Two brothers (Working Title)

CHAPTER ONE

Billy Donovan couldn't help but sigh. It was all over. Years of fighting, bickering, and squabbling were now in the past. A small tear trickled from his left eye and slid halfway down his cheek before it danced down onto the clich grimy bar that he rested his elbows on. Despite the layers of sticky alcohol, the tear managed to pirouette and prance with such elegance that Billy almost smiled. Almost. And then, after one final leap and twirl, Billy made a flicking motion with his thumb and index finger and it almost looked as if the tear took a bow before finally joining the rest of the sticky liquids on the wooden bar top.

Another deep sigh and Billy stared at his whiskey. He still wasn't sure what he was.

With a squelching sound, he pulled his tired elbows off of the counter and slowly spun around. His bones hurt. It wasn't just from the depressing soreness that often comes with age but also from the many fights that he had been in. Too many knocks to the head had left him with concussions and he was occasionally unable to remember his name, or what he was doing. His ribs ached from all the times they'd been broken and his legs had been snapped like twigs enough times to make him envy paraplegics. Winter mornings were the worst though. Billy, alone, would often find himself crawling to the bathtub. Once there, comforted only by the coolness of the bathroom tiles, he would run a warm bath and remind himself that it wasn't time to die yet.

The bar was as depressing and dank as the countertop. Dim lights hid the few patrons' scowls and the constant thrum of traffic kept their low, whispered conversations private. Billy couldn't help but snicker at how he'd become a clich a stereotype, and faded into obscurity. His five minutes of fame were well and truly over.

"Same time tomorrow?" Trevor, the slender young man who tended the bar, asked.

Billy grunted and nodded.

He didn't hold a grudge against Trevor. In fact, he liked the guy - there was still a sparkle in Trevor's eye that he envied and, no matter, how grouchy Billy was, Trevor always greeted him with a smile and it was normally the only smile he would get all day. There was a time when Billy's wit was almost legendary, but now he was too tired.

"You need to settle you're tab," Suzie said as she pushed through the swinging kitchen door.

She finished wiping a viscous blue liquid off of her hands with a tea towel and absent-mindedly shoved it into a bewildered Trevor's pocket. Confused and too afraid to move, Trevor just stood there, hands clutching at thin air as he watched and listened.

Billy put both feet on the ground and stood up, his bones creaked.

"You can't keep drinking here if you don't settle your tab Billy."

Billy's shoulder's slumped and Trevor took a step backwards towards the kitchen. He pressed his back against the kitchen door and it reached out and cuddled him back.

Suzie was a pitbull. Short, nasally and with her hands on her hips, she stepped forward and leaned against the bar.
"Billy..." Suzie started.

A small dribble of saliva dripped from the corner of her mouth. Suzie stopped talking, cleared her throat with a cough and used the back of her hand to clean her lips.

Recomposing herself, she leaned closer to Billy until he could feel her warm breath tickle the hairs on the back of his neck.
"Drinking isn't free Billy..."

Another trickle of salvia slid from the corner of her mouth and clogged Suzie's words in her throat. It was thicker and warmer than before. She wiped it away, made a sucking sound and swallowed, but it wouldn't stop.

She was now clutching both hands to her mouth and crying from the corners of her locked lips. Her body felt cold and her head started to pound.

The kitchen door made a soft thudding sound as it swung back and forth on its hinge. Trevor had disappeared.

"Billy..." Suzie pleaded.

The other patrons had busied themselves in their own conversations as they obviously tried not to notice what was happening.

"I'm sorry," Billy sighed, exasperated, "I can, I don't know, have some money to you by next week?"

As Suzie's mouth turned off the leaky faucet, water slowly started to leech back into her brain cells and it rehydrated her. The drums in her head subsided and she took a deep breath. Followed by another deep breath.

"Is next week alright?" Billy repeated, as he turned around.

His eyes were swimmingly blue and yet hazy with a winter's morning fog. They met hers and Suzie nodded as she took a step backwards.

"How about half your bill by next week and we're square," her voice was squeaky and breathless.

She absent-mindedly rubbed her throat.

