Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
His shot misses everyone, which in turn gives Alec a chance to dart forward and grab the remaining currently alive Irishman on the bridge. In a classic Alec move, he snatches up the guy, spins him around, and is now using him as a human shield.
If Terminator wants to gun Alec down, he’s going to have to saw through the body of his co-worker to do it.
Co-worker. In the midst of the chaos, that word popping into my head makes me laugh a little. Co-worker. Yeah. Someone’s gonna have to have a serious talk with HR when the bloodbath is over. This can’t be procedure.
I spin around to confront Terminator, but before I get the chance, Christine has handled him and he falls to the dirt. His timeclock punched for good.
She’s running up to join me where I’m now crouched at the edge of the bridge, but before she can reach me…
Cillian doesn’t shoot her. Thank God. But he does something infinitely more unexpected. And strange.
He grabs her. Grabs her up from behind like somebody pulling somebody else off a person they’re beating up. In that way that lets you know they’re not trying to harm them so much as restrain them, keep them from doing what they’re doing.
It’s weird.
In the midst of this show of lethal force playing out all around us, the fact that he would grab her, as opposed to end her, while way more preferable, is odd as shit.
And, I suppose, it’s that sense of disorientation I feel watching it happen that inhibits me for just long enough that he’s able to drag her, kicking and screaming, to the ajar back door of the idling van, throw her inside, slam it shut, jump into the driver’s side…
And take the fuck off.
ALEC
What the fok are Danny and Christine doing here?
Gaan naai ’n boom, man. Why doesn’t anyone ever just do what I ask? I’m starting to feel as though perhaps my authority isn’t quite as absolute as I thought.
“Fok else is here, man?” I shout into the ear of the oke I’m holding in a chokehold, barrel of my pistol pointed at his frizzy Irish kop.
“Feck yerself!” he shouts back. I’ll give these oud seuns credit, they’re spunky.
“Who was it shooting from that building, bru?” I clarify, pressing the gun harder into his temple.
“Feck am I supposed to know? Ye killed Brasil, ye feckers!”
Curious. We did not, in fact, kill Brasil. At least I didn’t. Maybe Danny and Christine arranged that little deus ex machina? But that doesn’t make sense. Danny would have simply placed Christine there if that had been their plan. Also, given the fact that they’ve just shown up twenty minutes after I told them I was going alone tells me that none of this was thought out at all. How could it be? I didn’t know I was coming alone until twenty minutes ago myself.
And now I can hear sirens approaching in the distance. Fokken hell.
I have to assume they are for us. Unless some other shootout is happening somewhere else nearby. Improbable, I must assume.
And, on the heels of that thought, three things happen almost simultaneously.
a) I see Christine being thrown into the back of the unmarked black van.
b) I see Danny see the same thing and watch as his twisted body bursts into a sprint in that direction.
c) I decide that the fokker in my grip is not going to be of use or provide any worthwhile information, so I pull the trigger and send him to his eternal rest.
Except I don’t.
I don’t pull the trigger. I don’t kill him where he stands.
Instead I just smack him hard in his brainbox with the butt of my pistol, pick up his own where he had previously dropped it on the ground—along with the other scattered pistols fallen from the hands of my two other now-deceased aggressors—and shove them all into my coat pockets.
I don’t know why I don’t end him. But I don’t. And, as before, I don’t have time to parse my sudden bout of conscience now. I’ll revisit it later, but for now I have to get the hell out of here and, more importantly, join Danny in pursuit of Christine.
The laaitie isn’t knocked out. I didn’t manage to smash him hard enough to put him to sleep. But he’s wailing and moaning, holding his head as he rolls about on the bridge.
The weight of the pistols clanging around in my pockets is making running after Danny harder than I would prefer, but leaving the weapons behind doesn’t feel like an option, so I scoop the fabric up around me and dart ahead as if I’m wearing some type of improvised death kilt.
As I exit off the bridge onto the other side, I involuntarily scan the windows of the building from which the kill shot emanated. I can’t see anyone or anything. No one still there.