Gundown

by Ray Rhamey

  Franklin helped her and Chloe get their bags in. A hallway led to four bedrooms: a tidy one that Franklin said was his, one with a musky scent coming from it—his cousin Earl’s—and two unused but clean rooms with single beds and small dressers. Franklin said, “Sometimes I rent rooms to actors in town to do a play.”

  Jewel was quick to say, “Let me know what, I’ll pay.”

  “You get a couple days to look around.” He grinned and tousled Chloe’s hair. “And squirts stay for free. Don’t take up much space. Make yourself at home.” He pointed to his room. “I’m takin’ a nap.”

  After Chloe and her rubber ducky had enjoyed a playful bath in an old-fashioned tub with feet, Jewel tucked her into bed in the smallest bedroom for a nap. Then she surrendered to exhaustion and collapsed on the porch swing. A quiet hour went by, and then Franklin joined her, two beers in hand. She accepted one, and they sat in restful silence.

  The rumble of a busted muffler interrupted the quiet when a red pickup truck pulled into the driveway and stopped behind Franklin’s cab. A shirtless, blond young man, tan, lean, and muscled, bounded out of the truck and trotted up to the porch.

  Franklin smiled. “Jewel Washington, meet my cousin Earl.”

  Earl hopped onto the porch and took Jewel’s hand. His blue-eyed gaze flicked to her scar and then took in the rest of her, then came back to look her in the eye. He smiled. “A pleasure.”

  Jewel was surprised to find herself liking the way Earl looked at her. She said, “Me, too.”

  Franklin said, “Beer?”

  “Like to, but I got a meeting.”

  Franklin said, “Where you heading?”

  Earl glanced at Franklin. “You know.” He rushed into the house.

  Franklin scowled. “I don’t like that militia crap. It’s trouble.”

  Earl burst out the door, pulling a white T-shirt over his head and trotting to the truck.

  Nice butt. Lordy, it’d been so long since she’d had a little lovin’ from a decent man. She was lonely for some sweet company.

  He jumped into the pickup, then leaned out the window and said to her, “Will I see you later?”

  Franklin said, “She’s staying with us for a while.”

  Beaming, Earl said, “Franklin, you have just made my day.”

  He roared out of the driveway.

  “Your cousin seems nice.”

  “He’s one of the world’s great people, except for the militia thing. He’s a set designer for the Shakespeare Festival, got a real artist’s eye.”

  “What’s the militia thing?”

  Franklin gazed after the departing truck. “I just don’t understand it. Earl’s a liberal guy most ways—hell, he couldn’t care less that I’m gay. But his daddy was real paranoid about the government, especially gun control, and I guess he passed on a pretty serious case of it.” He glanced at her. “Don’t let on I said anything, okay?”

  Jewel sat back and swigged her beer. “I won’t. Ah, how’s he feel about women?”

  Franklin grinned. “I think you’re gonna like that side of Earl.”

  Ashland was lookin’ good.

  Hank Get Your Gun

  As Hank’s plane descended to the Medford, Oregon, airport, he marveled at the contrast between the green Rogue Valley and the flat, gray-brown mess of Chicago. Oh, Chicago was a great city, but it sure didn’t come close to mountains surrounding a pretty valley when it came to being easy on the eyes.

  When he went to claim his suitcase, he found incoming luggage being X-rayed and some bags searched—he was glad Parsons had warned him about trying to pack a gun.

  He rented a four-wheel-drive SUV and sped south on Interstate 5. In twenty minutes he took the Ashland exit and soon drove along the city’s main drag, if city was the right word for two primary streets lined with tidy little buildings that housed shops and restaurants. He parked on Main Street and left his car to get a feel for the place.

  The physical pleasure of just being there surprised him. The mountain air was crisp and fresh. It felt good to breathe. The late-afternoon sun warmed his skin, and a breeze brushed his face with a softness unlike Chicago’s heavy air.

  On lampposts hung crimson banners with a golden lion rampant, celebrating what Wikipedia said was the town’s most famous institution, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Who’d have thought a tiny town way out West would have theater that could win a Tony Award? Tree-shaded sidewalks were lively with tourists. There were long-haired young men and tattoos aplenty on colorful people, a mix of young and geriatric, all lively and busy. No gangbangers swaggered with pistols in their hands.

