If I knew I'd tell you. It takes so much just to stay ahead. Time grows shorter you know. Each day lasts a little less longer than the day before it. That sinking feeling of dread sits in your stomach. It's so heavy.
A feeling grows, soft at first, but then more prevalent. The dread climbs and you know that before it can reach a crescendo you're going to have to face whatever it is that you gotta face. It's inevitable.
I'm not a good man. I've hurt people ... a lot of people. I'd tell you that I'm sorry for what I've done and what I have to do, but ... I'm not exactly sure that's true.
Seattle, Washington
2004
John broke to his left and down the steps, skipping as many as he could to get to the bottom landing. The entire metal structure was shaking and vibrating with each hard strike of his foot. He paused long enough to see that Louiz was now in a full out sprint down the alley.
When John reached the bottom himself, he caught his break: Louiz was already winded; too much fast food and weed had killed the kid’s stamina.
“Louiz, stand down!” John yelled.
A gunshot went off, and the garbage bag to his left exploded.
The alley wasted no time swallowing the noise.
Louiz exited the alley with the pink bundle under his arm like he was heading for a touchdown, and ran into the park across the street. John followed, sucking wind hard as he pulled the Beretta out of its holster.
He tried to keep his eye on Louiz, but it was getting difficult as the kid was ducking and diving out of pedestrian traffic.
Up ahead, Louiz turned his neck for a second to look back and see how close John was (about two hundred yards) when he collided head on with a man in a red parka.
John watched as the two went sprawling, ass over elbow.
But Louiz was quick, agile even, and he was back on his feet, not giving John much time to catch up. As he stumbled to look back at John, he aimed the gun, and John brought up his own.
Then, Louiz changed his mind and fired blindly at the man in the parka.
A bullet ripped through the man’s kneecap.
Red Parka howled, and someone else screamed as the birds in the nearby trees took off for a less noisy environment.
John dropped down on a knee in front of him. Blood from the wound was already staining the walk and the grass next to it. The man was in shock and confusion. The look on his face said he didn’t know whether to scream or cry.
The cement path ahead wound its way around the public restrooms, a building with green shingles, and Louiz had just dropped out of sight behind it.
John knew he was running out of time, the gap was widening again.
Think fast… think fast… think… FAST!
And John was back to his feet and back in the hunt.
Red Parka behind him was still screaming, pleading for help, but John tried to block that from his mind. As John hit the bend in the path hard, another gunshot rang out, this one punching a hole into a wastebasket outside the bathroom entrance.
Louiz had been waiting around the corner, probably trying to catch his breath again, and hoping John had given up the chase.
John fired back, grazing Louiz’s shoulder, but the kid didn’t stop, instead he fell forward into a sloppy run.
“Motherfucker…” John muttered. His legs were getting sore, and his throat and chest were on fire. He dug down and forced his legs to churn forward.
Louiz was losing momentum, and with a sudden jerk he turned around and hurled the pink bundle toward John.
“Oh shit,” he gasped, feeling the words get sucked back into his mouth. John had to leap forward to grab the sailing child into his arms.
But he caught it, and it felt so light there in the crook of his left arm. Before he could look down, and unwrap the blanket, something hot tore through the bundle and into his left bicep.
The pain dropped him to his knee, and as his vision blurred, he looked up ahead of him and fired twice toward the running Louiz, both shots sailing wildly.
“Oh no… oh no,” he cried out as he dropped to the ground.
He tried to remove the pink blank from his dead arm. His gun fell to the cement and he laid the surprisingly light child onto the grass, and pulled the blanket free.
He wasn’t sure what it would take, but he was going to put Louiz down, for good.
A little girl’s doll, with what was left of its face, stared up at him.
Sweat stained his eyes as he picked up his gun and he pushed forward on legs that felt made of taffy. In front of him, Louiz cut off the path and into a bark mulched playground. John tore after him, reloading his weapon on the run. He could hear his heart hammering in his eardrum.
As he entered under the awning that marked the entrance to the playground, he saw Louiz steal a glance over his shoulder, then the kid was zoning in on a little girl who had just come off a slide.
In one motion Louiz scooped the child up and was spinning. John saw the girl’s mother leaping off the nearby park bench she had been sitting on.
The girl screamed, and John felt his blood pressure boiling. Louiz was bringing up the gun to the girl’s head; his finger was about to squeeze the trigger.
John was raising his gun with his one good arm, and fired wildly. Rounds ricocheted. And a metallic echo rang out through the air.
The girl’s mother went down in a heap.
Then, everything seemed to dance in slow motion in front of his eyes.
The girl fell and Louiz pirouetted, and plowed face down into the bark mulch.
A dull buzz filled John’s head as he reached the scene.
The fire in his lungs had turned into an icy ache.
He felt himself double over.
The little girl was crying, and trying to crawl toward her mother.
John’s eyes shifted from the girl, to Louiz, and then back to the mother, who was lying flat on her back, leg geysering with blood. He scrambled over to her, and fell halfway before finally dropping down next to her. The pain in his bicep was like a hot iron under his skin, but he ignored it to take his jacket off and make a tourniquet.
He unzipped the woman’s jacket, and froze.
The woman was pregnant.
He felt blood and sweat mix in his mouth, and he tried to speak, but couldn’t. The little girl wailed.
“Don’t take my baby,” the woman cried. “Don’t take my baby — don’t take my baby… don’t take my baby.”
John sputtered, no words.
“I’m a ——pol——a police——“
He looked around, for the first time very frightened.
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