95.

  Bricks' breathing sounded like a strained whistle. I could hear unintelligible grunts and moans of agony coming from him. With tears still flowing from my eyes, I rolled my ruined body over. My left arm was completely limp at my side, palm on fire. Brick twitched, his massive shoulders convulsed as he groaned. He was on all fours, hugging his hands to his face and chest. Then he looked up at me, and it was one of the most horrific sights I'd ever seen.

  The explosion from the finger pistols had hit him straight in the chin, throat, and chest. It was a wild shot fueled by the intense emotions of fear, horror, terror. All of these made for powerfully combustible elements. The shot I had fired at Brick had basically shattered his lower jaw and torn flesh from his upper chest and throat. His jaw was hanging uselessly, swinging from side to side. There was a deep split across his chin and bottom lip, and all the teeth in his lower jaw at the front had been blown apart.

  He was screaming wide-mouthed in agony, blood drooling from his mouth. I could see in his eyes complete confusion and animalistic agony. Then his eyes swivelled towards me, ignited with anger and unbridled hate for humanity. Wheezing, Brick began to drag his broken body towards me. I watched him in horror. He was saying something completely unintelligible, his jaw hanging like a flap of meat swinging from side to side with the pendulous movements of his body. As he got closer, I understood.

  "I'm gonna kill you." He was saying it over and over again.

  Something about Brick’s belligerent callousness towards human life, his willingness to kill and maim other people, ignited hatred within me. Even now, when he was a bloody, disfigured mess, his only instinct was to hurt. I pulled myself up to meet his crawling charge. Both of our bodies were so ruined, it wasn't going to be a fight; it was just going to be a struggle to the death.

  Brick lurched forward with both hands and clawed at my face, trying to force me onto my back. One of his hands tore at my throat, the other trying to scratch out my eyes. I shook my head, trying to keep him away from my eyes, my left hand hanging uselessly by my side. But my right hand, even with its broken digits, was still strong and still had a brass knuckle attached to it.

  I lashed out with the brass knuckle and didn't hesitate to aim at his ruined mouth. Even as I hit the thing, it didn't feel like a jaw, it was too fleshy and soft, and it gave way immediately under my punch. Brick screamed and fell to his side, curling into a fetal position in so much pain he couldn't even touch it. He just howled, and I could see his tongue flopping around, like a bloody slug. Yet there was no pity in me, just more anger, and more hatred.

  I dragged my broken body onto Brick, flattening him out with my legs , I wrapped my good hand around his throat. I squeezed as hard as I could, willing any last bits of strength in those muscles to contract, to choke the life out of this monster, to finally put this wild animal down. I saw Brick’s eyes bug as the air began to close off. His jaw flapped and his tongue lolled in his mouth. He tried to scream, but it just came out as an airless gasp. I squeezed harder, seeing his face start to go blue as he gargled blood.

  "It's because of you!" I spat at him through gritted teeth. "It's because of you, you fucking animal. It's because of you. You did it to them. You fucking did it to them. You turned them into zombies! You made them hurt me and throw me away like fucking trash! It's because of you, you son of a bitch!" I screamed in his face, and I was no longer choking him, but hitting him instead, bludgeoning him with my good hand, bringing the brass knuckle down onto his face, slamming my fists into anything I could.

  Brick gargled bloodily under the barrage of blows.

  "You've ruined my fucking life!” I screamed, going back to choking him, squeezing his throat, feeling the muscles of his throat clenching under my hands, seeing the life draining from his eyes.

  "Tell me why!" I screamed. "Tell me why you fucking did it. Tell me why scumbags like you get to hurt people. Why do you get to ruin lives? Who the fuck are you?" Then I was hitting him again, and then I was choking him again. Wild rage ran through my body as 18 years of pain and trauma boiled to the surface.

