Left to Darkness Read online

  Two guys, three, tops, he figured as the door opened a crack and he fired through it into a big man’s knee.

  Just one man?

  No—smart—the other stood to one side, stepped forward and put his gun to Frank’s temple.

  Frank didn’t care if he died. The other guy did, so when Frank twisted his head to the side, the tough guy was a little slow off the mark. The bullet grazed Frank’s forehead, leaving a burn like the trail of the meteor on his pale skin. Liebowicz didn’t notice, though he was instantly deafened.

  The guy was on Frank’s right. Frank’s gun was in his right hand, making it pretty much useless in the split second he’d have before the guard fired again. But the guard’s feet were almost directly below the barrel of the gun.

  Frank blew a hole in the man’s foot, then, now with more time, put a bullet in the first guard’s head, then the second.

  He took their guns. Now he had three weapons. He kind of wished he had a blade, too, but there was such a thing as overkill. Frank stashed their guns in his big pockets and kept his, which he knew worked (minus four rounds), in his giant right fist.

  He took a short walk down a short hall to a key-coded door. No big deal. Maybe a guy inside, maybe not.

  Didn’t matter. Close enough.

  Frank walked to the door and put the gun against the lock. A bullet for the door, a bullet for Finley, and two guns to spare. All cool, he thought.

  He didn’t need to pull the trigger, though, because Finley himself opened the door.

  24

  The reason Finley didn’t have a bullet in his head right away was Frank’s surprise. He wasn’t quite shocked…Frank didn’t shock. It was pretty close, though.

  James Finley was younger. Not surgery younger. Just…he’d dropped maybe twenty years, like a man on a diet shedding some pounds.

  “Ah, Mr. Liebowicz…” said Finley, looking over Frank’s shoulder like he had all the time in the world. “Impressive work,” he said.

  Liebowicz thought about shooting Finley in the guts, young or not. Or the balls. Somewhere he’d bleed out or be crippled up enough to wait on the meteor. But then Finley said something that gave Frank pause for the second time.

  “I’ve been visited by an angel, Mr. Liebowicz. Won’t you join me? I’m having drinks and watching the show. It’s fun. Good fun.”

  Frank didn’t say anything, but stepped inside the penthouse as Finley requested, keeping his thoughts to himself.

  “Shoot me, don’t shoot me, I think you’ve left it a little late,” said Finley with an easy shrug. He nodded at the wide glass wall to one side of him. The wall looked dangerous to Frank, like a man might forget himself and walk right out into the sky. But he guessed the glass was thick, even though it didn’t look it.

  He figured he wouldn’t be able to throw Finley through it. He did wonder, for a second, if a bullet would shatter it, or just bounce off. Just for a second, though, because as he looked out of that wide window, there was the meteor, the full panorama of it, and it was fucking beautiful.

  The meteor was streaking to Earth, entering the atmosphere already. It was a streak of sheer destruction. Light in the sky like an autumn sunset. Pink on fire.

  It was going to land on Frank’s head, after all. It seemed Finley spoke the truth. It looked like neither of them were going to make it out alive.

  Frank laughed, a thick hearty thing that suited his frame.

  “Vodka?” said Finley.

  They were dead, whatever he and Finley did now, thought Frank, and so thinking figured he might as well have a drink. Liebowicz nodded and took a seat on a plush couch. The couch sighed as he sat. Frank left his gun pointing outward, resting on his thigh, because end of the world, or their world, Finley was still a sneaky cunt.

  Finley passed Frank a bottle and a shot glass. The bottle and the glass were chilled. Finley himself took a large whiskey.

  “End of the world, right? No point in mucking about.”

  Frank nodded. He filled his glass and tipped it down his throat. Felt good. He had another.

  “Some show, isn’t it?”

  Frank nodded again. He was aware of Finley, totally, but he watched the meteor coming over Finley’s shoulder.

  “Quiet fellow, aren’t you? Aren’t you even a little curious?”

  “About how you got to be…what…sixty? Fifty?”

