Red rain 2.0, page 28
IB and Annie think they know the truth of it.
But they don't. Nobody does. Except me and a drug tsar called Vassily. So nobody's ever going to know. Vassily has that communication problem.
Now I need to know some things from the living.
"Feel like I got run over by a truck. So can I ask a basic question here?" I say. "What exactly happened to me? Who, what, when, and where?"
"You got shot, Luther," Annie says. "Last night, sometime between 11:15 and 11:20. Sound about right?"
"Yeah. About right. But I need to hear details. Because everything seems a little fuzzy, a little disordered."
"Okay," Annie says. "You park your car in the usual place near your apartment. You lock it. You're walking toward the front entrance and somebody maybe twenty feet directly behind you fires one shot. Must be a total surprise, because you don't start to turn, you don't move to draw down. You just go down."
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An excerpt from THE BITE
"I can't move. EMS picks me up. Then total blank, until people in greens are working me over. I think."
"You pass out on the way to the hospital," Annie says. "Blood loss, shock. Your heart's going just fine, though. You make it to the ER. The trauma crew gets busy. You're anesthetized."
"And I wake up now," I say. "When's now?"
"It's 6:45 the next morning. Out just a little more than six hours," Annie says.
"Damage assessment?"
"What IB said. You remember what IB told you a minute ago?" Annie says.
"Drilled clean through," I say. "Dumb and lucky."
Then that gray scrim drops down again, stiff and hard this time. I feel my eyes rolling back inside my skull. My body spasms. I'm gone. I'm back in that black hole.
But I don't stay there long. When my eyes open and refocus, a doctor and two nurses are just rushing into my room. They fuss with the drips, check the monitors. I see the doctor give Annie a thumbs-up when he leaves.
"Christ, Ewing. I'm gonna kill you myself, you scare me like that again," Annie says. I turn my head on the pillow and stare at her. She stares back. She's trying to stay cool, but she's wearing that crooked grin. The cutest grin going. Never figured out why it only shows up when she's distressed or really worried.
"Hey Annie, sorry," I say. "Promise I won't get shot anymore. Okay?"
"You think this is funny? You find it all real amusing, do you?" she says.
"Luther's got a really warped sense of humor—you ought to know that by now, Annie," IB pipes up. "The skinny little fuck Likes to walk into bullets and shit like that every once in a while, just to pull our chains. He deliberately passed out just now."
"Sick. And it's contagious," Annie says. "Seems to me it was you that walked into something last time, IB. At least you had enough sense to be wearing a vest when you pulled that stunt."
An excerpt from THE BITE 291
"Now, Annie, I never did that on purpose. It was an accident," IB says.
"Yeah, he was planning to dodge, like the agents in Matrix" I say. "You know, bend this way, bend that way, faster than a speeding bullet. Only he got confused, bent the wrong way."
"It's all a movie to you boys, isn't it? Nearly getting killed is just entertainment?" she says.
"No. We need to maintain a certain distance. A certain point of view. That the guns only fire blanks, and the rest is all just special effects," I say.
"You are both seriously disturbed individuals, you know that? No, you obviously don't know that. You don't have a fucking clue. You're trapped in adolescence, the both of you." She's not grinning anymore. There's a hitch in her voice. "Maybe you should give some thought to getting professional help. Maybe you should find a good therapist who could help you grow up. You bastards."
Annie drops my hand, rises from the chair. "I'm glad you're alive, Luther. But you really piss me off," she says, bolting from the room.
"Shit, IB," I say. "Look what you did."
"Me?"
"Yeah, you. I needed that nice hand-holding I was getting. Then you go and spook her."
"Me?"
"I don't see anybody else in here."
"I got two things to say, birdbones. One, Annie doesn't spook. Two, I didn't get myself capped. Three, I'm not lying in bed tubed up like some drunk plumber mistook me for a bathroom that needed renovation. Four, I believe you did do that little croaking act on purpose. Lastly, you look like dog shit."
"That's two? Count much, IB?"
"Whatever." Ice Box grins. "Once I get started I inspire myself."
Michael Crow, Red rain 2.0
