by Sam Kench
‘Eamon, you’re alive!’ She said happily, but his expression made her uneasy.
Before she could back up, Eamon had already closed to within three feet of her. ‘Did you kill her?’ He asked as he continued forward.
‘What?’ Maria asked, distracted by the five armed individuals now populating the parking lot behind him.
Eamon wrapped his massive hands around Maria’s neck and kept walking away from the mini-mart with her in his grasp. ‘Did you kill her yourself, or just let your sicko friends do it?!’ She began to lift her gun but he closed his fist around it while still holding her neck with his other hand. He pushed her up against the Volvo, bent her backwards over the hood, tore the gun from her grasp, and threw it to the ground. His men hurled questions at the back of his head, but Eamon didn’t hear any of them. He had questions of his own to ask. ‘Did you kill Beth?!’ He loosened his grip on her throat just enough for her to squeak out words.
‘Eamon, what are-’
‘My wife!’ Eamon pulled Maria off the hood and slammed her back down onto it. ‘Did you kill her?!’
‘No! I swear!’ Maria looked into his face, searching his blue eyes; just as sad as they were angry. ‘I swear to you, Eamon.’ She felt his grip loosen further but not enough for her to wriggle free.
Eamon looked away from her. He pointed his face at the ground and shut his eyes. The voices of the men who looked to him as their leader filtered into his ears but they seemed to speak a foreign language. He turned back toward Maria and opened his teary eyes. He replayed her voice in his head and studied her face.
Maria saw his vulnerability. A tear fell from his eye onto her lips. She thought she saw recognition in him. ‘Eamon, lo-’
‘Were you there?... When it happened? Were you there when she died?’
Maria saw herself in third person. She saw herself lying asleep in the backseat of the blue pickup truck with the peeling paint. She saw Beth reach into the glove compartment, pull out a gun, and commit suicide.
She looked up into Eamon’s sad eyes, ‘I was there, yes. Eam-’ She found her voice gone before she could finish.
Eamon’s grip tightened even more than before. He squeezed the air out of her throat. Sadness had just lost to anger in the fight over Eamon’s eyes. His big hands could've snapped her neck like a twig, but then it would be over too quick. He picked her up and slammed her down onto the hood again. She felt a grunt of pain run up her throat and smash into the roadblock of Eamon’s hands. She pulled on his fingers and found herself feeling weaker and weaker. Her vision started to darken. She saw a black vignette encircle the world.
His internal, infernal inferno raged anew. He looked down at her face as it began to change colors. He stared into her eyes as they grew glassy. He saw Maria standing in the retirement home. He saw her standing off to the side as her classmates murdered Beth. He saw her, unfazed, as the love of his life was thrown onto a pile of corpses and entombed within a mountain of butchery.
With his hands squeezing ever tighter, he felt her grip on his fingers loosen. Her hands fell limply to the hood, her mouth hung open, no longer gasping for air that couldn’t pass into her lungs. The blood vessels in her face were swollen; her eyes lost recognition. He kept squeezing.
ACROSS THE STREET and three stories up, Georgie looked through the open window with the scope of his rifle to his good eye. He watched the girl’s arms drop onto the hood and took her for dead. Georgie drew in a breath and settled his crosshairs on Eamon’s heart.
A DISTANT POPPING sound synchronized with a flash in a third floor window across the street. Spurts of Eamon’s blood shot off in two directions. The thunderous crack of the rifle came an instant after the shot’s impact. Eamon collapsed backwards onto the ground. The shot had missed his heart, but had succeeded in puncturing his lung. Eamon, though just barely retaining consciousness, knew straight away that it was a kill-shot. It was only a matter of time. He remained cognizant enough to recognize that the line of sight between himself and the shooter had now been broken by the body of the car. He assumed the shooter was with Maria.
Without Eamon to hold her up, Maria’s body slid off the hood and hit the ground like a sack of dirty laundry.
As the cobbled together gang attempted to make sense of what was happening, another jet of blood colored the air, followed shortly by the thundering of the rifle and the thumping of a dead body hitting the snowy pavement. Grant was dead before he hit the ground.