  Brick must have just been a kid when my parents were doing drugs, when they became fiends, when I saw the life go out of their eyes, to be replaced with the hunger of need. I watched them waste away, the vitality leaving their bodies, their skin turning sallow and yellow, their teeth beginning to rot and fall out, their hair thinning and turning brittle. Brick probably never sold my parents drugs, but right now I wasn't killing Brick. I was killing every scumbag that ever ruined innocent people's lives. No, that's not true, I was killing the scumbags that ruined my life, that stole my parents from me, that stole my childhood from me. I was doing it for me and only me. This wasn’t justice. This was revenge.

  I screamed, my words becoming an unintelligible, ranting howl that tore from my throat so hard it hurt. It was a raw, terrifying scream of pure human agony and pain.

  "I'll fucking kill you! I'll fucking kill you! I'll fucking kill you!" I screamed at Brick, my voice hoarse and breaking.

  Brick kicked his feet and clawed at my hands, and I saw it then, I saw the life leaving his eyes. They were becoming cloudy, unfocused, staring at nothing. I felt his hands go limp and his feet stopped moving. I squeezed harder. He gargled. His body twitched. I screamed in his face.

  Then I let go and threw myself off him, curling into a ball and sobbing like the broken little child I always had been. I heard Brick gasping and coughing weakly behind me. My entire body trembled, and as conscious thought floated back into my mind, I realized how close I'd come to killing Brick, how close I'd come to being Brick. And even more terrifying… how much I had wanted to.

  I pulled myself up onto my knees, cradling my damaged arm, and looked at Brick. He was barely conscious, his face a ruined mass of bloody meat, and I could see the livid bruises already starting around his throat where my hand had been. Shame burned in me. The anger fled from my body, the hatred dissipated, leaving only guilt and exhaustion - bone-deep, no, marrow-deep exhaustion. Brick's head lolled towards me. His eyes were still unfocused, but they were looking at me, and he was saying something.

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  I knew what he was saying. He was saying, "Kill me.”

  "No," I croaked. "I'm not you. You'll face justice for what you've done, and justice isn't killing you. It's locking you in a damn box for the rest of your life and letting you rot.”

  Brick stared at me, then turned his face away, and I saw his body go limp as he fell into unconsciousness. The ultimate survivor, the product of the New London streets, had finally given up, had finally given up.

  With a monumental effort, I pulled myself to my feet, felt around in my pockets with my good hand, and withdrew a small brick phone, the type that I'd taken off the drug dealers, and a small white card. It was the card that DI Woodley had given me. With barely functioning hands and fingers, I punched in the phone number and heard it ring.

  "DI Woodley," a gruff voice answered on the other end. Of course, the old dogged detective was still working at this time.

  "I've got Brick," I said.

  "What? Who is this?”

  "If you want Brick, come to Mault Avenue, Building 4, Floor 14. I'd bring an ambulance with you too," and then I hung up the phone.

  I stared at the phone for a moment before hurling it out of the window, and threw DI Woodley's card after it. It crossed my mind to maybe tie a Brick up, but the best I could do in my condition was grab an unused zip tie and tie his feet together. Although, looking at the state of him, he wasn't going to get very far in his condition. I could barely even look at his mangled face. I turned and slowly limped away, picking up Grandad's bat and sheathing it. Just before I left the flat I looked down at my quivering, blood stained hands. Brick was right about one thing: no one leaves the gutter clean.

  l left the flat and hobbled down to the next floor, where I found Sherbet. He had been industriously sawing away at the zip ties on his wrists with a shard of broken glass. He had managed to free his hands and was currently working on his feet. When he saw me, the blessed homeless man burst into tears, and so did I.

  I finished cutting him loose, and he rose from his chair and gathered me up in a warm hug. I wrapped my one good arm around him, and we just stood there for a few seconds, both sharing in the bittersweet joy of surviving. Eventually, I separated from him, pushing him gently back.

  "We need to get out of here," I croaked. "The police are gonna be coming."

  Sherbert nodded and wiped tears from his grimy, battered face before taking me under my good arm and helping me hobble down the stairs. We ran into no further opposition. There were still remnants of my battles along the way, a few unconscious bodies unlucky enough to be left behind by their friends. It seemed like all of Brick's men had run, leaving him to face the consequences alone.

