The Walk

CHAPTER FOUR

12:25 p.m. Tuesday

The streets were clogged with people now, hundreds of government workers, lawyers, jurors, marshals, judges, transients, parking lot attendants, and LA Times reporters. They milled around, trying to stay clear of the burning buses, the smoking cars, the fallen buildings, the wailing of the injured, the stink of the dead.

Buck pushed and shoved his way through them, clearing a path for himself and Marty up 1st Street as it rose over Bunker Hill. Marty realized there might be some advantages to having Buck along after all.

Marty had only traveled a mile or two since leaving the set, but it was a hard walk, making his way over ruined streets strewn with chunks of disgorged asphalt. Already his feet felt swollen, his knees were sore, and he was gasping for breath. If he kept deteriorating like this, Marty thought, he might need Buck to give him CPR in a couple more miles. He resolved at that moment to go back to the gym and use that membership, if the gym was still standing, or if it wasn’t, just jog around the rubble three or four times each day.

As he ascended Bunker Hill, Marty clearly remembered the last two times he’d been downtown. The first was five years ago, when he and Beth came down to get a wedding license and meet with the family court judge who was going to marry them. The judge seemed to embody the full force of the law, as if personally schooled by John Houseman in the art of glowering intimidation. But when he performed their wedding, he seemed to be channeling Henny Youngman instead, apparently using their vows as a chance to try out a possible Vegas lounge act.

The second time was about a year ago, to talk his way out of serving on jury duty. All it took was an autographed photo of Jennifer Garner and a promise to read the clerk’s spec screenplay when he finished it. Marty still hadn’t gotten it and, judging by the damage to the County Courthouse, stomped under one of Mother Nature’s enormous Doc Martens, he probably never would.

“Hey, did you piss yourself?” Buck glanced at Marty’s pants.

“That’s Evian,” Marty replied between labored breaths.

“Yeah,” Buck snorted. “I bet you shit Beluga caviar, too.”

Abraham Lincoln’s bronzed, decapitated head rolled past Marty as he paused at the corner of Hill and 1st and looked at the glimmering, downtown office towers a few blocks south. Buck was more interested in watching Honest Abe’s head roll through the intersection than appreciating the view.

The only way you could really see the polished granite and tinted glass monoliths was from a distance, up close they were about as welcoming and creative as a retaining wall. They were each designed to make a grand architectural statement that could be absorbed in one glance from the freeway. Now they were all shedding glass like tears.

From where Marty stood on the crest of Bunker Hill, catching his breath, he could even see the future, or at least the building that stood in for it in a thousand bad TV shows and movies. The Bonaventure Hotel was five giant glass cylinders waiting to blast off a concrete launch pad into outer space. Today it looked like the launch finally happened, only the rockets had exploded before lift-off.

The studios would have to find the future somewhere else.

“Now that’s what I call fucking ironic,” Buck snorted. Following the course of Abe’s wayward, bronzed noggin, Buck inadvertently spotted something interesting.

“What?” Marty asked.

“Look at that,” Buck pointed a block south, where the old, brick Kawada Hotel still stood at the corner of 2nd and Hill, the sign for their Epicenter Cafe intact. “Isn’t that fucking ironic?”

“Uh-huh,” Marty continued on up the street, wondering for maybe the eighth time in five minutes why Buck wouldn’t go away. But he told himself it couldn’t hurt to have a big guy with a big gun at his side, especially considering the bad neighborhoods he’d soon be walking through.

“I appreciate ironic, witty stuff like that,” Buck said. “Kind of goes against my hard-ass personality. Makes me so goddamn colorful you want to fuck me, doesn’t it?”

Marty heard cries from the Department of Water and Power, a boxy building erected on a parking structure, the top level of which had been turned into a square lake, creating a moat around the edifice. The forty-year-old architectural conceit had turned into a trap now that the parking structure had pancaked onto itself and the contemporary drawbridge connecting the building to the street had fallen. The DWP workers were stranded in a collapsing building, but could rationalize their fate as the price of working in a bureaucratic fairy tale.

“I once saved a puppy dog,” Buck added. “They were gonna kill the drooling little fur ball for protecting his home against an intruder. I couldn’t live with the fucking injustice, with the idea of this poor, fluffy creature dying for doing the right thing, so I took a goddamn moral stand. The night before they were gonna give him the needle, I broke him out of the pound and let him live in my Mercury Montego.”

Buck looked to Marty for congratulations and got incredulity instead.

