Page 37 of The Circle

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.

Who shot? Why? An accident? An errant shot meant for me that landed in the head of the man who ordered it?

Can’t be. The oke on the bridge seemed as shocked as I am.

Again, not the time. Must revisit anon.

Danny’s chasing after the van, gun drawn, as the vehicle speeds away. He doesn’t shoot, presumably because the back of the van contains Christine and while shooting at the tires looks cool when it works, it could also endanger the precious cargo in the back if it were to cause the driver to lose control.

“Fuck!” he shouts as I reach him.

“What the fok, man? Why are you here?” I shout.

“Come on!” he yells back, ignoring me altogether.

Truly, when did I start carrying so little influence? This has been a very strange few… weeks? Months? Years? Millennia?

Regardless, I resign myself to the fact that I must needs remain in bafflement for just a wee bit longer and limp along after him, my kilt of annihilation still holding me back in an utterly absurd way.

We arrive next to what appears to be an ancient Triumph Bonneville. What a motorbike enthusiast might refer to, I suppose, as a classic.

There is no more talk, no exchange of pithy dialogue as Danny jumps onto it and starts it up. I don’t even insist that I should be the one leading the pursuit of Christine’s abductor. I just climb on behind him, guns still clanking in my pockets, place my hands on his hips—which, under any other circumstances, might be an act of salaciousness, but in this case is entirely functional—and hold on as we zoom off after the van.