From: TajuddinA@aol.com Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 01:30:05 -0500 Message-ID: <970107013003_1890296876@emout09.mail.aol.com> Subject: child 8/10 "Like As a Child" pt. VIII "Hello?" Tina's smooth, silky voice came over the reviever and Al felt the effects of not having had any time with her lately. "Tina, hey. Listen, I've got to get back to the Project and it looks like a long night so if you could drop Callie off here, we'll meet you back at the Project. She can get her things and spend the night at the complex again." Al fiddled with the phone cord as he spoke. Something just didn't feel right, and it wasn't just Sam's leap that was bothering him. "I could watch her," Tina offered. "No, we've found a new wrinkle and we'll probably need you too, honey." "Well, okay. We'll see you in twenty, twenty-five minutes." "Sounds good. See you then," he said and hung up. He busied himself getting his things together as she waited for them to show. He was in Callie's room when he heard a noise in the front of the apartment. Surely it couldn't be them already? He walked into front room and barely registered the shattering of glass as someone shot at him. Luckily, they missed. If he hadn't been such a bad shot from the angle he was at, he might easily have been hit. He dropped immediately to the floor and reached for his gun. Al crawled back into his room, which only had one window in it, as opposed to the rest of the apartment, and backed against the wall beside it. A moment of two passed by without a sound, but Al knew better. He pulled out his handkerchief and threw it in front of the window, raising his arms over his face to protect himself from the shattering of glass. It came to rest on the floor with a bullet hole through it. Al whistled softly, wondering how they had missed him earlier. Most likely, there was at least two of them, but there was only one window. That would most likely mean.... Then he heard the front door rattling again and the sound of a shot blowing the lock off. He crouched in the corner, knowing the intruder would know exactly where he was. He ducked down and moved to the other side of the doorway, careful to hide his actions from the outside. Sure enough, a big man burst into the room, firing immediately towards the corner where Al had been. Al jumped him, reluctant to actually shoot him (the effects of being friends with Sam Beckett for so long, no doubt), and cracked him over the head with the butt of his gun, whirling immediately towards the window. He fired once at what seemed to be, at such a quick glace, a person and then threw himself to the side to avoid the inevitable shot that would be taken at him. He was halfway lucky. The bullet lodged itself in his left arm, just below the shoulder, causing him to falter. Before he had completely processed what had happened, he was falling and he saw the sharp corner of a table rushing up to meet him. The 'crack' as his head connected with it was deafening. Al grabbed at the table as he fell, only slightly aware of what was going on around him. *It's a good thing I didn't lose an eye,* was his last insanely calm thought as he succumbed. "John?!" someone called from somewhere else in the apartment. The man entered the bedroom to observe Al laying on the floor face-down, a glassy puddle of blood pooling beside his head. The man grinned with a kind of grim satisfaction from a man proud of his talent, but dissatisfied with the applications of it. "John?" he urged, shaking the other man. "Come on, he got me in the arm and I really wanna go to a hospital. Get up." John stirred and sat up, wincing. "Ow....did you get him, Alec?" Alec gestured to Al's still form with his good arm. "Sure did. Poor bastard; I wonder what _he_ did. Come on, let's get outta here!" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------------- Sam waited in the parking lot. He saw Jody Hawkins go in; now he just had to wait for her to come out. The moments passed slowly, and he was about to go in after her when she came out, visibly distressed. Sam got out of his car and ran up to her. "Jody..." he said. She turned to face him. "I got laid off," was all she said. Her eyes were dry and she seemed as if she was not really inside her body. "I don't know what I'm going to do," she said in hollow tones. "I don't know," he said, "but let's go someplace where we can talk." She shook her head. "No, I need to be alone." "Jody, I really think-" "Thanks for your support. I'll see ya around." The words were hollow and unfeeling, but Sam didn't think she was quite to the point of doing what history said she had done. She turned to go to her car. "Jody!" Sam yelled after her. She ignored him. He followed her to her house, wondering where Al was. When they got there, he noticed a car out front. She noticed it too; she stood and stared at it for a few minutes, and then she went into the house. He waited. Time passed by slowly and nothing happened. He waited a full half an hour before she emerged from the house. More than likely he had blown their plan to stop her from getting the gun in the first place, but he couldn't stop to see who it had been that had given it to her. The most important thing to do was to make sure she didn't go into that store. And where the heck was Al, anyhow? He started the car and followed her out, casting a wary glance back at the house and the car outside it before driving off. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------------- Tina pulled up to the apartment and put the car in park. "I'll be waiting until you get in safely, honey." "Okay," Callie returned, opening her door and pulling out the bags after her. She walked up the short walkway and turned the knob, and stopped. There was a hole in the lock. She turned and saw Tina pulling off slowly, watching to make sure the door was unlocked. A sudden panic gripped her ^The lock was blown off and she couldn't hide in her room any longer. The mark the bullet left on the door was one of utter destruction and twisted metal. Twisted and destroyed. Twisted and....