They were coming for him. They were coming to kill him.
He heard a rock fall off a pile to his left and roll down into the street. The whispering around him increased to tones of rebuke, all coming now from the same direction. He followed the sound and traced it to the doorway of an empty building. He looked closer, pushed into the darkness for the lightest tones, and he saw that they were passing out rocks, to each other down the line. Half of them already had one in their hands, held down by their sides. When everyone was armed, he supposed, they'd rain them down on him. Then the others would beat the life out of him with their clubs.
His mouth went dry. He didn't know what to do. He couldn't think. He couldn't sober up.
The rum came rushing back to him. His body suddenly felt good, his throbbing chin dulled, his head was light again. He was brave and invincible.
It didn't seem so bad. He'd been through worse than this. He could push his way through. Why not give it a try? What the hell?
He took a couple of steps back and squared his shoulders for the bulldozer run. He could hear them behind him. He didn't look. Could they see what he was doing? Probably. These kids lived in the dark. Had they second-guessed him?
When he charged, he'd knock three or four of them down. They'd pelt him with rocks, but if he kept his head covered and ran like a motherfucker, he'd escape the worst of the barrage.
Uphill, drunk, not so young anymore. Where was he going?
They'd chase him and he wouldn't know where to turn. He'd worry about that later.
And how many were there?
A hundred. Easily. He was dead.
The rum rush deserted him. Optimism split on him too.
The drum started againjust the one, the same deep slow beat he'd heard in the courtyard earlier in the evening. This time it sounded like bombs dropping on a distant town or a battering ram striking a city's gates. The beat didn't go into his heart but right behind his ears, every note a grenade exploding in his skull, sending shock waves down his spine, making him wince and shudder.
Think again, he told himself. One more try. If that fails, run.
"You want money?" he pleaded, despite himself. No response. The rocks were passed on in silence, the kill hands filling up, the circle almost closed. It seemed hopeless.
Then he remembered his gun. He was armed, full-clip.
Suddenly a motorbike roared into life at the top of the hill, the engine shocking the night like a chain saw in a chapel. It was the kid in the white suit.
He came down the hill, the bike slowing to a growl and then a purr as it came up to the circle around Max.
The kid put his bike down and came over to Max.
"Sa wap feh lŕ, blan?" he spoke in a deep, ragged voice that belonged to someone five times his age.
"I don't understand," Max slurred. "You speak English?"
"Inglishhh?"
"Yeah, English. You speak?"
The kid stood his ground and looked at him.
Max heard it before he saw it, something slicing through the air, something heavy, aimed right at his head. He ducked and the kid in the suit swung into space.
Max dug a furious left-right combination into the kid's ribs and solar plexus. The kid gasped and cried out as he folded over like paper, sticking his chin straight out for a right hook, which Max slammed home and sent him sprawling to the floor.
Max grabbed the kid in a choke hold, pulled out his Beretta, and jammed the barrel through his mouth.
"Back the fuck up or he dies!" he yelled, looking all around him. The kid was flailing at him with his hands, kicking at the ground, trying to tip Max over. Max stamped on one of the kid's hands with his bare heel. He heard bones give and a strangled cry boil in the middle of the kid's throat.
No one moved.
What now?
He couldn't exactly drag the kid around with him as he looked for his way home, checking every street until he found it. No way. Maybe he could use him as a shield, push him as far away from the crowd as possible, then cut him loose and go on his way.
No way would they let him.
He could try and shoot his way out.
But no, he wouldn't use it. Not on fucking children.
He'd fire in the air and run as they hit the deck or scattered or panicked.
"Put your gun away!"
Max jumped.
The booming voice had come from above, in the black sky, behind him, downhill. Still keeping his hold on the kid, Max shuffled around toward Pétionville. The view ahead was completely blocked by the man's body, which Max couldn't see but sensed, massive and heavy, the thunder in dark, roiling clouds.
"I won't ask you again," the man insisted.
Max took his gun out of the kid's mouth and slipped it back in his holster.
"Now let him go."
"He tried to fuckin' kill me!" Max yelled.
"Let him GO!" the man boomed, making some children jump and drop their rocks.
Max freed his assailant.
The man barked something in Kreyol and blinding-white overhead lights came on. Max looked away, hand up against the glare. He saw the kid on the ground, blood all down the front of his suit.
Suddenly Max could see every millimeter of the immediate street. The children were standing around him three rows deep. They were all skinny, dressed in filthy rags, many only in shorts, turned away from the light, hands shielding their eyes from the glare.
The same voice barked in Kreyol again.
The kids all dropped their rocks in a collective crash. The rocks rolled down the road, some thudding into Max's bare feet.
Max squinted into the lights. The voice was coming from above the row of floodlights.
The voice boomed again and the children scampered, a stampede of tiny, mostly bare feet ripping down the road, puttering away as fast as they could. Max saw them running through Pétionville's square, over a hundred of them. They would have torn him to pieces.
He heard the sound of a big engine turning over and saw twin sets of exhaust fumes rising up behind the lights, in the shape of upended pine trees. It looked like a military jeep. He hadn't even heard it coming.
The man's accent was straight-up Englishnot a hint of French or American in it.
Max felt the man looking down on him, at least a good extra foot taller. And he felt his presencepowerful, magnetic, and crushingenough to fill a palace.
He came closer to Max.
Max looked but couldn't see his face.
The man reached down and grabbed the kid by the middle of his jacket and plucked him clean off the ground, as though picking up something he'd dropped and come back for. Max only saw his bare forearmthickly veined and heavily muscled, bigger than one of Joe's bicepsand his fistblunt and heavy and crude as a sledgehammer head. Max swore the man had six fingers. He'd counted five knuckles not four when he'd seen the hand bunch up the boy's suit jacket into a handle.