NaNoWriMo Excerpt
Dec. 3rd, 2007 07:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kiyakotari
The last scene I wrote. Er...warnings for character death, violence, and general squick (I suppose - doesn't seem all that bad to me, but some might be bothered by it). GJ, the needles are for you. ^_~ Abigail is going to have taken it up, and there will be several (not yet written) scenes in which she'll be doing it.
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They are talking, or at least Abigail is, face turned back over her shoulder toward him, her lips curved in a smile. She looks back at the door as she pushes it open, laughs in amusement at her own wit. Abigail steps into the hotel room seconds before Darryl, and that's all it takes. He hears the muffled phut of a gunshot, the sound of the bullet leaving the barrel softened by a sound suppression device. Abigail makes a quiet noise, half moan, half gasp, and stumbles back into him.
He catches her without thinking, jerks them both back out of the room, holding her up. He doesn't have a chance to look in the room, see who he's dealing with, how many of them there are. He steps around the corner, puts the wall between them and whoever was waiting inside the hotel room. His mind is racing. Who are they? Why are they here? How did they slip up, how were they tracked down? Is it revenge, someone from a recent job who found out the identity of the agent hired to pilfer their stock information, foil their assassination plot? Who did he piss off? Whose attention did they attract?
Abigail's chest is wet, and his hands are already covered in her blood. She's gasping, big gulping swallows of air. It bubbles, pink froth on her lips, smeared across her cheek. A punctured lung. Certainly fatal, if she does not receive immediate medical attention. Possibly fatal even then.
There is not enough time, no time to do more than press her hands against her chest and whisper in her ear, voice low and fierce, "Hold it. Try to slow it down."
She is a doctor - she knows what is happening to her, he can hear it in her voice when she tries to reply, a gurgling wheeze. "Ma-madison. Turn...ner. Madison."
Which makes no sense at all, of course, and then there is the sound of the hotel door opening and Darryl knows there is no more time at all. He reaches for his coat pocket, remembers at the last moment that he left his guns in the hotel room, both of them. He has nothing.
Abigail's oversized purse is on the floor next to them, strap still partially tangled around her shoulder. Darryl reaches for it, pulls it open. The pen gun is not there, but Abigail's knitting is inside, partially finished scarf still attached to its ball of blue chenille yarn, two needles stuck into the lump holding it all together. He yanks the needles out with one hand, folds them up against his arm, hidden by the red sleeve of his jacket. Rises to his feet, quickly, with very little noise. Abigail is slumped on the floor, against the base of the wall. Her dress was a light green before it became stained with her blood, and slashes of the original color can still be seen, but they're already disappearing. She's bleeding out, too quickly. Something more crucial than a lung must have been hit. Perhaps an artery.
The gun comes around the corner before the shooter, and Darryl doesn't have to think. His hands become a hammer, left hand curling around the outside of his right - which still holds the needles against his arm - and slam down on top of the wrists of the man holding the weapon. It goes off, another suppressed explosion, but it is knocked from the shooter's grip, clatters to the floor.
The man ducks quickly, bending down to snatch the weapon back up, and Darryl kicks it away - it skitters off down the cross hall, out of reach for now, from both of them. The man swears, softly, throwing himself backwards, trying to get away from Darryl. Darryl doesn't give him a chance, follows him around the corner, foot lashing out - it glances off a quickly raised arm with bruising force, but the strike is ultimately harmless.
The man is completely unfamiliar, dark haired, features strong but somehow neutral, that same neutrality Darryl sees when he looks at his own reflection. A killer, then. Not simply an agent of convenience, but someone sent specifically to eliminate. Someone used to blending.
The recognition is instantaneous, and Darryl's reaction is potentially lethal, follows on the heels of that acknowledgment without any requirement of thought. His hands drive forward and in, a needle held in each one now, slender lengths of metal slicing through the air centimeters from his enemy's face. The man's eyes widen almost imperceptibly as he sees his danger, and he twists, manages to get outside of the reach of Darryl's arms. Retaliates with a swift kick, foot catching the side of Darryl's thigh, hitting the nerve bundle there. Darryl's leg turns to water underneath him, and he nearly collapses, manages to lurch to the side instead, against the wall. There's no time to wait for recovery, and he plays up the injury, supporting himself, watching the shooter.
