Sudden Prey

is he? Which way, which way?”
    Lucas put the radio back up and shouted, “Man down, get a goddamn ambulance up here.” He scrabbled crabwise to Bunne and asked, “How bad?” while Stadic was shouting, “Over to your left . . .”
    Bunne said, “Man, hurts . . . Can’t breathe . . .”
    Lucas unzipped the baseball jacket coat and found a torrent of blood pouring from a chest wound, and more, sticky and red, in the back. The hole in the coat looked more like a cut than a bullet puncture. Lucas pressed his palm against the chest wound and looked back in the street, and saw it lying against a car. A fuckin’ arrow? No sound, no muzzle flash . . .
    “He’s shooting a bow,” Lucas shouted at the others. “He’s shooting a bow, you won’t hear it, watch it, he’s shooting a bow, stay out of the streetlights.”
    One of the cops yelled, “What the fuck is this? What the fuck is this?”
    An ambulance turned the corner, the lights blood-red, and Lucas waved at it. When it came in, he said to the EMT, “Hit by an arrow, he’s bleedin’ bad,” and left her to it, running after the other two men.
    He found them zigzagging up the street, still following the blood. “Ten feet at a time,” the uniform said. The uniform was sweating with fear and was wet with melting snow. His eyes were too big behind his moisture-dappled spectacles, his breathing labored, but he was functioning. He ran left, and dropped, pointing his shotgun down the blood trail. Stadic went right, dropped. Lucas followed up the middle, dodged and dropped. Stadic went past, and then the uniform cop.
    On a patch of loose snow, Lucas saw that they were only following one track.
    “What happened to the other two tracks?” he shouted.
    “I don’t know. They must’ve turned off back in the street,” Stadic shouted back, as the uniform cop leapfrogged past him. Stadic scrambled to his feet, and as he did, he grunted and dropped, and Lucas saw an aluminum arrow sticking out of his chest and just a flicker of movement up the trail. He fired three shots, saw another flicker, and fired two more, the last two low, and then the uniform cop fired a quick shot with his twelve-gauge.
    “How bad?” Lucas shouted at Stadic.
    “Nothing. Hit the backing plate in the vest,” Stadic said, getting to his feet. “He’s a good fuckin’ shot.” He broke the arrow off and they moved forward again, found a puddle of blood, and some blood spatter. “You hit him,” the uniform cop said.
    “Maybe you,” Lucas said.
    “Naw, I couldn’t see bullshit, was just shooting ’cause I was scared.” He looked around and said, “Maybe we ought to wait until daylight. He can’t be far. He ain’t going anywhere, he was already bleeding before you hit him.”
    “I want him,” Lucas said. He put the handset to his face and told the dispatcher that the three had broken up, two apparently together, the third hurt bad. He gave the location and said, “We’re following up.”
    “There are people coming straight into that block,” the dispatcher said. “You’re heading right into them. We’ve got guys with armor coming up, so take it easy . . .”
     
     
     
    WHEN THEY SPLIT up, Sandy had run on ahead. LaChaise trailing her by fifty feet, with Martin hobbling behind. They ran a block, LaChaise catching Sandy, then a red Ford stopped at an intersection ahead of them. Sirens were coming from all directions: the Ford wasn’t moving. Without breaking stride, LaChaise swerved behind it, jerked open the passenger-side door, and pointed his pistol at the driver: “Freeze, motherfucker.”
    The driver instinctively stepped on the brake, and LaChaise was inside, his gun in the redheaded kid’s face. Sandy, when she saw LaChaise turn toward the car, dropped back a few steps. When he jerked open the car door, she turned and ran the other way. When LaChaise turned back, she was gone in the snow.
    “Fuck it, fuck it . . .” LaChaise pointed his pistol at the redheaded driver: “Take off. Slow. Go, go . . .”
    He slid to his knees in the passenger-side foot well, his head below the level of the dash, the pistol pointed at the kid’s chest. They went a block, then the driver said, “No,” and swerved, and they hit something, and LaChaise yelled, “Motherfucker,” and the driver put his hands up to ward off the bullet.
    But LaChaise levered himself up, and the kid babbled, “They almost hit us . . .” and LaChaise saw the two cars—a cop car and a