Children of Paranoia

  I slung the backpack over my shoulders and quietly pushed the closet door open. The exercise room was nearly as dark as the closet. I tried to remember where all the equipment was located so that I wouldn’t trip over anything. I could see just enough to make my way through the shadows. Slowly, I walked toward the stairs leading up to the second floor and climbed. At the top of the stairs, I turned, holding the gun out in front of me with two hands. I had never been formally trained to handle a gun so I moved like I had seen actors in television crime dramas move, turning the corners of the dark house quickly with my arms outstretched, leading with the gun.

  When I came to the base of the second flight of stairs, I could see the light coming out of the spaces beneath the two bedroom doors, cutting into the darkness. My targets were still awake. I listened. I couldn’t hear any sound coming from my mark’s room. I could hear the bodyguard playing some sort of video game on his computer. There were sounds of screeching tires, gunshots, and general mayhem. The real mayhem was going to be quiet by comparison.

  I made my way up the stairs. I walked with my back against the wall and kept my eyes on the bedroom doors. If someone came out now, I was ready to shoot on sight. The doors didn’t budge. I made it to the top of the staircase without incident and was able to duck back into the shadows. Not a single stair squeaked. My targets stayed in their rooms. As I reached the top of the stairs, the sounds coming from the bodyguard’s bedroom grew louder. When I got to his door, I reached out and touched it, the same way I would have if I were testing to see if there was a fire in the other room. It was a reflex. The door was cold.

  I took a deep breath. I held the gun in my right hand and reached for the doorknob with my left. I twisted the doorknob. Two shots—that’s all it was supposed to take. I pushed the door open. As it swung, it let out a faint squeak. I stepped through the door and aimed my gun at the bodyguard. Somehow, over all the noise coming from his computer, he had heard the door. He reacted quickly. He looked at me, then the gun. His eyes grew wide with fear. He dove off his chair, trying to reach a safe place behind the bed. I fired. My aim was good. If he hadn’t dived so quickly, I would have hit him right in the chest. If he hadn’t heard the door squeak that one shot would have probably killed him. Instead of hitting him in the chest, the bullet lodged in his shoulder. Even with the silencer, the gunshot was loud. I got a little flustered and fired again quickly, aiming for the widest part of him and shooting him in the stomach. As the bullet entered his gut, the bodyguard let out a grunt. He fell to the floor, already bleeding heavily from his stomach. Then he made another move. He lunged for the bedside table. He kept his gun there. I’d seen the bodyguards put their guns there. I took aim again. This time I aimed for his head. I just wanted to take one more shot and end it. I wanted to take one more shot and move on to the man that I was supposed to be killing. I had to hope that he hadn’t noticed the gunshots, that they were lost amidst the sounds of the video game. I lined the handgun’s sight up with the bodyguard’s hair but his hair was wrong. His hair wasn’t supposed to look like that. His hair was blond. It should have been brown. It was the wrong bodyguard. I wasn’t about to kill one of the enemy. I was about to kill an innocent man.

  I took my finger off the trigger. I looked down at the trail of blood on the carpet that the Aussie left as he crawled. I froze for a second. I felt like I was seeing a stranger’s blood for the first time, like his blood was a different color than all those people I’d killed before. My stomach turned. I started to sweat. The Aussie took another lurch forward toward the nightstand. He reached up to open the drawer. His hand neared his gun. Instinctively, I took a step toward him and kicked him in the stomach as hard as I could. I kicked him right where I had shot him. He cried out in pain and doubled over before he could reach his gun. I pulled my foot back. It was covered in blood. I leaned in closer to the Aussie, holding the gun inches from his head, and spoke to him in a whisper. “You’re not the one,” I said to him, my voice full of anger. The bodyguard didn’t move. I walked over and shut the bedroom door so that I could think.

  The bodyguard simply stared at me, dumbfounded. I could see the fear in his eyes. I had just shot him twice and then told him he wasn’t the one. He must have thought I was insane. He opened his mouth and a single word came out. “What?” he asked.

