Revenant

Chapter 38

I forget exactly how many shots I fired in that stairwell before some part of me actually clued into what was happening, and I realized a great many number of things all at once.

First and probably foremost, I needed to get the fuck out of here. Sounds obvious, I know, but at the time it was like a stunning revelation. Stevie was here with me, standing mere feet away. Enough shots had been fired that the commotion was probably going to attract a bunch of cops shortly. A guy I'd been talking to a few short seconds ago had been murdered right in front of me. Blood, smoke, and death were everywhere I looked, and all in all I was in very serious trouble. Getting the hell out of this place and not getting arrested, or murdered? Genius, right?

I hadn't come up with exactly how I was going to do that yet, but hey, one thing at a time.

The second thing I realized was that, considering my first idea was so great, I wasn't exactly accomplishing much by standing there like an extra in a bad horror film, firing an ineffectual weapon over and over at the unkillable undead monster slowly advancing up the stairs towards me. Although it did seem that the high-velocity fragments of metal I was sending in his direction were staggering him a little or making him twitch from time to time, suggesting they were actually doing something useful, they weren't dropping him the way shotgun blasts to the face and chest are supposed to. Rather than stand there shooting him again and again, I could - and should - be grabbing my duffel bag and bolting up the stairs. Once I was on the fourth floor I could maybe kick down the door to that suite, apologize to whoever I encountered on the other side, smash through the glass window and onto the fire escape. That whole scenario seemed to mesh rather nicely with my first realization.

Third - the kid at the front desk, the one I'd given a fifty to... had seen me. Stupid. I'd made no attempt to disguise myself, or make myself unmemorable. And cops would be here soon. Though I'm a difficult person to describe even at the best of times, I now matched the description of a 'person of interest' in what would eventually become a homicide investigation. That would make things tricky, but I could worry about that later. Or not at all, come to think of it. After all, I could end up becoming a corpse shortly. That would be that problem solved, right?

Fourth thing - the fear was back.

I was terrified again. Absolutely terrified. I wanted my mommy, badly. I'd never met her, and had absolutely no idea who she even was, but I wanted her there with me... telling me that everything would be okay, and she'd keep me safe from the bad thing that wanted to hurt me. In my entire life, I'd never had a thought even remotely resembling that one. But I was thinking it now.

And that feeling of terror and panic had come on all sudden-like, as though a switch had been flipped. One second I was analyzing and responding to the freakishly bad situation I'd found myself in, and the next? Whammo. It was a feeling that was like discovering the very concept of fear for the very first time... and I hated it.

Hated it.

And I knew these feelings weren't my own, that was the thing. They were a weapon. Stevie was doing something to me, somehow - was attempting to control me with this thing he could do. He was trying to make me feel weak, and afraid... like the terrified little foster boy I used to be.

Weak. And afraid.

I don't have many buttons, I'll admit. But 'weak and afraid' is a big one. Push it at your peril.

They say that courage isn't the total absence of fear, but rather the ability to do what needs to be done despite the presence of fear. However, as it so happens, there's this trick I've learned that can work just as well. It's something that bypasses the need for courage entirely and overrides fear... eliminates it from the equation. Something powerful and primal. Something that is, at times, even scarier than fear itself.