Page 160 of Never Flinch

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Holly stands in front of those doors. Jerome stands nearby, his lips pressed together so tightly that his mouth has all but disappeared. It seems she waits a very long time before Gibson speaks on the other side, his voice low and confidential. “Is that you, Sista Bessie?”

Holly deepens her voice as much as she can and tries to imitate Betty’s light southern accent. “Yeah, it’s me,” she says, and thinks she sounds horrible, a goony minstrel-show racist doing a caricature Black voice.

There’s another pause. Then Gibson says, “Are you here because you’re guilty?”

Holly looks toward Jerome. He nods at her.

“Yeah,” Holly says in her deepest voice. “Guilty f’sure.”

It’s horrible. He’ll never believe it.

Then, after an agonizing pause, the red light on the keypad turns green. Holly has that one moment, that one signal, to raise her gun before the door opens. Gibson stares at her extremely Caucasian face, eyes widening. He has his own gun, but Holly doesn’t give him a chance to use it. She shoots him twice: center mass, just as Bill Hodges told her. Gibson staggers backward, pawing at his chest, eyes wide. He tries to raise his gun. Jerome shoulders Holly aside and shoots him again with Red’s pistol.

Gibson utters one word—“Daddy!”—and falls forward.

Holly spares him only a glance before looking into the arena. “Fire,” she says, and giant-steps over Gibson’s body.

In the circular rink area, the crumpled posters are blazing and the crisscrossed ties surrounding it are catching, blue flames turning yellow and racing along their lengths. Two women are bound to the penalty box, a third—Kate—to a bleacher stanchion nearby.

Holly runs toward them, stumbles, goes down, and is barely aware of splinters jabbing into her palms. She gets up and goes to the women shoulder to shoulder in the penalty box. If she had a blade she could free them easily, but she doesn’t.

“Jerome, help me! Put out the fire!”

Jerome runs back to the body of Donald Gibson, and yanks off Gibson’s sportcoat. The man’s arms come with it, and Jerome has to struggle. Although he’s dead, Gibson won’t give the coat up. His shoulders roll from side to side, head wagging like some grotesque ventriloquist’s dummy. At last Jerome pulls the coat free and runs into the arena with the coat’s silk lining ripped and trailing out behind him. Holly is unwinding the tape binding Barbara’s arms to the yellow steel pole, but it’s slow, slow.

Kate spits away the bloody tape over her mouth and shouts, “Faster!” in her growling voice. “Do it faster!”

Always the boss, Holly thinks. She grabs swatches of tape in both hands and pulls with all her strength. One of Barbara’s arms comes free. She rips the tape off her mouth and says, “Corrie! Corrie! Do Corrie!”

“No,” Holly says, because Barbara is her priority. Barbara is not just her friend but a loved one. Corrie will be second. The boss willcome third… if at all. Holly’s hands are slippery with blood from the splinters. She yanks the longest one out and goes to work on Barbara’s other hand.

In the middle of the floor, by the stuttery glow of the two working battery-powered lights, Jerome throws Gibson’s sportcoat over the fire and begins stomping on it—left-foot, right-foot, left-foot, right-foot—as if treading grapes. Sparks fly up in a cloud around him. Some burn through his shirt, stinging his skin. One of his pantlegs smolders, then catches fire. He bends and beats out the flames, vaguely aware that his snazzy Converse sneakers have begun to melt around his feet.Athletic socks don’t fail me now, he thinks.

Holly manages to unwind the tape around Barbara’s middle. Barbara tries to stand and can’t, tries to piston her legs and can’t. The tape binding her thighs to the seat of the penalty box is too tight.

“Your pants!” Holly shouts. “Can you slide out of them?”

Barbara pushes her trousers partway down, gets some slack in the tape, and tries to pump her legs again. This time she can. Her knees come up to her chest, then to her shoulders. She wriggles out of her pants and her legs are free.

Gibson’s sportcoat is burning and flames are racing every whichway along the boards. Jerome gives up trying to smother the fire and comes to the penalty box, jumping from one crosstie to the next. He goes to work freeing Corrie. To Holly he says, “I slowed it down but it’s on those ties. The sides will be next. Then the rafters.”

The fire is indeed spreading. Jerome is doing his best to get Corrie loose, but she’s been wound up even tighter than Barbara.

“Hey. Young Man Jerome. Take this.”

He turns his head and sees Betty. Her afro is matted and her face shines with sweat, but she looks better than she did on the picnic bench. She’s holding out a pocket knife with a worn wooden handle. “I always keep it in my purse. From when I was on the chicken circuit.”

Jerome has no idea what a chicken circuit is, and doesn’t care. He snatches the knife. It’s sharp, and slices through the tape holding Corrie to the penalty box easily. He leaves her to finish freeing herself and moves on to Kate. The ceiling of the old arena is high, which helps with the growing billows of smoke, but it also acts as an open flue, feeding the fire.

“Help me,” Jerome tells Holly. “It’s getting a teeny bit hot in here.”

But the heat on his back is nothing to the heat on his feet. His sneakers are now misshapen lumps. He hopes that when he takes them off—assuming they get out of this—the hightops will peel away his socks but not his skin. He’s aware they may take some of both.

Holly helps as best she can. Barbara, now free but barefooted and bare-legged, tries to help finish freeing Kate.

“No, no, get out of here!” Jerome yells at her. “Help Betty, she’s almost out on her feet! Go on!”

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