  I lifted up the ski mask so that my mouth was no longer covered. “You’re not the one,” I repeated. “But if you keep fighting me, I’ll blow your fucking brains out.” That registered. The bodyguard turned over, sprawling his legs out in front of him, and leaned his back against the bed. He looked down at the two new holes that I had created in his body. Blood was pumping slowly out of the hole in his shoulder, dripping down his chest and getting caught in the ribbing of his white tank top. The blood there was nothing compared to the blood coming out of his stomach. He held his hand over the hole. His hands were huge, at least twice the size of mine, but his giant hand didn’t come close to covering the ring of blood that was growing out of his stomach. The stain on his shirt was already as large as a globe. He studied his wounds for a second. Then he looked back up at me, standing over him with a gun. He started to cry. “Shut up,” I said to him, wanting to punch him in the face just for being there. “You weren’t supposed to be here,” I mumbled under my breath. He couldn’t hear me over his own sobbing. My mind raced. My mark was twenty feet away. I could go over there and plant two bullets in his head and be done with this in less than thirty seconds. I looked down at the Aussie again. His sobbing had stopped. He was staring up at me, trying to look at my eyes through the ski mask. His face now was a mix of confusion and anger. If I left the Aussie alive, I knew that he’d go for his gun. He’d try to be a hero. Leaving him alive was not an option. I couldn’t kill him either. I wasn’t a murderer. I was a soldier. I decided that I had to save him. I couldn’t have innocent blood on my hands. I just couldn’t. Fuck it, I thought. Fuck the mark.

  “I’m not going to kill you,” I said to the bodyguard, speaking barely above a whisper. “I’m going to get you out of this house and I am going to save you. But if your boss sees us or hears us or calls the police, I am going to kill you both. Do you understand?” The Aussie nodded. The anger began to drain from his face. All that was left was confusion. I’d just shot him and now I was trying to save him. There was no way for him to understand. Still, if I was going to save him, I had to act quickly.

  “Can you walk?” I asked him. Without saying a word, the Aussie grabbed the post on the corner of the bed and tried to stand up. He made his first effort using his left arm, the one with the hole in the shoulder. The attempt didn’t take. When he tried to pull himself up, his bloody hand slipped and he fell face-first onto the floor, his nose pushed into the carpet. I stepped forward and rolled him over. “Can I trust you?” I asked, looking in his eyes for the answer.

  “Yeah,” he said, his voice twinged with an Australian accent. The confusion was gone from his face. All that was left now was fear. I still didn’t trust him. What I trusted was that fear. I had seen enough of that in my life to know that I could depend on it.

  I took his good arm and wrapped it around my shoulders. I stood up, propping the Aussie against me and pulling him to his feet. I wrapped my other arm, the one holding the gun, around his waist to help his balance. “We’re going downstairs,” I told him. He nodded again. We took two steps toward the door. The Aussie was already weak. He dragged his feet with each step, barely lifting them off the ground. “Stronger,” I said to him as we reached the door. Before opening the door, I turned to the bodyguard. “The motion detectors. Do you have control over them or does he?” With his free hand, the Aussie pointed to his chest. “And they’re not on?” I asked. He shook his head. It was clear now. We were on the same team. We had the same goal.

  I opened the door and we stepped through it. The Aussie was walking more confidently now, getting used to standing on his feet. He continued to press his good hand against the hole in his stomach,
applying pressure to try to lessen the bleeding. We took a step toward the stairs. Then I heard something coming from the mark’s bedroom. A rustle of movement and then a voice. “Close your goddamn door, jackass!” the boss shouted from his room. I swung my foot back and kicked the Aussie’s door closed. I listened. Nothing else. The boss didn’t suspect anything.

  When we got to the top of the staircase, I looked down at the stairs. The Aussie wasn’t going to make it down the stairs under his own strength. I turned my face toward his. Our noses were no more than an inch apart. He was breathing heavily and his eyes were beginning to glaze over. “I’m going to carry you down,” I said to him. He nodded. Then, in one quick motion, I bent my knees and threw his body over my shoulders. He was heavy. I started down the stairs, trying to walk quietly without losing my balance. About halfway down I began to feel the Aussie’s blood seep through the back of my mask. It was warm and sticky.

  When we made it to the bottom of the stairs, I propped the Aussie up against the wall near the front door. He was still conscious. I pulled my face close to his. “The gate. How do I open the gate?”