  But there were guns. Brightly colored pistol grips stuck out of small holsters on a half dozen strollers, mostly women. Maybe these were the nonlethal guns Noah Stone talked about in his speech. Which reminded Hank that he had no weapon.

  He pulled out his wallet and fished for the card Mitch had given him. A call from his cell phone and the password got him directions to an address. Now impatient with strolling tourists and their chipper mood, he hurried to his car.

  The address on Kent Street was an ordinary ranch house in an orderly row of middle-class homes. Grade-school children played in the driveway next door, and a blond, lean woman in her twenties walking a beagle came toward him. She gave him a nice smile, which he was happy to return.

  When he stepped onto the porch of his contact’s house, he heard a man shout, “Goddamn it, we gotta take Stone out!”

  Hank peeked in a narrow window beside the door. Two men sat in a cramped living room, drinking beer from cans. He waited a moment, but nothing more was said. A scrawny cat appeared from under a bush and wound around his legs. He gave it a scratch on the head and then knocked.

  A short, beer-bellied man opened the door. A woolly black Fu Manchu mustache framed his down-turned mouth, and bushy muttonchops decorated his fleshy jaws. “Yeah?”

  Hank said, “I called. You Hatch?”

  Rick Hatch nodded, his manner cautious but welcoming. “Yeah. I got word from Mitch you might be coming around.” He pushed the door open and stepped out. After careful looks up and down the street, he said, “Ah, you got an ID?”

  After Hank showed his driver’s license, Hatch backed into the house and said, “Come on in.”

  When Hank entered, Hatch waved a hand at the other man: clean-shaven, good-looking with a lean body, blond hair, and a tan. He sat forward on a plaid couch, a framed velvet painting of dogs playing poker on the wall above it.

  Hatch said, “This’s Earl Emerson.”

  Earl smiled and said, “Howdy.” His voice was the one that had shouted the threat to Noah Stone.

  Hank nodded.

  Hatch eyed him. “What can I do for you?”

  “I need a handgun.”

  The fat guy raised his eyebrows and smirked. “Hey, you can get a stopper at a buncha stores. Five bucks.”

  “You call those handguns?”

  Hatch snorted. “I call ’em pee shooters ’cause they’re about as useful as pissin’ into the wind.” He led Hank down a narrow hall to a closet in a small bedroom. He pulled on the hanger rod, chock-full of clothes, and it swung toward him and out of the way. Reaching up, he hauled on a slim rope and drew down an attic stair. The odor of gun oil spilled from a dark hole above. Hatch led the way up, turning on a light at the top.

  Hank could stand straight only in the center of the attic room. Racks filled with shotguns, rifles, and assault weapons lined one wall. A table at the end of the space displayed a dozen handguns and holsters, plus boxes of ammunition.

  Hatch smiled and said, “Welcome to the right to bear arms. What’s your preference?”

  Hank picked up a .45 automatic like his own—yeah, the Colt was an old design, but he trusted it, and it fit his hand just right. He racked the slide, then ejected the magazine; the weapon was clean and well cared for. But there was a red square bonded to the frame that didn’t belong. “What’s this?”

  “A counterfeit ID chip to m
ake it look like it’s been modified. So you can carry it in public. Just don’t let a cop check it with a detector.”

  Hank now saw that most of the guns, even the rifles and shotguns, had similar red squares. The assault weapons didn’t. “I need to know more.”

  Hatch picked up a 9 mm Glock. “This’s a legal weapon, been converted for use in Oregon. I hated to do it, but I needed a model to work from.” He pointed to the red chip on the legal gun. “State puts these little microchips on legal gunpowder weapons. Stick a police detector next to it, you get a beep for okay. No beep, it’s illegal. Trouble is, nobody’s been able to copy the chip’s circuits.”

  He ejected the magazine. Instead of full-sized bullets, it held short, stubby cartridges with a white, plastic-like slug at the front instead of lead. “I got tangle loaded in this one.” He pulled back the slide and showed Hank the gun’s guts.

  Part of the chamber was plugged with steel—a normal bullet wouldn’t fit. Hatch said, “Only things’ll go in here are little nap, tangle, and whack rounds. The microchip connects to the chamber; you try to modify it, you destroy the chip.”

