It was pure instinct. I ducked, and dove for my badge just as an unnaturally long arm sliced through the air where my neck had been only moments before.
I landed hard on the floor, just missing the fallen drawer. My hands slid on loose papers and slipped out from under me. I half-rolled in time to take it on my shoulder instead of my face.
I pushed myself up onto my knees.
He wasn’t stooped any more, and everything about him was longer – arms, legs, nose and definitely teeth. He stretched to the ceiling, seemed to fill the room, and he was very, very angry.
Badge, where the hell’s my badge? I thought. Papers all over the floor, but it should be on top of them.
“Hands up! Put your hands up!” Bradley was shouting. I didn’t have time to spare him a glance as Definitely-Not-Glenn-Jackson swung at me again.
Still kneeling, I grabbed the drawer, held it up as a shield.
The thing’s hand smashed through the cheap, old wood, but I’d thrown off his aim at least, because he just managed to clout me on the ear.
The old expression is wrong, by the way. It’s much more like seeing lightning than stars.
I fell again, but this time I didn’t feel it when I hit the floor. Everything seemed muted, like someone had turned down the volume on the world. I just barely heard what sounded like more shouting, and the boom of a gun, and I knew that Bradley had fired.
And then, in the weird, impressionistic way that unused senses and half-forgotten thoughts can suddenly become prominent when others go away, it suddenly occurred to me that I recognized the elusive scent that suffused Glenn Jackson’s bedding.
Dry autumn leaves, I thought.