"I promise," Billy groaned as he walked outside.

Billy's white knuckles gripped his steering wheel. An acrid smell burned his nostrils but he was used to it. Strewn over the back seat of his 2012 Toyota Camry were clothes, some worn and others clean. A toiletries bag sat half open on the floor, mold festered on a half eaten sandwich next to it. When Billy bought the car it was already old but since then the metallic blue paint had withered and cracked, there were dents on the back of the rear passenger side and the bonnet had been pushed inwards enough so that when the car ran for too long, the radiator started to make a hissing sound.

As he pushed his forehead into the front dash, the layer of dust sympathetically moved aside. Billy took a deep breath and the cold winter air tickled the insides of his throat. He smiled and shivered a little.

The key turned in the ignition and the engine painfully stuttered to life. Billy was about to put the engine into gear when a loud bang perforated silence of the night.

His head shot up from his dash. He listened, waited but there was just silence. Could it have just been a car backfiring or a balloon popping? Maybe it was the sound of children playing with fireworks.

Billy's hand moved back to the gear stick when a second bang shattered his disillusionment and this time it was followed by a commotion. Shouts and screams came from Suzie's establishment, followed by another two quick successive bangs.

The Camry's engine cried and whimpered, it begged him to leave. The cold dew that lazily hung on the night's breeze tried to push Billy back into the car but it was no good. His feet flew over the gravel driveway and before he could rationalize or dissuade himself, he was standing in front of the open door to the bar.

Over the course of his life, Billy had seen many dead bodies, some were even because of his actions, but it never got easier for him. His stomach lurched and he could feel the bile as it clawed its way up his throat.

Trevor laid face up in the middle of the barroom floor. His eyes were vacantly open and a trickle of blood wept from a wound just above his right breast. To Billy's right, two more bar patrons that only moments ago were trivially getting drunk to their own merriment now sat lifeless and limp. Sulphuric smells wafted pass Billy and walked out of the door. He forced the acidy demon that crawled up his throat back into his stomach.
Oddly enough, there was no shooter, only silence and scared drinkers who sat huddled together under tables.

Billy quickly gathered himself, closed his eyes and focused. He snatched at the water molecules in the air around him. He thrust his hand into the gush of water that flowed through the pipes beneath him. He called out to the rainwater that was trapped in the clouds above. An audible thrum emanated from Billy and, as he pushed his hands forward, a thick mist descended on the insides of the bar.

For a moment, there was nothing then, as the mist began to settle, it clung to the silky outline of what looked like a man. He stood behind the cash register and was stuffing wads of money into his pockets. His face was still a vague vestige but there was no mistaking the thick smoke that rose from the pistol in his hand.

Anger boiled the blood in Billy's veins and he clenched his fists together. If the shooter didn't know that he'd been seen before, the feeling of heaviness that set into his limbs made him audibly gasp and, as he looked up and saw Billy's wild eyes, his head started to frantically swivel with all the grace of a bowling ball. The man tried to raise the pistol but his arms had become chained to his sides. First his knees buckled then his waist crumpled, finally, the wooden floorboards smashed into his head. As Billy forced every water molecule to repeatedly stomp down on the shooters spine, the man could feel the atmosphere crush him. He let out a whimper and suddenly there he was, in full visibility. His eyes were closed and his breathing was shallow. Billy opened his fists and the water molecules fled. Every other person in the bar tripped over each other as they ran for the door.

Billy knelt down next to the shooter. A small wispy moustache and the little patchy bushes of a beard told Billy that he was probably no older than twenty years old.

Trevor was nineteen.

"You did this to yourself," Billy softly said.

The shooter only replied with a pained murmur as a sliver of air pushed itself out of his lungs.
"Billy?" cried a female voice from the kitchen.

It was guttural and bubbling, as if the speaker was underwater, and Billy immediately knew whom it was.

He sprung to his feet and slammed into the swinging kitchen door so hard the hinges nearly broke.

Suzie had pushed herself up against a stove and she had both hands pressed into her lower abdomen. Tears ran down her face and there was a streak of blood on the floor from where she'd been shot.

