Distractions

Fiction betrays the reality of certain situations.

Much like how shooting a car's gas tank will not make it explode and no security system on Earth is comprised of a series of red laser beams, it is not easy to be curt and dismissive when there's a gun pointed at you.

It's a gun. You know what it can do. I've seen it, I've shot holes through paper villains to great effect. A gun can put a hole clean through you. Or your windshield.

I didn't know why there was a guy with a gun in Comstock's living room, nor did I know why Comstock was dead or why I was there. I couldn't move; that's all I knew. I tried to remember what the guy had said, "You killed Dingan?" How is that relevant?

The man stayed in the shadows, I couldn't really see his face.

Someone said my name. The voice came from behind. I turned my head just enough to see that Amy was still standing in the foyer. Great. She was supposed to cut through the kitchen, grab a knife, and throw it at this guy's face. Why wouldn't she instinctively do that? I would have.

The guy's still there. Why isn't he saying anything? Was I supposed to answer that question? Is he enjoying the panic he's put me into?

"Dingan tried to kill me," I managed to say.

"So it's true?" the man said, finally. I still couldn't figure out what that accent was. His voice was light, as if whispering.

I said nothing. Just stood there like an idiot with a cell phone in my right hand.

"I was told he was at fault," he said, probably talking about the corpse by the door.
"So you killed him for it?" I said, waiting for a plan to float to the surface of my brain like they usually do.
He was silent for a moment, then turned his head slightly and said, "You, away from the door. Come in here." He was talking to Amy. A few seconds later I felt her standing a few inches to my right.

After another pause, the man asked, "Who are you?" He seemed to choose his words carefully.

I tried to measure the distance between us. It was over six feet. At a distance, the guy with the gun always has an advantage.

"You don't know?" I said, mildly incredulous, "I thought I was at the core of all this."
"I guess I'm being kept in the dark," he said. The accent sounded Scottish maybe.
"Hey, I've been kept in the dark for a while now. I find the best way to get answers is to threaten people, though I usually don't get that far," I said, pointing at Comstock.

The man stepped just a bit closer. Maybe five feet away now. "I do as I'm told, I don't look for answers. I was told to kill the man responsible for Dingan, and I was told that was him."

Hired to kill the man responsible for Dingan's death? Who would do that, other than Schumer?

"You're just a kid," he continued, "how the hell could Dingan have tried to kill you?"
"I'm scrappy," I said. He took another step forward. Four feet. I could see the gun in his right hand better, it was a black pistol with a silver suppressor. It wasn't a Beretta or a H&K, those being the only two guns I know by sight. The fact that I couldn't identify the gun made me wonder if I was only myself. If I'd had weapons training, wouldn't I be able to recognize a gun by sight? I thought that whenever I was in danger, the training took over like a second personality. I felt alone in my mind.

I said, "Dingan was an accident. He tried to take me in, I escaped. He tried to kill me, I killed him back. My understanding is that Comstock hired him, but he did so for someone else. If you want revenge, you'll want to head up the ladder, not down."
"And you're down the ladder?" he asked, less careful with his words. The accent was definitely Scottish. Or Irish. Welsh, maybe?
"At the bottom, and off. I'm off the ladder. I'm running around the yard trying to find the ladder."
"But you're here," he said. "I can't exactly walk away with two witnesses."
"Not my fault you showed yourself. You had a nice hiding spot going there."

After a moment, he said, "Toss the phone."
I frowned and threw the phone in my hand over to the couch.

He took another step forward. Three feet.

Close enough.

My left arm went left, my body went right. I gripped the top of the gun's slide and pulled it backwards, heard the chambered round tumble from the gun and onto the hardwood floor. My right hand went knuckles-first into the man's wrist, freeing the gun from his grip. My right elbow flexed into the man's neck, and I brought my fist down into the back of his head while I turned the gun in my left hand to hold it by the grip. I felt it, that feeling of running on auto-pilot. That clarity. I was glad it was back, comfortable in handing my safety over to a voice inside my head.