The man straightens, not smiling, and reaches for the inside of his jacket. There, the moment! Darryl lunges forward, throwing his full body into the movement, his balance completely compromised. They go down, together, tumble across the floor. But Darryl has already won - one of the knitting needles has found its mark, protrudes from the corner of the man's eye socket at an acute angle, only a couple of inches still visible. The other one is snapped in half, buried partially in the man's shoulder. It hit bone, and Darryl's hand, still slick with Abigail's blood, slipped on it - he pulls his hand away, slowly, carefully, and the needle comes with it, sliding out of the man's flesh with very little resistance. It impales the palm of Darryl's left hand, the fleshy area below his smallest finger. One end is sharp and covered in the dying shooter's blood, the other end a jagged point of broken metal, protruding from the back of Darryl's hand, skin torn, a hole punched in it where the steel passed through. He leaves it, careful not to move his fingers, stands up and goes to Abigail's side.
She is already dead, her eyes wide and staring up at the ceiling. Her hand has fallen away from her chest, rests palm up on the carpet beside her, fingers lax. The blood-soaked dress around the wound is still bunched and wrinkled, where she tried to stem the flow.
Darryl slides down the wall, hits the floor next to her. He reaches out with his uninjured right hand, smoothes the fabric, straightens it so it lies flat over the swell of her breasts. He is not sure how long he sits there - it could be a moment, or an hour, or longer - before he finally raises his hand, looks at it. The broken needle goes all the way through, at an angle. He's lucky it came out the back. Any more acute a degree and it would have gone into his wrist, immobilized it, possibly left him with a permanent handicap. He reaches up with his other hand, takes a firm grip on it - the blood is congealing now, sticky. He pulls, quick and hard. The pain is terrible, his muscles having tightened, seizing up around the foreign intruder, but it comes free. More blood runs down his wrist, drips on the floor to mingle with Abigail's.
Darryl gets to his feet, tests his leg - it is weakened, but holds, and he walks up the hallway, picks up the gun and checks the clip, then goes and pushes the slightly ajar hotel room door all the way open again. He goes into the room carefully, checks with the thoroughness of paranoia all the parts of it to make sure no one is hiding inside, but he already knows it will be empty. If anyone else had been waiting for them, they would have come out as a team, not left the single assassin to deal with him on their own.
Darryl sticks the gun into the waistband of his pants, the silencer making it too long to hide in his jacket pocket. He walks back out into the hall, takes hold of the dead man and drags him into the hotel room. He puts him in the bathroom, not bothering to haul him all the way into the tub – it doesn’t matter. He won’t be staying here long.
Out into the hallway again, and Darryl kneels beside Abigail, lifts her up in his arms. Her purse dangles from her arm still, and he shifts her, grabs it with one hand so it won’t fall. He looks at the floor critically. There is quite a bit of blood, but the carpet is dark, and the lighting is dim, turned down at this time of the night. It shouldn’t be noticeable unless someone is looking for it.
Darryl carries her into the room, and lays her out on top of the pristine bedcovers, on her back. He straightens her limbs, folds her hands across her chest. Brushes her hair back out of her eyes – she would hate for anyone to see her with her hair all messy. Thankfully her makeup isn’t smudged. He doesn’t think he could fix that. He takes her purse and opens it, pulls out a few small things. Her cell phone, which has the number for his current one programmed into it, goes into his coat pocket. Her passport he considers for a moment, looking at the name stickered onto the plastic casing for the microchip. Elaine Munroe. He pockets that as well. He pulls the knitting out and looks at it. The end is already starting to come unraveled, the needles gone now. He isn’t sure how to tie it off, so he goes over to the desk and finds a pen, sticks it through the loops along the top edge.
Darryl moves around the room quickly, gathering things – he takes his clothing out of Abigail’s luggage, puts it and his guns into his duffel bag. The knitting goes in there, as well. He takes their electronics, the large suitcase with Abigail’s medical supplies in it. He glances around the room again. That’s everything he needs. Darryl walks back over to the bed, his duffel slung over his right shoulder, the handle of the rolling suitcase held in his right hand.