  His voice came out in a lisp. He sounded weak. “There’s a button. On the inside. Next to the gate.” Of course, it was easy to walk out, just not easy to walk in.

  “Wait here,” I said to the Aussie, and began to turn away.

  “Don’t,” he said, more loudly than I would have liked.

  I turned and looked at him. He wasn’t asking me not to leave him. He was asking me not to kill his boss. I wanted to tell him that his boss deserved to die. I wanted to tell him that his boss used him. I wanted to tell him that he was a stupid piece of shit who didn’t know anything. I didn’t. There was no time.

  “Don’t worry,” I said to him. “I’m not going to kill him. Not tonight.” That’s all I could get out. I should have killed him. It would have been easy, easier than it ever would be again. It would have been quick. I wasn’t thinking straight. If I couldn’t save the Aussie, I was going to have innocent blood on my hands. My stomach was churning. It had held together until I hit the bottom of the staircase but now it let loose. I stepped away from the Aussie into the darkness and bounded into the closest bathroom. I lunged forward and vomited in the sink. I had never thrown up on a job before. I had nearly thrown up after my second kill, a thirty-three-year-old man, an instructor. He trained their killers. I slit his throat with a knife while he was trying to get into his car. It was messy. Blood spurted everywhere. That’s when I started strangling people. It was usually more of a struggle, but it was much cleaner. I wiped the remaining chunks of vomit from my lips and flicked them into the sink. That was done.

  I walked out of the bathroom and headed toward a phone. I picked up the phone and turned it on without thinking. I was lucky that the boss wasn’t on the line. I got a dial tone. I dialed 911 and hoped that this was the appropriate number in Canada. I quickly got an operator. She said something in French and then, in English, said, “Nine one one. How can we help you?”

  “A man’s been shot. He’s on the corner of Maplewood and Spring Grove. Send an ambulance.”

  “Okay, monsieur,” the operator spoke in an official tone. “We would like more detail. Can you stay on the line?”

  “No.” I hung up the phone and headed back toward the front door. The Aussie was right where I had left him but his head was dangling loosely on his neck. His eyes were closed. He was out cold. Still, I could see his chest moving slightly up and down as he breathed. I stepped forward and slapped him as hard as I could. His eyes shot open and were, for a second, full of life. “Stay awake,” I ordered. Then I swung his good arm over my shoulder again and headed out the front door.

  We didn’t have much time. We had to manage the driveway, the front gate, and another couple of blocks before we got to the corner where I had directed the ambulance. If we were too late, they would assume it was a prank. We had to move. I turned toward the Aussie. “Speed. We need speed.” He was struggling but still attentive. He nodded and our pace quickened. With effort, we made it down the driveway, through the gate, and along the street. We left a trail of blood behind us as we walked. After about ten minutes, we had gone all of about half a mile. When we turned the last corner, I could see the flashing lights from the ambulance. The ambulance wasn’t alone. There were cops there too. That was more than I’d bargained for. It was the end of the road for me.

  I took the Aussie’s arm off of my shoulder. I tried to steady him by placing one of my hands on his still good shoulder. I stepped behind him. “Walk,” I said, and I gave him a firm push with my free hand, the one in which I held the gun. He took two weak steps forward and fell to the ground. Then he got on his hands and knees and began to crawl toward the blinking lights. He looked like a cartoon of a thirsty man crawling through the desert toward water. He made it about two more feet and then he collapsed under his own weight again. He rolled over on the sidewalk and looked back at me, tears flowing from his eyes. If I left now, he was going to die in the street, thirty feet from help.

  I stepped forward, picked the Aussie up again, and threw him over my shoulder. I pulled the ski mask back down over my mouth and walked toward the ambulance, holding the gun out in front of me.

  The paramedics and the police were chatting away, assuming by now that the call had been a prank. The first paramedic noticed me when I was only about twenty feet away. As soon as his eyes fixed on me, I aimed the gun directly at him. He froze. He didn’t say a word. He was paralyzed with fear. Even at that distance, I could feel his fear. I must have looked like the grim reaper, walking the streets at night, dressed all in black, a ski mask covering my face, a gun stretched out in front of me and a corpse draped over my shoulders. At about ten feet, the cop and the paramedic who had been chatting away finally noticed me too. The cop went for his gun. He was out of practice, his movements were clumsy and slow. “Don’t even think about it.” I shouted. “Anyone pulls a gun, and people die. Lots of people.” The cop took his hand away from his belt. I yelled at his partner to stand next to him. I wanted everyone with guns to be standing where I could see them. The partner, who looked to be about fifteen years old, quickly obliged.

