motion when I realized that hot blood had sprayed my face. Bobby’s
blood. Jesus, God. Even as I was swiveling toward the source of the
gunfire, I discharged my shotgun and immediately chambered another
shell.
Instead of the guy in the dark suit, there were two guards we had never
seen before. Uniforms, but not army. No service that I recognized.
Project cops. Mystery Train security. Too far away to be anything other
than annoyed by my shotgun fire.
Another piece of the past had solidified around us, and Doogie triggered
the Uzi as Bobby hit the floor and bounced. The machine pistol settled
the dispute totally and abruptly.
Sickened, I looked away from the two dead guards.
The elevator doors had closed before anyone stepped out of the crowded
cab.
The gunfire was sure to draw more security.
Bobby lay on his back. Blood was spattered on the white ceramic tile
around him. Too much blood.
Sasha stooped at his left side. I knelt at his right.
She said, “Hit once.”
“Got biffed, ” Bobby said, biffed meaning smacked hard by a wave.
“Hang in there, ” I said.
“Totally thrashed, ” he said, and coughed.
“Not totally, ” I insisted, more terrified than I had ever been before,
but determined not to show it.
Sasha unbuttoned the Hawaiian shirt, hooked her fingers in the bullet
punctured material of Bobby’s black pullover, and ripped the sweater to
expose the wound in his left shoulder. The hole was too low in the
shoulder, too far to the right, something you would have to call a chest
wound, not a shoulder wound, if you were going to be honest, which I was
by God not going to be.
“Shoulder wound, ” I told him.
The throbbing electronic sound dwindled, the ceramic tiles faded under
Bobby, taking the spatters of blood with them, and the overhead
fluorescent panels began to vanish, though not all of them. Time past
was surrendering to time present again, entering another cycle, which
might give us a minute or two before more uniformed abbs with guns
showed up.
Rich blood, so deeply red that it was almost black, welled out of the
wound. We could do nothing to stop this type of bleeding. Neither a
tourniquet nor a compress would help. Neither would hydrogen peroxide,
rubbing alcohol, Neosporin, and gauze bandages, even if we’d had any of
those things.
“Woofy, ” he said.
The pain had washed away his perpetual tan, leaving him not white but
jaundice-yellow. He looked bad.
The hallway had fewer lingering fluorescents and the oscillating hum was
quieter than during the previous cycle.
I was afraid the past was going to fade entirely out of the present,
leaving us with an empty elevator shaft. I wasn’t confident that we
could carry Bobby up six flights of stairs without causing him further
damage.
Getting to my feet, I glanced at Doogie, whose solemn expression
infuriated me, because Bobby was going to be all right, damn it.
Mungojerrie scratched at the elevator doors again.
Roosevelt was either doing as the cat wished or following my own track
of reasoning, because he repeatedly jammed his thumb against the call
button.
The indicator board above the doors showed only four floorsg, B-1, B-2,
and B-3though we knew there were seven. The cab was supposedly up at the
first level, G for ground, which was the hangar above this subterranean
facility.
“Come on, come on, ” Roosevelt muttered.
Bobby tried to lift his head to reconnoiter, but Sasha gently pressed
him back, with one hand on his forehead.
He might go into shock. Ideally, his head should be lower than the rest
of him, but we didn’t have any means to elevate his legs and lower body.
Shock kills as surely as bullets. His lips were slightly blue.
Wasn’t that an early symptom of shock?
The cab was at B-1, the first basement under the hangar floor.
We were on B-3.
Mungojerrie was staring at me as if to say, I warned you.
“Cats don’t know shit, ” I told him angrily.
Surprisingly, Bobby laughed. It was a weak laugh, but it was a laugh
nonetheless. Could he be dying or even slipping into shock if he were