"It looks worse than it is," Suzie coughed and bloody spittle splattered onto her arm.

"Just sit still, don't talk."

Billy stood in the middle of the kitchen and reached his hand outwards towards a kitchen tap. With purpose, he summoned a stream of water and shaped it into a wad of what looked like bandages.

"Suzie, when I say, move your hands."

Suzie groggily nodded.

"Now!" Billy shouted and as Suzie let her hands fall to her sides, Billy wrapped the water bandages around her wound. Like cement between bricks, he pushed it into the folds of her wound and held it there, a plug that was only barely preventing a dam from bursting.

Suzie weakly looked down, "thanks, but what now?"

But before Billy could answer, even though he had no idea, the sounds of sirens and the screech of tires shouted sweet nothings at them.

CHAPTER TWO

"Hands where I can see them!"

Billy's pupils yanked themselves open and he instinctively put his forearm up to give them a respite from the abrasive red and blue lights that were screaming into the otherwise dark night.

"All the way up!" came the voice again.
It was a female's. Billy recognized it.

Elizabeth Quinton was a lieutenant with the Enhanced Persons Task Force, or EPTF. With shoulder length blonde hair and artic blue eyes, she was wisdom, answers and obedience all wrapped up in a slender, muscular frame.

“Hands where I can see them!”
Billy’s pupils yanked themselves open and he instinctively put his forearm up to give them a respite from the abrasive red and blue lights that were screaming into the otherwise dark night.
“All the way up!” came the voice again.
It was a female’s. Billy recognized it.
Elizabeth Quinton was a lieutenant with the Enhanced Persons Task Force, or EPTF. With shoulder length blonde hair and artic blue eyes, she was wisdom, answers and obedience all wrapped up in a slender, muscular frame. The air around Billy seemed to simultaneously thrum and deaden as his shoulders weightily slumped and his knees unlocked, like coiled springs. He shifted his weight to one side and Suzie watched as his eyes softened and the muscles in his face tensed up.
“If I lift my hands up, she bleeds out,” Billy snarked, as he gestured with his eyes.
Suzie’s pupils had started to swing and sway upwards and downwards, and small beads of perspiration leeched through Billy’s skin and dripped down his forehead.
Elizabeth made a waving motion and two men in EMT uniforms rushed to Suzie’s side, dropped to their knees and almost pushed Billy out of the way. As Billy’s concentration broke, the damn walls crumbled and blood burst outwards from the gunshot wound. Having succumbed to the pain, Suzie’s head lolled lifelessly forwards as the EMT’s applied triage. For the next few minutes, both EMT’s worked in silent unison, their bodies acting as one to save Suzie’s life. Finally, after what seemed like an agonizing lifetime, one of them turned to Elizabeth.
“She’s stable, but the bullet is still in there. We have to go, now.”
As the other EMT that was finishing up applying triage to Suzie turned around, Billy scowled as he noticed his face looked identical to the other one and the bones of his face creaked and cracked until he suddenly looked like what Billy could only assume was his genuine face.
Billy grimaced as he hauled himself to one knee, waited a minute for the pain to stop shooting through his kneecap, and then leveraged himself back to his feet. The simple act of standing up from the ground took Billy a full minute, and a feeling of resigned pity made Elizabeth’s body language soften and her voice less terse.
“What happened here?” She somberly asked as she looked around.
Even though the bar was never a place of bemused merriment and joyful cheer, up until moments ago, it still held a certain charm. Now, the chairs had been carelessly strewn on the floor by patrons fleeing for their lives, and there were four dead bodies. A repugnant stink of death mixed with the odor of stale beer and Elizabeth coughed to hide her gag.
Billy upturned a chair and sat down. As he did, his aching ligaments and tendons thanked him by only twinging ever so slightly, instead of the searing white hot pain he normally endured when he moved too suddenly.
“It makes sense. Get some corals to work as EMT’s, take on the appearance and traits of each other so they can work quickly. Do they get a choice, or do they get given the job out of the womb?” The disdain in Billy’s voice palpitated and he leaned forward and dropped his head in his hands.