I felt something on my leg for a moment, and before I could process it and my surroundings, I saw that Amy had the knife from my pocket in her hands, open, and she lunged forward at the man and plunged the blade into his right thigh. They both howled at the same time, for different reasons. Slightly taken aback, I pulled Amy away from him and kicked the assassin backwards. He stumbled and crashed into the stone fireplace mantle.

"What the hell was that?" I asked, moving the gun to my right hand and keeping it pointed at the man.
"Just helping," Amy said, breathing heavily. I put a hand on her shoulder and walked her to the couch and sat her down.

The man was leaning now against the fireplace, keeping his weight off his leg. He grimaced and winced, both hands wrapped around the handle of the knife stuck into his leg. After some panting, he pulled the knife from himself with a quick tug. He held the knife in front of himself with both hands.

"Drop it," I said, leveling the gun again, and holding it with both hands like you're supposed to, so that somebody can't just grab it and rip it from your hands.

His fingers went limp and the knife fell to the floor. His hands retracted and he held them both over the wound in his leg.

"Now, while we wait for the police, you can tell me all about who you're working for," I said.

The man just kept grimacing. I turned to Amy for a moment and told her to call 911. She asked where the phone was, and I told her it was on the couch by her. She looked, and said she couldn't find it. I turned my head for another moment to look at the couch, but I noticed a slight flurry of movement from the corner of my eye. I turned back to the man at the fireplace just in time to see a small, black cylinder fall to the ground with a slight clank. I quickly tracked my eyes upward to see the man had turned and was holding his face against the mantle, a small shiny ring of metal around his index finger.

I tried to say, "Oh, crap," but was cut off just after the "oh" by a sharp, blinding white light and a deafening explosion. My ears and eyes gave out in an instant, the image of the man holding his face to the wall burned into my vision as I stumbled backwards and tripped over a piece of furniture and fell to the floor. I barely noticed myself hit the hardwood with my back, my senses had all gone away. I existed in a world of sharp ringing and painful blackness. I was aware of the gun in my hand, but there was nothing I could do with it.

For the second time in as many weeks, I wondered if I was permanently blinded.

After a few seconds, the photosensitive cells in my retinas wore themselves out and my vision slowly crept back. All I could smell was ammonia and gunpowder. My ears were still ringing and I found it hard to balance, but I pulled myself up to my feet and tried to figure out what the situation was.

Amy was still on the couch, only now lying down and rubbing her eyes. I discovered the gun in my hand and drew it upwards, scanning the room. There was nothing at the fireplace but a bit of blood, my knife, and a black metal canister, the frame covered by a series of uniform holes, and an aura of black soot covering the floor for about a foot around it. Still fighting for balance, I stumbled into the kitchen, and then the foyer. Comstock was still there, as dead as ever. I set out to inspect the other rooms but back in the living room I noticed that the glass window closest to the fireplace was broken. Outside it, surrounded by bits of glass was one of the small wooden chairs from the table just by the window. He must have used the distraction to escape.

I went over to Amy and put a hand on her shoulder. With her eyes still closed, she tried to fight my arms away until I yelled her name loud enough for me to hear it. I sat down and we took a few minutes to let our senses return.

"Was that a flashbang?" she asked, her voice a bit raw.
"Yeah," I said, rolling back through the series of events. The flash was a magnesium flare, the bang was an ammonium perchlorate reaction probably thrown in with some phosphorus. The intended effect was achieved; not prepared for it, the flashbang had incapacitated me long enough. He could have taken the gun from me and shot me, or used the knife at his feet on me. That he had only escaped seemed unusual, if highly fortunate.
"I thought it was a grenade, or a bomb," she said, "I thought we were dead."
A dull ringing still echoing in my skull, I said, "We're not. Not yet."