Even with a hand clamped around his throat, Crow screamed.
Ruger’s lips were peeled back like a feral dog’s as he leaned in toward Crow’s throat and they were less than an inch away when Norris Shanks yelled, “What the fuck are you doing?”
Hissing, Ruger turned toward the cop who stood in the doorway. Shanks held his flashlight to one side and was reaching for his handgun when Ruger grabbed Crow with both hands and threw him across the room. Yelling in pain and fear, Crow spun through the air and crashed into Shanks with a teeth-jarring impact that slammed them both against the far wall. Shanks slid to the floor and Crow landed hip-first in the officer’s lap, mashing his testicles and tearing loose all the stitches on both sides of his hips. Shanks shrieked with pain and Ruger took two quick strides toward him and kicked him in the forehead, knocking his head back with a crunch that silenced the scream at once.
Crow rolled off Shanks and spun around on his hands and knees. Despite the searing pain in both hips, with the hand removed from his throat Crow’s oxygen-deprived brain was working better now and adrenaline was starting to pump through his system.
“Cr…Crow…?”
He turned and saw Val’s head and shoulder appear from the far side of the bed, silhouetted against the window. She was alive!
Ruger reached for him but Crow launched himself forward, surprising the killer and driving his right fist into Ruger’s crotch; then as he bent over the pain Crow reached up with both hands, grabbed his hair, and yanked him downward. Ruger hit chest-down on the floor with a crash that sent a shock back up through Crow’s arms. Crow lifted his head and slammed it down again—and again. He could hear bones break.
He lifted a third time and Ruger’s icy hands shot out and caught his wrists like two vises. After those three blows it was an impossible move, something no man, not even Ruger, could have done. But there was no loss of strength in those hands and Ruger held them, pulling Crow’s fists away from his scalp so forcefully that Crow could feel hair and scalp tearing. He still held them as he rose to his feet while keeping Crow in a kneeling position, arms raised as if in surrender.
Crow looked up at Ruger and even in the darkness he could see those fiery red eyes—those impossible eyes—and see the cuts and lacerations on the killer’s face. Even the worst one barely bled a drop.
Crow knelt there, held by overwhelming strength, looking up at Ruger, trying to make sense out of what he was seeing. None of this was possible. Was he still dreaming? Was he lost somewhere in a nightmare? For one wild moment Crow wondered if he had really been shot worse than he thought back there on Val’s farm. Could everything that had happened since then be part of some trauma-induced coma?
Ruger’s fists were tightening and the pressure was making Crow’s arm bones grind together. He had to do something, dream or not, impossible or not.
Using Ruger’s iron grip as a support, Crow picked up both of his legs at once, poised for the split part of a second like a gymnast hanging from the rings, and then pulled his knees up to his chest so his feet could clear the floor as he brought them up and kicked out with every ounce of strength he could manage. He tried to break Ruger’s knees, but the angle was bad and instead his heels struck Ruger in the hard muscle of both thighs.
It was enough. Ruger howled in pain—the first concession to humanity that he had made—and dropped Crow. Ruger staggered back with bad balance and had to grab the footrest of the bed to keep from falling.
Instantly Crow made a dive for Shanks’s pistol and had it out when Ruger lunged at him again, howling with rage. Crow swung the gun up but Ruger swatted it out of his hand and the gun flew across the room where it struck the window, creating a vast spiderweb fracture. Ruger again reached down for Crow but Crow threw himself backward and kicked upward, catching Ruger under the chin. Once more Ruger was staggered backward, but again he somehow managed to shake it off.
“What’s going on?” someone yelled and Crow was vaguely aware of shapes in the doorway—nurses, patients.
“Get the cops!” Crow yelled, but he had no idea if anyone went to get help. Ruger reached over and swung the door shut with such force that Crow could hear cries of surprise and pain as it struck faces and hands.
Then Ruger turned and leered at Crow, showing the uneven row of teeth—the teeth Crow had shattered after they’d fought in the rain—and his grin looked like the mouth of a shark. All of those jagged teeth seemed unnaturally sharp and unnaturally long.
