More than anything, Brian wished for the strength to chase him down, and even made a feeble attempt to get to his feet and do so before stumbling back down to the ground. No chance. Gritting his teeth until he thought they would break, he reached for his lower back and felt for the source of the pain. His shaking hand came away covered in sticky hot blood. Covered. Covered.
Cursing with the effort of putting one elbow in front of the other, he dragged himself toward his phone lying on the ground a few feet away. It was dark, there was no one out here, and if he lay here too long, he was going to fucking bleed out and die, and he couldn’t leave her like that. He couldn’t leave his son. Not now, not now, please God, not like this…
Making a grab for his phone, he only succeeded in pushing it farther away. His fingers were uncoordinated. He’d expended the last of his energy to reach his lifeline, but somehow, he dug deep into the only reserves he had left and shoved himself forward one more time. For Candace. For Lyric. His palm landed on the phone and his hand shook as he lifted it. It could’ve weighed a metric fuck-ton, and darkness was coming for him. Even breathing caused a blowtorch to sear into his wound. He fought it, focusing all his remaining faculties on getting his fucking phone to cooperate with his clumsy, blood-slick hands, had to get someone, anyone at this point, anyone who could get some help…
But the darkness, it was winning. His phone clattered to the pavement. He had time for one last desperate glance at the shining lights inside Dermamania before they blurred before his eyes and blackness pulled him down and didn’t let go.
***
Fucking nicotine fit. Starla fought it for as long as she could, but it had its claws firmly in her, and with all her drama lately, it was worse than usual. She’d been smoking like a freight train, and everyone noticed.
“Damn! You fiend,” Ghost commented as she grabbed her smokes from her purse and headed toward the back. “Your lungs haven’t shriveled up and blown away yet?”
“Go fuck a cactus,” she told him cheerfully.
Yeah, yeah, she needed to quit. She would. Someday. And someday might come a lot sooner if people would quit hassling her about it, damn. Besides, it was too nice a night to be stuck inside for more than an hour. That was another convenient excuse, and it wasn’t like she was busy tonight or anything. Two of her appointments had canceled on her last minute.
Stepping out the side door facing the parking lot, she pulled a cigarette from her pack with her teeth and glanced up at the sky. What were Jared and the girls doing? She missed them more than she liked to admit to herself. Missed the calming atmosphere at his place. Maybe if she called—
Wait. Why was Brian’s truck still here? Frowning around her cigarette, she glanced down at her watch. He’d left almost ten minutes ago.
When she looked back up for a closer inspection, her cigarette fell from her mouth, forgotten.
A dark shape huddled on the ground just a few feet from one of the security lights, a dark crumpled shape in a pool of red. Red, the only color she could discern in a spectrum of darkness.
“Jesus Christ.”
She reached him at a full run, falling to her knees, heedless of his blood getting on her clothes. “Brian!” she shrieked, wanting to touch him but terrified she shouldn’t move him. He lay mostly on his stomach, and she could see now that the trail of his blood extended for several feet, as if he’d fallen, and he’d crawled…
“Help!” she screamed back toward the shop. She screamed Ghost’s name, she screamed Janelle’s, she screamed until her throat was shredded by her own voice and she thought she might have to get up and go back in there to get help, but she didn’t know if she could walk. They probably couldn’t hear her for the music. Desperately surveying the scene in front of her, though she didn’t want to look, she didn’t…she saw that Brian’s phone rested only inches from his limp hand. It too was covered in his blood. She snatched it up and dialed 911, knowing that she had to find out if he was alive and not wanting to. She didn’t want to know, oh fucking hell, she didn’t. But the dispatcher would ask if he had a pulse, if he was breathing. How could someone lose this much blood and live?
Closing her eyes, Starla said a prayer to the God her parents insisted was real and placed two searching fingertips on his neck, feeling for a pulse.
She almost fainted in relief when she found one. It was weak and fast, but it was there, and maybe her screams had been heard after all, because the sound of running feet and shouting voices was suddenly all around her. Ghost was there, and she’d never been so relieved to see him in her life. Janelle took Starla by the arms and tried to pull her up and away, but she fought. She’d almost forgotten she had the phone to her ear until a voice sounded. “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”