You’re gonna stop right there and not move an inch and keep your hands out where I can see them, the voice intoned while the flashlight beam sliced around his ankles. It was the craggy voice of a dumb-fuck security guy, not a cop, he could tell, some elderly bimbo working night shifts to keep his old lady in the nursing home. He’d had enough interaction with cops and such to know that the two routes available to him were as clear-cut and precise as any: you’d either make a quick darting run for it and figure on some kind of pursuit, scrambling over fences and through brush, the cop holding off on shooting you because he’s worried about lawsuits and investigations and messy stuff like that; or you go for a violent give-and-take, hand to hand at close range (close enough to make it hard for the cop to grab his gun), that might result in your death, his, or both. He figured the second course of action was the best and took the fistful of pellets, turned, faced the man, said good evening, sir, and flung them hard. They passed the man’s head and landed in the water and caused a great white rush of tiny mouths—a bubbling accompaniment to the spongy thud the pipe made (he later found out it was a hunk of sprinkler piping that Janet had found along the edge of the hatchery) as it hit the old codger in the skull. Nothing on earth like the sound of lead hitting flesh, he thought. But apparently the speed or whatever Janet was on wasn’t stopping there, and she gave Jimmy a slug in the head, too.

He woke up in the pure white corridor of the Elma General Hospital. He’d been through the process enough times to know how it went: first the opening of the darkness into a small little pinpoint of white (at which point he pretty much knew what was going on because there were the little PA calls of Dr. Such-and-Such will you please go to such-and-such ward. Such-and-such nurse, please come to such-and-such station, along with the crying, begging, and pleading (or the hallowed silence) of his fellow emergency roommates. Then the widening of the pinhole to the bright white of the crystalline neon lights, at which point he’d close his eyes to avoid the rest, the face looking down at him in concern, asking his name, asking it again and again and again until he spit it forth, adding asshole to the end: Jimmy Turner, asshole. Then from there, days and days in critical care without a television, the ten bucks rental fee not covered by The State. No one except the medical staff and a single welfare guy from The State would come to visit. He’d been through it before and would most likely go through it again, but this time it seemed drawn out. It took up his life. It took up a great deal of his entire life while in the outside world Janet went off on a wild hike over the sand traps and fairways of the dark golf course adjacent to the hatchery, and then slept off the pills in a clump of brush, while the old codger security guy suffered his concussion and severe memory loss, waking hard-pressed to put a face to the guy he’d confronted (and it was all smothered in the half-light and darkness anyhow).