“What kind of puppy?” Marty asked.

“What fucking difference does it make?”

“Was it a pit bull?”

“It was a pit bull puppy,” Buck snapped. “They are just as fucking adorable as any other fucking puppy.”

“And this intruder, what exactly was he doing?”

“Climbing over the fence into the dog’s territory, that’s what, after disturbing the animal’s peace in a terrifying manner.”

“He terrified a vicious pit bull,” Marty said.

“The kid’s baseball slammed into the dog house, scaring the crap out of the dog, then the idiot kid climbed into the yard to get his ball. Okay? The point is, the dog doesn’t know a fucking baseball from fucking gorilla and did what came naturally, defending himself and his goddamn master. So what I did was a fucking humanitarian act.”

“He was your dog, wasn’t he?” Marty asked. “And he mauled a child.”

“You are missing the fucking point, asshole.” Buck stabbed the air between them with his fat finger. “I got depth of character and thousands of great stories.”

Marty was finally getting it. “You’re pitching me a series, right? About you?”

“Why the hell not? You ever see a guy like me on TV?”

Only on Jerry Springer. “Call my secretary and make an appointment.”

“We’re having our appointment right now, dumbfuck,” Buck said. “You got some other pressing engagement?”

The world had literally fallen down around them and Marty was expected to take a pitch. But he couldn’t say this was the worst circumstances under which he’d been forced to listen to TV series ideas. His male fertility specialist was examining Marty’s scrotum, feeling around his uneven balls, when he offered the observation: “Some incredible characters walk through these doors. You wouldn’t believe the hilarious stories.”

“Really?” Marty said, trying to act as if it was perfectly natural to be standing there, his pants around his ankles, a guy rolling his testicles in his hands, discussing series concepts.

“I got them all on index cards, they are absolute gold, funnier than ‘Seinfeld.’ You want to see them?”

Marty was afraid to say no, considering the guy literally had him by the balls. The situation wasn’t all that much different today, but Marty’s attitude certainly was. A year ago, his wife was sitting in the waiting room, and he could feel her yearning desperation through the walls. He needed the doctor happy. He needed his lopsided balls producing guided-missile sperm.

He didn’t need Buck.

“Look around you,” Marty told Buck. “We just survived the big one. Thousands of people are dead. The city is in ruins. Do you really think this is the best time to pitch a TV series to me?”

“Absolutely. We’re bonding. When this is all over, we’ll have a foundation to do some business together,” Buck replied. “What’s your name?”

“Martin Slack.”

“All the detectives on TV are pussies, Marty. Do-gooders who only care about helping people and don’t give a shit about getting paid. Everybody cares about getting paid, so that’s bullshit. How the fuck they make the payments on their sports cars and buy all those expensive suits if they don’t get paid? Tell me that.”

Marty was about to tell him about the last detective show he worked on, just this morning in fact, when he came down the other side of Bunker Hill, saw the Harbor Freeway, and forgot everything he was going to say. Hundreds of cars were tangled together, charred and aflame, strewn over six lanes of up-ended roadway and fallen overpasses, stretching on for miles. If there was anybody screaming or crying under it all, the forlorn wail of agonized automobiles drowned them out.

Los Angeles was nothing but the intersection of vast freeways, and Marty knew they must all look like this-a line of ants squirted with lighter fluid, set aflame, then smacked a few times with a brick.

The death toll was unthinkable. And help would never come. It was caught dead in traffic.

Marty pulled the dust mask over his nose and mouth and pondered his options. He could climb the embankment and cross the carnage on the freeway, or he could walk underneath it, where the 110 passed over 1st Street. The overpass was still standing, but who knew how stable it was? How fast could he run twenty yards? How lucky did he feel?

Buck made his choice, he was already striding under the overpass, yelling back at Marty to hurry the fuck up. Marty knew Buck didn’t give it any thought at all, he just moved forward with all the intellectual self-reflection of an amoeba.

Marty didn’t think he could wade through the mess on the freeway, but it was suicide to go under an overpass that had already been weakened by two earthquakes in one morning. So that left only one choice. Blunder on like Buck. Only a hell of a lot faster.

“Shit,” Marty muttered, than ran as fast as he could, using the ascent to give him some momentum into the overpass. He was half-way through the overpass when he tripped over a hunk of concrete.

Marty went sliding, as if trying to make first base. Lying flat on his stomach, nose to the asphalt, he heard the rumble and knew what was coming. Aftershock. He scrambled to his feet and started running again, knowing he was too late, knowing he’d be squished by tons of concrete in a second.

