Hysteria Read online

  His skin tingles. It’s more than just the breeze. It’s as if something inside, beneath his skin rages. With every waking second, he feels more and more alive. His heart seems to pump at incredible speed. It’s as if he’s a new improved model. If only it were true.

  “Small problem,” he says

  She looks down at his legs. “Wait here.”

  Angel slips out the door and follows the guy in the wheel chair. As the corridor empties, she smiles at the guy, seems to offer to push his chair, opens a closet door and shoves him inside. She closes the door behind her, placing a do not disturb sign on the handle as the door shudders with violent thumps. She walks away, wheeling the empty chair into McKenzie’s room.

  McKenzie leans forward and the girl, surprisingly strong for her slim build, lifts him up and deposits him in the chair.

  McKenzie looks back at his empty bed. Then across at his roommate, bandaged around the head and sleeping. He takes the ID board off the bed and hangs it over his own bed. “That should slow them up.”

  “Who is that patient?” she says.

  McKenzie shrugs. “Does it matter?”

  “No,” she says and wheels him out into the corridor. “But you may have killed him.”

  McKenzie feels his stomach lurch into his throat. He swallows hard. “What do you mean?”

  “Never mind,” Angel says and wheels McKenzie passed the closet door shaking at its hinges.

  They pick up speed and swing around the corner. Pulling up sharp.

  McKenzie looks up at Mylo supported on crutches and leaning on his sister Jenny.

  “Hey superstar,” Jenny says and leans down to kiss his cheek whispering, “I get exclusive on the hero’s story. You’re taking me from College paper to Pulitzer prize.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” McKenzie says looking behind him and up at the Angel.

  “Patient needs urgent x-ray,” Angel says and pushes the wheelchair at Jenny and Mylo.

  Jenny sticks out her foot blocking the chair. “You’re going nowhere,” she says pointing at the girl pushing. “How do I know you’re not a journalist getting the scoop with sexual favors?”

  A muffled shouting from around the corner gets louder, “Get me out of here. I’ll sue your asses.”

  Jenny’s eyes narrow. She seems to be studying Angel. “Is she even a nurse?”

  “McKenzie, man,” Mylo says, “As your manager and agent, any deals you make I get twenty percent.”

  “My what?” McKenzie shakes his head. Why, all of a sudden, does everyone seem to want a piece of his life?

  “You’re going global, man,” Mylo says. “Cover of Time, Rolling Stone, promise me you’ll accept our invite to the playboy mansion.”

  Jenny digs her elbow into Mylo’s ribs. Angel stares over Jenny’s shoulder. A man in a suit approaches. A cheap bunch of flowers in his hand. Water dripping from the flower stems as if he’s just quickly stolen them from a vase in patient’s private room. He slows, allowing McKenzie to notice something moving inside the flowers. Poking out through the stems. Seems like a black tube. No, it’s a gun barrel with silencer. The man aims at McKenzie.

  Chapter Eleven: Hospital Chase

  “Del Amitri,” Angel shouts and supporting herself on the chair handles, she cartwheels over McKenzie, Jenny and Mylo. She twists through the air, kicks out and brings her foot around. Thrusting a Jimmy Choo heel into Del Amitri’s throat as he squeezes the trigger.

  A bullet rips into McKenzie’s leg plaster. Travels up his thigh and exits across his hip.

  Feeling like a sitting duck in hunting season whose fate it seems is to lose his private parts before he ever gets to enjoy losing his virginity. McKenzie throws himself forward, out of the chair and crawls through the throng of panicking patients and hospital staff, running, screaming and treading on his fingers.

  He reaches the elevator door as it slams shut on his hand. It opens again and a screaming woman inside stamps on his fingers.

  McKenzie snatches it away and the doors slide shut.

  Another bullet punctures a fire extinguisher on the wall above McKenzie’s head. Exploding foam and metal across the hospital floor.

  McKenzie crawls to the stairwell doors. Head butts them open and crawls through. His crawling momentum slides him head first down the first flight of stairs. Unraveling his hand bandages with each bump of a step. He slides to a halt on the landing. His plastered legs sticking straight up. His neck feels dangerously close to snapping on the bottom step.