‘Where are they?!’ Lance yelled, moving toward Eamon, ‘Where the fuck-’ His head popped like a cherry pie with a firecracker in it. Pastry crust fell to the ground and red fruit dyed the air red for but a moment. A body terminating at the neck fell to its knees.
‘Fuck! No!’ Peter yelled. He turned around and ran back toward the mini-mart. The window beside the mini-mart door shattered. He at first took it to be a missed shot aimed at him, then he realized with a glance over his shoulder that the shot had ended Alton’s life. Peter yanked open the mini-mart door and ran inside.
Lee ran to the side of the lot and got behind a dumpster. He had a view of Eamon and tried to discern whether or not he was still alive.
GEORGIE AIMED into the dark mini-mart through the shattered storefront window. You don’t get to slink away again, Peter. He settled his crosshairs on a patch of Peter’s hair poking out from around the corner of one of the shelves. It was a small target, and barely visible in the dark store. The wounds in Georgie’s chest stung badly and a blood laden cough came through that he tried and failed to suppress right as he pulled the trigger.
Georgie pulled away from the scope and coughed. His aim was off. He knew he had missed without the need to look. He let two more bloody coughs slip out before he was able to quell the respiratory fit. He wiped the blood from his lip, chambered a new shell and returned his eye to the scope. Where his shot had failed at connecting, it had succeeded in scaring Peter out from behind the shelf. The coward ran down the aisle and attempted to climb over the cashier’s counter. Georgie fired into his spine. Shooting a coward in the back; a fitting end, he thought.
Peter’s head broke through a cigarette display case. He fell to the floor on the other side of the counter where he lay bleeding and paralyzed.
A MUCH NEEDED breath of air came rushing into Maria’s lungs. Color rushed back into her world and the dark vignette receded. She sat forward with a burst of panicked energy, and reached for her throat. It was already badly bruised and the hue would only get worse with time… if she lived long enough for that to happen. Her first few breaths stung badly.
She located her gun on the ground and crawled over to it. She was still a couple of feet away when she noticed a man with a handgun stepping out from behind a dumpster, and taking aim at her. He had the drop on her. She shuddered as a bullet entered the man’s temple at a downward angle and blasted out through the cheek on the other side of his head.
She looked behind her, then refocused her attention back on her gun. She scooped it up, rose to her feet and ran toward the mini-mart. She felt dizzy as she ran, and nearly fell over more than once on her way to the door.
GEORGIE’S SCOPE LINGERED on who he thought was his last target, lying dead on the ground. In his field of vision, no creature still drew breath. He considered it having come just soon enough; his rifle had slung its last bullet.
But something didn’t sit right with him. That last guy was aiming at someone. Georgie pulled his eye from the scope and looked naturally from his third floor vantage point. With unencumbered eyes, he saw an un-magnified view of the entire King’s Gas Farm property. The girl was back on her feet; not dead after all. Georgie stood from the chair he had placed in front of the window as the girl ran into the mini-mart. She clearly thought he had more shots left to fire. He was about to leave, but that something-off feeling was still there, nagging at him. Then it came: movement. Georgie raised the empty rifle back to his shoulder and returned his wide eye to the scope.
A bloody hand pres
sed down on the corner of the hood with enough force to make the whole vehicle sink low on its tires. Eamon hauled himself back up to his feet and stumbled toward the mini-mart as fast as he could, leaking blood by the cupful. Georgie cursed himself for missing the lumberjack’s heart. It was, This damn bloody cough, he told himself.
Georgie slung the empty rifle over his shoulder, went out into the hallway and began his descent from the building.
MARIA SAT ON THE FLOOR in the darkest corner of the mini-mart, hoping to wait out the gunfire. She had just one bullet to her name and no idea where this sniper was firing from or how many adversaries she still had in the immediate vicinity. It looked like Eamon had accrued some enemies. She heard glass break against the linoleum floor. Someone had just come in through the window and Maria didn’t know whether to hope it was one of Eamon’s men, or one of their assailants.