  I bent down and placed the Aussie on the ground without taking my eyes off the cops. The Aussie made an audible gasp when he hit the ground. By now he was completely covered in blood, but he was still conscious. I looked at the paramedics. “Take him to the hospital. Fix him,” I ordered. They didn’t move. I took two steps backward. “Now!” I shouted. Their daze broken, they went into action. They pulled the cot off the ambulance, got the Aussie on the cot, and loaded him inside. They moved quickly and with purpose, suddenly realizing that the faster they moved, the faster they would get away from the psychopath with the gun. The cops watched with envy.

  As soon as the ambulance drove away, I knew that the paramedics would be radioing for backup. Within minutes, the area would be inundated with cops. This wasn’t protocol. I wasn’t trained for this. I looked at the two cops in front of me. They were as white as ghosts, scared shitless. They were probably even more scared than I was. “You saw me save that man, right?” I yelled. I was standing close to them. I probably didn’t need to yell anymore. They nodded in unison. “I don’t want to kill anyone,” I yelled again. They shook their heads in agreement. “I’m going to run away,” I said. They nodded again. “But if I hear a single gunshot, I’m coming back and there will be hell to pay.” More nodding. I turned and ran. There was no plan anymore. I just ran as fast as I could. I ran for the park. There were no gunshots. Soon, the sounds of sirens began to pierce the night air. I threw the ski mask away. I kept running. I needed to get back to the safe house. Until I changed clothes I knew that I wasn’t safe. That was the fastest I ever ran, probably the fastest I ever will run. I didn’t slow down. I burned off the fear as I ran. It was just after midnight when I made it back to the safe house.

  When I got back inside, I stripped off my clothes and got in the shower. It
took me a long time to scrub the blood off the back of my neck.

  The rest of that evening went by in a blur. Even thinking back on it now, I only remember disparate moments and nothing in between. I don’t remember how I got from place to place. In my memory, I simply drifted from one place to the next as if in a dream. I do remember calling Intelligence and talking to Brian. At first he was pissed off that I had blown the hit. That changed, however, when he realized what a mess I was. I treated the call with Brian as a confessional. I cried, blabbering. “I almost killed someone,” I muttered through trembling lips, repeating the phrase over and over again. Brian just sat there and listened, waiting for the purge to end. When it did, Brian simply responded, “Just get out of the city. Hell, get out of the country. Do it tonight. Find a place to lay low in Vermont. Just get out. Call me in three days.” Then he gave me the code. I broke protocol and wrote the names down. I was worried that my head was too messed up to remember them. Stephen Alexander. Eleanor Pearson. Rodney Grant.

  Next, I did the one thing that you are never supposed to do. I did the unthinkable. I went to the hospital to see my victim. I knew that I couldn’t move forward, couldn’t leave this city, and could never face you again unless I knew that he was going to be okay. I wasn’t a murderer. You wouldn’t have fallen in love with a murderer. You were too good for that.

  Sneaking into the hospital was easy, even in the middle of the night, even to visit a man who had just been shot. The hospital staff’s job was to keep people healthy, not to run surveillance for them. I went into the Aussie’s room and sat down in a chair across from the bed. I didn’t dare turn the lights on. The big Aussie was asleep. He had an IV sticking in his arm. His shoulder was bandaged. His stomach was covered by the sheets, but it had to have been bandaged pretty heavily too. The bandages covered the stitches that closed the holes that I had made only a few hours earlier. He was attached to a heart monitor. The heart monitor let out rhythmic beeping sounds. It was soothing. I nearly nodded off in the chair. I remember wondering if my heart would ever beat that evenly again. I doubted that it would. The Aussie woke up after about fifteen minutes. He turned his head and looked at me, slouching in a chair in the darkness. He looked in my eyes and recognized me. “It’s you,” he said. I nodded. He knew I was the guy who had shot him. “In front of the strip club?” he asked. He remembered that too. I nodded again. Then he asked, “Why?”