Free Countdown City: The Last Policeman Book II (Last Policeman Trilogy) by Ben H. Winters Page B

bravado, tenses and takes a step closer to me. I can hear her murmuring prayers in the darkness, and she gets as far as “who art in heaven” when the elevator shudders to a stop and the doors groan open and reveal a room full of supplies: crates, pallets laden with jugs and cans, water bottles, shelving. And then a man hoots and launches himself into the elevator car, directly into my midsection, knocking the breath from me and forcing me backward into one dark corner. He lands on top of me and clamps a hand down over my face. I am smashed into the dirty floor with this man crouched above me like a wolf, a lycanthrope, his knees pinned into my shoulders, holding my mouth shut and jamming something hard and cold into the side of my head.
    I writhe. I try to speak and cannot. The stranger’s eyes are bright and narrow in the dim refracted light.
    “It’s a staple gun,” coos the man in my ear, low and lover-like.“But I modified it. Juiced it up a little.”
    He digs the staple gun harder into my temple, and I try to twist my head away and cannot. In the corner of my eye is Martha Cavatone, her mouth agape, her eyes distorted with fear. A tall woman is behind her, one hand pulling Martha’s head back by the hair and the other holding the keen end of a cleaver to her neck. Their pose is biblical, brutal, a lamb at the slaughter point.
    We’re in this tableau, the four of us, as the doors of the elevator creak closed and we start down again, listening to the rusted clang of the chains.
    “It takes about thirty-five seconds for the elevator to get down to the ground floor,” says the man on top of me, leaning his body forward to flatten me further. “The way we do it is, it touches down, the doors open, we roll out the bodies and hit the Up button.”
    Martha screams and thrashes in the grip of the tall woman. I breathe through my nose, deep breaths.
    “I don’t know what happens to the bodies. It seems too early for cannibalism, but who knows? They keep disappearing is all I know.”
    The man’s chin is square and jutting. His hand is rough and it smells like Ivory soap. I started counting seconds as soon as he started talking; there are twenty seconds left.
    “What I did was, I rigged the staple gun to the motor of a hedge trimmer, so it can really do some business. I got guns, but I’m saving up my bullets. You know how it is.”
    The man grins, shining white teeth, a gap between the two infront. The elevator descends, the chains rattling deafeningly like exploding ordnance. T-minus ten seconds—T-minus nine—who’s counting?
    “My friend Ellen, she just uses a butcher’s knife. No imagination, you know?”
    “Fuck you, you dick,” says the woman holding on to Martha, glaring at the man. He puffs out his cheeks, looks at me like
can you believe this one?
T-minus two. One. The elevator touches down with a thud. My bones rattle. I brace myself.
    “Who are you?” says the man, and takes his hand off my mouth, and I say, “My name is Henry Pal—” and he fires the staple gun with a whir and a click and my brain explodes. I scream, and there’s another scream, in the corner, it’s the woman, Ellen. I crane my neck and try to see through the pain-sparked flickers, red and gold stars flaring across my field of vision. Martha is biting the woman’s arm, kicking free.
    “Fuck!” screams Ellen, raises her knife like a butcher, and Martha screams, “Phillips! Mr. Phillips!”
    “Oh,” says the man, and eases off. “Well, shit.”
    Ellen lowers the knife, breathes heavily, and Martha sinks down against the back wall of the elevator car, her face in her hands, sobbing.
    A password. Of course.
Mr. Phillips
. Palace, you idiot.
    Blood is rushing from the side of my head, down my forehead and into my eyes. I raise one finger and touch the wound, a hole the size of a dime, the small sharp object of the staple buried in the thinflesh of my temple.
    My assailant tosses his weapon on the floor of the elevator.