Gun (Gun Apocalypse Series Book 1)

by Lee Hayton

The garage door sat open, waiting for Greg to pull the car through it.

  Annie swallowed, and her throat clicked. Was Mikey still seated in the back, screaming?

  Greg’s mobile went straight to voicemail. She even tried her own, which she’d left resting in the cup holder because her shorts didn’t have pockets. The same response greeted her.

  The landline phone was sitting on the floor, the case now askew. Annie picked it up and sighed with relief when it clicked back into place. Her small tantrum had caused no permanent damage.

  Hitting redial, she held the phone to her ear as she walked to the connecting door between the garage and the hallway. It was still empty. A grease stain darkened the concrete in the center of the floor. Cleaning it up was another job neither of them had got around to doing.

  Maybe the car’s stalled just around the next corner. You should go check.

  Annie slammed her hand down on the countertop to stop the voice. It held strident echoes of her mother-in-law Meredith, a woman so superior to Annie herself that she was surprised Greg hadn’t dumped her two seconds into her first visit to his home.

  “We can’t take your call. . .”

  Annie jabbed at the Off button and ran her shaky hands through her hair. The short curls were standing on end, tightening into ringlets in the humidity. Once upon a time, straightening them had seemed an important activity.

  She couldn’t look for them by car because Greg had the damn SUV and her car was in the shop. If she went out on foot, she walked out into danger. At least two other men were out there, armed and dangerous. With those odds, would she even make it to the corner? And if someone shot her, what then? From her experience with 9-1-1, there’d be no chance to summon an ambulance.

  Annie closed her eyes and remembered the worried frown of concern on Greg’s secretary’s face. They’d gone to the office party last week—something he almost never did. What was her name? Stacy? Tracy? She’d walked up to Annie and expressed concern at the hours Greg worked. The emotion he put into his job.

  Had Greg snapped? The other man only began shooting once Greg fired the first shots. Was her husband now a gun-wielding lunatic because she hadn't forced him to take a vacation?

  The man from the house wasn’t firing because of Greg.

  Annie stared into space for a second, imagining a catalog of disasters.

  Stop it. Phone the police again.

  Except she’d been phoning for half an hour.

  Tears threatened, but Annie didn’t let them fall. If she collapsed now, she wouldn’t be able to do the thing that needed to be done, whatever that thing might be.

  The remote for the TV sat on top of the sofa arm, where Greg always left it, though there was a perfectly good basket going begging.

  What do you think has happened? The internal voice still sounded like Greg’s mother, her voice a fingernail on Annie’s internal blackboard. Do you think he’ll be on TV? Do you think little Greg has become famous?

  Little Greg. Since he topped six feet, the name meant nothing at all. Meredith didn’t even use it ironically.

  The television opened on a cartoon, and Annie’s throat tightened. SpongeBob SquarePants was Mikey’s treat. Sometimes he’d behave for hours off one threat to ban a single episode. The character even adorned the T-shirt he’d insisted on wearing that morning.

  Annie clicked through the stations, stopping at the first news channel. Before she heard the announcer’s words, a frown creased her face. Something was off.

  The presenter’s hair was pulled back into a ponytail. The woman’s face shone without the light-diffusing powder of makeup. She wore a loose sweatshirt rather than the usual blouse and blazer.

  Staccato words crawled across the ticker tape. Gun. Gunmen. Mass shooting. Gun.

  Locations scrolled by, some in the States, some overseas. Each one followed by a number. Thirty-seven. Twelve. A hundred and eight. In confusion, Annie thought they were lottery numbers.

  Then the phrases clicked, and she collapsed onto the sofa, the cushion farting under her sudden weight.

  Thirty-seven people dead. Twelve café customers dead. Lone gunman shoots one hundred and eight students.

  Pictures flashed on the screen. A warning message scrolled across: Images may disturb some viewers. Too late. By the time it flicked up, Annie’s mind had filed away the horrifying Polaroid’s of three limp bodies sprawled on a cold, gray street.