Eamon picked himself up off the glass covered floor, leaving more blood behind than he had hoped. Every breath in and out was filtered by a punctured sac in his chest. Blood swirled around inside his lung and came up into his mouth and up the back of his nasal passages. He knelt on the floor below the window to stay hidden from the sniper. He choked and spat bloody mucus onto the glassy floor.
Eamon had seen Maria go into the mini-mart. He had initially planned on playing possum until the sniper lost interest, ran out of ammo, or let their guard down, but seeing her pull back from the brink of death gave him a change of plans. He knew he was on borrowed time, and if he could accomplish one last act before meeting his maker, it would be to avenge his poor innocent wife. He moved, doubled over to stay a smaller target, toward the back of the store. Blood leaked from his chest and mouth with each frail breath.
Eamon reached the back shelf and got behind it to separate himself from the front view of the store. His eyes settled on Maria in the dark corner at the other end of the store, an exposed aisle separating them. She looked back at him. He couldn’t read her expression in the darkness, but her eyes shone white through the shadows. ‘How could you just stand there?’ He asked the shadows. ‘How could you let them do that to her?!’ He screamed, blood pouring from his mouth and streaming through his desert island beard.
Maria was confused. She raised her gun, but with only one bullet left, she couldn’t afford to miss, and she didn't even know if a single bullet could take this beast down.
Eamon’s damaged body shifted from side to side as he shambled toward her through the dark store. She waited for him to get closer, to become an even larger target to increase her odds.
'We waited for you, Eamon.'
He looked into her bright eyes in the dark.
'She didn't want to live without you.'
Eamon stopped walking in the middle of the last aisle before Maria’s corner. Sunlight blasted one half of his body between the two shelves.
'That's why she killed herself. She just couldn't live without you.'
Eamon stood in place. His fire was snuffed out. He believed her. He understood. Tears came at last.
He opened his mouth, 'Maria... I-'
Glass shattered at the front of the store and a bullet burrowed into Eamon's side, just below his ribs. The bullet stayed inside his large torso. He hit the back wall of the store and spun to his back on the floor at Maria’s feet. She remained seated, her finger still resting on the trigger, though now her aim was toward the aisle.
The bell above the door chimed.
Eamon looked up at her. He didn’t seem able to move. He took in sharp, shallow breaths broken up by horrible coughs that sent blood up into his own eyes.
Georgie rounded the corner, his Webley gripped with both hands. He looked at the girl, then back to Eamon.
Georgie stepped beside Eamon, then placed his foot on the lumberjack’s chest, directly onto the first bullet hole. He laid all of his weight on Eamon.
There was a stabbing pain in Eamon's chest. One of his ribs had been broken by the first bullet on its way inside and was being forced into his lung by Georgie’s boot.
The men exchanged the blood filled coughs they had burdened each other with. Georgie bent down and used a dirty thumb to wipe the blood away from one of Eamon’s eyes. He straightened back up, held his gun over Eamon’s face, waited for him to look up at the barrel, then fired his last shot into one of Eamon’s sad blue eyes.
Maria’s mouth hung open in disbelief. She felt frozen in place.
Georgie pointed his empty gun at the girl. She was of no concern to him, clearly at odds with Eamon. He took a step back toward the exit, thinking the girl wouldn’t have the nerve to fire…
He underestimated her... and soon felt a hole in his tiny black heart. To hell with it, he thought as he collapsed to the floor and got a faceful of glass.
AN HOUR of gasoline retrieval later, Maria left the parking lot in the direction of Bristol as the skirmish’s sole survivor. King’s was now as much a graveyard as it was a gas station.
20. BRIGHT SIDE KIND OF THINKING
TOMMY SAT ON THE HUMP in the two-seater muscle car. He had wrapped both of his arms around one of Maisey’s and was determined to keep them there until the end of their journey. He didn’t talk much, and Maisey thought about how small his amount of schooling had been, and about how small of a chance he had of getting anything more in the way of a proper education. She hoped she would be capable of teaching him all that he needed to know, or at least finding someone who could do the teaching for her.
She looked down at Tommy. He looked asleep, or at least close to it. She looked past Tommy to Bug.
