Night Runner (2 page)

As soon as the visitor saw the others, he shoved me towards the motorcycle. Now, I was only fifteen years old, but I was tall for my age, and strong, too. Still, I had trouble staying on my feet when he pushed me away. He had a lot of oomph in those arms. By the time I had my balance, he was right beside me again. His head was swivelling every which way. I couldn't imagine what he was looking for. Behind him, through the window, I could see the parking lot
was empty. Hardly surprising. Most people wouldn't choose to visit a mental ward at three in the morning.

“Well, what are you waiting for, boy, the Apocalypse?” he said. “You're going to be worm food if you don't get a move on.” He looked at me with his eyebrows high on his forehead and a weird expression on his face, like I was supposed to jump on the motorcycle and ride it to freedom or something.

“He's coming,” he continued. “He could be here any second.” The man put a hand on my shoulder and pushed me gently towards the motorcycle again. He looked back over his shoulder at the parking lot. I got the feeling Darth Vader was about to waltz in and lightsabre us both in half.

When he noticed I wasn't moving, his nostrils flared and an expression of annoyance came over his face. He reached down, grabbed the handlebars of the police cycle and picked it up himself. That was when he noticed the front forks were all mangled.

“Damn piece of garbage!” he shouted. “No wonder the police can't catch anybody.” Then he tossed the bike aside as if it deserved a special place in the junkyard for letting us down. It smashed into the wall, and the fierce roar of the siren turned into something that sounded more like the mewing of a dying cat. “We're going to have to run for it,” he said.

The wine smell on his breath was so strong I started to gag. He didn't give me time to recover. Instead, he just grabbed my scrubs near the collar and started to sprint. And just like that, I was practically airborne. And I had no control whatsoever over where I was going. The guy must have been bionic or something.

He hauled me through the lobby and out the gaping hole that had once been the main entrance. Our feet made crunching noises on the broken glass. I tried to work his hand free from my shirt, but it was as if he'd tied his fingers into knots. I couldn't budge them.

Then a bunch of things happened, all at the same time. I heard
Nurse Ophelia shouting my name. She was somewhere behind me. About six police cruisers pulled into the parking lot. Two security guards ran into the reception area on our left and started chasing us. And someone shouted, “DON'T MOVE!”

Well, maybe the old man was deaf. Maybe he was so used to hearing strange voices that he'd learned to ignore them. Or maybe he didn't understand English all that well and thought “DON'T MOVE!” meant slip it into overdrive, because that's what he did. And he was fast. Even hauling me alongside him, I bet he would have beaten half the Canadian Olympic team. We almost made it off the lot, but just as we were approaching the street, I heard a sound like a firecracker. The old man slowed a bit. Then a whole bunch of firecrackers went off, and he let go of me, stumbled and fell.

I couldn't keep my balance, so I fell down beside him. I scraped an elbow on the asphalt, and my hands hit something warm, wet and sticky. Then I rolled up onto my knees. The old man was lying right beside me. Blood was pooling underneath him. It was all over my hands and clothes. And it was all over him.

He'd been shot. Many times.

I felt the old man's hand digging into my arm again. He was struggling to speak.

“Run . . .” he said. Then he coughed several times. “Don't let the cops get you. He's coming. Run!”

A
s the blood spread across the asphalt, the old man's eyes went glassy and the strain on his face seemed to go away. A slow smile spread up one side of his mouth.

I didn't know what to do. Smile or no smile, this man was dying. And there was blood everywhere. I started to get dizzy. My eyes spun in quick circles, like they couldn't focus all of a sudden. Everything went red. My teeth started grinding. I was so confused and agitated that all I could do was put my hands against the sides of my head and groan. To be scared or sad would have made more sense, but all I could think was that this was wasteful. I should have been able to do something.