  I was barely conscious now; any energy or adrenaline that I had been running on was completely gone. My body physically trembled; my leg was so battered it just dragged uselessly behind me. My arm screamed in agony, my hand had gone ice cold and lifeless. My head was so fuzzy that I kept forgetting where I was or what we were even doing. But Sherbert was strong and single-minded, and by the time we had gotten out of the building, he was practically carrying me.

  We had made it across the street and into the darkness of the alleyways when we heard the sirens. It sounded like the entire police force had turned out to capture Brick. I heard helicopters in the sky and drones buzzing. Sherbert picked up the pace. He bent over and threw me over his shoulder, moving as if I weighed nothing, and ran from the horrors of his captivity and the arrival of the police as fast as he could.

  The sun had begun rising over the horizon by the time Sherbert needed to rest. He was wheezing when he finally knelt down and placed me gently against the wall in an alleyway. I was in a bad way now. I was barely lucid; darkness had crept into the corners of my vision, and I knew it was a really bad sign that I could no longer feel all the pain in my body, just a weird numbness.

  "Mr Mage, Mr Mage!" Sherbert said, lightly slapping my cheek as he saw my head lolling and my eyes closing. "Mr Mage, you've gotta stay awake. Come on, stay with me."

  I mumbled something and groaned as my head lolled to one side.

  "I'm sorry, Mr Mage," Sherbert said. "But this might help."

  He rolled my head back upright, pulled my hood down, and then pulled the tattered remains of my balaclava from my face. "Come on, Mr Mage, you just gotta breathe. Just stay with me, okay? Please, you gotta stay with me."

  My breath was shallow and rattling.

  "Oh man! Oh man! Oh man!" Sherbert ran his hands through his thinning hair as he crouched down in front of me, panicking. "We've got to get help, Mr Mage. I'm not gonna be able to get you to a hospital like this. I've got to call an ambulance."

  I nodded my head slowly. I don't know if I was agreeing or if I just lost control of my head, but Sherbert took that as acquiescence.

  "Okay, okay," he said quickly. "I'll go get help. There are a couple of shops back there. I'll use their phone. I'll call you an ambulance, okay? You just stay here, Mr Mage, and stay awake.”

  Sherebert got up to leave, and I grabbed his arm.

  "No," I shook my head.

  "Mr Mage, you're gonna die if we don't get you help."

  I reached out slowly with a bloodied hand and tapped my chest protector and then the handle of my Grandad's bat. "Take them," I croaked to him. "Take it all and hide it before you call them.”

  Sherbert understood what I meant and tenderly but quickly began to strip all my gear from me. He took the bat from around my shoulders, the one brass knuckle that I had left from my broken hand. He gently maneuvered me around as he pulled off my coat and then undid my bloody chest protector. That's when the blood really began flowing. I saw Sherbert's eyes widen, and I looked down at my torso. Oh, I had been stabbed, more than once. Maybe that's why I was beginning to lose sensation. I was slowly bleeding out. I almost chuckled at the sight of my body, bathed in bloody wounds. There were so many of them: my chest, my arms, my hands, my stomach, my side, my legs. No wonder I'd gotten so exhausted. I must have been cut and stabbed a dozen times, probably more.

  My head lolled back again, and now the darkness was really starting to fall. I saw Sherbert wrap all my gear up in my leather jacket. He then went through my pockets, and I groaned and tapped my belt. He quickly whipped it off me, unbuckled the forearm protector, and my Grapple Cord from my other wrist, and bundled all that up in the leather jacket. Tears were running down his cheeks. He kept stealing furtive glances at my bloody torso.

  "Take it, Sherbert," I said to him. "And run. Don't come back… don't come back…"

  Sherbert sniffled and wiped his eyes before turning and running, leaving me to bleed in a dank back alley in South London. My eyes closed slowly, and darkness swallowed me.

  I won. I’d beaten the Syndicate. I'd beaten Brick.

  I did it. I saved them all.

  I could die happy.

  I wasn’t worthless after all...