His bandages had been soaked through, and beneath his person, a shallow pool of blood was collecting on the leather seat. Bug was doing all he could not to complain. It proved to not be too much of a challenge with all the blacking out he was busy doing. For now, he was clinging to life by a thread.
Bug sputtered back into the state of consciousness that he kept slipping out of. A groan of pain came with his arrival.
‘We’ll be there soon, Bug. They’ll be able to fix you up there, I promise. If the doctor could fix up my ugly mug, a little hole like that should be no problem at all. He could probably patch you up with his fucking eyes closed,’ she said, trying to add a degree of levity, but not managing to convince even herself.
With his eyes closed and his teeth grit, Bug made a request for more heroin.
Maisey looked over at him, concerned. ‘I told you, Bug, that shit’s gone.’ This was the third time Bug had asked after the heroin and been informed of its departure. She consider it a terrible sign that he kept forgetting. ‘We’ll be there soon,’ she repeated softly. ‘I’m sorry,’ she added, before he slipped back into darkness.
MAISEY HEARD A FAMILIAR SOUND as she neared the high school. It was a sound that she had found comforting as a child and now did again as an adult. A rumbling snow plow passed the cross-street ahead of Maisey, an orange light swirling and flashing on top of the giant metal vehicle; a sign of civility, a sign of order. As the sound dopplered away, Maisey could hear a second plow off in the distance. She remembered waking up in bed as a little girl to the rumbling sounds of the passing plows; her bedroom windows rattling in their frames and her rapidly awakening mind filling with the youthful hope of being snowed in.
The best excuse to avoid going to school was a snow day. No need to feign sickness, and plenty of hot chocolate to go around after they were done playing outside. As soon as their mother got the cancellation call from the school, the sisters would run out into the yard in the snow gear they had already donned in anticipation. Tina would make a snow angel and Maisey would try to bury her while she did it. Whenever a plow came down their road, they would run to the edge and stand atop the snow bank so the plow would spray them with slush. Their mother hated that. Warming up always felt great after getting so wet and cold.
THE ROADS AHEAD were flat. The plows were clearing all of the streets leading to and from the high school. They worked their way outward from the center, forming a clea
n circle of civilization and order. Members of the gym community were out on foot, hammering painted signs into the ground that directed the sick and scared toward their safe-haven
Bug shuddered awake again with a pained groan. Maisey touched his shoulder, ‘Hey, Bug, look! There it is!’
Bug opened his eyes and saw a high school rushing towards him through the windshield. The sight energized him. He tried to sit up straighter from his slumped position but only managed to move about half as far as he intended. ‘Oh shit.’ Bug said happily as they pulled into the parking lot.
She echoed him, ‘Oh shit.’
Maisey had exited the school conscious, but the only time she had entered had been immediately following a brick to the head. She parked in the half-full parking lot and opened her door. Tommy wouldn’t let go of her, and she didn’t want to wake him so she picked him up and carried him. ‘Wait here, Bug. I’ll get someone to help move you.’
‘Right-eo.’ He flashed a bloody thumbs up.
Two national guardsmen were posted on the gymnasium entrance. They had risen from folding chairs when the car pulled into the lot. A makeshift canopy and tunnel had been constructed over the gym entrance, and every other entrance into the school had been permanently sealed shut, not just with barricades and with locks, but also by welding torches. Two more national guardsmen circled the building on foot patrol.
Maisey approached the men with Tommy in her arms. There was apprehension in her steps as she eyed their rifles. ‘I was in there before,’ she said, ‘I left with Charli and Lucas to go-’
One of the guards noticed her concern and put her mind at ease, ‘I remember you, don’t worry.’ She was pretty hard to forget with a shaved head and one eye. ‘We’re not a shoot on sight kinda place anyhow.’
‘Oh Jesus-fuck.’ Maisey let out sigh. ‘I am so fucking grateful for that.’ She walked the rest of the way up to them. ‘I’ve got someone wounded.’ She noticed the guards look to Tommy with concern. ‘No, he’s okay. Someone else. In the car.’ She turned with the guards to look toward the muscle car. ‘He’s been shot. He’s having trouble moving…’