  A buzzing sound filled her ears. A fat summer blowfly or reverberation from a cheap speaker fed too much bass. When Annie wrenched her gaze from the TV to find the source, colors swirled before her eyes like drops of gasoline in a puddle. Her body felt so light she could float in mid-air.

  She bit down on her tongue.

  Fainting spells had plagued her college years. Greg thought they were funny, a signal of her creativity. To Annie, they represented pain and weakness, a sign that her sympathetic nervous system was shot.

  A glass of water would help, but the tap lay across an arid desert of carpet. Annie crossed her ankles and squeezed her thigh muscles, forcing up the sluggish blood resting in her lower legs.

  A popping sound joined the buzzing noise. Annie gave in and hung her head low between her knees. A graze decorated one of them with dark crimson beads offset against black streaks of tar. She didn’t remember falling over. It must have happened when she chased the car.

  No. No. No. Don’t think about that.

  She needed to concentrate on getting through to the police, so they’d chase after Mikey. Not dwell on the fear and panic twisting his beloved face.

  “Thank you for calling 9-1-1. . .”

  The buzz in her ears retreated to a soft hum. The popping sound, like Tom Thumbs firecrackers, recurred. Annie moved to the lace curtains and twitched them aside again for a better view of the street.

  Suburbia. SUVs in driveways. Neat lawns clipped to regulation length. Apart from the house three doors up on the opposite side. There, two cars sat parked on the lawn with grass growing halfway up the windows.

  Pop. Pop. Pop.

  The sound was coming from the same corner where she’d stood while Greg recklessly drove Mikey away.

  As Annie watched, a man sprinted headlong around the bend, hopping on one foot to counteract the pivot. He regained balance and ran down the middle of the street. Heading her way. Two women followed, arms clutching at each other like they were a life jacket in choppy waters.

  The man slowed at the house with the cars out front. He grabbed the lead car’s fender and used his forward momentum to swing in behind the back of the car. Shielded from the corner, he was in full view of Annie.

  One woman fell to her knees and the other curled a hand under her friend’s armpit, lifting her to her feet without breaking step. They tumbled beside the disused vehicle, crawling to join the man.

  Pop. Pop. Pop.

  As the sound grew louder, the man poked his face around the side of the rusting car to look where they’d come from. After a second, he jerked his head back and gestured at the women to move farther toward the house. Next, he got to his knees and pulled a pistol out of the rear of his waistband.

  Annie gasped in shock and leaned away. Her heart screamed at her to retreat while her brain commanded her to keep looking.

  The man curled over the trunk of the car, resting his right elbow on the dented metal for stability. His head tilted, one eye closed, aiming back along the street.

  Turning her gaze, Annie saw a woman advancing toward them. A rifle was held up in her arms, the long barrel seeking a target. The man squeezed off a shot—pop—and the woman fell.

  Annie redialed the phone with shaking fingers and listened to the same message.

  No. Someone must answer.

  A missing son and a shootout across the street were too much to deal with alone. Annie jammed her thumb on the disconnect—wishing she still had an old rotary-dial she could slam into its cradle—then dialed again.

  “Christ’s sake,” she cried out as the
electronic recording sounded again.

  She swiped the hair away from her eyes and turned to look back out the window. The man and his two female companions were running directly at her. Straight toward her house. The man held the pistol out, ready to fire again.

  Annie backed up a step. She remembered closing the front door. Was it locked?

  She ran along the soft carpet, retracing the black footprints that her dirty shoes had ground into the dull cream fibers. The button on the handle was already popped in, locking it. She flicked the switch for the deadbolt and heard it clunk into place. A chain was mounted above that—never used. Annie hooked it across as one last measure of security.

  She listened in horror to the stampede of footfalls as the gun-toting trio ran into her open garage.

  Chapter Three

  Blain

  Blain turned over in bed. The resulting thump from his headache woke him, and he stared at the clock, disoriented. Three in the afternoon.

  For Christ’s sake. He’d taken four hours, tossing and turning, to get to sleep in the first place, and all he could show for it was forty-five minutes of rest.

