Chapter 19
The gun was in the folded-up denim jacket.
He picked it up, surprised by how heavy it was. He turned it in his hands, looking at it.
Shane didn’t know much about guns. When he was a kid, his dad had dragged him along on a few turkey hunts. But they’d used shotguns for that, and this was a pistol, and Shane had never really liked the feel of a gun in his hands, anyway.
He still didn’t really like the feel of it, to tell the truth.
The gun was made from polished chrome. It felt cold to the touch, colder than the temperature of the air. And wherever he touched the gun, he left prints and smudges on the shining metal. Holding it made him feel dirty.
It made him feel nervous, too. He looked at the hole the bullets came out of, surprised by how large it was. Just looking in the hole made his throat feel tight, despite the fact that he was the one holding the gun.
Still, coffee mugs and staplers and his own steel-toed boots hadn’t been the most effective means of defense. A gun would be better, surely, and that meant he’d rather have one in his hands than be without.
And if he was going to have one, he’d better try to understand how it worked.
The gun had a squared handle. It looked like the type of guns you saw in cop-movies, not the type you saw in westerns. That meant the bullets were in a magazine in the handle.
There was a little lever on the side of the handle. He pushed the lever, and the bottom of the handle jolted open. He grabbed the bottom and pulled it out. There were twelve blunt little bullets in the magazine, and he knew from the movies that there might be another in the chamber.
He jammed the magazine back into the handle, surprised by how hard he had to push before it clicked into place.
The next thing he looked for was the safety. The shotgun he’d used as a kid had a button safety right in front of the trigger guard. Push the big side of the button in, on the trigger guard’s right side, and the trigger wouldn’t move, the gun wouldn’t shoot. Push the small side of the button in, on the guard’s left side, and the gun was ready to fire.
But this handgun didn’t have any such button.
That made him even more nervous. Without the safety, he felt like the gun could go off at any time. He felt almost like he was holding a bomb.
He pushed the thought out of his head, willfully forced down the nervousness he felt. He kept examining the gun, saw that the trigger actually looked like it was made of two pieces. It looked like there was a larger trigger cradling a smaller one.
He touched the outer trigger with his fingernail, pulled it very gently. The trigger didn’t move. He put the tip of his finger against that outer trigger’s edge, pulled gently. Didn’t budge. He pulled a little harder, increasing the pressure carefully. The trigger still didn’t move.
He touched the inner trigger gently. It sank into the larger trigger, he kept pulling, gently. The larger trigger started to sink back. He pulled a little harder, still being very careful, still paying close attention to the amount of pressure, all of his mind focused on that finger.
With a shocking “POP!”, the gun fired.
It startled Shane so much that he dropped the gun. It bounced off his steel toe, clattered to the floor.
“Fuck!” he said, his heart racing, his ears ringing. He looked at the wall, saw a small, round hole that hadn’t been there before.
“Well,” he said, catching his breath, “I guess that’s the safety. You have to pull the inner trigger down before the outer trigger moves.”
He picked the gun back up, and put it on the table in front of him.
“Now what?” he asked the empty room.
A sudden buzzing against his right thigh made him jump. He flicked his hand at it, as if it were a bee he meant to crush. But his fingers hit something hard and flat beneath the fabric, and then he remembered: Terrance’s phone.
He reached into his pocket and pulled the phone out. Another little exclamation point, another new message beneath it. Before Shane had read the first word, the phone buzzed in his hand, startling him again. He flinched, and the phone flipped up into the air. It bounced off the lounge table, and clattered to the floor on the far side.
“Fuck!” Shane said.
He made his way around the table, picked the phone up off the floor, and looked at its screen. Two exclamation points, and a long message he had to scroll through to reach the end. The message read: “(Cont.) –close all access to aforementioned areas of highest reported incident rates. Citizens currently within affected areas should be aware that no emergency services will be available in the immediate future. Evacuation crews are being assembled—further details to come. Remain indoors with entrances secured until further notice.”
“‘Close all access,’” Shane said. “‘No emergency services.’ What the fuck? They’re just going to leave people on their own?”
There was a little arrow at the top of the message, pointing left. Shane swiped his finger across the screen in the indicated direction, bringing up the previous message. It read: “Unknown pathogen outbreak continues. Greatest number of reported incidents appear to be concentrated in South Beach/Mission Bay area, though incidents also reported in Portrero Hill, Mission, SOMA, and Marina neighborhoods. Police to—”
For a long, quiet moment, Shane held the phone and stared at its screen. His eyes were focused on the words, but he wasn’t taking them in. And then, finally, it clicked in his brain. He raised his head abruptly, and cursed.
“They’re shutting down South Beach, which means they’re shutting down Townson. And if emergency services won’t be available in shut down areas, there’s not going to be any medical help here for hours.”
He raised his left hand, looked at the scrapes on his knuckles.
“If I’m infected, how long do I have?”
He looked at the phone, thinking.
“Terrance got bit just before he came in to work, which was probably just before five. What time was it when he had the seizure?”
He squeezed his eyes shut, thumping the heel of his hand against his forehead repeatedly.
“Seven thirty, it was just before seven thirty. He got bitten again maybe fifteen minutes after that. He was pretty much gone by just after eight. I might have less than three hours. And they’re shutting this area down now, shutting out all emergency services.”
His eyes snapped open.
“I need to get the fuck out of here right now!”