He stands there for a while, looking down at her, then turns and walks over to the door. He tries to open it with his left hand, not thinking, and the pain reminds him of the injury. That’s dangerous – it will stand out, draw attention, make people remember him, make people ask questions. He doesn’t want anyone remembering him when the hotel staff finds the bodies in the morning.
Darryl sets the duffel down, and goes into the bathroom. He flicks the lights on, steps over the body, turns on the sink. The wound in his hand is a small puncture, caused by the slender needle, but ragged. It will most certainly scar. Darryl puts his hand under the hot water, watches the blood wash away until it runs pink, then nearly clear. He turns the faucet to cold, and chills it to trigger vassal constriction. After several minutes, the water has no color at all, and Darryl turns the sink off again.
He opens his duffel, rummages inside with his right hand for one of the sterile bandages he keeps, white gauze in a little plastic wrapper, and finally finds one. He tears the packet open with his teeth, wraps the bandage loosely around his hand. It’s still bleeding a bit, but not much. The bandage will contain it.
Darryl doesn’t bother looking for tape – he just tucks the end of the gauze under itself, then closes his duffel and opens the door. He holds it with his foot, slings the bag over his shoulder, grabs the suitcase handle, and steps out into the hall. The door closes behind him.
It’s not until he’s already in a cab, several blocks away and heading north, that he remembers the second gun, the one the assassin had gone for just before Darryl killed him. A stupid mistake, but Darryl never touched it. There’s no way it could be traced to him, and it will serve to confuse the authorities a little, slow them down, give him a bit more time to leave the country.
Darryl catches motion in his peripheral vision, and looks up. The cabbie is looking in the rear view mirror at Darryl, and when their eyes meet he rumbles a question, voice rough from years of tobacco abuse.
“Où voulez-vous aller?”
Where to? He hasn’t thought about it. Darryl looks out at the street, dark asphalt and bricks passing by, the occasional prostitute. Where to, indeed? In the immediate moment, at least, he can give an answer. “La station de train.” The security for a train ride will be less strenuous than that for an international flight. He tries to remember what passport chits he has on him, and can’t.
The man grunts again, and turns left on the next cross street. Darryl goes back to looking out the window.
____________________________________________________________________________________
EDIT: Also, what say you? Shall the madness continue?
They are talking, or at least Abigail is, face turned back over her shoulder toward him, her lips curved in a smile. She looks back at the door as she pushes it open, laughs in amusement at her own wit. Abigail steps into the hotel room seconds before Darryl, and that's all it takes. He hears the muffled phut of a gunshot, the sound of the bullet leaving the barrel softened by a sound suppression device. Abigail makes a quiet noise, half moan, half gasp, and stumbles back into him.
He catches her without thinking, jerks them both back out of the room, holding her up. He doesn't have a chance to look in the room, see who he's dealing with, how many of them there are. He steps around the corner, puts the wall between them and whoever was waiting inside the hotel room. His mind is racing. Who are they? Why are they here? How did they slip up, how were they tracked down? Is it revenge, someone from a recent job who found out the identity of the agent hired to pilfer their stock information, foil their assassination plot? Who did he piss off? Whose attention did they attract?
Abigail's chest is wet, and his hands are already covered in her blood. She's gasping, big gulping swallows of air. It bubbles, pink froth on her lips, smeared across her cheek. A punctured lung. Certainly fatal, if she does not receive immediate medical attention. Possibly fatal even then.
There is not enough time, no time to do more than press her hands against her chest and whisper in her ear, voice low and fierce, "Hold it. Try to slow it down."
She is a doctor - she knows what is happening to her, he can hear it in her voice when she tries to reply, a gurgling wheeze. "Ma-madison. Turn...ner. Madison."
Which makes no sense at all, of course, and then there is the sound of the hotel door opening and Darryl knows there is no more time at all. He reaches for his coat pocket, remembers at the last moment that he left his guns in the hotel room, both of them. He has nothing.