He ran screaming out from under the overpass, tripping again, rolling onto his back, turning in time to see a wave of fire sweeping across the top of the freeway, cars exploding like popcorn in its wake. The rumble he felt wasn’t an aftershock, it was a chain-reaction explosion rolling up the 110.

The fire moved like water, washing over the freeway and then dissipating like it never existed at all, a blistering figment of Marty’s over-worked imagination. But he knew it wasn’t. Just one more unbelievable sight in a day already too full of them.

Marty got to his feet and spotted Buck, his back to him, pissing against the cyclone fence of the half-finished, $150 million Belmont High School. If the bounty hunter saw the fire, it hadn’t made much of an impact on him, at least not one strong enough to ignore his bladder. He seemed much more interested in relieving himself on the most expensive high school in the world, its construction halted and abandoned mid-way through because somebody discovered it was built atop toxic waste. But at least the school was earthquake safe.

Buck zipped up his fly and turned to see Marty. “I got a few notes on your running. First, tie your fucking shoes.”

Marty looked down at his feet. Both shoes were untied. His glasses slid off his nose and shattered on the ground.

“Second, you run like a pansy-ass fag,” Buck said. “Are you a pansy-assed fag?”

“No,” Marty said, tying his shoes. “I’m married.”

“To a woman?”

“Yes, to a woman.”

“Was she always a woman?”

Marty glared at him, saw Buck’s gingivitis grin, and stomped on his glasses, grinding them into plastic crumbs.

“That’s where I’m going,” Marty said, “back home to her. Where are you going?”

“I’m going home, too.”

They started walking again, side by side, down the nearly deserted street. Where was everybody? After a moment, Marty asked Buck: “Where’s home?”

“Hollywood.”

“You got anybody waiting for you?”

Buck shook his head no.

“So what’s your hurry?”

Buck gave him a cold look. “Where the hell else would you go?”

Marty turned his gaze ahead, where 1st Street rose again, this time as an arched, concrete overpass that stretched across Glendale Boulevard. It seemed intact, with one car stalled at the crest, but Marty wasn’t going to press his luck. He’d walk around the overpass and rejoin 1st Street on the other side of Glendale Boulevard.

“What’s her name,” Buck asked.

“Beth.”

“What’s she do?”

“She was an actress but she gave it up.”

“Did I ever see her in anything?”

“No.”

“How the fuck would you know?” Buck snapped. “You know every show I’ve ever seen? Give me some titles.”

Marty listed a few by rote. “They Eat Their Own 2, Summer Wine, The Endless Spiral.” Not the most illustrious resume, Beth would be the first to agree. Her most lucrative gig was an antacid commercial that ran off and on for years.

“The Endless Spiral, was that the thing with Christopher Walken as the ghost assassin guy?”

“Yeah.”

“Was she the girl Christopher Walken finger-fucked in the taxi?”

Yes.

“No,” Marty replied. It was after sitting through that unbearable scene, Christopher Walken sitting right next to them in the screening, that Marty finally agreed to have a child, on the condition she’d give up acting for a while and become a stay-at-home Mom.

“I see a lot of bad fucking liars in my field,” Buck said, “and you are the fucking worst. How could you let some guy finger-fuck your wife?”

“It was Christopher Walken and they were acting.”

“That looked like a finger in her twat to me,” Buck said.

“It was a stunt twat,” Marty said. “Can we just drop it?”

Clearly Buck was enjoying himself too much to let it go, and he probably wouldn’t have, if it weren’t for the panic-stricken, Mexican man who ran up to them, babbling in Spanish. It was easy for Marty to just keep going and ignore him, but Buck stopped and answered the guy in what sounded remarkably like fluent Spanish. That stopped Marty for a moment, a moment he’d soon regret.

He understood a few of the words-Boy, Car, Trapped-and looked again at the overpass.

Marty saw now that the overpass wasn’t intact at all, it was split apart at the crest, a Toyota teetering over the jagged edge, tangled in the splintered rebar. The windshield was shattered, a body splattered on the street directly below the car.

The driver should have worn a seat belt.

Buck shoved him. “This guy says there’s a kid in that car up there, buckled in the seat, too fucking scared to move.”

“I don’t blame him,” Marty said, starting to walk away. Buck grabbed him.

“The guy needs our help to get the kid out.”

Marty shook his head. “Do I look like Charlton Heston to you?”

“What the fuck?”

