Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [156]
Finney walked down to the next landing and felt around on the floor for the pistol Balitnikoff had dropped. He hadn’t encountered either of the Lazenbys since he threw them down the stairs and had no idea where they were now. As he swept his gloved hands around on the floor for the gun, he touched a pair of boots and realized there was a man standing in front of him. He rose to find the dim outline of his brother, Tony, a battle lantern in one hand, the missing pistol in the other. He was still wearing a facepiece and breathing bottled air. “What are you doing with these guys, Tony?”
“Get out of here, John. Leave the building. Go away and don’t come back.”
“I can’t leave. There are people in trouble.”
“Get out or—”
“Or what? You going to shoot your own brother?”
“John . . .”
“Give me the gun, Tony.”
“I can’t.”
“Shoot me or give me the gun. I’m not giving you any other choices.”
“Damn you, John.”
“I’ve been damned for a while. You want to see what it’s like, pull that trigger.”
Tony raised the pistol to his brother’s face and held it. After a moment, his arm began shaking. Then his shoulders slumped and the gun skittered down the stairs. “Ah, shit! The whole thing just ran away with us.”
“Where are the others?”
“Mike has a dislocated shoulder. You broke Paul’s leg. I don’t know where Marion went. There’s no one else up here.”
Diana was almost to the juncture where her own body weight would carry her into the shaft. She’d kicked him two times in the face and blood was gushing out his nose, but it didn’t seem to faze him. He continued to push and shove like a man putting garbage down a chute.
Then she heard a familiar voice say, “You sonofabitch!” Immediately the pressure against her hips ceased. She heard scuffling as she balanced on the brink of the shaft, uncertain whether she was going in or not. After some moments of flailing, she managed to touch the wall inside the shaft where she found a metal flange that gave her enough purchase to slowly stop her teetering and lever herself out. She propped her back against the wall, stripped the cord off her neck, and tried to move air into her lungs. Her throat was swollen, her face itchy with what felt like needle pricks.
G. A. was making almost no headway against the intruder, even though, legs pumping, he was shoving with all his strength and weight.
Finney wasn’t wearing a bottle, his sooty face and shoulder dappled with blood from G. A.’s nose.
Finney walked G. A. backward, the two performing a strange, lethal dance, until they were standing next to the exposed elevator shaft. As Diana watched, G. A. pulled a small automatic pistol out of his pocket. She tried to shout a warning, but couldn’t get any sound out of her swollen throat before G. A. fired a single round into the center of Finney’s coat.
It didn’t seem to affect him. At the sound of the shot, Finney gripped G. A. by the lapels and whirled him out from the wall, spinning him around the room in a circle, like a man playing with a child, until the centrifugal force brought G. A. back around and slammed him into the raised edge of the floor of the elevator. Striking his rib cage and arm with a dull cracking sound, G. A.’s legs collapsed and he slipped, his legs disappearing into the shaft.
As gravity slowly inhaled G. A., Finney stood over him, his soot-streaked face dispassionate. Without meeting Finney’s eyes, G. A. slipped to the lip of the hole. Diana wanted to tell him to let go of the pistol—if he let go he might be able to hold on—but she still couldn’t get any words out.
“Why?” Finney asked. “Why did you guys do this?”
“You’d never understand,” G. A. gasped.
“Try me.”
“Why bother? You’re a loser.”
Locking eyes with Finney, G. A. slowly raised the gun for one last shot, a shot