Riders on the Storm

The charge was pretty much the same kind of tackle-line maneuver he’d tried before. A mistake on his part. I knew when to step out of range. I also knew enough when to sink the statue in his forehead.

Between his rage and his shock and his pain he was temporarily disoriented. He staggered around, arms flailing for balance. The white T-shirt he wore was bloody from his hands swiping it.

I used the time to find my gun.

When I saw it I moved as fast as I could. It was under the coffee table.

And it was then that Byrnes decided to remind me of who and what he was. While I was grasping for the forty-five he got me around the hips, threw me over his shoulder and then heaved me into the fireplace. Bone and stone do not mix, not when bone is hurled against it at a great rate of speed.

Then he was pounding on me.

I hadn’t had time to climb to my feet so he stood over me punching at will. Stomach, sternum, face, skull. This was the pattern he’d no doubt found most successful and most efficient. He was not a dumb man. Stomach, sternum, face, skull.

I kept rolling left and right, deflecting as many punches as I could.

The formula he’d been using must have gotten boring for him because he suddenly felt the need to pick me up and hurl me again, this time halfway across the width of the fireplace and into the stand of tools including the hand-tooled poker.

He looked as surprised as I felt when I was able to creak to my feet and grab the poker.

He’d been ready for another round of stomach-sternum-face-skull or some variation thereof when I waved the sharp-edged poker in front of me. He didn’t move, just watched.

I moved several feet away from the fireplace. He stood where I’d just been.

“You’re doing a lot better than I thought you would, Counselor.”

“Thanks for the compliment. You’re not doing quite as well as I thought you would.”

“C’mon, now, Counselor, you’re not dumb enough to think this is really over yet. Are you?”

“No, I guess it probably isn’t.”

And once again he showed me why he was Byrnes and I was McCain.

He bent down and snatched up the fireplace shovel from among the other scattered iron instruments. Now it was his turn to cut through the air with it. He used both hands the way he’d swing a baseball bat. None of this candy-ass McCain nonsense of just waving it through the air to keep him away. I’d been playing defense. Byrnes, of course, was playing offense.

In this brief respite I had time to realize that I was in some real pain and that my nose was streaking blood into my mouth. The surprise was that I did not have a headache.

I kept thinking of the gun. The gun could save me. I couldn’t think of anything else that could.

He lunged. I backed up three steps into a grandfather clock in a corner. The chimes went wild for a minute or so.

He smiled. He was probably playing a movie in his head. The best scenes would be me on the floor and him savaging my head with his iron shovel. Maybe when I was at least half gone he’d take my poker from me and bash what little remained of my life with my own weapon.

Oh, yeah. He’d been rejuvenated. The baseball bat swing came closer and closer. Backing me up. Making me stumble not once but twice. Enjoying himself because he got to see that he was in control again.

I was now on a path to reach the couch. He was pushing me to reach it, slashing the air when I tried to move in a different direction, leaving me no room to maneuver. I needed to get the gun under the coffee table.

Then it was my turn. Or I hoped it was. I attacked him. My turn to carve my own direction. Fuck him.

And it worked.

His response to my sudden strike was to swing in an ever wider arc and that left him off balance. And that was when the hook of my poker caught him on the right cheek. It wasn’t a particularly sharp edge but I had the opportunity to hit him three quick times along the eye as well.

Blood poured from the massive cut I’d inflicted. His eyes lost focus for a few seconds.

I risked one more slash. It didn’t cut but it disoriented him enough to lose his grip on his shovel.

He came at me but I’d been able to run around to the front of the couch.

I had half-ass good luck.

I wasn’t quick enough to avoid the kicks he leveled at me as my hand scrabbled under the coffee table. He had to be wearing steel-toed boots. But I was quick enough to fill my hand with the gun so that when he grabbed me again — to hurl me across the room again? — I turned and shot him in the right shoulder. His hand shot out for the gun. He had the strength to wrench it out of my hand and it went off again. This time a bullet blasted his right thigh.

His first response was disorientation. He didn’t cry out at the pain. He didn’t try to shield himself from another shot. He just stood there staring at me in disbelief.

This wasn’t the way his world was supposed to run. He was attacker, not victim. The other guy was supposed to be in pain.