First Blood

But Teasle took another snip at his hair and startled him. There were clumps of long hair scattered across the gray wet newspaper, some of them tangled around Rambo's bare feet. He expected Teasle to go on snipping at his head. He braced himself for it. But then Teasle brought the scissors too close to his right eye, cutting his beard, and Rambo instinctively dipped his head to the left.

'Hold still,' Teasle said. 'Shingleton, you and Galt hold him steady.'

Shingleton pulled his head up straight, and Rambo slammed his arm away. Teasle snipped again at his beard, catching it in the scissors, pinching his cheek.

'Christ.' He squirmed. They were too close. They were crowding him so he wanted to scream.

'This could go on all night,' Teasle said. 'Galt, go get the shaving cream and the razor off the desk.'

Rambo squirmed. 'You're not shaving me. You're not coming near me with that razor.'

Then Galt was there handing it to Teasle, and Rambo watched the long blade flash in the lights, and remembered the enemy officer slicing his chest, and that was the end. He broke, grabbing the razor and standing, pushing them away. He fought the impulse to attack. Not here. Not in the goddamned police station. All he wanted was the razor away from them. But Galt, was white-faced, eyes on the razor, and he was fumbling for his gun.

'No, Galt!' Teasle shouted. 'No guns!'

But Galt continued fumbling for his gun, and awkwardly he had it out. He must really have been new on the job: he looked as though he could not believe he was actually raising the gun, his hand shaking, squeezing on the trigger, and Rambo slashed the razor straight across his stomach. Galt peered stupidly down at the neat deep slash across his belly, blood soaking his shirt and pouring down his pants, organs bulging out like a pumped-up inner tube through a slit in a tire. He took a finger and tried poking the organs back in, but they kept bulging out, blood soaking his pants and running out his cuffs onto the floor as he made a funny little noise in his throat and toppled across the chair, upsetting it.

Rambo was already charging up the stairs. He had looked at Teasle and Shingleton, and the one was over by the cells, the other by the wall, and he knew they were too far apart for him to slash both of them before at least one had time to pull his handgun and fire. Even as he rounded the landing halfway up the stairs, the first shot came from behind him, whacking into the landing's concrete wall.

The top half of the stairs was at an angle the reverse of the lower half, so he was out of their sight now, over their heads, pounding up toward the door to the main hall. He heard shouts below him and then running on the first half of the stairs. The door. He had forgotten about the door. Teasle had warned Galt about making sure to lock it. He rushed up, praying that Galt had been in too big a hurry when he came back with Shingleton, hearing 'Stop!' down behind him and a gun being cocked as he wrenched the handle and pulled at the door and sweet Jesus, it came open. He was just ducking around the corner when two shots cracked into the bright white wall across from him. He heaved on the painters' scaffold, and the thing came crashing down in front of the door, planks and paint cans and steel poles piling together, barring the way.

'What's going on?' somebody said in the hall behind him, and he turned to a policeman standing surprised, staring at Rambo naked, reaching for his gun. Four quick steps and Rambo chopped the flat edge of his hand across the bridge of the guy's nose and caught the gun dropping from the guy's hand as he fell. Somebody from downstairs was pushing at the wreck of the scaffold. Rambo fired twice, hearing Teasle cry out, hoping the shots would hold back Teasle long enough for him to reach the front door.