“I’m going to kill you and everything you love,” Ruger hissed. He was not even breathing hard as he closed in again, bone-white fingers reaching to grab.
Crow kicked up again and caught Ruger in the chest, but it was like kicking a tree trunk. It didn’t even slow him down. He tried it again and Ruger caught his ankle and dragged him forward like a fisherman reeling in a marlin. Crow tried every trick he knew to disengage his foot, but all he did was tear the skin on his ankle and twist his knee.
Ruger reached down to grab Crow’s throat again when the loudest sound Crow had ever heard seemed to rip the whole room apart. Ruger was knocked forward and almost fell, but took a broad step to clear Crow and somehow remained on his feet. He turned and Crow looked up and there was Val on her knees, leaning against the far corner of the bed, holding Shanks’s gun out as smoke curled up from the barrel.
With effort Ruger pulled himself erect and faced Val. He hissed at her like a snake and started to reach for her when she shot him again. The bullet caught him in the shoulder and spun him around. Crow covered his head with both arms and ducked out of the way as the bullet punched through Ruger’s upper chest and struck the TV mounted on brackets above the bed. Metal and glass fragments showered down on Ruger, but he did not fall.
“You killed my father!” Val was screaming over and over again. She fired again, catching Ruger on the other shoulder and he did a wild pirouette before careening off the bed.
Crow reached over to Shanks and frantically patted down his legs until he found the backup pistol in a small holster strapped to his ankle. Above him Val fired again and Ruger was slammed back against the wall.
“You fucking bitch!” he screamed, but still he didn’t go down.
Crow tore open the Velcro and clawed the pistol out of the holster. It was a .38 snub-nosed Smith and Wesson, and Crow rolled onto his back and raised the pistol with both hands and just as Val fired a shot into Ruger’s stomach Crow opened fire and hit him again and again and again.
Caught between two fires, Ruger was a puppet dancing in the darkness, being jerked back and forth, either unwilling or unable to fall as Val hit him in the stomach and chest and groin and Crow hit him in the back and kidneys and shoulders.
Crow fired five times and the hammer clicked dry on the sixth chamber, which had been left empty. Val fired twice more and then there was the audible metallic snap of the breech locking open.
Ruger was chest-forward to the wall, and as Crow watched his legs buckled and he slid slowly down to his knees, lingered there for a second, and then toppled over onto his back. Mouth slack, eyes shut, muscles slack.
As Val knelt there her arm sagged to the floor and she dropped the gun. “You killed my father, you son of a bitch.” She looked at Crow with dark and wild eyes and he could see the fresh dark bruise on her face where Ruger must have hit her when he’d slipped into the room during the blackout.
“Val…wait…I have to check.” Holding the gun high, ready to use it as a club, Crow wormed his way over and with his other hand felt for a pulse in Ruger’s throat. Nothing. He tried another spot. Absolutely nothing.
Crow bowed his head.
Karl Ruger was dead.
“Jesus Christ,” Crow said, and then he struggled to his knees and reached across the corner of the bed toward her just as her eyes lost their focus and rolled up in their sockets. With a soft sigh she passed out and sagged down on the bed. Whimpering in fear, Crow crawled over the bed to her and pressed his ear to her chest, not breathing at all until he heard the steady thump-thump-thump of her heart.
“Thank God!” he breathed and kissed her over her heart and then kissed her sweet face. “Thank God….”
Outside, there were yells and an official voice—Frank Ferro, Crow thought—was yelling, “Police! Police! Out of the way!” Footsteps were hurrying, getting louder, coming closer.
A hand clamped around his wrist with implacable force and Crow turned in absolute horror to see Karl Ruger leering up above the footrest, his eyes wide and red and hellish.
With irresistible force he pulled himself up and pulled Crow close and whispered in his graveyard voice, “Ubel Griswold sends his regards.” Then he laughed the coldest laugh Crow had ever heard and the red light went out of his eyes and Karl Ruger sank back to the floor.
Crow was frozen there, his eyes wide and unblinking, his heart beating painfully in his chest, mouth agape as the horror of those five words plunged his entire world into madness.