  Deciding another round of staircase belly sliding will kill him. He reaches up to the wall banister and drags himself to his feet. Leaning his weight against the banister, he inches himself down each step as the top-flight stairwell doors fling open and crash against the walls.

  He knows he’s got no choice but to try to run. Faster he steps and feels something catch his hand. His hand bandages tangling up in the banister, jerk him backwards, drag him off his feet. He feels his legs slide out from under him and he bounces down the steps on his ass. Somersaulting at the bottom, crashing through a set of doors, and rolling himself onto the fourth floor hospital Lobby.

  The sound of running footsteps gets louder.

  No time to look back. He needs a vehicle of some kind to get away.

  An orderly offers an empty wheel chair to an elderly visiting patient.

  McKenzie crawls over to the waiting chair, pushes the patient aside and snatches at the chair.

  “What the hell, Mon?” the orderly shouts and stares over McKenzie’s shoulder.

  This is it. By reflex, his eyes squeeze tight shut and his arms cover his face. McKenzie knows as someone flips him onto his back, this is the moment he dies. He opens his eyes. Determined to stare death in the face.

  Chapter Twelve: Kidnap

  “X-ray phobia, McKenzie?” Angel says and lifts him up into the empty wheel chair.

  McKenzie sighs.

  “Anal suppository for this one,” Angel says to the Hospital Orderly.

  “Yeah go gentle with them big ones, Doc,” the Orderly says.

  McKenzie feel his face flush like an erupting volcano as Angel pushes his chair into an empty elevator and hits the button for second floor. The doors slide shut.

  “We’re going back?” McKenzie says. “Are you nuts?”

  Angel punches the stop button. The elevator sighs and shudders to a halt.

  “What is your relation to Tyler Blake?”

  “Who?”

  Angel stares at McKenzie as if his soul is under inquisition. She nods and punches the stop button again. The elevator starts up.

  McKenzie punches the stop button.

  “What the hell is going on?” he shouts. “Who was that guy? And who are you?”

  “It’s time you met Fantasy Fifteen,” she says.

  “Who?”

  “They will send someone,” she says. “Now that everyone knows you are the source code.”

  “You said that before,” he says. “The source code for what?”

  “Exactly what we would like to know,” she says.

  The elevator pings to announce the second floor.

  “If anyone asks,” she says. “I’m your new girlfriend.”

  “I’m dead, aren’t I?” he says. “This is all some kind of weird after life.”

  Angel leans over McKenzie. Rests her hand on his crotch and kisses him long and hard on the lips. She pulls away. “No, McKenzie,” she says. “You are very much alive.”

  McKenzie flushes and covers up his crotch as Angel pushes him towards the doors.

  The elevator doors slide open and a female cop, a sergeant, with her uniform covered in dust and blood, points a gun at McKenzie.

  “McKenzie Chase?” she says.

  How many times in one day does a kid need to stare death in the face? McKenzie nods.

  The Cop sighs, lowers her gun. “You’re in danger.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” McKenzie says.

  “Back away,” Sergeant
Rodriguez says holding up her bleeding hand at two hospital security guards. “Situation under control.”

  “Sure, whatever officer,” says a hesitant guard staring at Rodriguez’ blood soaked uniform. “You ok, ma’am?”

  “Nothing to see here,” Rodriguez says. “Move these people away.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” a man in a suit with a tie that seems to strangle his grey neck as he peers over horn rim spectacles. “You’re terrifying my staff and patients. I demand to know what on earth is going on.”

  “Situation over,” Rodriguez says leaning over McKenzie and vomiting.

  McKenzie feels a warm wet sensation trickling down his neck and stops shaking Mylo to look up.

  “You’re in no fit state to judge that, officer,” the man says. “I’m Perkins, hospital administrator. You need medical attention and that means now.”

  A man with a bandaged toe hobbles over to McKenzie. “That’s my chair you thieving scum ball,” he says slapping McKenzie across his face.

  McKenzie ties to kick out at the man and falls on top of Mylo.