“I’m not putting my hands up by the way,” he mumbled to the ground.
With a sympathetic sign, Elizabeth’s heels started to clack against the floorboards. She lifted another chair off the ground, dusted it off and sat down.
“What happened here?” she asked. Her voice was calm, resolute and patient.
Not saying a word, Billy pointed at the crumpled body which laid prostrate on the floor. The bloodied body resembled more a car which had been left out in a hail storm.
“Was that you?” Elizabeth asked, with a tenderness in her voice.
The sympathy and sorrow in her eyes laid in stark contrast to the brutality of the bar around her. She cared about Billy, that much was obvious. During their time working together as partners for the EPTF, they had seen a lot, and experienced a lot. Those are the kinds of feelings that don’t just go away, no matter what happens. Or what someone does.
Billy nodded, “he came in here looking for trouble. Killed Trevor.”
Saying Trevor’s name made Billy’s voice crack, “he was nineteen. He didn’t deserve… that.”
An uncomfortable silence settled between the two old colleagues. Craning her neck to one side, Elizabeth could see Trevor and it disturbed her that not only did she not feel anything at the sight of a dead teenager anymore, but that he actually looked peaceful. As if he was just sleeping.
“Nobody deserves that. Did the same guy kill them as well?” Elizabeth asked, as she pointed to the other two patrons whose bodies were slumped forwards in their chairs.
Billy nodded. A fuzz had started to fester in his mind, and the edges of his vision became hazy as a throbbing pain emanated from his temples.
With a deep sigh, Billy stood up. The world around him swam circles and Elizabeth placed a hand on his back to prop him up and stop him from falling back down.
“You have to take it easy, especially after all you’ve done tonight.”
“I’m fine. I just need a drink.”
Billy swatted Elizabeth’s hand away and tried to resonate resoluteness, but he couldn’t hide his weariness. Every step towards the bar felt like wading through concrete, and his limbs were being weighed down by bags of birdshot. The thrumming that thumped between his ears was almost deafening and he stopped walking and grabbed hold of a chair to keep his balance. As his eyes fell to the floor, he felt a firm hand on his wrist. It gingerly raised his hand up and placed a glass of water in it.
“Drink,” Elizabeth said, “then we can talk.”
Without saying a word, Billy sculled the glass of water. He could feel the cool liquid saturate his cells and permeate through every neuron in his body. Just as abruptly as it started, his head quietened and the black spots that were only moments ago clouding his vision disappeared.
Billy wanted to dislike Elizabeth. Even though they had worked together for nearly half a decade, when it mattered the most, she threw him under the bus, and then reversed it over him. Unfortunately for Billy, there was always a tenderness to her that was endearing. She had a way with people, and her eyes always seemed to sparkle with sincerity and generosity.
“Feel better?” Elizabeth asked, as she watched Billy stumble to the bar, fill up the glass again and greedily drink every last drop.
Billy nodded and sat back down, this time across from Elizabeth. He wanted to see her eyes.
“I heard gunshots. Small caliber, but loud. Rushed in, acted. Wasn’t fast enough,” Billy said, his words fragmented as he tried to hold himself together.
Once again, Elizabeth could hear the regret in his voice. Before she could interject, he continued.
“I waited. I heard the first gunshot and I waited. Didn’t want to think it was trouble, but I knew. Maybe if I’d acted earlier…”
There were no words that could salve the wound of responsibility that Billy felt, Elizabeth knew there was no point in trying. Any words she said would simply be weightless platitudes.
“Go home, get some rest, something to eat. I’ll still need to get an official statement, but that can wait,” Elizabeth said, as placed a hand on Billy’s shoulder and squeezed. Even without words, it communicated the reassurance that Billy needed, and he could feel the neurons and nerve endings in his body slow and mellow.
Billy winced as he stood up, nodded, and remained silent as he walked past the forensic officers who were meticulously taking photographs and inspecting the scene. He felt a tug at the back of his mind, a compulsion to turn again and see the catastrophe that was behind him, but he ignored it, and let the door slam behind him as he left.