Chapter 22 #3
Shit. DJ threw up from the pain. He was strangling, too disoriented from the meds and the pain to know which way to turn his head.
Please don’t let me die choking on my own vomit.
A rockstar had to have priorities, after all.
The cart was moving more swiftly, bumping along, wheels squeaking.
The weight of the equipment lifted, the blanket yanked off.
Paul hauled DJ out of the cart and dragged him down a short, narrow hallway, out of view of the main corridor they’d been following.
He turned DJ onto his side, letting him cough the bile out of his throat onto the tile floor. His eyes ran with tears.
While the evacuation noise was quieter, he could hear the rumble of everything going on above, the fire alarms still blaring. They hadn’t activated here, though, and the smell of smoke was fainter.
So Paul hadn’t set fire to his escape route or the places he’d hide if he ran into problems. It was possible they’d shut off the vents in this wing to discourage the fire from spreading. It felt hot and stuffy. Or maybe that was just DJ being feverish.
But his head also felt clearer. Maybe he’d gotten some of the drug out of his system. No, it had been an injection. But maybe…he’d said it was temporary…
He had the metabolism of a house wren. Marjorie had coined that term about him first. When he’d had his appendix out, they’d discovered anesthetic burned through his system faster than most. Maybe what he’d considered a curse when he was younger, wanting to be beefy and strong-looking, would be a blessing to him now.
Paul stood over him impassively, waiting. DJ’s brain was spinning too hard to focus, but then he latched onto what Paul had said to him, on the phone call after the food truck shooter incident. DJ had revisited it a hundred times in his mind, trying to place him.
You sang for me first.
He coughed and took the chance. “You used to be…nicer.”
“I’m exactly who I’ve always been.” The rough note in Paul’s voice suggested he wasn’t happy about that, but then his expression brightened. “You sang that song, when I was wheeling you to the lobby. You said it was just for me, for getting you the hell out of that place. You noticed me, Dorian.”
Pushed toward the sun
With rubber soled shoes
And a firm grip on my chariot
Nothing will stop him
From our charge toward destiny
And McDonald’s fries for lunch.
Holy crap. DJ had been sixteen years old, being discharged from the hospital after his latest run-in with pneumonia.
Though he didn’t know it then, it would be his last. Once he and Survival had started performing regularly, their star beginning to rise, it was as if he’d passed some sort of test. He left his childhood afflictions behind.
Which had made it a pivotal moment, and why he could call it to mind now.
The orderly had been accompanied by a volunteer. The orderly let him push the chair, but DJ recalled there seemed to be some tension between them. The orderly had been kind and patient with DJ, comfortable around teenagers, while the volunteer had seemed colorless, his face blank of emotion.
DJ, feeling ebullient about leaving, had come up with the song on the fly. “This is for you guys.”
The orderly had laughed. The volunteer’s eyes had lit up like a switch had flipped on inside him. When DJ sang the verses, the volunteer sang with him. He’d had a decent tenor.
I know what he sounds like when he’s singing.
You sang for me first.
Stalkers made up their own truths.
“I’ll be able to take care of you, because I know how to do anything you need,” Paul was saying.
“I’ve worked at a zoo. I helped build enclosures.
Did injections, tended wounds. I’ve been a plane mechanic.
And a fireman. A hero, you know. I was even a tech for a band in Texas, so I’d know how to keep your guitars the way you like them.
My mother was wealthy, so I could learn anything I wanted to know about anything. She knew I was a genius.
“She kept telling me I needed to focus on one thing, but she died of heart failure. It happens, you know. Especially when you let yourself get stressed about things that you don’t need to worry about. You won’t ever have to worry again, DJ. We’ll—”
Paul’s head whipped around, and his body went rigid, the eyes back to flat and lethal. He drew a gun hidden in the toolbelt and brought it forward with smooth efficiency.
“No…” DJ grabbed onto his ankle with fumbling hands. “Don’t. Please…I’ll pretend you…helping me. Don’t…hurt anyone.”
“I don’t think that’s going to help in this case,” Paul said.
“No. I don’t think so, either.” Roy’s voice came from the main corridor.
Relief flooded DJ, so strong it dropped his forehead back to the ground.
He needed to raise it back up, stay aware, so he could help.
From the muffled sound of his voice, Roy was around the corner, not providing a target.
This hall was a dead end, holding another storage room and an electrical closet. Paul would have to get past Roy.
“How did you find me?” Paul said.
