Bull's Eye: Confessions of a Fake Psychic Detective #3

Chapter 10

At first, Zandra thinks it's a car door slamming. There's quite the traffic jam outside of the double doors. Cars and trucks pulled up onto the sidewalk, their human contents spilling out over the concrete. Had they held cameras in their hands as they packed the space outside the doors, it would look like a scene out of Hollywood.

But they don't hold cameras. Most hold their fingers clenched into fists. The ones not shouting obscenities clamp their teeth into their sockets, swelling their cheeks.

The crowd disperses almost as soon as the double doors open and Zandra steps outside. That's how she knows the sound isn't something innocuous.

For some reason, Zandra's reflex is to look down at her feet. This could be an instinct to cover her throat, as people often will do when they feel threatened, but her eyes may have been faster than her brain. They focus on the blood at her feet.

The bastards shot me.

Vince yanks Zandra's arm and pulls her back inside the jail. The guard next to her stays outside the doors, shouting something intelligible at the crowd. Even if he had a gun, and he doesn't, finding the shooter would be almost impossible in the chaos. He gets a little help from someone screaming, "There he is, there he is, there he is," but it's not clear where the assistance is coming from. Too many feet rush in too many directions.

Vince struggles to get the double doors shut on account of the guard not moving out of the way. Darryl offers a hand, but they quickly realize why the doors won't shut despite their protests to clear the way. Their hands shift from the doors to the guard, and they pull him inside with bloody fingers. Zandra scrambles out of the way as the guard collapses to the floor.

"Are you OK?" Vince says to Zandra after Darryl finally gets the doors closed.

"Dammit, I told you it was too dangerous," Darryl says before she can reply. He's nearly hyperventilating from the adrenaline dump. "Why don't you...why...why not you listen with me?"

Vince keeps a cooler head, but his hands are seized up in tremors. It's not uncommon for fine motor skills to go to hell when the fight-or-flight gears spin. He may be talking to Zandra, but his eyes are on the guard.

He was an obnoxious prick, but I'll be sure to thank him for absorbing most of blood.

It's an odd thought to cross Zandra's mind, but it's not too surprising. The brain takes extra care of itself during periods of trauma, favoring its focus on the mundane. She knows it can create false memories down the road, and she struggles to maintain her presence in the here and now.

Let it happen. Don't insulate yourself, like with David and Soma Falls. Fogs up the memories.

Wait. What am I thinking?

There's no time for that. Sprawled out like a haphazard mannequin, the guard rolls to his side and ejects something thick from his mouth onto the floor. His entire body rattles from the violence, squeezing more of his innards out through this mouth like a roll of toothpaste.

Zandra pats herself down for injuries, but she's not sure what to anticipate. She has no idea what a gunshot feels like. If it's anything like knives, it'll take a moment for it to register. She remembers reading how, at the dawn of gunpowder, people didn't know how to react when they'd been shot. They just kept walking until they died or fell down, unsure whether the pain would eventually subside like an insect bite. Modern day pop culture changed that, with all of its dramatic wailing and flailing about, but even then it's not clear.

"Where did they get me?" she says to Vince in a wheeze.

People wheeze when they've been shot, right?