The last few microseconds were the ones that saved Brady’s skull and life. The red alerts in his brain went off, all at once, silenced his pointless reverie about getting out into nature more often, and reminded him that he had just committed the cardinal sin of walking into a darkened room without so much as pausing in the entrance to make sure it was safe.
His police training kicked in, angry at his neglect, and he managed to twitch his torso just a few degrees clockwise, tilting his head and rotating his upper body away from the blow. The crowbar came down not on his skull or clavicle but on the thick, ropy muscles of his rotator cuff. The impact was still enough to make his vision flash hot white, and he collapsed in pain and surprise, his knees hitting the hard floor first. He managed to put out a hand to stop himself from going all the way down, and the shock of pain now spread into his wrist as well. Two seconds into the assault and he’d suffered injuries in four critical areas: shoulder, both kneecaps, and left wrist.
But none was debilitating. He turned his head sharply and saw a pair of decrepit black high-tops, a pair that might have been top-of-the-line once but were now ratty and torn, victims of years of abuse and stink, only the rotted traces of laces left in them, and the bare, dirty skin of filthy shins peeking over their tops.
Brady rolled once, to his left this time, and the crowbar came down in the middle of the tile floor, sending chips of white ceramic flying. Ordinarily his right hand would have ducked into the shoulder holster he wore around his left side, just inside his canvas jacket, but he didn’t bother this time, because he knew there was nothing in it. Still only a few seconds into the attack, he decided to give himself a break and leave aside the utter idiocy he had shown by strolling, unarmed, into an unguarded, abandoned fuel station during a worldwide emergency without carrying a weapon or even pausing for so much as a “Hello, anybody home?” first. He was due for a fearless and searching self-evaluation, once he got out of this predicament, should he be lucky enough to do so.
Brady knew that taking a look back at his attacker was likely to prove fatal—he’d be low, looking up, in a helpless posture, as the crowbar came down for a third time—so he scrabbled across the hard tile floor without so much as a glance, scuttling like a crab toward the still-open front door. He passed over the threshold on throbbing wrist and aching knees, dragged himself up onto his feet, and ran to the car, fleeing like a seventeen-year-old camper in a horror movie.
He got to the car, yanked open the driver’s door, and didn’t dare to look back at his pursuer until he had both hands on the armrest, squeezing the outer ledge of the plastic lid and simultaneously tugging upward on the front lip. The compartment clicked open and Brady’s right hand dove inside, closing around the cold, pebbled handle of the M&P Scandium, the one with the hammer.
Looking up as he raised the gun into the space between the open door and car frame, he finally laid eyes on his assailant. The meth head couldn’t have been more than twenty years old, but they must have been twenty hard years, because he was as leathery as a saddlebag, dirt-encrusted, and unshaven. His appearance was striking enough, but the stench of him was worse; it was swept up on a breeze blowing off the mountains behind him and washed over Brady in a wave.
“Motherfucker.”
Brady was never much for cursing, but when he did that was his go-to word, and he went there now, in a commanding voice that left no room for discussion. The meth head paused, feeling the sudden shift in Brady’s attitude and, even in his addled state, not failing to notice the guy he’d once had dead to rights now had a gun trained on him.
Brady was about to shout his next instruction—put the crowbar down and get on the ground, or words to that effect—when the meth head’s two friends came stumbling out of the gas station as well. They were a couple, a few years younger than the first guy, teenagers still, and they were just as angry and unreasonable as he’d been. With the door to the place fully open now, Brady could see inside, and he made out just enough of the bedrolls, empty tuna cans, and piles of garbage to figure out what had happened here. The refueling station had been neglected for a few months—it wasn’t Brady’s job to check on the place, but he sure as hell wished it had been—and had been discovered, broken into, and homesteaded by this trio of addicts.
Again, Brady’s momentary distraction nearly killed him. While his eyes were diverted to the two new arrivals and the open door to the building, the first guy had moved toward him again, crowbar raised. He was within six feet of the car before Brady detected the movement, shifted his aim, and squeezed off a shot meant to go over the fucker’s head.