Fifty Grand

And then somehow Youkilis gets to his feet. Naked, hallucinating.

“Aaaaggghhh,” he screams. Guttural, horrifying. He looks confused, hurt. The noise he made scared even himself. His hands are burning him, his lungs agony.

“Get down, you fucking idiot,” Briggs says.

“Get down, Paul, get down,” Jack says.

But Youkilis isn’t getting down. He wants to escape the water, the ice, the hurt.

He can’t. There’s no way ou-

Cunning flits across his eyes when he spots me. Her. All this pain is something to do with her. “Neaaaahhh,” he says and comes for me, hands out like Mitchum in that Yuma flick with the kids and the money.

He growls, staggers, trips on Jack’s leg.

“Grab him!” Briggs yells at Jack.

But Jack keeps his head down.

That’s my boy.

Youkilis steps around his boss and lurches closer. He’s going to kill me if he can. He’s going to bring me into his world.

“Get down, you fool,” Crawford says and makes a grab for him. “Jack, tell your fucking buddy to get down.”

But a nearby rifle shot sends Crawford diving for the ice.

I hug Klein like a lover and his body protects me from the bullets and his blood protects me from the cold, seeping into my shirt, coating my skin, slithering into my underwear and down my leg, warming, purifying-as intimate as mother’s milk.

“Faaaking bittch!” Youkilis says, staggering to within a few meters of me.

“Go away,” I hiss at him.

He laughs and is gearing up for the final zombie shuffle when a rifle shot buries itself in his back.

He drops to one knee.

“Faarg!” he screams, and he looks at me with savage, cold fury.

Somehow he gets back to his feet. Fucking unstoppable. Naked, inhuman, a thing from beyond the grave. I’m afraid of him. And then Briggs resumes firing at me. BOOM. BOOM. A bullet rips through Klein’s neck and almost gets me, missing my head by centimeters and zipping across the ice. Briggs changes the clip.

More rifle puffs. Youkilis swatting at the bullets like the monster in Frankenstein trying to catch musical notes. Finally the anonymous marksman makes the kill shot. A hit behind Youkilis’s ear-the expanding lead rifle round ripping through his eyes and forehead. He staggers on for one more beat and falls on top of Klein.

You did it, you got here.

“Fucker!” Briggs yells, and he shoots the reloaded.45. BOOM. BOOM

. But now there are two corpses to give me cover.

“We gotta get out of here!” Crawford says.

“The fuck! How? Fucking pinned,” Briggs replies.

“Been watching. It’s one guy, he’s in the trees by the car,” Crawford says.

“Or it’s two guys, taking their time,” I suggest.

“Shut up, bitch, you’ll get yours,” Briggs says.

“If you surrender I’ll make sure they don’t kill you,” I yell.

“Shut the fuck up, you fucking cunt,” Briggs says. “Crawford, can you get an angle on the bitch?”

Crawford tries a shot that plows into Youkilis with a sickening squelch.

“I don’t think so,” Crawford says.

“Maybe we should give ourselves up,” Jack contributes.

“Cut us down like dogs,” Briggs says.

Briggs fires several more at the tree line and his clip runs out again. It holds eight. The bad news seems to be that he’s brought several spares.

A different noise. Thunder. No.

A ripping, tearing, a-

Beneath all of us the ice starting to crack.

“Jesus Christ!” Jack yells, his hands still over his head.

“We’re fucked!” Crawford says.

“We’re not fucked. Keep it together!” Briggs orders.

Another puff of ice. My unknown confederate adding to the mix.

“Fuck it, let’s go!” Crawford says.

Holes appear and water starts gushing up through the ice in frothy freezing bursts. One of the sharpshooter’s bullets skims past my feet. Shit. Was that a mistake? Is he really an ally after all? Is he trying to kill all of us? Esteban, is that you?

Water bubbling underneath me. This is what you get for playing Nemesis.

I scramble away from the blood and the surging water on hands and knees toward a firmer piece of ice a few meters from the bodies.

This looks better. But how would I know? Cuba doesn’t even get frost.

I kneel on the raw plain of ice, completely exposed.

When I was child I used to play a game. If I closed my eyes I could make myself disappear. As long as I couldn’t see me no one else could. Keep ’em closed and you’ll be ok.

The bodies. The blood. The shooting-the rifleman from the parking lot, Briggs and Crawford firing back into the trees.

Don’t look in my direction.

Don’t look.

I’m invisible.

I’m not here.

A grinding, gurgling sound. I open my eyes just as Youkilis slips beneath the surface. Klein follows him into a fissure, his body turning and his cat black eyes staring at me before disappearing into the slime of the lake bottom.

Ice cracks all around me and I get to my feet for balance.

My sweater is dyed red, like a target, like Che storming the barricades, but he had a gun and I’m a sacrificial la-

Wait a minute.

The backpack.

A 9mm and a clip.

My father’s gun.

“Jesus, there she is! Got a shot?” Briggs yells.