Bad Games

66



Patrick turned towards his wife. He knew she’d been shot, and he’d feared the worst. When he saw her upright and calling to him, his rage became something controlled by a switch—the animal was instantly gone, and he started sobbing with relief.

Patrick pushed off Arty’s bloodied chest and jumped to his feet, Arty’s limp body rocking beneath Patrick’s weight before it settled motionless. Caleb was already attached to his mother’s leg, weeping and refusing to let go. Carrie was still hiding.

“Baby,” Patrick said, taking his wife into his arms. She cringed when he touched her and he instantly checked her wound. “How bad is it? Can you hold on?”

She nodded.

He smiled and coughed out another cry. He went to kiss her but stopped short. A frightening realization sunk deep into the pit of his belly. In his lust for vengeance, and now basking in the ecstasy of salvation, Patrick had overlooked a glaring truth.

Two.

One was dead, but there were two of them. Where was the other one? Where was Jim?

“The other one,” he blurted. “Where’s the other one?”

Amy looked as though she didn’t understand.

“The other one, Amy! Jim! Where’s Jim?! Where’s—”

She gripped his arm tight. “It’s okay, it’s okay…” She moved her hand from his arm to his battered face, caressed it. “He’s upstairs. He’s hurt badly. Don’t worry…it’s okay.”

Of course. Of course he was out of commission. How else would Amy have managed to come downstairs on her own?

Patrick wanted details. He wanted to know how she’d done it, and if Jim was truly incapacitated. But his wife’s ragged breathing and crumpled posture buried those questions for a later date—

(and there WILL be a later date, you motherf*ckers, he found himself thinking for a quick second, and with more than a little triumph)

—and forced him into action.

“Okay, good,” he said. “Just hold on then, baby. I’m gonna get us to a hospital. Just hold on, okay?”

She nodded, hunched over, clutching her chest. Blood was seeping through her fingers. With her free hand, she rubbed Caleb’s head at her waist then looked around the room.

“Where’s Carrie?” she asked.

Patrick was bent over Arty’s body, rifling through his pockets for car keys. He didn’t look up when he answered his wife. “She’s hiding. Carrie! It’s safe now, honey! You can come out!”

Patrick resumed digging in Arty’s pockets, but was coming up with nothing. “Shit! I can’t find any keys.”

Amy struggled for a breath and said, “Look around. They’ve got to be here somewhere.”

Patrick gave up on Arty and stood. His head went in all directions around the family room, scanning tabletops and any other flat surface where one might throw their car keys. He saw nothing.

“I don’t see anything,” he said. “Jim. Maybe Jim has them.”

Amy looked worried. “Don’t leave me, Patrick.”

“Baby, he might have the only set of keys. We need them to get out of here.”

Amy shook her head. “Do you even know where here is? Do you even know where the nearest hospital is?”

She was right. In his haste, he had not thought things through clearly. He just wanted to distance his family from this place as quickly as possible. But his wife was right. Where the hell were they? And would they even know where to go once they left? They could not afford to drive around all night in Amy’s condition.

“Call 911,” Amy said. “They can trace the call for the address if need be.”

She was right again. He cursed himself for not considering it sooner. Patrick rushed across the room and snatched up the cordless phone resting on a small oval table.

He started to punch the number nine and stopped. Carrie had appeared in the doorway of the family room. She was sobbing hysterically, but her tears meant nothing to Patrick—because his daughter’s face was also wet with blood.

“Carrie!” he cried, dropping the phone to the floor, running to her. Patrick’s was inches from his daughter when she was suddenly yanked out of view, disappearing from the doorway. A powerful arm took his daughter’s place, and that arm drove a knife deep into Patrick’s stomach.

Jim’s entire body came into view. His face was the delirious mask of a clown—a man bent on brutal carnage without losing his comic zest for the atrocities.

Patrick thought he had been punched at first. When his stomach muscles started going into excruciating spasm, he realized something was very wrong. He looked down and saw the knife, buried up to the handle and sticking straight out of his lower abdomen.

“Boo,” Jim said. He ripped the knife out of Patrick’s stomach and pulled back for a second stab. Except Patrick leapt forward into him, jamming Jim’s movement before he could complete his thrust.

Jim struggled to push him away, but Patrick clung to him as if their clothes were sewn together, his eyes fixated on something protruding from Jim’s face.

Patrick clamped his teeth down onto Jim’s nose, jerked his head to one side, and bit the thing clean off.

Jim screamed, dropped the knife, and clutched his wounded face.

Patrick spat the nose on the floor, ducked down and scooped Jim up over his shoulder. Patrick spun, took a running start, then leapt into the air with his prey, the two landing on the family room floor with a brilliant boom.

Patrick immediately straddled Jim’s chest and began hammering down punches. His wounded stomach cramped fiercely with the impact of each blow, but nothing short of a shotgun to the face was going to stop him.

Patrick continued hammering away like a piston, the sounds a knuckles cracking flesh and bone like a butcher pulverizing meat. Jim was close to unconsciousness and groping blindly at his assailant above him. And when Patrick finally stood, there was a brief second where an onlooker might have thought Patrick was showing mercy on his foe.

What he was doing, however, was trying to locate the coffee table, and the gun beneath it.

Patrick kicked over the coffee table, revealing the discarded six-shooter. Gritting his teeth from the pain in his gut, he bent and seized the gun, walked back over to Jim, dropped one knee onto his chest, rammed the gun barrel into his mouth, and pulled the trigger until the muffled explosions became empty clicks.