The Lazarus Heart by Poppy Z. Brite Page A

alone just like you said. But I want you to do some-"
    And then the shotgun made a sound like thunder trapped inside a metal box and wanting out, tearing its way free, and the black door was blown completely off its hinges. There was no time for them to get out of the way-Frank saw that at the same instant he saw Roy raising the Mag-10 Roadblocker for another shot. The woman was
    sprawled at his feet. Frank could see that she'd been caught between Roy and the door when the monster Ithaca semiautomatic had gone off, that the blast had cut her in half. Roy was covered in the woman's blood, and the air was thick with smoke and a settling crimson mist.
    "Stay down!" he screamed at Linda, stealing precious seconds to aim before he fired his revolver twice, both shots catching Roy cleanly between the eyes. The huge man jerked backward and his spasming fingers squeezed the Roadblocker's trigger one last time, but the shot went wild, blowing a hole in the ceiling above his head, adding plaster dust and more smoke to the haze already billowing from the doorway of the project apartment. Roy stumbled backward, tripped over a coffee table, and fell dead to the floor.
    "Mother Mary..." Frank whispered, but he couldn't even hear his own voice for the ringing in his head, the smothering echo of the shotgun.
    "Are you okay back there? Linda, are you okay?" She didn't answer, but he was already up and moving, advancing on the doorway, the barrel of his .38 not moving from Roy's prostrate form. He'd fallen backward and both his feet were sticking up in the air, his expensive athletic shoes soaked in blood, his own blood and the woman's.
    Frank stepped carefully past the buckled, broken door; the hole blown in the center was as big as his fist and he knew it was fucking amazing he wasn't a dead man. He stepped over the shredded mess slumped in the door, something that had been a human being hardly a minute before. The floor was slippery and he steadied himself by leaning against a wall. That was covered with blood as well, and his hand came away red and sticky. There was no sign of the other children. Frank guessed they were hiding somewhere in the apartment.
    "Linda, I could really use your help up here," he shouted, leaning cautiously over Roy's corpse. "We gotta find these kids."
    He noticed that there were two neat punctures just above the bridge of Roy's nose, a widening pool of blood and gray matter on the floor beneath his head. Both of his
    eyes were wide open, staring blankly up at the ceiling or God or his killer. The shotgun was still clutched in his hands.
    "Linda? Did you hear me?"
    When she finally answered him it was a weak, uncertain sound. He looked slowly over one shoulder, reluctant to turn his back on this crazy man even now, even when
    there was absolutely no way he would be getting up again. Frank stared out through the clearing fog of smoke and dust, the doorway of the apartment gaping like a ragged exit from some backwater recess of hell.
    Linda was sitting at the top of the stairs, her back against the brick wall of the building, surrounded by a spreading puddle of her own blood.
    "I think I got hit," she said, her words already mired in dulling shock. "Frank, I think the bastard shot me."
    Frank almost slipped in the dead woman's intestines on the way out, barely managed to catch himself. Even from a distance he could see the blood jetting from the wound in Linda's thigh, bright red arterial gouts in time to her heartbeat, spilling her life out onto the dirty concrete. Linda was staring at the wound dumbstruck, as if it amazed her, as if it was the most incredible thing she'd ever seen but no part of her, nothing that could have happened to her.
    When he reached her Frank dropped to his knees and looked at the hole, her brown skin and pink muscle chewed to hamburger. He had no idea how the blast could have missed him and caught her until he saw the jagged piece of shrapnel sticking up out of the wound, a piece of the