Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [143]
A molar.
The left side of my face was swollen and tight. My jaw was broken.
I recalled once reading about a man in a bear attack who’d been besieged by the same feeling of disbelief that was now gripping me. In his wildest dreams he’d never imagined himself getting eaten by a bear. In my wildest dreams I’d never imagined getting beaten to death by a chemist.
61. STEPHANIE GETS INTO DONOVAN’S BRAIN
I knew after he finished with me, he would start on Stephanie. I knew also that there wouldn’t be a thing I could do to stop him.
Not that I was having much luck stopping this.
The thought of Stephanie forced me to my feet. Broken and bleeding, the least I could do was keep him occupied. Give her time to flee.
He stood well back while I propped my legs under me like a newborn calf, wobbly and wet and trying not to stumble.
Stephanie said, “For God’s sake, stop it. You’re killing him.”
Startled by the nearness of her voice, Donovan relaxed his martial arts stance for a moment and turned toward her. “Baby, you haven’t seen a thing.”
“Leave him alone, you big creep.”
“Your boyfriend broke my hand. It’ll be a while before I’m through with him.”
Their brief exchange distracted Donovan long enough for me to run at him, head down, building up speed.
I tackled him just above the knees. My thought was that he’d go over backward, but it was like hitting a wall. If I’d had any teeth left, I might have sunk them into his thigh, but there was only wind and fluid where my choppers had been.
And then, without warning, he toppled over and I was on top of him, my fists moving like a blur of jackhammers. Or so I wanted to think.
Eventually one of my blows found the family jewels. Donovan yowled and curled into a fetal position.
Stephanie took a step toward us. “No,” I said. “Stay back.”
He rolled over and grasped me with both meaty hands, tearing at my clothes. The hospital top ripped apart. I might as well have been wrestling a gorilla—one of those big boys turning truck tires into pretzels behind the glass at Woodland Park Zoo.
Somehow he got one arm around my neck, and his grip grew tighter. We struggled, rolling across the floor, crashing into the desk, knocking over a chair, rolling across the room to the vault.
When he tightened his arm around my neck, the pain became unendurable.
It was a strangely intimate position, his breath warm and moist on my face, the blood from his nose trickling into my eye. I could feel the warmth of his arm around my neck. Could hear his heartbeat thumping on my back as he slowly closed off my airway.
He cinched his arm tighter, crushing my windpipe a quarter inch at a time. After some moments of this, he loosened his grip enough for me to get a snatch of air. He didn’t want me to die too quickly.
We were on the floor, my eyes bulging, face itchy, limbs shuddering like a dying wildebeest. Big cats didn’t kill their prey by ripping them apart. Not like you’d think. They clamped their jaws on the victim’s throat and waited while the kicking victim exhausted the air in its lungs. It was revolting to watch, but not nearly as revolting as when you were doing the kicking and shuddering yourself.
“Run, Steph,” I gasped.
As I began to black out, a shadow passed over us. For a moment I entertained a feeble thought that Stephanie was going to stab the bastard with the hypodermic she’d been holding. Or that she’d located his gun and was moving closer so she could put a slug into his brain stem.
Instead, she stabbed me. Hard.
In the buttocks. The needle went in so deep, I swear it hit bone. Despite the fact that I was on the brink of death, it hurt like hell.
A moment after the pain in my butt subsided, Donovan screamed.
Realizing his grip had slackened, I wrenched myself out of his arms and rolled free. Climbed to my feet.
My neck was so stiff I could only turn a few degrees in either direction, and even that produced pain. I’d never had a broken neck, but if pain was any indication,