Saint Oswald by Jay Bonansinga (always you kirsty moseley .txt) 📗

“What hill?”

“Northeast side of the quarry!”

Oswald yanks Kornblum, then starts dragging the flailing mental patient around the back of the poultry truck, through a fog bank of feathers.

In the distance, just beyond the west end of the bridge, at the top of a bluff, the quarry building rises out of the trees. A mammoth cinder-block edifice the color of rotting teeth, it has a huge rusted-iron entrance gate. Ashy smoke pours out of its scorched chimney, and a giant conveyor crane dominates the horizon behind it.

Oswald starts dragging Kornblum toward the quarry side of the bridge.

The amplified voice behind them: “SIR, YOU’RE FORCING ME TO GET UGLY HERE!”

“Stay down!” Oswald yells at his hostage, dragging him along so violently he nearly pulls the man out of his shoes. “And cover your ears!”

The trooper’s voice: “I’M GONNA HAVE TO GIVE YOU JUST FIVE SECONDS TO COMPLY!—”

Out of the corner of his eye, Oswald sees the Sirocco of dust coming up the access road to the west. The flashing chaser lights of the second police car are just visible skimming the tops of the river grass and foliage. Maybe a hundred yards and closing fast.

“—ONE!—”

Kornblum’s shirt pops its seams, and he suddenly wiggles free. He stumbles to the pavement, lets out a gasp, and then starts crawling toward the ledge.

“—TWO!—”

Oswald lurches after the shithead. He reaches down and gets a hand around the guy’s belt, and then lifts him off the ground.

“—THREE!—”

For a frenzied instant, Kornblum keeps trying to flee, his arms and legs cartoonishly churning in place like he’s on an invisible treadmill. Oswald summons all his strength. He hefts the man into the air with a grunt, then staggers toward the end of the bridge, carrying Kornblum by the belt like a bail of dead hay.

“—FOUR!—”

Right then, as Oswald reaches the end of the bridge, a lot of things start happening all at once: Oswald raises the .44 with his free hand, aiming it at the air above the second cruiser as it thunders toward the bridge, and the amplified voice announces that time has run out, and that’s when Oswald starts squeezing the trigger in rapid bursts, triggering a sudden storm of gunfire from all directions.

High above the quarry, Gerbil Goldstein sees everything from behind the wheel of the S-10 as she punches the brakes and sends the pickup into a skid.

The truck smacks a guardrail, then skids to a stop next to a derelict radio tower. Through her open passenger window Gerbil has a good view of Derelith Bridge down there in the sun, maybe seventy feet below the bluff, as well as the quarry building to her left, and the vast canyon of limestone to her right, the layers of sediment gleaming a slimy gray in the wan daylight.

“THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!” she screams into the cell, which is still gripped in her sweaty palm. She doesn’t expect an answer, though, considering all the pop-gun noises coming through the phone, crackling in her ear, booming in the sky above her.

Through the truck’s window she gets a bird’s eye view of the OK Corral down on the west end of the bridge. She hears the gunfire and she sees puffs of gun smoke rising up in profusion. She sees the police cruisers with their doors banging open, the arrhythmic flash of heavy-gauge shotguns. She also sees chickens everywhere, chickens flapping up against the sky, chickens swarming off the edges of the bridge like Lemmings.

On the west side, the quarry men are coming out of their lairs along the base of the building, yelling, pointing. And for a moment, Gerbil is transfixed by the gathering crowd of laborers.

Then she finally realizes what they’re pointing at: Oswald has grabbed hold of the giant shovel at the base of the crane, and the shovel is moving, rising up, levitating Oswald and his hostage up the conveyor (along with the shovel’s payload of limestone).

Gerbil’s voice is barely a whisper: “Oh my God, oh my God—don’t tell me—you’re not—you’re not—oh my God—you are.”

Oswald has a death hold on the bottom of the shovel—Kornblum wriggling in his arms—as the giant scoop lifts both men into the air.

It’s a remarkable sight—the two men dangling off the shovel, legs flailing—while the gunfire continues tracing through the cloud of dust below them, ricocheting off the iron truss-work in florets of sparks.

From her vantage point at the top of the quarry, Gerbil is stricken momentarily dumb by the spectacle. She gapes open-mouthed. She clutches the cell phone, the housing still pressed to her ear.

She sees Oswald and the wriggling idiot reach the top of the crane.

“Oh my God, no, no, no, no.”

Seventy-five feet above the mountain of limestone, the shovel suddenly lurches forward. The scoop tips, and Oswald and Kornblum are unceremoniously dumped into a vast pile of calcium carbonate.

13.

“TONTO?! CAN YOU HEAR ME?! YOU THERE?! YOU COPY?!” Gerbil hollers into her walkie. It has taken her less than ninety seconds to commandeer the truck down the hill, and now the pickup is scudding around a hairpin at the base of the limestone mountain.

More sirens rise in the distance, warbling on the river winds. More troopers are circling the quarry, closing in. Gerbil stomps the brakes, and the S-10 grates to a stop against a drift of moon-dust.

Twenty feet away, the gray sand is shifting, puckering, imploding in on itself, as a pair of amorphous blobs emerge like afterbirth oozing out of a womb.

“OZZY?!”

Gerbil throws open the door and leaps out of the S-10 with a small SIG Sauer nine-millimeter semi-auto gripped in her right hand. She feels ridiculous and ostentatious holding the weapon—she has no idea how to fire a gun, nor does she harbor any desire to start.

She hustles over to the base of the hillock with both hands clutched around the grip, feeling like an idiot imitating an actor imitating a gangster—pointing the barrel at the undulating sand.

“UHHHHK—!” Oswald