Omega Days (Volume 1) - By John L. Campbell Page 0,2
the trigger twice, knocking Chato against the wall. Perro looked up in surprise and swung his automatic towards the priest, firing, as Xavier turned the revolver on him. The crash of Perro’s gun was deafening, the white of muzzle flash at close range blinding as something whispered past the priest’s ear. He pulled the trigger of the revolver, once, twice, three times, four and clicking. Perro was still firing, and something hot kissed Xavier’s cheek. Then the bald gangbanger was falling backwards, tipping over the TV and going down with it in an explosion of glass and plastic.
Silence then, with only the thumping of his heart in his ears. Xavier was standing, didn’t remember getting to his feet, and his nose burned with the scent of cordite and the sharp tang of blood. He stood with his arm outstretched, blinking, the revolver hot in his right hand, suddenly heavy. He let it fall to the floor and stared at his hand, while something warm and wet ran down his cheek and neck.
Chico cried and crawled to his mother, taking her in his arms and stroking her hair, yelling for her to wake up. The frightened faces of neighbors appeared in the hall beyond the open doorway, voices speaking urgently in Spanish as in the distance sirens began to wail.
Father Xavier Church felt his legs give out and he collapsed back onto the couch. He couldn’t stop staring at his hand.
Red and blue lights flashed in the street in front of the apartment building, squad cars and ambulances packed in tightly, uniformed officers warning away the curious. The ambulance carrying Mrs. Robles and her son, who refused to leave her side, had already left. Near the steps of the building, a man with white hair and a windbreaker zipped up to his priest’s collar stood talking with two detectives, one a black sergeant and the other an Hispanic lieutenant. They had just finished telling the older man what had happened.
Monsignor Wellsley glanced over to where Xavier was sitting at the back of an ambulance, a medic applying a bandage to the side of his face where a bullet had carved a red furrow.
“The men he shot?”
The sergeant jerked a thumb at the apartment building. “Both dead. He got one in the chest and the throat. The bigger one caught a single round in the forehead. The other shots went wild.”
The lieutenant gave his sergeant a look. “Thanks for the graphics, Tommy. Father, they were both known gangbangers, and it looks like they came here to execute the boy. Your priest got them first.”
The monsignor looked again at Father Church, who sat quietly, staring at nothing. “What happens now?”
The detectives looked at each other. “We’re in pretty strange territory here, Monsignor. It looks like a clear case of self-defense, or going to the defense of another. But a priest as the shooter is a new one for me.”
“Is he going to be charged?”
The lieutenant shrugged. “I can’t say what the DA will do with this, Father. But I really don’t want to book him tonight. We’ve got the weirdest calls coming in, and we’re pretty busy. I’d just as soon release him to you, if that’s okay.”
The sergeant nodded beside him.
“I don’t see him making a run for it,” the lieutenant said. “If the Church will take responsibility for him tonight, and make sure he comes in tomorrow morning to make a statement, I don’t see any reason why he can’t go with you.”
Wellsley shook their hands. “Thank you, Lieutenant. We’ll be available for whatever you need.”
The cops nodded and moved away quickly, in a hurry to be off on other business. The monsignor walked over to the ambulance, where Xavier just looked up at him and shook his head. Wellsley thanked the paramedic, who told him it wasn’t a serious wound and to treat it with Tylenol. He put an arm around his priest and guided him through the emergency vehicles.
“Let’s get you home, Xavier.”
Monsignor Wellsley had produced a Valium from somewhere and ordered Xavier to take it before he went to sleep in his room at the rectory. His dreams were dark, twisting corridors filled with gunfire and screams, and several times he came to in the night, groggy and disoriented, certain he heard helicopters overhead and screaming outside his window. Sleep quickly pulled him back down each time.
A headache was waiting when he awoke, daylight filtering through the curtains and turning the small, simple room a faded yellow. The