Plugged - Eoin Colfer [77]
We pass Chequer’s Diner and the park. I see Carmél, the waitress, joshing it up with a customer, a guy in a hunter’s cap. He swats her behind and she pours him a refill, smile bigger than a slice of melon.
I didn’t know there was a backside-swatting option.
Maybe there wasn’t for me.
Barely ten p.m. and already the streets are drying up. Cloisters is a daytime town. Leafy suburbs and four-wheel drives. Wooden houses filling their lots right to the fences, and expansive parks with soft-fall areas for the little kids. Our sordid world fires a shot across the bows of decency once in a while, but according to the Cloisters Chronicle, this small town has the third lowest crime rate in the country, and the second highest literacy rate. It’s nice to live in a place where people still prefer books to TV.
Ghost Zeb doesn’t let me get too deep into the maudlin. It’s a bit late for community spirit, partner. Don’t tell me, if you survive the night, then Slotz gets turned into a soup kitchen and St Daniel spends his days in a soutane dispensing homely wisdom with every bowl of chowder.
‘Chowder?’ splutters Irish Mike. ‘Jesus, laddie. Don’t crack up yet; the night is young.’
Thinking aloud again. Bad sign.
I really wish that man would stop with the laddie bit. It’s offensive. Maybe a sharp elbow in the ribs would knock the leprechaun out of him, but then I might not reach journey’s end alive and find out what happened to Zeb.
Very good point. Excellent in fact. Hold on to that.
‘Where are we headed?’ I ask Mike pleasantly. You never know, he might tell me.
‘Shut the hell up, McEvoy.’
Then again . . .
We don’t drive for that long. Nowhere is too far away in Cloisters. On our short trip we pass eight churches and three patrol cars. God and guns, that’s what we put our faith in here. Red bulbs buzz overhead, stretching down through the blocks like landing lights.
Pretty soon we’re pulling around back of a familiar strip mall. Zeb’s place. Last time I was here, I was loading a corpse into a trunk. It makes sense to finish things at the clinic. A couple of bodies in a burnt-out fire trap would have accidental death written all over them.
‘End of the line, laddie,’ says Mike, and I feel each stone crunch under the Benz’s tyres as the vehicle slows.
Maybe, I think, suddenly gripped by the absolute certainty that if I go into that building on Mike’s terms I am dead. But not the way you expect it, laddie.
What I’m about to do doesn’t seem part of the real world. It’s one of those ideas that generally would never make it past the good-sense filter in my head, but for the past few days that filter has been switched off. And when a notion like this occurs to me, I fear the switch may be jammed.
So. Two men in front, two behind and Irish Mike to my left. All armed, all dangerous. But all also pretty confined in their movements and probably not expecting me to buck such superior numbers.
If I am going to act, it needs to be right now, before the seat belts come off. I snort a few breaths to psych myself up, then make my move.
Okay. Five targets. Here we go.
First I give Irish Mike the heel of my hand in his windpipe; that should keep him gasping for five minutes. His eyes bug out like he’s been shot in the arse with a harpoon, a vision I will hopefully have a chance to play back for Jason. He loves that kind of thing.
The guys in the back are first to react, so I reach under the middle row seats, yank the adjustment bars and, using my legs as pistons, drive them into the men behind. The seats slide back smoothly on their rails; God bless German engineering. Shins splinter, and maybe an ankle. One guy’s head cracks the rear window. No weapons drawn as yet.
Part of me feels like I’m watching this happen. It’s as though someone else is taking decisive action and I’m somehow observing from a