vituperation

This is fiction, because that’s what my spare time is now — both producing and consuming.

45,000+ words so far, go me! Should this ever make it onto shelves, and a reviewer uses the words “white-knuckled” or “relentless,” I will feel like I’ve accomplished what I set out to.

Think, Matt. Think.

I had to get out of the handcuffs. If I was free of them we could make a run for it, maybe get out into the darkness and away from whoever was shooting at us. Could I make it out to the patrolman and search him for keys without taking a bullet in the back? Probably not, but what choice did I have?

The patrolman wheezed again, blood bubbling from the hole in his chest. The entire front of his uniform was soaked now. When his breath eased out in a long sigh, he didn’t draw in another one. Beside me, Andrew was no longer crying. He stared at the dead officer, his shoulder forgotten. In one hour, he had seen more deaths up close than I did during an entire tour of duty in the Gulf War.

If I was going to go for his keys, I wanted to have some idea of where they were first. In the movies, cops always carry a leash keyring on their belt with a bunch of keys—including one for the handcuffs—hanging off it. This wasn’t a movie, though, and I didn’t see anything on the patrolman’s belt other than his gun. A gun could get handcuffs off, too, I realized.

My gun, which lay not ten feet from us just around on the side of the Jeep. I peeked around the fender and could see it back by the open door, lying out in the open, but still close. I could get to it quickly enough, but with the cuffs on, trying to pick it up off the ground and get back out of the line of fire would be almost impossible to do with any speed.

“Listen to me,” I said to Andrew. “Get on your belly and wriggle under the Jeep. Go back toward the door on my side, and look for my gun laying on the ground. I need you to shoot out there as fast as you can, grab it, and get your butt back under the Jeep. You can do that, can’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” he said.

“Get me my gun, and let’s get the hell out of here. What do you say?”

He lay flat and vanished under the Jeep. I held my breath, listening for any signs of whoever was out there in the dark, but didn’t hear anything but the scrape of Andrew’s shoes in the sand. He was back in no time, holding my gun out ahead of him.

“Good boy,” I said. I scooted on the ground until I was turned away from the Jeep. “I’m going to hold my hands out, and I want you to put the barrel of the gun against the chain. Make sure it’s aimed away from both of us, and pull the trigger. Do you understand?”

“I don’t want to shoot you,” he moaned.

“You’re not going to shoot me, buddy. Just aim the gun the way I said and everything will be fine. Let’s get out of here.”

I felt pressure on my wrists when he pressed the gun to the handcuff chain. I sent up a silent prayer that this would work.

“Ready?” Andrew asked.

“Do it,” I said, and he pulled the trigger.

The report from the gun scared a yelp out of Andrew, but my hands separated, thank God. I hugged him close, took the gun, and told him he did a good job.

The shooter was probably still to our right, I thought, so our best bet was to go left. Looking out that way, there wasn’t a lot of cover. We needed to stay low and use the brush and darkness as much to our advantage as we could.

“Okay,” I said, “are you ready to make a—”

Activity down the road caught my attention. Three deputies were racing toward the curve with their guns drawn, responding to the shot they’d just heard. I realized in an instant how this would look to them: me in busted cuffs, with a gun in my hand and a dead officer in the road. Cops don’t take too kindly to someone they think killed a fellow cop.

A bullet thunked into the back of the Jeep. The shooter must have seen them too, and wanted to flush us out into the open before they got to us.

I pushed Andrew forward, trying to keep the Jeep between us and the killer behind us.

“Run!” I screamed.

A couple of days ago, for the 1000th episode of his show, Craig Ferguson did the whole thing with puppets. This is is the musical number.

You’re welcome.