  Hank shook his head. “Are all guns in Oregon like this?”

  “Pretty much. ’Cept for legit hunting weapons, ain’t a real gun that’s legal, not target, not nothin’. Even hunters have to go through the hassle of showing a gun license to buy ammo.” The light of a zealot shone in Hatch’s eyes. “We fought ’em, by God, we fought ’em. What made it so hard was the state sold the idea that they weren’t taking guns away, just making ’em safer. And they paid to change ’em over. And they teamed up with the Alliance to come up with those stinkin’ little stoppers for five bucks a pop. Usin’ my tax dollars!

  “With all that safety runnin’ around, guns that killed didn’t have a chance. Hell, we couldn’t even argue they were takin’ away our Second Amendment rights ’cause we could carry those little popguns for self-defense. We got shafted and couldn’t do a thing about it.”

  Hank sympathized; no way did he want to live without the weight of a pistol against his ribs. He looked at the guns on the racks. “I don’t see red chips on the assault weapons.”

  “Well, since they don’t have any legitimate civilian use, not hunting or nothing, they’re just flat banned. I gotta admit, they are weapons of war—if you’re a hunter, the real thing is sure better than an assault rifle. You want something heavy, too?”

  “No.” He hefted the pistol. “I need a shoulder holster and a box of shells. How much?”

  “A thousand.”

  Hank lifted his eyebrows.

  Hatch answered. “It’s the risk. You get caught with just one lethal firearm, let alone a whole roomful, you go to the Keep. Automatic. No appeal, no nothin’. I get caught with this many, I’m doomed for sure.”

  Hank dug cash from his jeans and peeled off a thousand. “The Keep?”

  “Hell on earth.” Hatch handed Hank a holster and cartridges and led him out of the gun “shop.”

  Back in the living room, Hatch settled on a chair and said, “Earl, tell him about the Keep.”

  Earl’s sunny disposition went behind a cloud. “It’s where they send you for a violent crime if you don’t let ’em brainwash you.”

  Next to being without a weapon, Hank hated being caged. It had taken him three months to escape from an Afghan prison, and that was the only time he’d come close to losing it. He still had flashbacks. “I won’t let that happen.”

  Earl said, “You go into the Keep, you don’t come out unless you’re pickled.”

  “Pickled?”

  Earl scowled out the window as if feeling an old hurt and said, “Yeah. They call it deep therapy, but it’s brainwashing.” He turned his gaze on Hank. “We don’t exactly know what they do to you. The guys who’ve had it just smile and say it’s the best thing ever happened to them. They’re robots.” He frowned. “We lost two friends that way.”

  Hatch said, “Yeah. They were good guys, believed all the right things, fought for the right to carry. Now they’re a couple of law-abiding pansies. One’s a kindergarten teacher, the other one works for the devil himself.”

  “For Stone?”

  Earl nodded, then looked a question at Hatch.

  Hatch told him, “Go ahead. Parsons says he’s a good guy.”

  Earl stared into Hank’s eyes. “We’re going to take Stone out so things can go back to the way they ought to be.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “The Rogue Valley Militia.” He glanced at Hatch. “Me.”

  “You think killing Stone will do what you want?”

  Earl said, “It started with him, it’ll end with him.”

  Hank saw a deep hatred in Earl. It was personal. “When?”

  Hatch shrugged.

  Eyes wide, Earl said, “It’s gotta be at some event so the faithful see their hero’s nothing but a sack of meat like everybody else.”

  This guy was not rowing with both oars. But he wasn’t Hank’s problem.

  Hatch gazed at Hank for a long moment. “Parsons said you’re on our side. You want to help us out?”

  Earl frowned. “We don’t need any outside help, Rick.”

  Hatch looked to Hank, the question still on the table.

  “No thanks.” He turned his gaze on Earl. “I’m on the side of the law. But I won’t rat on you, either.”

  Earl shrugged.

  Hank checked his watch. There were a couple of hours before sunset, and his ribs ached. He wanted some time off and a leisurely supper. Noah Stone could wait.

  Maybe he should ask these guys for a good place to eat. He glanced at the dogs-playing-poker painting. “Thanks,” he said to Hatch, and left.