“I’m not a hero.” Marty turned away, and again Buck grabbed him.

“Maybe I’m not making myself fucking clear here. There’s a kid alone in that car up there. He’s trapped.”

“So are a thousand other kids in this city. Am I supposed to save each one of them?”

Buck let go of Marty and looked him right in the eye. “You are going to save this one.”

“No,” Marty said. “I’m going home.”

He adjusted his gym bag on his shoulders, turned his back to Buck, and headed west. Molly was enough. More than anyone had a right to ask of him. He’d done his part, he didn’t have to do any more. His only obligation was to get home to his wife.

Marty heard the click. The Dirty Harry click. The sound was almost subliminal. He knew what it was from a lifetime of vicarious experience. Although nobody had ever pointed a gun at him and cocked the trigger before, he’d heard it on TV so many times, he knew the sound instinctively.

“Take one more step asshole and I’ll shoot you,” Buck said behind him.

He stopped and looked over his shoulder. Yep, Buck was aiming a gun at him for the second time today. Behind Buck, the Mexican guy was waving his hands, jabbering in a desperate torrent of unintelligible Spanish, clearly afraid he’d been terribly misunderstood.

Marty spoke clearly and slowly.

“I’ve been through this already, Buck. That’s why my backpack was on fire. That’s how close I came to dying. You want to be a hero? Go for it. I hope you survive, but I can’t risk it again. I have to make it home, for my wife. That is my moral obligation. Okay?”

But Marty didn’t get anything back from Buck and he’d be damned if he was going to argue about it. So Marty just started walking.

And Buck shot him.

Marty heard the unbelievably loud gunshot the same instant he felt the scorching punch in his shoulder, spinning him around and knocking him off his feet.

His shoulder was burning. He touched the bloody tear in his jacket and, his ears still ringing, stared back at Buck incredulously. “You shot me?”

“I grazed you,” Buck said. “Don’t be a pussy.”

Marty’s fury overwhelmed his pain. “You don’t have any one, it doesn’t matter if you get killed trying to save everybody. There’s no one waiting for you, no one depending on you.”

“That kid is,” Buck said. “Look around you, asshole. You’re alive. You have two good arms and two good legs. Your fucking obligation is to help everyone you see, whether you want to or not. So, you got a choice. You can die a hero trying to save that kid or you can die a coward right now. You decide.”

Marty glanced up at the car, creaking in the breeze, then at the bloody lump on the pavement. In a few minutes, if he gave in, that could be him. Only with a car and maybe the entire overpass on him. Even the homeless were smart enough to flee from the fractured overpass, leaving behind their flea-ridden mattresses, piles of soiled blankets, and plastic bags of garbage.

The crumbling overpass, the swaying car, they were death traps. Attempting this rescue, without the necessary equipment or any experience, was suicide.

It was like all those stories he’d read in the LA Times, the ones about people who drowned trying to save someone who fell through ice or got sucked under the sea by a riptide. Instead of one unfortunate person dying, three or four would-be rescuers inevitably sacrificed their lives as well.

Those stories, buried in the bottom corner of the back pages, always struck Marty as sad, tragic, and stupid. He liked to think that if he were in one of those situations he’d know to choose survival over unthinking heroism, no matter how wrenching that decision would be.

But he’d never been in one of those situations.

He also never had to make a decision at gunpoint before.

It changed things.

“Put the gun away.” Marty said.

Buck kept it on him.

“Put the fucking gun away,” Marty yelled. “I can’t think with that pointed at me.”

“There’s nothing to think about.”

“Do you know how to get the kid out without knocking the car over the edge? Do you, you fucking psychopath?” Marty stared at him, at the blank look on his face. “I didn’t think so.”

Buck holstered his gun. “You got some rope in your pack. We’ll lower you down.”

“First of all, that rope is for tying up a roll of electric cables, it’s not strong enough to hold a man,” Marty said. “Secondly, why am I the guy?”

“Because you’re the lightest of the three of us,” Buck said. “And even if you weren’t, you’ve been shot in the arm.”

“You said I was grazed.”

“Stop being a pussy,” Buck said.

Marty looked at the teetering car again, then down at the pavement, and the body splattered on it. His eyes drifted from the body to the pile of filthy blankets and he remembered something he saw on Cinemax late one night, one of those soft-core women-in-prison movies. The busty, sexually-adventurous convicts escaped using bed-sheets. It wasn’t a very secure prison, the guards weren’t too bright, but the girls were pretty resourceful and the principle was sound.