  “She locked me in a closet,” the hobbling man says and grabs Perkins arm. He drags the administrator over to Angel.

  “You fire this pathetic excuse for a nurse or doctor or whatever the hell she is,” he says. “Or I’ll shove a malpractice suit up your as.”

  Perkins turns purple “I can assure you, sir, she’s not on my staff.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Rodriguez says and pushes Angel as she whispers, “Act like you’re both busted.”

  An elevator traveling from the roof stops and opens its doors. Mylo staggers out, holding his bleeding head. “He took Jenny,” Mylo says and collapses. “Roof.”

  Chapter Thirteen: Point And Shoot

  McKenzie wheels himself to the elevator. Punches the button for the roof garden, on floor ten. As the doors slide shut, Angel slips in.

  She bends over and rolls up a jeans leg.

  McKenzie tries not to stare at her gorgeous butt. Conscious of the flimsy apron covering his privates.

  Floor Five.

  Angel reveals an ankle holster, removes a gun and offers it to him.

  McKenzie feels himself stare wide-eyed like a dumbstruck moron.

  “Now how to use it?” Angel says.

  He shrugs. “Point and shoot?” McKenzie says.

  “Watch the recoil,” she says. “Remember the hand brake.”

  “On a gun?”

  “For your wheel chair,” she says. “Dummy.”

  McKenzie flushes at the sexy way she says dummy.

  “The recoil?” she says. “Or you sail backwards off roof, sunshine.”

  Six.

  He’d be her sunshine any day or night. He takes the gun. Impress her, show her how cool you are McKenzie, he screams inside his head.

  “Cool Glock,” he says. “One of the new ones.”

  She smiles.

  It works. He is charm personified. He feels like he’s orbiting the earth with joy.

  “It’s a smith and Wesson,” she says. “A kid’s gun.”

  Seven.

  McKenzie feels himself burn up on re-entry.

  “This is a Glock,” she says and reaches inside the back of her Tee and pulls out a bigger handgun.

  “I know that,” he says.

  Eight.

  “Stay out of my line of fire,” she says.

  “You won’t shoot near Jenny?”

  Nine.

  She stays silent.

  “Did you hear me?” he says.

  Ten.

  The doors slide open and a bullet smashes into the wheel of McKenzie’s chair.

  Chapter Fourteen: Friendly Fire

  McKenzie dives out of the wheel chair and crawls out of the elevator. Keeping his head low.

  All about the roof plants in giant pots obscure his view. Where is Del Amitri?

  The dawn mists full of shadows that seem to move for a moment then freeze.

  McKenzie jumps and holds his breath. Peers into the haze.

  Angel crawls away through a long archway corridor of climbing roses and vines. Her knees scrapping through a bed of fallen petals.

  McKenzie drags his aching legs along behind him. He rests by a giant sunflower in a pot.

  The pollen batters McKenzie’s nostrils. He feels is nose tickle. He stifles a sneeze. Another comes. Too late. He throws his head back and sneezes violently.

  A bullet slices the head of the sunflower and it falls on top of McKenzie.

  “Draw his fire again,” Angel whispers.

  “His what?” McKenzie says. “Are you nuts?”

  He bits his lip and tells himself to impress her. But impressing this girl seems like the surest way to get himself killed fast. He nods. Reaches up at the climbing roses and shakes them.

  Gunfire and petals explode about him.

  Angel returns fire.

  Silence.

  Jenny is sat on a garden bench looking directly ahead. McKenzie waves.

  A shadow appears behind him. He twists around as the shadow lashes out at him. He crashes into the rose bushes. Raises his gun. Feels a sharp blow to his arm and his hand turns numb.

  He looks up into the barrel of Del Amitri’s Glock.

  “Are you the source code?” Del Amitri says.

  “What the hell are you-?”

  Del Amitri squeezes the trigger.

  A bullet punches into the cast on McKenzie’s right leg. The pain travels up his leg like Satan’s own express train setting his brain alight with the fires of hell.

  “Answer my question,” Del Amitri says, “or the next bullet is to your head.”

  “No, Del Amitri,” Angel says stepping out from behind a rose bush and placing her Glock against Del Amitri’s neck, “the next bullet is for you.”

