Flashback - Part Four (Pulp 11)

I started to try and talk him down, but I never even opened my mouth to speak. All of a sudden his eyes flared, and he slapped me across the face like a formula one car hitting a hay bale. I never saw him move, but I went sprawling out of the booth, spitting blood and curses. At the same time, the waitress, who was on her way back to our booth, blossomed a deadly red flower out of her midsection. She went down screaming, and her intestines coiled out like the grossest slinky you ever saw. I had my gun out and pointed at the Wide Man, when finally the sequence of events registered in my brain, and I realized he had just saved my life. There was a hole in the window next to where my head had been.
He dived out of the booth, again moving far faster than I would have expected. I noticed that he actually broke the heavy bolts that held the table in place when he swiveled his hips to move. It slumped down a bit, canted over and resting on where I had so recently been sitting. His dive carried him to the waitress, and his big hands shook as he tried to figure out what to do for her.
A second bullet shattered the glass and clipped my chin. I had just started to rise, and I accelerated it into a jump, one foot on the sagging table and right through the open window frame. My gun was out and seeking a target, and my blood was cool and purposeful.
I saw a quick movement at a first-floor window across the street and I put a round through it on reflex before I stopped to think about poor Uncle Fred trying to check out what was going on. Fortunately, I saw a sniper rifle tossed to the side, which cleared up who I was shooting at. Unfortunately, I must have missed, and the figure who had tossed the rifle took off out of my view.
I made a quick bet based on the construction of the front of the house, and ran like a shot to the alley off to the right of it. I legged down it about halfway before I heard clanging and banging from a fire escape in the back. My horse had come in.
As I slammed around the corner my guy was just recovering after jumping the rail. He was quick about it, too. He was white, maybe 5’10”, built lean. He had cropped hair like a marine and he was wearing a charcoal gray track suit. I slid to a stop and put two rounds in him, dead center mass. The track suit was tight enough that there was no question but that I hit him.

He gave maybe a little grunt, and then he took off. And when I say took off, I mean he looked like Usain Bolt would’ve had a hard time keeping up. I watched him run in a straight line like that for three blocks before he finally turned out of my sight. I just couldn’t move. I kept expecting him to drop, but he just ran. Maybe even accelerated. And when I slowly walked a block in the direction he had run, there was no blood at all.

I didn’t know it then, but I was going to get used to impossible things happening to and around me.