  “A small miracle…one that outweighs the contents of my missing briefcase.”

  “What was in the case?”

  “Is, Mr. Liebowicz. I don’t believe there’s a man alive that could open the case apart from me…or, more accurately, soon, there won’t be. And now? I don’t think it’s anywhere near as important as I once thought. But…I don’t suppose you’d happen to have it?”

  Frank shook his head. “What’s in the case?”

  Finley sighed. “Mr. Liebowicz…you always were a dog with a bone. I don’t think it really matters now, do you?”

  Frank supposed not.

  “Okay, how’d you do it? Surgery? What for? You could have been anywhere on the planet, and you made yourself pretty for what? The end of the world?”

  Finley shook his head. “Oh no. Not at all. Not surgery, and not for vanity, I assure you. I told you it was a small miracle, and it’s true. You see, I met a man. Naked as the day I was born. Gave me a little something for posterity.”

  “A jolly good rogering?”

  “Wonderful! Haha,” said Finley with a large grin. “No. He gave me back my youth, but more importantly, my mind, Frank.”

  Hardly, thought Frank. He shook his head and downed another shot. “Bullshit.”

  Finley’s expression darkened for a second, then lightened again. “It is not. Not at all.”

  “Kind of pointless, though.”

  “I’m not sure, Mr. Liebowicz. That, my erstwhile killer, is what I intend to find out.”

  “By getting hit by a fucking great rock?”

  Finley’s smile was back.

  “Indulge me a while?”

  “Guess it can’t hurt. I think we’re pretty much in exactly the wrong place at the wrong time. Like you say, neither of us is getting out alive. Plus, if I get bored, I’ll just shoot you in the face and call it good.”

  “Fair enough, fair enough.” Finley didn’t seem the slightest offended by the threat.

  Frank thought about just pulling the trigger. Figured he was being set up for something. But he was curious. Curious enough to listen, but not to take his finger off the trigger of his gun, the barrel of which was still pointing in Finley’s direction.

  “The man I met…an angel, if you will…”

  Frank couldn’t see the trail of the meteor any longer. He wondered if they even had time for Finley to finish his tale.

  Be a shame to die without hearing the punch line.

  “This angel, he gave me a cigarette. Some kind of magical cigarette. Maybe even infused with holy purpose…”

  Jesus Christ’s balls, thought Frank, but he didn’t interrupt. He was still waiting for the end of both this chat, and the world.

  Shoot or not…that was what he was wondering, while he listened.

  “Anyway, I began to get younger…bullshit, yes, but you can see the results.”

  Frank had to concede that the transformation was more than he would expect possible with simple surgery.

  “So, there I was, getting younger, when some complete cunt ran me down. In Chelsea, of all places. I was distraught, yes. I took the driver’s number and had him killed. Then I ate him. Can you believe that?”

  “No,” said Frank. He doesn’t know what he just said. He can’t, right?

  “No matter,” replied Finley. “So I tried shooting myself.”

  Crazy as London. Crazy. Fucking crazy.

  “Right…” Frank tightened his finger on the trigger of his gun.

  “Yes, I did. In the shoulder, at first. The muscle, not the bone. I’m not entirely insane, Mr. Liebowicz. But then I ate and my strength re
turned…and I was whole again.”

  “Right…” said Frank. “Steak and chips?”

  “Flesh, Mr. Liebowicz. Flesh.”

  “Right,” said Frank again, and pulled the trigger an instant too late. The floor suddenly jolted upward and to the side, like they were in an earthquake. The bullet shot wide, taking out a long window.

  Glass can’t be that thick.

  Cold air blasted in, unnatural in its power.

  The meteor had hit. Not direct, but the gust…a prelude. The floor, the whole building, shook and screamed. Metal, thought Frank, under stress. Buildings in London weren’t designed to hold up against earthquakes…

  The shock of the impact.

  The wind grew so fast that Frank was blinded by flying grit. Squinting, blinking, he tried to focus and aim the gun at Finley. The crazy bastard laughed and laughed while Frank fired, and missed, with his last bullet.