Marty clutched his bloody shoulder and got up. “I got an idea. You’re going to have to find a few more people to help.”

1:30 p.m. Tuesday

The smell from the urine-starched blankets tied around his chest and wrapped under his shoulders was overpowering. If the drop didn’t kill Marty, the odor would.

The bum’s blankets were tied together end-to-end and securely wound with Marty’s rope. The apparatus trailed behind him a few feet to Buck, Enrique, and half-a-dozen other survivors who held the other end as if preparing for a game of tug-of-war.

Marty stood on the edge of the precipice, beside the Toyota, gathering his courage. The ticks, fleas, and lice were probably smart enough to abandon the blankets now. No sense taking a fall with this fool, a guy who mistook Caged Party Bimbos for an instructional video on urban rescues.

“We’re ready,” Buck yelled.

“I’m not,” Marty muttered, pulling his leather work gloves tight over his hands.

The car was hanging by just one rear wheel, held in place by just a few pieces of twisted rebar. He couldn’t see the kid, the car was tipped too far forward, but he could hear him whining in terror.

Marty had no idea what he was going to do, except not look down. He turned to the men holding the rope, strangers he didn’t know an hour ago and still didn’t know right now. He was entrusting them, and a make-shift rope made of a dozen soiled blankets, with his life.

“You sure you can hold me?” Marty asked.

“Two more seconds and I’ll push you,” Buck said. “Stop stalling. That car isn’t going to hold much longer.”

Marty took a deep breath and moved right up to the edge. It was a long drop. Chances of survival if he fell were zero.

“Shit,” he whispered, sitting down.

He grabbed two pieces of rebar and slid slowly over the edge, bits of concrete shaking loose, falling into space and shattering on the street below.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

Marty slid a bit further, his legs dangling over the side. Soon there would be nothing for him to hold on to at all.

“Do you have me?” he yelled.

“Hurry the fuck up,” Buck grunted.

Marty let go of the rebar and fell, screaming. The blanket dug into Marty’s armpits, jerking his shoulders up against his neck. But it held, stopping his fall, but jerking the cell phone out of his pocket. He dangled, spinning beside the car, making the mistake of looking down just as his cell phone shattered on the pavement.

Oh God.

Not only was he going to die, now he couldn’t call anyone to tell them about it.

He reached out and touched the car to stop his spin, and that’s when he saw the kid, buckled into the front seat, eyes wide with horror, hands out in front of him, flat against the dashboard. The kid was black, maybe six or seven years old. He was staring at Marty like he was a big, vicious spider hanging outside the window.

“Stay calm,” Marty said, “Don’t move.”

As if the kid was going anywhere. What a dumb thing to say. But Marty couldn’t think of anything else. He wasn’t even sure how to get the kid out of there without tipping the car over. Opening the door was probably too risky. It could shift things too suddenly.

“What’s your name?”

“Franklin!” It came out as a scream.

“Okay, Franklin, here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to roll down the window.”

The kid looked at him and shook his head, his teeth chattering in fright. No fucking way, not for this guy.

“You have to,” Marty said, his voice cracking with fear. If he was counting on winning the kid over with his own courage, he could forget about it.

The kid just kept shaking his head. “No!”

“Listen, kid, I know how stupid and scared I look. Some jerk in a bunch of dirty blankets. You think you’d rather take your chances in the car.” From the expression on Franklin’s face, Marty knew he read the kid right. “But Franklin, the truth is, the car is going to fall and you will die. I may get you killed, too, but at least you will have tried to save yourself.”

The kid looked at him, then looked forward, out the broken windshield at the ground below. Marty knew what he was thinking about. He was thinking about it, too.

“What would he want you to do?” Marty asked.

The blanket slipped a bit, shaking free more chunks of concrete. Marty inadvertently screamed again, grabbing at the air.

“Stop fucking around!” Buck yelled from above.

Something in Buck’s voice, perhaps the violence and anger, must have made a difference, because Franklin slowly rolled down the window. The car swayed and creaked as he slightly shifted his weight. Marty gently reached into the open window and held the door to steady himself. He could see that Franklin had wet his pants. Marty didn’t blame him.

“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to unbuckle yourself, grab hold of my arm, and I’m going to slowly pull you out.”

Franklin stared at him. “I can’t.”

“You have to, Franklin.” Marty said. “I won’t drop you. I promise.” He hoped it was a promise he could keep. His mind immediately, uncontrollably flashed to that horrific, opening scene in Cliffhanger.