Abigail's oversized purse is on the floor next to them, strap still partially tangled around her shoulder. Darryl reaches for it, pulls it open. The pen gun is not there, but Abigail's knitting is inside, partially finished scarf still attached to its ball of blue chenille yarn, two needles stuck into the lump holding it all together. He yanks the needles out with one hand, folds them up against his arm, hidden by the red sleeve of his jacket. Rises to his feet, quickly, with very little noise. Abigail is slumped on the floor, against the base of the wall. Her dress was a light green before it became stained with her blood, and slashes of the original color can still be seen, but they're already disappearing. She's bleeding out, too quickly. Something more crucial than a lung must have been hit. Perhaps an artery.
The gun comes around the corner before the shooter, and Darryl doesn't have to think. His hands become a hammer, left hand curling around the outside of his right - which still holds the needles against his arm - and slam down on top of the wrists of the man holding the weapon. It goes off, another suppressed explosion, but it is knocked from the shooter's grip, clatters to the floor.
The man ducks quickly, bending down to snatch the weapon back up, and Darryl kicks it away - it skitters off down the cross hall, out of reach for now, from both of them. The man swears, softly, throwing himself backwards, trying to get away from Darryl. Darryl doesn't give him a chance, follows him around the corner, foot lashing out - it glances off a quickly raised arm with bruising force, but the strike is ultimately harmless.
The man is completely unfamiliar, dark haired, features strong but somehow neutral, that same neutrality Darryl sees when he looks at his own reflection. A killer, then. Not simply an agent of convenience, but someone sent specifically to eliminate. Someone used to blending.
The recognition is instantaneous, and Darryl's reaction is potentially lethal, follows on the heels of that acknowledgment without any requirement of thought. His hands drive forward and in, a needle held in each one now, slender lengths of metal slicing through the air centimeters from his enemy's face. The man's eyes widen almost imperceptibly as he sees his danger, and he twists, manages to get outside of the reach of Darryl's arms. Retaliates with a swift kick, foot catching the side of Darryl's thigh, hitting the nerve bundle there. Darryl's leg turns to water underneath him, and he nearly collapses, manages to lurch to the side instead, against the wall. There's no time to wait for recovery, and he plays up the injury, supporting himself, watching the shooter.
The man straightens, not smiling, and reaches for the inside of his jacket. There, the moment! Darryl lunges forward, throwing his full body into the movement, his balance completely compromised. They go down, together, tumble across the floor. But Darryl has already won - one of the knitting needles has found its mark, protrudes from the corner of the man's eye socket at an acute angle, only a couple of inches still visible. The other one is snapped in half, buried partially in the man's shoulder. It hit bone, and Darryl's hand, still slick with Abigail's blood, slipped on it - he pulls his hand away, slowly, carefully, and the needle comes with it, sliding out of the man's flesh with very little resistance. It impales the palm of Darryl's left hand, the fleshy area below his smallest finger. One end is sharp and covered in the dying shooter's blood, the other end a jagged point of broken metal, protruding from the back of Darryl's hand, skin torn, a hole punched in it where the steel passed through. He leaves it, careful not to move his fingers, stands up and goes to Abigail's side.
She is already dead, her eyes wide and staring up at the ceiling. Her hand has fallen away from her chest, rests palm up on the carpet beside her, fingers lax. The blood-soaked dress around the wound is still bunched and wrinkled, where she tried to stem the flow.
Darryl slides down the wall, hits the floor next to her. He reaches out with his uninjured right hand, smoothes the fabric, straightens it so it lies flat over the swell of her breasts. He is not sure how long he sits there - it could be a moment, or an hour, or longer - before he finally raises his hand, looks at it. The broken needle goes all the way through, at an angle. He's lucky it came out the back. Any more acute a degree and it would have gone into his wrist, immobilized it, possibly left him with a permanent handicap. He reaches up with his other hand, takes a firm grip on it - the blood is congealing now, sticky. He pulls, quick and hard. The pain is terrible, his muscles having tightened, seizing up around the foreign intruder, but it comes free. More blood runs down his wrist, drips on the floor to mingle with Abigail's.
Darryl gets to his feet, tests his leg - it is weakened, but holds, and he walks up the hallway, picks up the gun and checks the clip, then goes and pushes the slightly ajar hotel room door all the way open again. He goes into the room carefully, checks with the thoroughness of paranoia all the parts of it to make sure no one is hiding inside, but he already knows it will be empty. If anyone else had been waiting for them, they would have come out as a team, not left the single assassin to deal with him on their own.
