Panic!

He couldn’t move. The unexpectedness, the shock of it, petrified him, and in that single instant Feldman—thin face white, frightened, homicidal—squeezed the trigger. The sound of the hammer falling was a deafening explosion in Brackeen’s ears and he thought Oh God, I’m going to die, I’m dead and the sudden fear was like a wiggling, slime-cold thing in his groin and his rectum and his belly, penetrating to the very core of him, touching the soul of him, and a scream that had no voice echoed through every cell and nerve-ending in his body. He looked at death, seemed to look beyond it to a terrible darkness, and his horror was pure and primeval. The second explosion, the ultimate explosion, was monstrously loud and he felt the bullet tear into his face, shattering bones, spurting blood, ending his life, ending the world.

And yet, it was all in his mind.

The explosion, the pain, was illusion. The automatic jammed, miraculously it jammed, and there was only the rain and the great mushrooming sound inside Brackeen’s head. Feldman looked at the gun in disbelief, and then he turned and fled down the slippery metal steps, almost falling, not looking back.

It was not until then that Brackeen realized he was still alive.

The realization came slowly, and at first he refused to believe it. I’m dead, he thought, and felt the cold rain on his face and a sliver of glass cutting into his thigh, sending faint signals of pain from his clouded mind. I’m dead, and his eyes cleared and he could see Feldman reach the bottom of the fire escape—one of those old-fashioned ones that ended flush with the pavement—and start running wildly across the slick alley floor. I’m dead, I have to stop him, two confused and conflicting thoughts, and he tried to raise the gun in his right hand. He had no strength. He felt incredibly weak, worse than he had as a kid after a bout with double pneumonia, but he was alive—accepting it now, the miracle of it—he was alive; and the trembling started. He straddled the window sill, shaking like a malaria victim, and through dulled eyes he saw Feldman disappear into the solid darkness between the hotel and the iron foundry at the alley mouth.

A moment later there was the sound of a shot. And then silence. And then another shot. The rain drummed hollowly on the metal of the fire escape, and the wind hurled itself against the walls of the narrow canyon like a caged thing. Somewhere in the building, a woman shouted querulously. A long way off, the moan of a siren punctured the wet blackness of the night.

Brackeen sat there for what seemed like an eternity before he was able to move again. When he stood up finally on the iron-slatted platform, the weakness buckled his knees and he nearly fell, bracing himself against the cold wood of the hotel wall. Going down, he held onto the railing with both hands, the service revolver back in his holster although he did not remember putting it there. He reached the alley below and walked toward the gray-black of its mouth; his gait was shuffling, awkward, like one of the wet-brains he had seen on Skid Row. When he reached the street, he saw that several people in various stages of undress were huddled around something on the sidewalk, murmuring and fluttering like sparrows. He went there and looked down.

It was Coretti, and he was dead.

He had been shot in the face.

Brackeen turned away and stumbled back into the alley and puked in the rain until there was nothing left, until another patrol car arrived on the scene. He was better then, and the trembling, though still noticeable, was less violent; the homicide inspectors who came a few minutes later attributed it to nervous reaction and simple shock. Brackeen did not tell them what had happened on the fire escape. He did not tell them how, in a sense, he was responsible for Coretti’s death. He made his report and he let them take him back to the Potrero precinct to change and then he went home and stayed there for three days, thinking about what had happened, examining it, and each time he relived the scene—saw the black hole of the automatic staring at him, death staring at him—he broke out in a cold sweat and began trembling and felt the fear squeezing painfully at his genitals. He took out his gun two dozen times in those three days and held it in his hands two dozen times, and two dozen times he had to put it away because the sight of it, the feel of it, made him sick to his stomach. And when he slept, he dreamed of a scythe blade descending and fleshless fingers beckoning and Coretti pointing at him, saying his name again and again through the gaping, bleeding hole in what had once been his face ...