Ladies' Night (18 page)

And then methodically began to kick it to pieces.

Halfway up the stairs they heard the screams and laughter and the sounds of struggle, of bodies falling and pounding into walls.

Goddammit
! Right in front of the fucking door!

"Guns first," whispered Phil. "We got to change our plan here.”

“
Bullshit!
"

"You love your son? You want to live to see him?"

"He's right, Mr. Braun."

"You assholes! That could be
Andy!
"

"Unh-unh, Mr. Braun.
Listen
to 'em. Could
Andy
put up a fight like that?"

Dan was right. It sounded like maybe a dozen out there. Whoever was behind that door was struggling hard to keep on living.

"Whoever it is, Jesus, we should help!" His voice sounded almost petulant to him.

"Hey. You can be a hero or you can save your son.
We need those guns
," said Phil. "We can be back here in
minutes
."

Tom knew they were making sense and he also knew he was verging on hysteria. He fought for control, trying not to fall apart right then and there in the stairwell. He wasn't going to be any goddamn help to Andy if they went out there and got themselves killed, but to be this close was torture.

His connection
to Andy was still alive and somehow he felt that that meant so was Andy.

"Okay," he said. "The elevators. It's faster."

They hurried back downstairs and hit the first floor landing at a run. Dan pushed open the door and they were out in the mirrored corridor and rounding the corner to the elevators when they saw the four young women in front of them. But by then they were moving fast and kept on moving, Phil taking one of them by the arm and stabbing her in the side then turning and hitting the call button, Tom backing the second to the mirror so that he stared at his own hard eyes as he stabbed her in the stomach. Dan was wielding the baseball bat like a two-handed sword, the last two women falling in front of him like grass before a demented reaper. One of them scrambled away from him on her hands and knees with her skull bleeding and Tom thought that it was the first time he'd seen any of them show that kind of fear. It was almost human.

The door to the middle elevator opened and they swung inside. Tom hit the button for ten. The door slid shut and then there was nothing to do but wait while the elevator ascended. The very normalcy was oppressive. Here he was, doing the same thing he'd done a thousand times, staring at the imitation brass of the wall surface, listening to the hum of machinery, waiting.

Everything's normal but us and them
, he thought.
Just another little ride in the elevator
. Sweat beaded Dan's forehead. The bat rested lightly on his shoulder. Phil's fingers opened and closed on the knife handle.
Clubs and knives
, he thought.
Back to basics
.

They stepped out into the hall.

Apartment doors hung open all along it.

One had been pulled off its hinges and lay across the hallway.

There were traces of what looked like blood on its inner side. Garbage was strewn around — wrappers, cans, melon rinds. Near the elevator a section of wallpaper had been torn away, the pasteboard behind it bone-white. Someone had smeared the wall with excrement.

They turned the corner. In the laundry room — every floor had one — a man lay face up in the first tumble drier. His eyes and mouth were open, his hands were folded in his lap and he was covered with soap powder. They'd drowned two men in the top-loader washers, one of them wearing a bathrobe and the other only a pair of boxer shorts.

They moved down the hall to Sharkey's apartment. Dan was ready with his passkey.

The door to 1034 was closed —
but not locked
.

Phil pushed it open.

They listened in silence.

He turned on the light in the living room and they walked inside.

They knew immediately there was no point calling for Sharkey. The smell was strong here, a salt-sweet reek and the smell of human wastes. They locked the door behind them and began to look for him.

The living room, dining area and kitchen were undisturbed. In the bedroom Phil went to the closet, reached up on to one of the shelves and removed a small pistol from beneath a pile of sweaters. Under another pile he found a box of shells. He felt around further.

"Shit, I can't find the Colt," he said. "Maybe he sold it." He loaded six bullets into the pistol and slipped the box into his pocket.

"Maybe he's got it on him," Tom said.

"Maybe."

"Mr. Braun?" said Dan. The black man was on his knees holding up the bedcovers which had dropped partly off the bed. The tip of the sheet was shit-stained and beneath the bed they could see a dark twisted form.

They pulled him out.

The face was bloated, blue and yellow. The belt from his bathrobe lay embedded in the swollen flesh of his neck and his fingers were frozen still clawing at it.

Phil looked down at him.

"Guy drank too much but he was never mean," he said. "It's a goddamn shame. You want to bet he figured he got lucky tonight? Nobody broke into this place. His door was open."

"Maybe that's where the Colt went."

"Maybe."

Dan patted the pockets of the bathrobe and peered beneath the bed. "He didn't have it on him," he said.

"Let's go," Phil said. "We got one gun. It'll have to do."

The elevator was still there open waiting for them. But this time there was nothing familiar-feeling about it. The air inside as they descended felt thick with a terrible promise. He heard a soft clicking sound and looked at Phil and saw him staring down at the gun and knew that he felt it too.

He'd just clicked off the safety.

The lock was going to hold but the bathroom door was some sort of cheapjack plywood. Andy gave her two or three more kicks before she got inside.

"
Noooo
!" he moaned.

His voice sounded low and hoarse to him, like he'd grown five years in the last five minutes.

He pushed open the medicine cabinet. Most of the bottles were plastic. But there was a heavy jar of cold cream and some perfume and cologne bottles. She kicked the door again and he heard the panel shatter.