  The damn headache. When Blain had called in sick to work on Wednesday last week—mindful that a day off meant no sales and no income—he’d thought he was suffering through the worst of a bad cold. He'd figured Colin from next door had probably given it to him—that kid was often so pale from an illness that calling him black was an insult. Dull gray at a stretch.

  Babysitting Colin after work had never bothered Blain before. The boy was a riot. If his mother was going to send him over sick, though, then Blain might need to rethink the arrangement. Emergency savings could only stretch so far.

  He got out of bed and stomped to the kitchen. The action made his headache worse but at least rid him of some of his frustration. The illness had worn his patience thin. The easygoing charm that snagged him car sales at the lot had departed entirely by the close of his second sick day. On the kitchen bench, his handwritten note stated the earliest he could take the next dose: Tylenol - 5:00 p.m. Advil - no more today.

  Fuck it. OTC were the only painkillers Blain had access to, and he couldn’t even take the damn things. A placebo might be the extent of the effect they had, but Blain would accept that over nothing.

  A week of living with this ache had left him confident that abstinence wouldn’t do. The notes were something he’d forced himself to do from Friday onward. That was the day he'd gone to take two pills and had realized the box was empty—the new box meant to last him all week. He’d been popping them like candy—except Blain didn’t have a sweet tooth.

  Beer. His fingers squeezed the fridge handle without opening it. A few beers might be okay right now, but there’d be seven shades of shit to pay in the morning. If he made it to morning. He pulled open the door only to let it suck shut again.

  “Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it!” Blain’s cursing descended into a wordless scream. The skin over his knuckles shone white where his skin stretched tight. Every muscle in his body tensed into fighting mode.

  Blain pulled open a cabinet door just so he could slam it. The release felt good. He pulled it open, slammed it shut. Open. Shut.

  Blood flooded into his cheeks, accompanied by its pal shame. He needed to get to sleep. Without a good rest, his headache would just continue to grow worse. The fever warming the lymph nodes of his groin and armpits would grow into a burn.

  Two hours. Blain couldn’t last that long.

  He pulled the beer out of the fridge, popped the top, and gulped half of it before his conscience could override him. At first, the warm tingle of alcohol made him feel better. The buzz absorbed his body. One empty can and Blain’s eyelids were slower to open every time he blinked.

  Another can, and Blain stumbled back to bed. He fell face down on the covers and closed his eyes. Bliss. His headache eased, his tight muscles relaxed, his breathing slowed.

  A rush of vomit caught him off guard. He retched into the pillow, and the beer came up more easily than it had gone down. Blain pushed himself into a sitting position and surveyed the wreckage. The pulse in the side of his forehead deepened into the familiar thumping ache. Blain burst into tears. The sobs pulled at his stomach, the muscles already strained from being sick.

  When the crying jag tapered into a runny nose, Blain forced himself into the shower. Once he'd cleaned himself, he would tackle the bedding.

  The warm stream of water eased into his back like a masseuse, calming him. He turned and let the water fall on his face, washing it free of beer and vomit. He stepped back, placing his foot upon a sliver of soap stuck to the aluminum floor. Already unstable, Blain’s footing departed him entirely, and the side of his head slammed into the shower wall.

  Rage engorged him, and Blain struck out, punching and kicking the Formica walls. His vision darkened, and his ears hummed, consciousness pushed under by an enveloping haze of anger.

  When he came back to himself, Blain’s blood had mingled with the cooling water, streaming in a raspberry cordial–stained swirl down the drain. His foot broadcast pain. The toes were dark purple and swelling.

  The wall of the shower had holes at fist and foot heights. Blain’s knuckles were raw where the skin had split open. For a few short minutes, although pain radiated throughout the rest of his body, his headache had gone. He could think.

  As he slipped his bleeding body into bed, the sickening thump returned.

  #

  When he woke the next morning, Blain thought his headache might be worse than before. It was hard to tell when his entire head was throbbing and thumping like the crying nerves of a rotted tooth.

