The hand is unnecessary, as it turns out. People think you’d scream. They always do in stories, in movies, but Phil had heard it from a Korean War vet once—that when you’re struck in the back like that, even if it hadn’t immediately pierced his lung—that you don’t make a sound. It knocks all the wind from you. You just drop like a sack of bricks and disappear.

Phil quietly hits the stone, still scrabbling at the floor while his chest fills with blood.