The rain coming to an end and clearing up with each passing footstep.
“You Jack?” he asked. “I said, are you Jack?”
Jack nodded his head, the stiffness of his neck tensing up before he knew what was happening. The cop moved his weapon and trained it on Colten, who looked up at him with blackened eyes, his head resting on the bumper of the pickup truck. Red kept the gun and his eyes on the madman, but kept talking to Jack.
“Can you get up? Can you walk?”
“I . . . I don’t know.”
Jack attempted to stand again, but his right leg gave way with newfound pain. He fell against the tailgate and put all his weight on his left foot. Every muscle in his body screamed at him. Every nerve resisting his attempts to get up.
“I need you to go get in my car. Get in there and shut the door. I’ll get you out of here soon enough.”
“But . . .”
“Shut up. Get in the car and shut the door.”
Jack drug himself across the clearing. The starlight now shining down and illuminating the stone floor. He cried in pain with each step . . . his strength completely gone. He made it to the car, opened the back door, and lay down on the bench seat. He wanted nothing more than to fall asleep. To pass out. To escape the pain that was now consuming every part of his body. He didn’t have the will to bend his legs and shut the door like he had been ordered. He didn’t care anymore.
Out in the clearing, Red waited until Jack had thrown himself into the back of the cruiser. Then he looked down at Colten, the end of his pistol fixed between his eyes.
“What are you going to do, Red?” Colten asked, fear building up inside him.
His rage had left him. Colten couldn’t explain the sensation that he now felt, as if suddenly one had the feeling of breaking free from a straightjacket. He sensed that he was alone. Abandoned. Left behind enemy lines without protection. He was scared, as scared as he imagined the young girls he had brought up here must have been. But now he was on the flip side of this evil game and he didn’t like it. Staring into Red’s eyes, Colten tried to discern if he had that same look behind the pupils. He searched for bloodlust.
“What are you doing, Red?” he squealed.
———
Red looked at the back of the pickup truck. It was smashed. The kind of damage one would think a truck would have if it slammed into the front of a police cruiser. His eyes traced the lines of the dents, imagining how his young officer’s body had bent the metal as it was pinned between the two vehicles. The rain had washed away the flakes of paint and any remembrance of PJ’s life that may have resided on the twisted bumper.
“Please,” Colten begged. “Please don’t do it.”
Red thought of his young officer coming through the station after one of her shifts. All smiles and full of life. He remembered every bad thing that happened to someone he cared about. He was lost in anguish, justifying what he was about to do. Convincing himself of the sweet release of judgment that he would feel by blowing away the trash of humanity crumbled on the ground before him.
Red cocked the hammer back.
“No, Red . . . no!”
“Shut up, Cole.”
And with that he fired.
The bullet passed out the barrel of the gun with a blinding flash of heat and percussion. It traveled beyond sight, and tore through Colten’s thigh right above his kneecap. Cole screamed in torment.
Red holstered the gun and grabbed his handcuffs. He then drug Cole to the wheel well of the pickup and chained his wrist to the spring.
“I’ll be back to pick you up, Cole,” Red said. “Or at least what’s left of you after the coyotes are done with you.”
“You can’t leave me here . . . Red . . . Red!”
Red walked to his cruiser. He pushed Jack, who was passed out, all the way into the car and shut the door. He got in, fired up the engine, and backed out of the clearing. The headlights flashed across the truck as he turned, and he could see Colten one last time screaming and pulling at the chain.
Red felt a cold sense of happiness, of fulfillment, as he drove down the mountain.