“You’re careful, smart and you plan things out. There were only a handful of exits you could take. Found your vehicle with the maintenance logo on it, and back tracked from the closest exit to here. My people are at the other ones. You’re screwed.”
“Am I?” Paul sounded puzzled. “I don’t think so.”
DJ drew in a breath as the gun pressed against the back of his head.
“There’s a room for the two of us in the afterlife.
We were meant to be together. Tell your people you’ve got me, DJ is secure, and to meet you at the West Street entrance, or I put a bullet in the back of his head and eat one myself. ”
DJ coughed. “Can you do that in reverse order?”
Paul ignored him. “And before you try to use some kind of bullshit code to keep them where they are, I will go out that exit with the gun against his skull.”
A pause, then Roy spoke on his earpiece mic. “G, Warren, this is Roy. Suspect is down and secure. I have DJ and will meet you at the West Street arena exit.”
“Good job. Got it, boss.” “Fucking A and Roger that.”
“Done.”
“Good.” Paul’s voice gained strength. “Now, step out where I can see you.”
“No.” DJ came as close to a shout as he could manage, which meant little better than a death rattle. “No, Roy.”
Roy loved him. Paul would kill him.
“Leave him…alone.” No matter the pain it caused his abused body, DJ rolled to his back and glared at Paul.
He had a gold earring in one ear. Maybe Bono was on his stalker priority list, too, and DJ had just lucked out and been nominated for the top slot.
“Leave him alive, or you get nothing you want from me. I’ll make your life a living hell. ”
“That’s my life already. I need you to be quiet.”
He kicked DJ in the stomach again. This time the explosion of pain was severe enough to suggest he’d hit something vital.
“That’s enough.” Roy’s voice was controlled but DJ knew that tone. Given the chance, he’d dismember Paul with safety scissors. If DJ wasn’t feeling the worst he’d ever felt, he would have been turned on by it. He was also terrified Roy would do what Paul said and step into view.
DJ would rather die than see Roy killed in front of him. But before his fuzzy brain could come up with anything, Roy emerged from the shadows with that ice cold look on his face. While that didn’t change, the direction of his gaze did. He looked toward DJ.
A farewell.
“No.” DJ grabbed at Paul’s legs again and screamed, that dying animal rasp, as Paul fired three times.
Roy stumbled back and dropped.
DJ’s thin roar of anguish made Paul kick him again. Then he pulled him to his feet, grabbing him under the arm, putting it over his shoulder. He squeezed the broken fingers and DJ almost blacked out again.
“You resist me getting you back into the cart, and I will shoot the next person we see. He doesn’t feel like I do about you. Stop fucking crying, or I’ll blow his face apart when we pass him. His blind momma will have to have a closed casket.”
Paul’s one hand had a hard clamp on his shoulder, the other pressing the barrel of the gun longwise against the small of DJ’s back.
Once they were where Paul couldn’t hurt anyone else, DJ would find a way to kill him, no matter how long it took, or if it cost his own life. DJ’s only purpose would be to eradicate him from existence.
They were next to Roy’s slack body. DJ couldn’t bear to look, so he averted his face, chest hitching with the swallowed sobs. He wanted to remember Roy alive. But Paul pulled them to a halt. DJ raised his head to see malicious anger suffusing his features.
Because of DJ’s reaction, Paul was going to shoot Roy in the face anyway.
Gilda wasn’t blind enough to erase that image, and she’d insist on seeing her boy’s body, to touch him one last time.
DJ snarled and summoned everything he had to thrust his body against Paul’s, throw him against the wall like he’d split out of his skin and become the Hulk.
The reality fell far short of that, but he managed to put them both off balance and they fell on Roy’s body. DJ cried out as he rolled over his broken fingers and the damage in his stomach and ribs shrieked in protest.
Paul snarled back and aimed for DJ’s leg. DJ was about to see his favorite jeans ruined.
Except two arms banded around Paul’s chest. Roy had come up from the ground like a jack in the box.
He hauled DJ’s stalker backward, tossing him to his opposite side, putting himself between Paul and DJ.
Then he pounced on Paul’s gun hand, holding the arm in a pin.
The gun fired, punching holes in the dry wall.
DJ scrambled away. From the pile of things Paul had tossed out of the cart, he grabbed a pipe for a standing microphone. Ignoring the agony in his hand, he used a double grip to bring it straight down on Paul’s ankle, stabbing him with it. Bone crunched and Paul screamed.