  He kept his eyes screwed up tight as he walked into the kitchen, hand trailing along the wall for guidance. Each time he opened his eyes, it felt as though the light was shoving shards into their soft jelly. Pain had never been like this. He needed to get to a hospital. He needed to get himself a dose of morphine.

  They’d never give it to him, though. Not for a headache. It would be impossible to explain. Especially since his brain was faltering under strain, words decamping en masse for a locale that didn’t involve so much pumping blood and squeezing.

  Blain stubbed his broken toe on the edge of a chair, and the floor plan in his head evaporated into smoke. Gritting his teeth, he opened his eyes a sliver to see where he was. See where he was going. Two seconds later, his eyes streamed tears, and his vision disappeared into blurriness.

  He could rob a pharmacy. Get a stock of Vicodin, Oxycodone, and Percocet, plus any other opioid his mother had ever warned him about. The good painkillers, not the worthless crap in his kitchen cabinet.

  The unsettling thought came out of nowhere and plugged into a repeating loop in his brain. Other thoughts departed, no room left.

  His dad had insisted he keep a gun in his apartment for self-defense. A condition of Blain leaving home, he’d stumped up the payment for it and kept on at him until Blain used the accompanying sessions of shooting lessons that came as part of the gift.

  Rob a pharmacy.

  The over-the-counter pills would probably threaten his liver more than his headache. He wouldn’t be greedy. Just take enough for three or four days—a week—then go in with the money and an apology when he was back to normal.

  If he talked to his doctor now, he’d look like an addict. Pale, shaking with need. Any GP worth their salt would take one look at him and refuse to scrawl out the required script. But if Blain helped himself—forced the pain into retreat—he’d be able to speak to his doctor like a human being, explain himself. Have a late prescription written out to square everything up.

  The stabbing pain in his eyes became too much, and he closed them, the last tears forced out as Blain pressed the heels of his hands into the sockets.

  Once he'd explained that the ache in his head was a thousand times worse than the pain from his bruised toes or his swollen knuckles, they’d understand. But he needed to go now. Leave it for later, and the headache would
bludgeon him dead.

  Blain lurched like a homeless drunk on the walk to his bedroom. This time, he swung one arm in front while sliding the other along the wall.

  The gun safe was in the rear of his wardrobe—bad news for self-defense, good for not launching into target shooting when he came home hammered.

  The four-digit combination lock almost outwitted him. More than once, Blain slammed his palm against the steel in frustration. The light was dim enough here that he could sliver open his eyes but too little for him to clearly see. On the fourth temper-wearing try, the front cover released, and he pulled the weapon out.

  A wave of calm washed over him, enveloping Blain in its warm caress. The pain in his eyes shrank from a gaping knife wound to a paper cut, enough for him to load the gun on the bedspread. His heartbeat skipped when he snapped the compartment home.

  With the shake departing from his hands, Blain found it easy to write out a note demanding the drugs. It was even simpler to dress in preparation, though he’d wandered the house in a bathrobe for the past day, unable to tackle buttons.

  For a moment, he pressed the gun’s smoothly polished redwood grip to his forehead. The headache receded so far he could think for the first time in days.

  Get drugs, food, and beer. The last he could use as a chaser if the codeine or Oxy didn’t hit him fast enough.

  Blain felt so good, he considered tucking himself back into bed between the crumpled white cotton sheets and sleeping. The next moment, his head exploded. There was so much pressure in his skull, he expected his brain to squeeze out through his eye sockets like toothpaste from a tube.

  He grabbed the pistol and stuck it into his jeans pocket. Going against all safety regulations—but he’d never thought to buy a holster for a concealed carry, and he didn’t want to shove it down the back of his waistband in case he shot his own ass.

  Slapping a pair of dark sunglasses over his sunken eyes, Blain went shopping.

  #

  Blain arrived at the pharmacy to find the front doors locked shut. A steel linked chain with a corrosive dusting of orange rust powdering the silver metal, hung between bollards on either side of the shop for good measure.