Chapter 2: All Hell Breaks Loose
Despite looking half-starved and sickly, I wasn’t going to let Hayes hit me with a nightstick. As he threw himself at me, I turned my right shoulder to him and launched myself into him, slamming his chest. I heard a loud crack as we connected, and it came from him, not me. Hayes swung, and his arm banged into my chest. My left arm came up and wrapped around the arm. My right elbow came up, digging into his chest, and slammed right into his jaw. The next step was to disarm him.
Hayes whirled around, hurling me across a desk. I hit the floor with a thud, and the desk crashed right next to me. He bounded over the desk, looking nothing so much as a great black raptor.
With one foot planted on the floor, I pushed my hips off the tiles and kicked out with my other leg, planting the sole of my shoe solidly into his chest. He was light enough that the impact pushed him back, and he landed on his feet. He wound up for another swing, but I kicked out again, this time hitting his knee. The leg went out from under him, and he tried to plant on the floor and swing again.
A fellow officer charged in, wrapping his body around Hayes’ arm. Hayes pushed off the floor with his good leg, and then stood ... on both legs.
I blinked and stared for a second. How’s he even upright?
A second officer came in, bear hugging Hayes around the waist. With his free hand, Hayes grabbed the officer’s hair and pulled back, prying his head back so they were face to face. Hayes head-butted him, then tossed him aside, sending both him and the first officer to the ground. He spun, driving his left fist into the first officer’s gut, making him release the nightstick. Hayes raised the weapon high, ready to take his head off with it.
That’s when I tagged in, sacking him from the side, slamming him up against a wall. I drove my right forearm into his face, and punched into the arm holding the stick. I hit again, and the nerves I struck caused his fingers to pop open.
I kicked the stick away before Hayes growled and shoved off the wall, driving both of us into the center of the bull pen. Hayes growled again, giving a full roar, like Godzilla. “Nalon, tnias, eid lliw uoy.”
Glass cracked all over the station house. I looked around at all the windows and computer screens that were suddenly broken or breaking. What the Hell is this guy on? Meth? PCP?
Hayes charged again, and I knew I shouldn’t take a direct hit from him if I could avoid it. I grabbed a chair, and used that to parry one of his windmill punches as I spun out of the way. I was a matador getting out of the way of the bull, and I used the chair to smack him on the back of the head as he passed. He went head-first into one of the windows, breaking the rest of it.
I didn’t wait for his next move but followed after him, smashing the chair into his back. He was covered in glass and sparkling bits flung off of him as he spun around, knocking the chair from my grasp. I wrapped my right arm around him in a headlock, in order to hold him. My left arm wrapped under his right arm, so he couldn’t bend in half and have a shot at striking my groin. My right side was essentially turned into him, so he couldn’t knee me. He could stomp my instep or maybe grab my hair, but I expected both of those. While they could stun me, he wasn’t going to get away.
That was when he thrashed like a wild thing and slammed me up against another window, breaking it and showering me with glass.
He kept spinning us around and growling. Apparently, Anthony Young had been placed at a desk while I had wandered off. The young man was cuffed to the desk and helpless as Hayes snapped at him with his teeth. Anthony leaned back as far as he could.
“Bad dog,” I muttered. “Heel.”
I wrestled Hayes back the other way, lifted him off the ground, and slammed him through another inside window.
Hayes kicked out, slipping out of my hold, jumping to the other side of the window, into an office. He turned around, probably thinking he could lunge back through,and gain momentum again. Unfortunately for him, I was already leaping after him and drove a foot into his face. He staggered back only a little and charged again. I sidestepped him, caught him by the shoulders, and hurled him out the office door. He effectively body-slammed a vending machine, crashing through the glass.
Hayes whirled around at me, his body a collection of cuts and his face a mask of blood.
And Hayes grinned like some demon released from a crimson-soaked Hell. “Em pots lliw gnihton. Tnias, em pots ton lliw siht.”
“Sorry, I don’t speak gibberish,” I muttered. Angels and ministers of grace defend us from the damned and the depraved.
Hayes blinked, and the smile wavered.
With a little prayer, I burst forward, leading with a stopping elbow—slamming my entire forearm in his face. Hayes’ head rocked backwards, and he came in swinging.
I leaned back, letting the fist go past my face, and my foot swung up, the front calf bone striking him full in the groin with the full force of my upper body. The blow lifted him off the ground, and his eyes widened in surprise, as though he were shocked that he felt pain.
My foot came down, and I leaned my body forward, my skull meeting his nose. He rocked under the force of the blow. I started a full running rosary through my mind as a way to keep my emotions in neutral. I grabbed him by his shirt, and spun him around, flat against the wall. I gave him a full body check against the wall, hoping to pin him there. I would have re-cuffed him, but if he was willing to dislocate one thumb, he wouldn’t hesitate to do the other.
I muttered under my breath, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, prayer for us sinners, now and at the hour of our—”
Hayes screeched as though I had jabbed him with a hot poker. He writhed against the wall and struck it with his knee, pushing back at me just enough to get a hand on the wall. He shoved off, throwing me backwards and slamming me against a wall.
Someone ate his Wheaties this morning, I thought. Forget PCP, what pharmacy is he on?
Before Hayes could close with him again, he was swept away by six large, armored police officers, crashing into the maniac, and dog-piling him to the ground.
Hayes look at me with eyes filled with unchecked rage, and insanity. “Trapa it pir lliw I dna! Eid lliw evol uoy ginhtyreve! Eid lla lliw uoy! Tnias, eid lliw uoy!”
I looked to one of the officers and shrugged. I was as put off as he was and as confused. I smiled and covered with, “And I don’t even know this guy. Imagine what it’s like when they get to know me.”
Hayes was taken away by all six officers, still screaming his gibberish, his feet off the ground. He thrashed and raged the entire way, kicking and struggling. One of his kicks knocked over another vending machine, leaving a hole in it as well.
I slumped against a wall and felt like taking a nap.
It then occurred to me that I hadn’t even signed in yet.
This is going to be a heck of a day.
It was hours before everything was cleared up, statements were taken, desks were righted, glass was swept up, brushed out, and cleaned off of everyone. The station would be finding glass here, there and everywhere for months. Even I would be picking glass out of my pockets, and I needed a shower in the station locker room just to get the sharp bits out of my hair.
Speculation was rampant. On the job, we’d all seen things we couldn’t explain before. Some of us ignored it, some of us became superstitious, and some of us just filed it away for later. Hayes had been a radical new experience for everyone. He was the worst of every meth head, combined with the worst legends of the bad old days when PCP was a street drug—you know a drug is bad news when even drug dealers stopped peddling it, lest their consumers go into a frenzy and rip their heads off and use it for a basketball. Among the suggestions were PCP, meth, and that Hayes had been some sort of soprano who could shatter glass with a high note.
Two officers had discovered Hayes on a park bench where children played. They were going to simply roust him at first, before they had discovered that he was using a bundle of bloody clothes as a pillow, and his hands had been covered in blood that wasn’t his. There were also some dead animals littering the ground around the bench.
In police work, we call this “suspicious.”
The cuffs had been slapped on Hayes, and he barely did more than giggle a few times. There was ID found on him, but he was hardly responsive for the duration of his stay in police custody.
Then I showed up, and he became plenty responsive.
It was noon before anyone gave Hayes another thought. Two police officers walked into the cells. They discovered Hayes hanging from a light fixture in his cell, his pants having been made into a makeshift noose.