An instant later, police officers were everywhere. Hands took hold of my arms, helped me up and pulled me away. I didn't resist. I just turned my head so I could get one last look. The old man's milky eyes were glazed over. His breathing had stopped. His smile
looked wooden now. Frozen on a dead face. Then, just before someone stepped in the way, his head tipped sideways in my direction. One of his eyes twitched and closed. It made him look as if he was winking at me.

I don't remember if I said anything as the police took me inside. I kept trying to look over my shoulder to see what was happening, but a group of officers had formed a ring around him faster than you could say
shoot
, and the two escorting me didn't slow down until I was back inside the lobby.

Nurse Ophelia was waiting there.

“Oh, no . . .” she said when she saw me. I was still covered in the old man's blood.

“It's not mine,” I said.

Nurse Ophelia stepped behind the nurse's station and came back a second later with a handful of tiny square packages. She started ripping them open. I noticed her hands were shaking.

“We'd better get that off,” she said.

Inside the packages were folded wipes that smelled like medicine. She gave one to me and started wiping at my face. She was a bit more clumsy than normal. Or maybe it was just that I was still dizzy. All this commotion was probably making everyone a little jumpy.

I was just getting down to the business of cleaning my hands when I heard a loud screech. It was the kind of noise a car makes when it stops too quickly—tires skidding on asphalt.

I looked up. A train of police cruisers was pulling out of the lot, and right in the middle of them was an ambulance. It had stopped suddenly, halfway onto the road. It tilted a bit to one side, then the back doors flew open and someone jumped out. It was the crazy old man! He looked around, then his eyes settled on me and he started sprinting back to the ward. A police car was in the way, but he didn't even break stride. He actually stepped right on top of the hood, cleared the roof in a single leap, then jumped off the rear bumper.
The police in the lobby reached for their guns, but the old man obviously didn't care a pinch.

Then he saw Nurse Ophelia and stopped dead.

I couldn't blame the man for staring. Nurse Ophelia was probably the most beautiful woman on the face of the earth. When we were window shopping last Christmas, she caused three accidents just walking from Brock Street to Simcoe. Unless you were blind, she pretty much stopped you in your tracks.

Well, the old man looked at her and his face calmed, but then his brow wrinkled up again, as though he'd just remembered he was supposed to be annoyed. He pointed a finger at her. “Get him out of here,” he said. Then he turned to go, and I don't know if it was because of all the police lights or what, but for just an instant, his watery blue eyes glowed red, just like a person in a photograph when the flash doesn't work right. I'm not even certain it really happened, because he sprinted off so fast that no one even had time to take aim and fire.

I looked at Nurse Ophelia and the officers nearby. Some still had their guns out. They looked stunned. I don't think if Santa Claus had flown down in a flying saucer you would have seen more mouths hanging open. One woman started talking into a radio that was clipped to her shoulder.

“Yeah, I think so. The same guy . . .” The way her voice sounded, it was like she didn't believe herself. I didn't hear the rest because Nurse Ophelia quickly took hold of my hand and started pulling me down the hall.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

One of the policemen interrupted before she could answer me. “We have to ask him some questions, ma'am,” he said.

Nurse Ophelia barely slowed down. She just looked over her shoulder. “I'm going to get him cleaned up. I'll be right back.”

When we got to my room she opened the door. It was dark inside. I like it that way, unless I'm reading.

“I want you to stay out of sight,” she said. “Just for tonight.”

I didn't really know what to say, so I nodded and took a bunch of the antiseptic wipes from her. I noticed her hands were still shaking.

“I'll get a hamper for your clothes,” she said. “They're soaked. Try not to get the blood all over everything.”

“What about that man?” I asked.

“Don't worry about him for now.”

“Do you know him?”

Nurse Ophelia shook her head. “No. But he's gone. And I need you to focus on getting yourself tidied up. The police will have to talk to you soon.” She pointed towards the house phone beside my desk. “You can buzz me after you've had a shower. And you might want to tidy up a little, just so no one gets lost in here trying to find you.”

I looked at all the clothes on the floor. It wasn't that bad. There were at least two or three patches of tile that weren't covered.