Darryl sticks the gun into the waistband of his pants, the silencer making it too long to hide in his jacket pocket. He walks back out into the hall, takes hold of the dead man and drags him into the hotel room. He puts him in the bathroom, not bothering to haul him all the way into the tub – it doesn’t matter. He won’t be staying here long.
Out into the hallway again, and Darryl kneels beside Abigail, lifts her up in his arms. Her purse dangles from her arm still, and he shifts her, grabs it with one hand so it won’t fall. He looks at the floor critically. There is quite a bit of blood, but the carpet is dark, and the lighting is dim, turned down at this time of the night. It shouldn’t be noticeable unless someone is looking for it.
Darryl carries her into the room, and lays her out on top of the pristine bedcovers, on her back. He straightens her limbs, folds her hands across her chest. Brushes her hair back out of her eyes – she would hate for anyone to see her with her hair all messy. Thankfully her makeup isn’t smudged. He doesn’t think he could fix that. He takes her purse and opens it, pulls out a few small things. Her cell phone, which has the number for his current one programmed into it, goes into his coat pocket. Her passport he considers for a moment, looking at the name stickered onto the plastic casing for the microchip. Elaine Munroe. He pockets that as well. He pulls the knitting out and looks at it. The end is already starting to come unraveled, the needles gone now. He isn’t sure how to tie it off, so he goes over to the desk and finds a pen, sticks it through the loops along the top edge.
Darryl moves around the room quickly, gathering things – he takes his clothing out of Abigail’s luggage, puts it and his guns into his duffel bag. The knitting goes in there, as well. He takes their electronics, the large suitcase with Abigail’s medical supplies in it. He glances around the room again. That’s everything he needs. Darryl walks back over to the bed, his duffel slung over his right shoulder, the handle of the rolling suitcase held in his right hand.
He stands there for a while, looking down at her, then turns and walks over to the door. He tries to open it with his left hand, not thinking, and the pain reminds him of the injury. That’s dangerous – it will stand out, draw attention, make people remember him, make people ask questions. He doesn’t want anyone remembering him when the hotel staff finds the bodies in the morning.
Darryl sets the duffel down, and goes into the bathroom. He flicks the lights on, steps over the body, turns on the sink. The wound in his hand is a small puncture, caused by the slender needle, but ragged. It will most certainly scar. Darryl puts his hand under the hot water, watches the blood wash away until it runs pink, then nearly clear. He turns the faucet to cold, and chills it to trigger vassal constriction. After several minutes, the water has no color at all, and Darryl turns the sink off again.
He opens his duffel, rummages inside with his right hand for one of the sterile bandages he keeps, white gauze in a little plastic wrapper, and finally finds one. He tears the packet open with his teeth, wraps the bandage loosely around his hand. It’s still bleeding a bit, but not much. The bandage will contain it.
Darryl doesn’t bother looking for tape – he just tucks the end of the gauze under itself, then closes his duffel and opens the door. He holds it with his foot, slings the bag over his shoulder, grabs the suitcase handle, and steps out into the hall. The door closes behind him.
It’s not until he’s already in a cab, several blocks away and heading north, that he remembers the second gun, the one the assassin had gone for just before Darryl killed him. A stupid mistake, but Darryl never touched it. There’s no way it could be traced to him, and it will serve to confuse the authorities a little, slow them down, give him a bit more time to leave the country.
Darryl catches motion in his peripheral vision, and looks up. The cabbie is looking in the rear view mirror at Darryl, and when their eyes meet he rumbles a question, voice rough from years of tobacco abuse.
“Où voulez-vous aller?”
Where to? He hasn’t thought about it. Darryl looks out at the street, dark asphalt and bricks passing by, the occasional prostitute. Where to, indeed? In the immediate moment, at least, he can give an answer. “La station de train.” The security for a train ride will be less strenuous than that for an international flight. He tries to remember what passport chits he has on him, and can’t.
The man grunts again, and turns left on the next cross street. Darryl goes back to looking out the window.
EDIT: Also, what say you? Shall the madness continue?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-12-04 04:56 am (UTC)I love that he brings along her knitting.
Will need to re-read this. May I see the rest?
no subject
Date: 2007-12-04 05:53 am (UTC)