  “What fun!” shouted Finley, as the windows blew in, sending thick shards of reinforced glass through the air. One hit Finley straight in the back and right through so the end protruded from his belly.

  Fuck it, thought Frank, and threw himself to the quaking floor.

  Then the wave of dirt, debris, roads, pylons, vehicles, bricks, and entire roofs hit the building like the shockwave from a nuclear blast.

  The building began to collapse.

  One second Frank was looking at Finley through watering, grit-scoured eyes. The next, he watched as Finley lost his footing and tumbled from the torn glass wall out into the maelstrom.

  Frank smiled. He knew he was going to die and didn’t care at all. He felt light and free. With the shit flying around the tumbling building, him within, he wondered if this was how people felt when they quit a job they hated. Wondered if people longed to tell their boss to fuck themselves, or just up and punch the bastards until their knuckles broke.

  Fuck you, Mr. Finley.

  Something hit the side of his head hard. Temple, he thought, but that was as far as he got before he, too, was gone.

  25

  Frank Leibowicz grew to a young man in Poland. He hadn’t lived there for nearly thirty years, yet, when he went under, it was to Poland and his youth that his mind returned.

  His mother, his father. Strangely, not the craft he’d learned when he’d been young, but sausage and red cabbage. The smell of it, his mouth watering when he’d been a child of maybe ten or twelve years old. His mother never told him the recipe—women cooked, not men. Men rested after work. True then as now.

  He wished she’d told him the recipe. He was twenty-two when he’d killed his first man. He remembered being horrified, wishing for a simple taste of home to wipe clean the memory of the blood. He’d tried to cook his favorite meal, to remember home and family and the things that had once tethered him to some kind of morality.

  He’d burned it, trying his best to remember the flavors and guessing the ingredients. But he had forgotten the red wine vinegar, charred the sugar. The sugar had smelled a little like caramel, and a little like charred flesh. He remembered the stench, even now.

  As a fifty-year-old man.

  I’m fifty, he thought. Not some young punk fighting for a place on the street. Frank Liebowicz doesn’t need to fight for a place any longer.

  He knew who he was. Knew himself better than most.

  Knew he was a fifty-year-old man, without a doubt, and that he was merely remembering the old days because (of the pain) he was avoiding waking up.

  Pain outside in the real world, memories of deaths past in this inside world he’d created to escape (the pain. Something outside this shell hurt like fucking fuck…). His mother and father had been murdered for a crime he’d committed. Such sadness he’d felt. He wasn’t sure what hurt more, the old wounds or (the broken hand. Right hand, his mind supplied, cataloguing his injuries even while he was out cold) the fresh wounds he’d sustained while trying to kill (James Finley…blown out into nothing through a shattered window) and as the name of his enemy came to him, he found himself again. Like a man who needed an enemy, needed a target. Even though he was perfectly centered, Frank recognized that without other people to kill, he was nothing. Without a mark, he was little more than a blank page.

  Blinking now, blinking away the blood in his eyes and coughing out the blood in his nostrils and mouth. He figured he had a shattered eardrum on the right-hand side (gun go bang bang, he thought, still hazy). Abrasions, grazes, a few deeper cuts. One ruined coat and a pair of creased trousers that were for the rubbish bin. Shoes were scuffed and covered in rubble dust, but serviceable.

  He could walk out, no problem. But for his right hand.

  His hand felt shattered to him, beneath a steel support, like a girder, from the ceiling of the high-rise.

  He couldn’t tell if the building had completely collapsed, or if it was still on the way down after (the meteor…like a fucking nuclear bomb…shockwave…earthquake…) the wave hit.

  He couldn’t move his hand, or drag it clear. At the angle he was stuck, he couldn’t lever his hand free. Even if he could, it’d be useless.

  So, Frank moved onto the next thing. He figured it was fairly straightforward. If he couldn’t get his arm free, he had to get free of his arm.

  A forearm, Frank knew well enough, was made up of two major impediments when it came to removing it. The two bones—radius and ulna.

