Page 138 of Antihero

He shot a quick glance over at Anca. She’d backed to the car, leaning against the hood, arms bent vertically before her like a shield, fists beneath her chin.

The three men wheeled in the aftermath of their swings, staggering to hold balance, mired in the mud. The Goliath’s shot leg slipped out and he went down, a slow-motion tumble like the sluggish kickoff of an avalanche.

Over by the felled tree, the boy bucked like a stunned fish. “Dad!”

Evan took an eighth of a second to set his bearings. A low-grade deception ambush. He’d been caught out because the ruse was so brazenly stupid, plopped before him while he’d been monitoring the sky for incoming Black Hawks. These men were way too large to have been Anca’s abusers, which meant rented muscle, probably prison boys given the teardrop tats and the lock-in-a-sock. No cell-phone range, just three ogres and Evan and Anca in a storm, with the seconds ticking down on his ability to stay upright.

He had to make serious headway before Goliath found his feet. Sweeping up the syringe, he jabbed it in Teardrop’s shoulder blade, juiced him with the remaining two mils, and shot him through a knee from behind. The guy grunted as he tumbled, screaming, “Fuck, Jimmy, get him—”

Before he struck the ground, Evan kicked him forward at his partner, who was closing in, the sock stretched long as it whipped toward Evan’s face. The impact shifted the trajectory, the lock snapping over Teardrop’s back and bouncing off his kidney, a piss-blood-tomorrow shot. Off the snapback, Evan caught the sock in the flaccid middle, the lock tetherball-winding around his fist until he ripped the weapon free.

Nunchaku whirls of his hands cracked Jimmy in the temple, throat, elbow, the latter giving off a pleasing crackle of shattered bone. Eyes fluttering, Jimmy fell sideways and then rolled onto his stomach. At the side of the road, Goliath was up on a knee, his hulking form striated from the dumping rain.

He rose and rose and rose.

Warmth was spreading through Evan’s veins, his senses blurring into one another. Exertion would make the fentanyl spread quicker through his veins, but he had no choice but to exert, a race against himself. He had to inflict sufficient damage in the next three minutes and forty-five seconds or else Anca and his inanimate body would be at the full disposal of these barbarians.

Teardrop grabbed Evan’s boot but Evan yanked his leg free, firing down at him, transforming the hand into an explosion of crimson. The man wailed, clutching the wreckage. Two and a half fingers lay in the mud, one twitching at the top knuckle. His eyes were rimmed red, the first charge of fentanyl. Evan had taken in four times as much. His own eyes must have looked like the devil’s. The opioid had red-lined his senses, the rancid breeze off Bottle Beach filling his nasal cavities. It felt like breathing fire. His attention warbled, came back into focus.

Jimmy coughed and stirred, the sclera of his right eye turned wine red from the blow to his temple. Over on the verge to the beach, Goliath had found his feet. A crimson rose bloomed on the front of his thigh. From the hip shot, blood dribbled down the side of his left leg. Alarmingly, he did not look unsteady.

Evan stood stooped, trying to draw a full breath. The brawl had carried him closer to the car, where Anca remained frozen against the hood.

“Get in … car,” he managed. “Lock doors.”

She broke from paralysis, feet slapping wetly as she ran to cover.

Evan’s ears were buzzing now.

He was down to three minutes fifteen seconds.

He raised the ARES, trying to pick a nonlethal spot on Goliath. None of the previous had worked. He’d just sighted on the right kneecap when he was struck from behind. His pistol flew away. A cushion of mud caught him, his shoulder plowing a furrow. Impossibly, Teardrop was back on his feet, prison tough and still coming on.

Evan swung around, scissor-kicked to sweep the legs. Teardrop hit the mud next to him. For a moment, they lay flat on their backs side by side. They stared at each other. Teardrop had shockingly clear green eyes. Static cramped Evan’s peripheral vision even more but he sensed Goliath reorienting toward the fight. A few feet to his side, Anca reached the door, slipped, pulled herself up by the protruding handle, her feet sliding out beneath her in the slick.

Evan punched Teardrop in the face, shattering the nose. He hauled himself up, clawing through mud, the foulness off the bay lodging in his lungs. Moving toward Anca.

A flash of movement—Jimmy up again, flying toward him for a tackle.

Evan banged into Anca, knocking her clear, grabbed the handle, and flung the car door open to meet Jimmy’s head. He’d seen it in movies but it proved effective enough in reality, the smack compounded by a crash of buckling metal.

Jimmy lay crumpled beneath the dented panel. Evan hauled the door open once more, grabbed Anca from the slime in the road, yanked her across Jimmy’s motionless form, and hurled her into the passenger seat.

He turned.

The concussions and fentanyl had overtaken Teardrop. He lay facedown, mud rising halfway up his cheeks toward the ears. The boy had given up bucking, watching instead with shiny eyes, the dead tree flared at his back, a ghastly peacock plumage.

Across the road, Goliath readied, breathing hard, mist pluming bull-like from his nostrils. His nose, a bulbous protrusion of scar tissue, had been broken and rebroken enough times that it was shaped like a blackjack. Before him, Evan felt like a specimen from an inferior species.

Two minutes fifty seconds, give or take.

Synesthesia mashed up his senses. He could see the fumes now as colors, could breathe in the sounds of the bay. The trash on the beach threw psychedelic streaks. Heaviness tugged at his muscles; he felt them weighing down his bones. He wondered if this was what it was like for Anca one to two times a day.

Rain spilled down his face, drenched his shoulders. He blinked hard, squeezing his eyes, opening them, fighting the haze. He couldn’t allow himself to go out until he’d rendered everyone unconscious or incapacitated. If he went first, he would not have a chance to wake up.

His pistol was in the mud to his side, far enough that he couldn’t reach it before Goliath reached him.

He was in trouble.