Burn Zone - A Psion Case File

Chapter Eight

Enraged, Lenny immediately let out a wash of flame from the palms of both hands. He wanted her dead so badly in that moment that he was practically blind to everything else.

Caroline rolled like a martial artist and continued her forward movement until she had placed a metal vent between herself and the flame. The minute Caroline was out of the way, Austin dived for Justice's pistol, ignoring several cuts and scrapes he got. He snagged the weapon and aimed. He shot three times and all three bullets ripped into Lenny. One hit him in the shoulder, one in his chest just beneath his collarbone, and the last one caught him in his hip and was vicious enough to spin him to the ground. He tried to keep up the flame, but his concentration wavered and the fire died out.

Caroline tentatively stuck her head out.

Lenny was on the floor, crying out in pain and bleeding profusely.

"Get her out of here!" Justice yelled.

Austin looked at the bleeding murderer without a trace of pity. He handed Justice the gun and hurried over to Caroline. He grabbed her hand as gently as he could and started walking her toward the still open door. The fiery glow around what used to be the doorknob had faded and cooled.

Austin never looked back.

Soon after Austin and Caroline were gone, Justice walked over to Lenny.

The lunatic was on the ground and wailing. He held one hand over the wound in his shoulder and another over the one in his chest. The wound to his hip just continued to bleed out onto the ground.

When he saw Justice looming over him, he bit down on his cries of pain and just glared angrily.

"You're a fool," Lenny spat. "Don't you see what we're trying to do?"

"Who's we, Lenny?" Justice asked but Lenny only laughed, the sound miserable and full of insanity.

Justice stepped closer to the man. He stood over the fallen arsonist for a minute with a cold, dispassionate face. Then he took his foot and grinded it into the gunshot wound in Lenny's pelvis.

Lenny screamed again and writhed in agony.

"I won't tell you," he gasped. "I won't tell."

Justice pushed harder on the wound but was only rewarded with more cries and little else.

"Won't tell. Can't tell. Leave me alone," Lenny shouted. "They won't let me tell."

"I see you can't or won't give me anything on the people pulling your strings, Lenny. Which is really too bad for you," Justice said. "It means you aren't useful anymore and with your powers, you're too dangerous."

Without another word, he aimed his gun at Lenny's head. He watched the man twitch in fear.

Justice pulled the trigger.

There was no hesitation.

Lenny's head jerked back and then he was still. The worst thing about killing him in cold blood was that he felt nothing. He felt nothing because he knew he'd done the right thing.

A monster like that couldn't be allowed to live.

Still, he just ended him. Lenny would not wake up tomorrow. He will never see the sun rise again or the stars in the night sky anymore.

Justice thought killing him would feel bad to some degree but there was nothing. He even tried to force himself to feel bad or guilty or something but still...nothing.

That scared him.

A lot.

He took one more look at the fire-starter's corpse and then turned and walked away. He caught up to Austin downstairs in the hospital. He was outside Caroline's room door. Justice wanted to make sure she was okay but she was sleeping so he didn't disturb her.

"Lenny?" Austin asked.

"Dead. Clean kill. He tried to fry me," Justice remarked.

Austin didn't say anything back. He just nodded.

******

Justice sat alone in the darkness of his apartment. There was a bottle of Jack in his hand that was already well toward empty. He glanced around with bleary, tired eyes, trying to focus on the thing in front of him. It was a man, or more accurately, another ghost. Only this one was far more familiar than the strangers that usually called out to him for help.

He was familiar because, unlike the other ghosts, this was one was his kill. His victim.

The man floated in front of him, his body riddled with three gunshot wounds that still oozed ghostly half-real blood. There was another hole in the middle of his forehead.

"You think you got away with it, don't you?" the mocking ghost of Lenny Johnson accused. There was a sneer on his face that always followed Justice down into his dreams. "You think you won? You didn't. You even gave up your precious morals to kill me and it was still for nothing. Let that sink in big boy."

"Shut up," Justice whispered, despite knowing Lenny wouldn't.

It's been two weeks since he murdered the pyrokinetic arsonist, Lenny Johnson and it's been two weeks since he forfeited everything, he believed in to kill the psycho. Every night since then, his ghost showed up to torment him. He wasn't sure how that was possible since ghosts were supposed to be restricted to their places of death, but that didn't do a damn thing to make the guy quit popping up.

"Go away." Justice's words felt thick and slurred, which caused another riot of harsh laughter to come boiling out of Lenny's dead mouth.

"You have no idea what's in store for you, Justice," the ghost threatened. "No idea."

Justice heard the speech over a dozen times now and each time it still inspired a growing sense of dread in him. Mercifully, however, the alcohol was finally doing its job. He started to pass out, his vision going black. The horrible, bullet-riddled Lenny Johnson was the last thing he saw before that blackness enveloped him entirely.

The words "You have no idea what's in store for you" also followed him down into his alcohol-induced semi-coma.