Franklin must have seen the doubt skirt across Marty’s eyes. “I want to wait for the firemen.”

They were losing valuable seconds. And the longer Marty dangled, the more terrified Marty was becoming. What little resolve he had was fading fast and so was the strength of the men holding him. Marty imagined what the audience was seeing and he wasn’t, the loose knots slowly becoming unfurled, the blanket ripping on the sharp edge of concrete. And they would all be screaming, why doesn’t that dumb fucking idiot do something?

“Franklin, there are no firemen. There will never be any firemen. I am it. Now get out of the goddamn car.”

The kid started crying again, but he unbuckled his belt. Franklin immediately fell forward against the dash, the car teetering suddenly with the shift in weight. Marty reached in, grabbed the back of Franklin’s shirt with both hands, and yanked with all his strength just as the Toyota pitched forward, falling free.

Franklin dangled from Marty’s hands, his shirt riding up his body, his legs kicking in open space, as the car flipped end-over-end and smacked into the ground below. Marty and the kid were both screaming now, spinning in the air, hanging in terror.

God, the kid was heavy. Marty had never held anything so heavy, it felt like the kid was tearing his arms from his sockets, ripping tendons, shredding muscles. He couldn’t possibly hold him another second.

The kid grabbed Marty and hugged him tightly, his face pressed against Marty’s legs, muffling his cries. But Marty screamed loud and hard, from the bottom of his lungs, enough for both of them.

Buck and Enrique pulled them up onto the overpass and dragged them a few feet from the edge before letting go. The kid broke free of Marty the second they were safe and ran, sobbing. Enrique chased after him, caught him, and pulled him into a hug.

Marty sat up, pulling the piss-soaked blankets off as fast as he could. Buck offered him his hand. Marty swatted it away.

“Get away from me,” Marty said, shakily getting to his feet. He was shivering all over. Buck reached out to him again and Marty punched him in the face.

It wasn’t much of a punch, not much more than a slap, really. His fist was shaking too much to have any power behind it. But it was the first time Marty had swung at anyone since third grade. His pugilistic skills hadn’t improved any since then.

Marty was as surprised by the punch as Buck was, but he didn’t regret it. Marty had never been so angry or so scared.

Buck could easily have flattened Marty with a return blow. Instead, the big man just grinned.

“Who taught you how to fight? The same clown who showed you how to run?” Buck said. “That’s got to change if you’re gonna pull off this hero shit.”

“I don’t want to be a hero,” Marty screamed at him. “I’d like to live.”

“Take it easy. Now that you’ve done it, it will be easier next time.”

“I’m going home,” Marty found his back pack and put it on. “I’m not stopping for anybody, do you understand me?”

Buck walked towards him. “We’ll see what happens.”

Marty pointed at Buck and backed away. “Stay the hell away from me, you crazy, psycho, son-of-a-bitch.”

“We’re going the same way.”

“I’m going alone,” Marty said. “I don’t want to see you ever again.”

Buck looked at Marty, truly dumbfounded. “What are you so pissed off for?”

Marty couldn’t believe what he was hearing. What was there the guy didn’t get?

“You shot me,” Marty yelled. “You wrapped me in piss blankets and dangled me off the edge of a collapsed overpass!”

“That part was your idea. And what the fuck difference does it make now? You saved the kid’s life.”

Yes, he did.

Marty turned and looked at Franklin, still crying, still hugging Enrique, a complete stranger. The nightmare was over. Thanks to Marty Slack.

He’d actually plucked a frightened child from a car teetering on the brink of a three-story drop.

Holy shit.

Maybe there was a little Charlton Heston in him after all.

Marty felt a proud smile starting on his face and quickly suppressed it, reminding himself that he was angry. Furious. Outraged.

He shot you. He forced you into this at gunpoint. You could have been killed! The only reason you’re still alive is dumb luck. How much more of that do you think you have left?

The scowl returned. He turned back to confront Buck.

“I could just as easily have ended up dead, because you put a gun to my head and made me do that stupid, suicidal stunt,” Marty said. “You are a homicidal Neanderthal psycho. I don’t want you near me, understand? Go away. Get somebody else killed.”

Marty turned around and marched off, passing Enrique and Franklin without looking at them. He didn’t want to be drawn in any deeper into the kid’s problems, or Enrique’s for that matter. All he wanted to do was go home, put as many miles between himself and all of this as he could.

“Stop or I’ll shoot,” Buck said.

He gave Buck the finger without looking back and kept right on walking.