^ and the girl dropped her bags and ran back to the car. Concerned, Tina turned off the ignition and got out. "Callie, honey, what's wrong?" "The door....there's something wrong," she responded breathlessly. Tina put a hand on her shoulder and led her back to the front door. She bent down and looked at the lock and felt a chill run through her body. "Stand back," she instucted and cracked the door. "Hello?!" she called out. There was no answer. "Al?" She pulled Callie in with her and sat her down in the hallway. "Stay here." Tina looked first in the kitchen, then Callie's room, and finally Al's. The sight that met her eyes sent waves of nausea through her stomach. She tried to stifle the scream that clawed it's way up her throat, but was not entirely successful. She dropped to her knees and rolled him over onto his side to get a better look at the damage, noting with a kind of detached horror the gun that slipped from his limp fingers when she did so. Callie came running in the room, responding to her scream, and stopped dead in her tracks. ^She was crying. He had said he was going to shoot her no matter what, he said. And then she screamed....^ "No!" she screamed with a passion Tina had never heard her express. "It's me, it's me," she wailed, dissolving into tears. ^"She doesn't need any help!"^ "Callie," Tina snapped, to get the child's attention. "Callie, honey, run and get me the phone, okay? Can you do that?" Callie stumbled out of the room and Tina pressed her hand to Al's head, trying to stop the flow of blood. She pulled him up on her lap, whispering to him, pleading with him to wake up. Red soaked his left arm too, and she began to feel overwhelmed and maybe slightly hysterical. "Al," she whispered, praying silently for some hint that he was even alive. Her only response was the heat of his skin on her hands, but she was inclined to take what she could get. With tears of thanks, she noted that the gash on his head was not caused by the cruel metal of a bullet and a rational thought squeezed itself out. *Concussion. It's just a concussion.* Callie returned as she was tying the remenants of her sleeve on his arm, and she dropped the phone on the floor. "Callie, why don't you sit over in the corner for a minute, okay?" Tina was grateful for Callie's presence because reassuring her was helping immensely in controlling herself. Callie went to the corner and sat down, watching the whole thing with wide eyes and crying silently. Tina dialed 911 with a shaky hand and gave them the information they needed. Just as she was hanging up, Al stirred in her arms. "Al?" she asked, brushing his hair off his brow. His eyes fluttered open and he grasped her arm loosely. "Tina," he said in a raspy voice. "Shhh, Al, there's help on the way. Please, don't move." He tried to move anyway and winced as the pain in his arm and in his head registered in his slowly clearing mind. "Sam..." "He'll be fine." "No," he insisted. "I have to tell him what we found. It could save his life. Please..." Callie left her corner and knelt next to Al. "I'm sorry," she said. "It's my fault." ^"I won't do it again, I promise. I won't interfere." "If you do, I'll kill you."^ "No," he said and reached out a blind hand to her. She took his left hand tearfully and he squeezed her gently. "Sweetheart, none of this is your fault." He turned back to Tina. "Tina, you've got to get me to the Project. Verbeena can take care of things after I've talked with Sam." "Al, no!" Tina said sternly. "Sam can take care of himself." "Help me up," was all he said. She stared mutely at him. "Help me up or I'll get there myself." She was trying to decide what to do, trying to ignore his blood seeping onto her clothes, to erase the soft sound of Callie's tears. He wasn't as bad off now that was awake, she reasoned. He closed his eyes against the pain and she knew that if Sam was really depending on this bit of information Al would never forgive her or himself if he didn't give it to him. Al relaxed slightly in her hold. "Al! Al, don't go to sleep. Okay, let's go. Just don't go to sleep. Promise me." He opened his eyes again, slowly. "I promise. It's not that bad, really, Tina. Please let me go." She took his right arm and pulled him up, supporting him with her shoulders. "Okay, Al. If you're sure you can make it." Callie maintained her grip on him the entire time, still sobbing gently. Together, they made it out to the car and Tina helped him into the back, telling Callie to stay back there with him and keep him awake. Callie sat fearfully in the back seat, clutching Al's hand in both of hers. He gave her a weak smile, but he looked really bad with all that blood. She wondered absently if someone could die from a concussion. She hoped not because she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had been shot. And he had been shot because of her. As much as he said it wasn't her fault, she knew it was. Just like Wendy. ^A shot, striking the wall beside her.^ Wendy was always so nice. She had tried to take Callie away from there. She should have known that this would happen if she let Al help her. If Wendy had been as determined as Al, he would have killed her, too. ^"Never.....never again...." Wendy's words haunted the girl every time she went to sleep. Every time she closed her eyes.^ "Never again," Callie repeated under her breath as a chant all the way back. Al didn't hear her. Tina sped down the desert road.