Behind the cologne he found his father's old straight razor. He opened it. He ran his thumb over the edge. It was stained and dirty but it was still pretty sharp.

The razor and the bathroom gave him an idea. The idea was right out of
Psycho
and it scared the hell out of him but she scared him more. He left the cold cream and perfumes in the sink and with the open razor in his hand slipped into the shower stall and threw the clear plastic curtain.

He could hear the door splinter.

He turned the shower on and threw the dial over to HOT as far as it would go, then quickly angled the showerhead away from him and stepped up on the ledge of the tub behind the spray.

The showerhead was already too hot to handle so he peeled off his pajama top and wrapped it around his hand.

Through the plastic curtain and the fog of steam he could see the hand moving through the hole in the panel Ambling for the lock then withdrawing. The door opening. His mother suddenly inside
.

He wanted to scream but he held it in, tried to stay calm because he could not make any mistakes here, it had to be just right. He could hear the thunder of falling water. It burned his hand through the wet pajama top but he held onto the showerhead anyway, willing himself to not let go.

She drifted to him through the pluming mist of steam and threw aside the curtain.

He heard the sharp, metallic-sliding rip of the curtain rings across the rod and jerked the showerhead up in her direction. The hot heavy spray hit her full in the chest and she threw up her hands. She backed to the wall opposite the sink but his spray could still reach her and he turned it on her.

He heard himself screaming, yelling in pure release, and followed her with the spray.

She began to twist and howl but he saw that she'd fixed his position now behind the spray and it was like they were connected. He knew what she was thinking — she was thinking that it would be an easy thing to face the pain for just a second and get to him — so he slipped off the ridge of the tub, scalding his own naked back in the process, and launched himself at her.

He cut her once, twice, a third time, felt the terrible resistance of flesh beneath the razor and felt the warm spray of red. He did not know where he hit her, only saw her fall back against the sink and stumble to her knees. He knew he should be staying there, standing there, standing over her, killing her with the razor now that he had the chance but he couldn't.
 
The awful sounds, the feel of the razor when it cut, the terror was too much. It was like he was in a room with every black, evil, wicked thing in the world and some of it was him — some of it was him with the razor.

It seemed that one second he was still in the bathroom and the next he was at the front door pulling it open and then standing frozen there, looking at them milling through the hall by the elevators and the stairwell all the way down to Lizzy's apartment, turning with a quick terrible purpose when they saw him, snarling.

He slammed the door. Locked it.

His heart was roaring.
He was in hell now, it was all hell, the entire world, this was what it was, not like he'd read or seen in the movies but this, exactly this
.

He heard the shower die abruptly.

He had never known a silence so thick and filled with meaning. He'd hurt her.

And now he'd pay.

She was coming to
make
him pay.

Calm down
, he thought.
You got to think
.

He still had the razor but it was not going to be enough — not now, not after he had hurt her.

There were things in the kitchen.

As quietly as he could, he went to the kitchen and closed the double louver doors behind him. There were no locks on the doors but they would give him an extra moment. The cleaver was on a peg on the wallboard. He took it down. The cast iron frying pans were on the stove. The biggest was too heavy for him so he took the next biggest. He opened the cabinet and took out a stack of plates.
The good china
. He was making noise and she'd know exactly where he was but it didn't matter, she was going to find him anyhow.

He put the pan and cleaver next to him by the sink where he could grab them fast and took up the stack of dishes.

He put his back to the far wall and waited.

He saw a shadow through the louver doors.

The pause that followed lasted a billion years.

He felt a rush of terror tremble him like an electric jolt and the doors burst open.

She stood there dripping wet with her nightgown plastered to her body and he took in at once the damage he'd done. The red skin blistering across her arms and breasts, the bleeding lines across her hip and belly. But all of it was nothing. The force of her was stunning. The dishes felt puny and ridiculous in his hands.

He threw them anyway. She batted them away and they crashed on the floor and counter. He grabbed the cast iron pot by the handle and threw it underhand as hard as he could like he was pitching a softball and he was lucky, it caught her in the stomach and made her double up for a moment and he rushed her with the cleaver.

She saw it coming.

She backhanded him across the face and sent him sprawling against the wall. He sat there dazed, pain careering through his face and jaw, looked up through a film of tears and saw her advancing.

He slashed at her legs with the cleaver and felt it connect,
the resistance of meat
, and heard her howl. He got up moving faster than he would have ever thought it was possible for him to move but it was still no good.

He felt an immense bone-shaking blow to the back just above his shoulder and then a second lower down, cracking his ribs. All the breath went out of him in a sudden rush and he fell flat across the floor. The tears were pain-tears now. He blinked his eyes to clear them and saw her foot right in front of him, then brought the cleaver down.

She stepped away.

He heard low evil laughter.

Goddamn you!
he thought and pain or no pain he rolled over on his side pushing outward and up from the wall and lunged at her with the cleaver — and if he lived forever he would never forget the sound of it.

Nor what he felt and saw.

The blade had all but disappeared into the flesh of her thigh and stopped against bone. He'd
heard
it stop. A huge flap of muscle and skin enveloped it. He saw muscles twitching, veins pumping bright hot blood. It sluiced over his hands still clutching the cleaver. He let go as though the handle were electrified.