Read Online Beat the Reaper: A Novel by Josh Bazell - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Josh Bazell
Tags: Fiction, General, thriller, Suspense, Fiction - General, Medical, Thrillers, American Mystery & Suspense Fiction, Suspense fiction, Physicians, Fiction - Espionage, organized crime, Assassins, Black humor (Literature), American First Novelists
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squealing and grabbing her ankle. I went down with her, catching her. Thinking, but not fast enough.
There was a noise behind me, and something tore into the back of my head. I managed to twist as I tripped forward over the bartender, and jammed myself to a stop on one leg.
But there were three guys facing me, and one was already hitting me again with brass knuckles.
I blacked out so fast I barely felt the hit of the opposite wall.
I blinked awake and my eyes filled with water even though I had tunnel vision. I felt like I was suspended face down by my arms and legs. I was incredibly thirsty. I also felt like there was someone standing on my head, trying to kick the back of my skull off.
The only parts that turned out to be true were the headache and the thirst. As I blew snot out my nose and squeezed my eyes clear, I could see I was on the ground floor of a burned out building, with the whole wall in front of me blasted away. I was overlooking a wasteland of dunes of loose bricks and broken concrete, hot in the light from the blue sky.
And I wasn’t suspended, though my upper body was hanging forward. I was in a wooden chair, with my arms and legs bound with gaffer’s tape.
I heard some words in Russian, and someone smacked me in the torn up mess at the back of my skull. Stupid pain—stupid because I knew it was just surface, but it made me cry out anyway—ran down to my right ankle and also around my head into my right eye socket. There were more words in Russian.
They stepped into my field of view. The three guys from the alley—one still holding the brass knuckles with bits of my scalp on it—plus a new guy.
The new guy in particular had that look of foreignness that makes you wonder whether your face gets changed by speaking a different language, or by drinking water with too much cadmium in it or something. He had a pointy chin and a broad, high forehead, so that his face was a downward-pointing triangle. *
When my eyes adjusted to his blocking out the light I could see that his face also had deep lines in it for an otherwise young-looking guy. It was part of a generalized runtiness.
“Hello to you,” he said. “Are you looking for me?”
I leaned back to look up at him. The chair creaked and shifted beneath my weight, and I suddenly felt a whole lot better.
“I was looking for a guy named Nick Dzelany,” I said.
“I am that guy.”
“Is there something you wanted to tell David Locano?”
“David Locano?”
“Yes.”
Dzelany looked around at the others and laughed.
“Tell him to go fuck himself,” he said to me. “Actually, I’ll tell him myself, by sending him your head. That’s something I like to do. Did he tell you that?”
“No, he didn’t.” Nor had I noticed, somehow, until that moment, that Dzelany was holding a machete. Slapping its blade against his thigh. He slowly raised it and put the flat of it against the side of my neck.
This is what happened next:
I thought, I should do something.
I felt the thought race down my spine. I tried to pull it back. I wasn’t ready. Then I realized that it was too late to pull it back, and that trying to pull it back would just fuck it up. So I went with it.
I stood up out of the chair, fragmenting it by jamming my arms forward and my legs backward. Dzelany was right in front of me, the top of his head just below my sternum. I triple-slapped him.
The triple-slap is from that lovely martial art called kempo. You bring your hands together like you’re clapping, but with the right slightly higher than the left, and slightly faster. So that an instant after you slap Dzelany on one cheek with your right hand, you slap him on the other cheek with your left. Then you bring your right hand back across, slapping him again with the back of it. The speed of the three strikes is disorienting: it’s too much to think about, like when you hold all four legs of a chair out toward a lion and its brain shuts down.
I didn’t really
There was a noise behind me, and something tore into the back of my head. I managed to twist as I tripped forward over the bartender, and jammed myself to a stop on one leg.
But there were three guys facing me, and one was already hitting me again with brass knuckles.
I blacked out so fast I barely felt the hit of the opposite wall.
I blinked awake and my eyes filled with water even though I had tunnel vision. I felt like I was suspended face down by my arms and legs. I was incredibly thirsty. I also felt like there was someone standing on my head, trying to kick the back of my skull off.
The only parts that turned out to be true were the headache and the thirst. As I blew snot out my nose and squeezed my eyes clear, I could see I was on the ground floor of a burned out building, with the whole wall in front of me blasted away. I was overlooking a wasteland of dunes of loose bricks and broken concrete, hot in the light from the blue sky.
And I wasn’t suspended, though my upper body was hanging forward. I was in a wooden chair, with my arms and legs bound with gaffer’s tape.
I heard some words in Russian, and someone smacked me in the torn up mess at the back of my skull. Stupid pain—stupid because I knew it was just surface, but it made me cry out anyway—ran down to my right ankle and also around my head into my right eye socket. There were more words in Russian.
They stepped into my field of view. The three guys from the alley—one still holding the brass knuckles with bits of my scalp on it—plus a new guy.
The new guy in particular had that look of foreignness that makes you wonder whether your face gets changed by speaking a different language, or by drinking water with too much cadmium in it or something. He had a pointy chin and a broad, high forehead, so that his face was a downward-pointing triangle. *
When my eyes adjusted to his blocking out the light I could see that his face also had deep lines in it for an otherwise young-looking guy. It was part of a generalized runtiness.
“Hello to you,” he said. “Are you looking for me?”
I leaned back to look up at him. The chair creaked and shifted beneath my weight, and I suddenly felt a whole lot better.
“I was looking for a guy named Nick Dzelany,” I said.
“I am that guy.”
“Is there something you wanted to tell David Locano?”
“David Locano?”
“Yes.”
Dzelany looked around at the others and laughed.
“Tell him to go fuck himself,” he said to me. “Actually, I’ll tell him myself, by sending him your head. That’s something I like to do. Did he tell you that?”
“No, he didn’t.” Nor had I noticed, somehow, until that moment, that Dzelany was holding a machete. Slapping its blade against his thigh. He slowly raised it and put the flat of it against the side of my neck.
This is what happened next:
I thought, I should do something.
I felt the thought race down my spine. I tried to pull it back. I wasn’t ready. Then I realized that it was too late to pull it back, and that trying to pull it back would just fuck it up. So I went with it.
I stood up out of the chair, fragmenting it by jamming my arms forward and my legs backward. Dzelany was right in front of me, the top of his head just below my sternum. I triple-slapped him.
The triple-slap is from that lovely martial art called kempo. You bring your hands together like you’re clapping, but with the right slightly higher than the left, and slightly faster. So that an instant after you slap Dzelany on one cheek with your right hand, you slap him on the other cheek with your left. Then you bring your right hand back across, slapping him again with the back of it. The speed of the three strikes is disorienting: it’s too much to think about, like when you hold all four legs of a chair out toward a lion and its brain shuts down.
I didn’t really
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