  He was strong enough to tear off someone else’s finger, but there was no way he’d manage to tear his own arm free. At best he’d stretch the flesh above his broken hand and dislocate his own elbow. Pain for no gain.

  A charred body lay maybe ten feet away, blackened flesh and melded nylon trousers all that was visible. Flame dripped from the floor above.

  Frank had two guns—his third was trapped in his right hand, empty and useless as his hand.

  Shoot the fucking thing off.

  Frank gritted his teeth. Pain for ultimate gain. He might not care if he lived or died, but he didn’t give up. Not ever. And he didn’t hold back.

  His angle was awkward. He was curled uncomfortably. Radius and ulna were almost pushed flat against the floor. If he tried for one bullet through both, he’d either shoot himself in the leg, or risk a ricochet from the girder, if he was really unlucky.

  You’re probably going to need two bullets.

  Two, at least. Downward, into the floor. At an angle in case there was something below the floor that would fragment the bullet and send pieces back up. He didn’t want to take it too close to the elbow but nearer the wrist. If he lived, he’d at least have most of his forearm, which would prove more useful than just his upper arm.

  Frank wondered if he’d pass out after the first shot, bleed to death…but he didn’t have a choice. Inaction would without doubt mean dying. Action might.

  Better of the two options, for sure, was to shoot his fucking arm off.

  Figuring he had most of it straight in his head, Frank didn’t wait any longer. Hesitation, doubt, fear; gone. He took the larger of the two guns from his pockets and held it in his left, pushed it down against the flesh of his wrist, and fired. The pistol was automatic. Gas pushed the slide back, ejected the hot shell, cocked the hammer as the next round was pushed from the magazine into the breach.

  Pushed the gun back down after the recoil, right into the gushing wound and shot through the second bone.

  Now, time was tight. It hurt like fuck and he was dizzy, but he was hurting, and hurting wasn’t dead.

  With all his strength, he wrenched himself free of the last strands of dying flesh and pulled himself out of the ruins. He stood as the flaming debris fell around him.

  He wanted good clean wood or steel to cauterize his stump right away…shrivel his veins and arteries and capillaries down to nothing in the heat of flame. But the only thing burning on this floor was a plastic chair. He didn’t want plastic in his blood. Frank wasn’t sure, but thought it might fuck him down the line, should he manage to get out.

  He looked up at t
he floor above. Plenty burning up there. Maybe a wooden desk on fire, or a PC. Might be he could use the PC case, if it was hot enough, and plain metal. Wishful thinking…

  Maybe not.

  At one point the wreckage formed a rudimental ramp upward. A bit of a climb for him, as he was weakening. But he could make it…maybe.

  Tourniquet, he thought.

  He could have shot himself again right then for not thinking right. But it was too late to beat himself up. Done’s done. He pulled off his belt and his tattered coat, then strapped his right biceps hard, until the flow of blood slowed. Then, on shaking legs, Frank climbed toward the fire. It was a short climb, but even with the pain coming from his phantom hand and wrist, he felt himself slide toward unconsciousness.

  More pain…that’s the trick.

  Don’t mind if I do, he thought, and tried to convince himself he was just taking an extra shot of vodka as he thrust his stump against the first natural material he found alight. Sizzling, awful pain brought him, gasping, to his knees.

  He didn’t scream. He looked at his black and bloody stump. Blisters, bone, but slow blood.

  Might still die, he thought.

  Might not, Frank. Plan for not.

  Frank Liebowicz wasn’t a quitter. He looked out from the shattered building to what lay below.

  Darkness, flying debris, a weird black rain. Nothing to land on, and maybe thirty feet down to the broken pavement below. Nothing to lower himself with, and flames at his back. His hand gone.

  A car, dented and with some of the windows blown out, was on its side.

  Frank’d seen plenty of movies with stuntmen jumping onto car roofs…

  You’re not a stuntman.

  Did it matter?

  He didn’t know if it would work, or if he could hit the doors. Might even be sidebars in the doors that’d break every bone in his body.