  She slaps Del Amitri’s Glock from his hand. Kicks out at the back of his knees and pushes him down onto his knees. She reaches inside his jacket, retrieves a pair of cuffs and hands them to Del Amitri.

  “Put them on,” she says.

  He motions to slap them on in front of him

  “Behind,” she says.

  Del Amitri moves his arms behind his back and snaps the cuffs over his wrists.

  “Who are you?” McKenzie says.

  Del Amitri smiles at McKenzie. “They call me the chaser, kid,” he says. “I’ll give you a head start.”

  McKenzie sits up on his elbows, leans forward, raises his gun and smashes it across Del Amitri’s face.

  Del Amitri spits blood.

  “Ain’t smiling now,” McKenzie says. “Are you?”

  “McKenzie Chase,” Angel says. “How dare you treat a prisoner like that?”

  McKenzie feels himself flush. Secretly he feels better for it.

  “When you get the urge to mistreat a prisoner who refuses to answer your questions,” Angel says resting the barrel of her Glock on Del Amitri’s hand. “This is how you do it.”

  McKenzie looks away. Throws his hands up to his ears as a small explosion sounds off and blood spurts up across his face.

  Del Amitri stares down through the hole in his hand at McKenzie. Silent, smiling.

  “Why are you doing this?” Angel says.

  “Orders,” Del Amitri says.

  “From who?” McKenzie says.

  Del Amitri shakes his head,

  Angel puts the barrel of her Glock to Del Amitri’s other hand.

  “That’s enough,” Jenny says. “McKenzie let’s go home.”

  “Nowhere is safe for you,” Angel says.

  “Who’s orders?” McKenzie says.

  Del Amitri stays silent,

  McKenzie nods to Angel.

  “Whoever took Madison,” Del Amitri says sinking down onto his side.

  McKenzie remembers the girl in the elevator on the empire state building.

  “Madison Del Amitri?” he says.

  Del Amitri nods. “My daughter.”

  “I saw her,” McKenzie says. Now
feeling ashamed of hitting Del Amitri. “Yesterday when I jumped. She was with-”

  “The jumper,” Del Amitri spits more blood. “I was trailing him.”

  “Who the hell are you?” Jenny says.

  “FBI,” Del Amitri says. “Check inside my wallet.”

  Jenny reaches inside Del Amitri’s jacket and looks at his badge ID.

  “Why were you trying to kill us?” Jenny says.

  “Not you,” Del Amitri says and nods at Angel. “Her.”

  “Liar,” McKenzie says.

  Jenny places the ID back in Del Amitri’s inside jacket pocket.

  Del Amitri leans forward. Bites at Jenny’s long hair. Steps back. Jerks his head back. Twists and swings Jenny by her hair into Angel. He springs up onto his feet, barrels himself into the back of Jenny, and kicks out at Angel. Knocking the Glock from her hand.

  As if double jointed Del Amitri jumps, bringing his knees to his chest and flicks his wrists like a skipping rope under his legs.

  Angel moves around Jenny as Del Amitri brings up his fists into Angel’s throat.

  McKenzie crawls after Angel’s Glock sat in a flowerpot. Every inch like a red-hot poker working deeper into his gunshot wound. Feeling his head swim as sweat floods into his eyes he reaches out for the Glock as a shadow looms over him and the gun. No time to aim he lets his fingers tighten around the handle of the Glock. He swings himself around, twists onto his back, raises the Glock and squeezes the trigger.

  Angel’s eyes widen, it seems with shock as she clutches her chest, trying to stem the tide of blood spurting out and down the jaws of her Tyrannosaur Tee.

  “No,” McKenzie shouts, realizing what he’s done.

  Chapter Fifteen: Rooftop Dilemma

  Del Amitri lowers Angel to the floor, presses Jenny’s hand onto Angel’s wound. He takes the phone out of her jeans pocket. And stamps on it. He walks over to McKenzie. Stands over McKenzie as he wraps his tie around his bleeding hands.

  McKenzie raises the Glock. Takes aim on Del Amitri. His hands shaking wildly.