Like Barney, these men moved between the spaces of the ordinary world of people. It would be useless to call them by race, profile, or statistics, because you walk past them every day and don’t notice them. Who was taller, shorter, older or younger, it didn’t matter. Their names, like Barney’s, were fluid things, adaptable at a moment’s notice to new identities, stealth personae.
Appraising the wreckage that used to be Barney, Sirius arched a brow and said, “So... enjoy your trip?”
“I lost my apartment,” Barney said. “Karlov collected my stuff, but if I ever get out of here, I’m officially homeless.”
It seemed as though America did not want Barney back, either. His home, such as it was, had been assimilated. He assured everyone present that he could stay at the range, had done so many times. There was room, comfort and familiarity there. He had not really lost anything. Except.
“I’m glad you guys are all here, so I only have to tell the story once. I’ve told Armand a little bit of it, but I’ll give you the definitive version, gory details and all. There’s a reason I’m doing this, and I’ll tell you up-front that I am in full possession of my senses, so don’t blame my meds. When I get done telling the story, I have a proposition for you, but it’s not really something I can ask of any of you. I think I know you all well enough to risk putting these ideas out into the air, and if I’m full of shit, tell me. As far as you’re concerned, this is just a made-up story about an imaginary guy named Barney, and what happened to him. Armand’s been asking me what I think I want to do after this, and I’ve been mulling it over — asleep, not asleep, coming at it from every angle I can think of. Here’s what I want to do: I want to tell you the story. And if, at the end of the story, what I have to say sounds insane to any of you, don’t say yes, don’t say no, no buts or maybes... just get up and walk out of the room if you’re not down. Fair enough?”
Sirius hauled in an extra chair. Barney recounted everything he could remember. And then he told the three men what he wanted to do.
Nobody left.
Barney barely saw the fifth Bleeding Room thanks to the benefits of modern anesthesia. His body first had to be strong and adjudged fit enough to withstand the rigors of induced unconsciousness, and there was no way the dual procedure could be performed by Dr. Brandywine with a local.
More forms. More time.
Barney’s hands were butterflied like lamb shanks so Dr. Brandywine could get at the interstitial bones — the ones no longer required due to the missing-inaction index fingers — and remove them. Resectioning to close up the gaps. Nerves and blood vessels were reconnected with microfilament too small to see with the naked eye. Bones never meant to be neighbors were brazed together. The remaining healthy skin now gave enough surplus to fold closed and suture. They would leave very interesting scar patterns. The shortest of these multiple surgeries was a ten-hour stretch.
Add plasma, antibiotics, painkillers. Mix well and let set.
Serves one.
The result was an adequately proportioned, though decidedly bizarre-looking three fingered hand so natural in shape that your eye was deceived into wondering what was amiss at first view. It was something you had to devote time to noticing. Freakish, maybe; odd, yes. Barney was re-evolving from near-useless flippers to a tri-taloned Martian hand from War of the Worlds, or what Mickey Mouse actually hid beneath that three-fingered glove.
But no bump, no stub, no disproportion.
Now all he had to do was learn to work with these new tools.
A finger stump would have necessitated special handgrip grooving for stabilization. The stretch of hand minus a finger would have to be accommodated by an extended handgrip, and the trigger, modified for a middle finger wrap — the middle finger was almost a whole knuckle too much for a proper pull. Gross gun weight, and therefore felt recoil, would have to be factored into the smaller overall palm area.
Karlov was working out that problem right now, somewhere else, leaning over a gun bench, probably wearing his double-magnifying specs for close work. Concocting new mutant forms of firearm. Making them evolve.
Armand was dealing with ballistics — what kind of rounds, how many grains of powder per cartridge, range, kick, bullet type. The swage die was his alchemical furnace. He had always manufactured his own ammo.
Sirius commenced a round of interviews with Barney that led to a pile of pencil sketches in slow layers of accumulation. It was all about strategy. Penetration routes, exit schema, logistics. Drills on backups, backstops, Plan Bs, contingencies. Who, what, and how many. Room plans. Terrain. Things that could not be recalled or anticipated had to be imagined. Best guesses. Smartest options.
Barney commenced therapy on both hands as soon as the seams set and they were sure not to burst under stress like wet piñatas. Squeezing, lifting, isometrics in an agonizingly slow but progress-oriented crawl.
The first red-letter day came when Barney could cycle the trigger on Armand’s Magnum through one complete double-action pull. Snap.
Thirty-nine to go.
For nearly a month and a half both his hands were imprisoned in nylon cross-lace braces with metal supports, like corsets for his wrists.
Red-letter day Number Two saw Barney feeding himself without a drop of spillage. His fingers and thumbs were beginning to get to know each other again.
Karlov brought him a rebalanced SIG Super .40 with a whisper trigger; Barney managed five pulls.
Which hung him up for another week when his hands started to bleed.
Barney’s goldfish croaked eight days after he set up housekeeping at the gun range, with the benediction of owner/manager Neil Takami, who secretly appreciated the extra nighttime security. Barney awoke to find the fish floating sideways, dead as roadkill, nobody’s fault, these things just happen sometimes. Following a brief unspoken encomium, Barney gave his late fish a burial at sea with honors, if you stop to consider that every sewer pipe and outflow system in Los Angeles eventually empties into the Pacific Ocean.
Barney had never watched television while on his own. He had watched the fish. From what he had gleaned of television while immobilized in the hospital — at least, the noisy and idiotic programs Armand subjected him to during their mutual convalescence — he wasn’t missing a thing of worth. Mano had not had a TV, either, and Barney didn’t have one here.
This left Barney with nothing much to do when he was by himself, surrounded by armament he was incapable of utilizing professionally, and amateurism grated his psyche. He hung with his crew: Karlov, refining his modifications to a variety of firearms; Armand, checking in to test his latest cartridges; Sirius, to pursue an overall mission objective. It was Barney that was the albatross here, his slow healing, crippled movement and nearly insurmountable pain deftly yoking an anvil to any concept of forward motion.
These were the classic ingredients for genuine despair.
He could head-butt the pain. He had to; there were three more operations on his hands after the first one, and each of those came with mandated recovery periods with too much time spent awake and luridly aware of the pulsing of blood through throbbing fingers, even the ghost fingers.
He could rationalize the slow-motion of healing. At least it was goal-oriented.
He could become a fast-food zombie, staring glassy-eyed at a TV until his brains dribbled out his ear. No, scratch that.