  Hell Comes to Georgetown

  Marion slipped into baggy sweats as soon as she got home from the office, poured a glass of wine, and then sank into the deep cushions of the leather easy chair that had been her dad’s. She could still smell his scent, a blend of pipe tobacco and the faint mustiness of the law libraries in which he’d spent so much of his life. She missed him. And she missed the legal mind of a premier defense attorney. She needed his wise perspective on what to do about the Alliance.

  She sipped her wine, enjoying the smooth, husky taste of a California chardonnay. Gazing into the wine’s golden depths, she thought of the Northern California valley from which it came, a valley now coming under the influence of the Alliance. She didn’t like what was happening.

  The doorbell sounded low chimes, and she wished whoever it was would go away. But no, they rang again. She pushed out of the chair and pressed the intercom button by her door. She made no effort to conceal her irritation. “Yes?”

  Suzanne said, “It’s me.”

  Marion regretted the edge in her voice. “Oh.”

  “Did I get it wrong? Didn’t you say seven o’clock?”

  Oh, shit, she and Suzanne had agreed to a quiet dinner at her place. Guilty because she’d let her petulance spill over onto Suzanne, she hurried to say, “Oh, I’m just tired. I’m glad you’re here.”

  “I brought Chinese, so— HEY! What’re you— Oh God, oh no—”

  A scream shrieked from the intercom, then cut off.

  Marion slammed out her door and raced down the stairs. Through the glass foyer door she saw Suzanne slumped against a wall, a sack of take-out cartons spilled at her feet. She clutched her neck; blood ran from under her hand. A man looked up at Marion, Suzanne’s purse in one hand, a knife in the other.

  He wore grubby gray overalls like mechanics wear, but his had a spray of red across the chest. A Washington Nationals cap shadowed a face that could have been normal, even nice—except his showed a mix of anger, lust, and fear.

  He pushed the foyer’s outer door open just as Marion burst through the inside door. She lunged, shoved him in the back with both hands, and propelled him out. He hurtled through the air, hit hard on his belly, tumbled down a half dozen concrete steps, and lay still on the sidewalk.

  She spun and saw Suza
nne sliding down the wall. Heart thudding, Marion caught her and eased her to a sitting position. Suzanne’s eyes were wide. Blood spread red on her white shirt. Marion tried to pull Suzanne’s hand away to see the wound in her neck, but Suzanne held tight. Yet the blood flowed.

  Marion sobbed. “Suzanne. Suzanne, love.”

  Suzanne’s gaze darted helter-skelter. Marion tried to keep the fright out of her voice. “I’ll call an ambulance, you’ll be okay.” She started to rise, but Suzanne gripped her arm.

  Suzanne breathed, “I—”

  Marion freed her arm from supporting Suzanne. “I’ve got to call—”

  Suzanne’s eyes glazed. Her chest stilled.

  Panic flooding through her, Marion gripped Suzanne’s shoulders. “No! You’ve got to hang on! You’ve got to—”

  Suzanne’s hand dropped from her neck into her lap. No longer driven by a beating heart, blood oozed from a deep slash across her throat.

  Marion crushed Suzanne to her and the empty-sack vacancy of a lifeless body sent a shuddering moan through her.

  The man, the man who did it—she twisted and saw him struggling to his feet.

  Rage swamped her grief. She lurched up and ran out, plunged down the steps, and crashed her six feet of solid muscle into him. He tumbled into one of the huge maples that lined her street, rebounded, and sprawled on the grass.

  Marion hit the sidewalk on her shoulder and rolled to a stop. She sprang to her feet, grabbed his shirt, pulled him up, and slammed him against the tree trunk. She stepped back and kicked him in the testicles with all the leverage that years of martial arts training had taught her.

  Screaming, the man fell to the ground, clutching his groin.

  Raging, crying, she kicked and kicked wherever she could land her foot until arms wrapped her from behind in a bear hug, lifted her away, and a man said, “Easy now, easy. I’m a cop.”

  She fought the grasp, but he was a big man; he held her until she stopped struggling.

  A vestige of sanity returned, and she thought of Suzanne. With new strength, she shoved the cop’s arms apart. She said, “Hurry!” and raced up the stoop and into the foyer.