The Ethical Assassin

Stride four, and the gun was aimed. But it wasn’t aimed at me. I managed a quick glance over my shoulder and saw Melford looking at Doe and raising his own pistol.

The wink had been real. The rest had been a masquerade. Melford hadn’t betrayed me. Not really. I still had no idea what all of this was about, why everything had happened, but I knew that Melford was not my enemy and that he was going to save me.

Then I heard the crack of gunfire, and the explosion came not from Melford’s weapon, but from Doe’s. I had come to believe so strongly in Melford’s magic that it hadn’t occurred to me that Doe might win the draw. Once Melford entered the battle, I had never doubted he would win.

Six steps in, and I dared another look behind me. I saw a flash of blood spraying up toward the burning rage of the sun in a cloudless sky. Melford, arms up in the air, falling back, staggering against the mangrove tree root, falling into the waste lagoon.

Doe flared his nostrils with rage. “I fucking knew-”

But that was as far as he got, because, I think for the first time, he saw me coming at him, now only three long paces away.

In his irritation at Melford and his complacency toward me, Doe skipped a beat before he began to level his gun at me. Then he moved it toward me, but it was off center. I knew, I had seen, that Doe was a good shot and a fast shot, but I would force him to become a desperate shot, and hopefully that would be enough.

Two steps now stood between us. I stretched out with an aching, hip-stretching stride, and I saw Doe squint his right eye. I saw the twitch in his wrist.

I shifted to my left. Doe hadn’t fired, so I hadn’t dodged a bullet. But now I was off my balance and the advantage was his. I lurched forward now. One more long step, and then I was in the air. I had never played football in my life other than the brutal touch football games I’d been drafted into during PE class, and I knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about tackle theory. I didn’t know how to hit or where, but I knew what to do now. Melford hadn’t been pointing at the ground when he’d winked. He’d been pointing toward his crotch, and it wasn’t his crotch he wanted me to think of, it was Doe’s.

I aimed myself with instinct and impulse and a paucity of physics. I landed with my shoulder, and I landed low and hard, jamming my weight into his testicles.

We collapsed together onto the hard ground. I let out a loud groan, but Doe let out a howl so warbly that it sounded almost like tribal music. I hadn’t thought I’d hit him nearly hard enough. I could feel the power of the blow diffuse, go to waste, as though something had been left behind, but Doe curled into the fetal position. His hands, including the one holding his gun, folded over his crotch.

Melford had been right. My tackle should have hurt Doe, but not floored him. I recovered my own balance, squatting and tense, ready to spring. Next to me, powerless to do harm, Doe rocked back and forth, his mouth open, though he made no noise. Tears streamed from his eyes. I reeled my arm back and with all the force of rage and anger and frustration I could muster, I rammed my fist into the space directly between his legs.

I pulled back to do it again, then stopped. Doe had opened his mouth to let out another yelp, but he hadn’t made it. The color drained from his face, his eyes rolled up, and he was still.

I found it very hard to believe I’d killed him from a blow to the balls, so I could only assume that he’d passed out. I took the gun, heavy and sickening, from his slack hands and rose. I gave him a couple of hard taps with my foot to make sure he was out, and then, remembering Melford, I spun around.

I was just in time to see his form sink under the greasy skin of the waste lagoon.

I didn’t know if he was dead before he hit the surface. I didn’t know if he was already drowned. All I knew was that he hadn’t betrayed me, and he had saved my life. I had to try to save his.

I darted to the shore of the lagoon, by the mangrove, only half-aware of what I had in mind. On the surface, above where he’d sunk, there was a slight indentation, as though he were dragging down the mass of the pool with him. I looked right and left- for what, I didn’t know. Maybe some hope, some option that would save me from doing what I did not want to do. But I had to do it.

I set down the gun by the shore, took a deep breath, and tensed my muscles. Then I froze. I couldn’t do it, I just couldn’t. Everything about me- my mind, my heart, my stomach, the cells that composed my body- screamed that I could not, under any conditions, do what I was proposing. The core of my being rebelled against it. The very stuff of life, millions of years of primate genetic memory, rebelled against it.

I did it anyhow. I jumped in.

The first thing I thought was that it felt more like jumping on a mattress, a hot, horribly rotten mattress, than jumping in water. The next thing I thought was that I was dead. Ghastly, congealed blackness rose up all around me, sucking me down, pulling as though weights were tied to my feet. It was up to my waist and then, in an instant, my chest. Panic stormed the gates of my consciousness, and I knew I had one chance before I lost myself in death and despair.

I struggled, straining my muscles, to reach up with one hand. I gritted my teeth and finally forced the arm out of the muck and felt it break the surface- I felt the relative cool of the air against it. Somehow I found one of the outstretched roots of the mangrove tree. I clutched it tight, feeling its sharp bark bite into my slick skin. With the other hand, still under the surface, I began to probe, moving around in a circular motion and then downward. It was shallow and deep in the lagoon all at once. I waved my hand as best I could, as far as it would go. I stretched as far as I could go, afraid of losing my grip, because if I did, I would fly into the lagoon and I would be lost.

The heavy, slow-moving waves smacked against my face. I could taste the filth in my mouth, smell its already drying crust in my nose. Mosquitoes, like tiny buzzards, had begun to buzz around me. The strength of the sludge pulled against me with a grotesque sucking sensation, and then, all at once, my mouth was under the surface. Then my nose.

Everything in my being cried for me to pull myself out, but I stretched farther, went deeper under. Then I felt something hard- the rubber and canvas of a Chuck Taylor. I leaned forward to make sure I grabbed shin instead of shoe, and I began to pull with my other hand at the mangrove root.

I broke the surface and gasped for air. It turned out to be a horrible move, since the waste slid into my mouth, and my stomach lurched violently. I wasn’t going to vomit. Not yet. I needed to stay in control.

With my free hand, I clawed at the earth and gained purchase on the root. Another few inches, and then another few, and then it became easier. My whole upper body was out, and after that I had one knee up on the ground, then the other. I was out. Somehow I was out, and I was pulling Melford along after me onto the shore, where I let go and sat next to him.

He looked much the way I must have, like a man made of wet chocolate- I kept telling myself chocolate, hoping it would keep the nausea at bay. I couldn’t see the details of his form well enough to see how injured he was. I couldn’t see if he was alive. I couldn’t see blood. And then there was the flicker of something.

His eyes opened wide, spheres of brightness against the darkness of his feces-covered form. His eyes lurched this way and that, and there was a moment of stillness in the air. Then, in an instant, he grabbed the gun and fired off a shot, and once more I heard Doe scream.