“Do I have to talk to them?” I asked.

“The police? Yes. I would imagine so, given what's happened. Why?”

“The man on the motorcycle said someone was after me. And he warned me to stay away from the police.”

Nurse Ophelia nodded slowly. “Right. Well, if you think this through carefully, Zachary, I'm sure you'll come up with a few reasons not to trust that man's advice.”

She had a point. He was a little weird. But then again, so were the rest of us. And when a guy steals a motorcycle for you, tells you to scram, gets blasted full of holes and then comes back to life just to tell you the same thing all over again, well, maybe that guy is someone you should listen to.

I
'd just finished kicking the last of my dirty clothes under the bed when I heard a knock at the door. An officer with a round head and big arms was standing in the hall. The badge on his chest said “Officer Cummings.” His partner was a brown-haired woman with a pretty smile. Her name was Officer Philips. She asked if they could come in. I said yes and then had to answer a bunch of questions about what happened. I sat on my bed the whole time and pretty much told them everything. Officer Cummings sat at my desk and wrote it all down in a notepad.

“Isn't it a little late to be exercising?” he said when I finished.

“Sunlight gives me hives,” I explained, “so I do everything at night.”

I looked at him when I said this. I wanted to make sure that he believed me, but he wasn't looking at me. He was looking at Nurse Ophelia, who had arrived from down the hall and was now standing in the doorway.

“Is everything all right here?” she asked.

I thought for just a second that Officer Cummings's eyes were going to roll out of his head and onto the floor, but then he got it together and half stood. His face was a little pink. “Yes. Fine, ma'am. I was just asking a few, um . . .”

“Please sit down,” she insisted.

“Isn't it a little unusual for a boy to be up at this time of night?”

“Zachary keeps a unique schedule. It's necessary. He requires very specialized medical attention. It's one of the reasons he's here and not in a foster home. Do you have any other questions for him? I'd like to get him his dinner. And he needs some rest.”

“Of course. Just a few more.” He sat back down and clicked his pen a few times. Then he cleared his throat. “This guy—did he say anything to you? Did he threaten you?”

“Not really,” I said. “He only said what I told you already. That I should run. And that someone was after me.” I almost added that he'd told me to avoid the police, but I didn't want to offend anybody.

Officer Cummings smiled. “You don't need to worry about anything. There'll be a car here twenty-four hours a day until we catch him.”

I tried to look impressed, but the truth was, the old man had been shot so many times he should have looked like a cheese grater, and it had barely slowed him down. Unless they dropped a building on his head, they weren't ever going to stop him. I wasn't worried about him, anyway. He'd come to warn me. I wanted to know why.

“Was he armed?” Officer Cummings asked me. “Did he have a knife or a gun or anything?”

I shook my head. “Just a top hat.”

“Did he offer you anything? Drugs, anything like that?”

“No.” I said. “Well, he did offer me a ride.”

“And it was just you and the other fellow who saw him? What's his name . . . ?” Officer Cummings leafed back through his pad. “Jacob?”

“Yeah. By the end, other people were in the hall too, but it was
mostly just Jacob and me. I doubt he heard very much. He was pretty far away. And he had his hands over his ears.”

“Is there anything else you can think of that might help us catch this guy?”

I glanced up at Officer Philips, who was leaning against the wall, then at Nurse Ophelia, who was still in the doorway. She moved her head just a little, like a mini nod, so I knew it was all right to answer.

“He smelled like he'd been drinking,” I said.

“No doubt,” said Officer Cummings. He flipped his pad closed. “Well, that does it for now. If we need anything else, we'll be in touch.” He rose, tipped his head in a goodbye sort of way, then stepped out to wait in the hall.

Officer Philips lingered for a few seconds longer. “Are you going to be all right?” she asked.

I looked at Nurse Ophelia. She nodded and so I nodded.

“Is there anything we can do for you before we go?”

I did have some questions. “Is somebody after me?” I asked.