Catharsis (Book 3): Catastrophe

by Campbell, D. Andrew

  “Well, that was impressive,” I say quietly. “Even for me.” Staring at the still vibrating sign, the annoying drawbacks to using the gun become temporarily forgotten. “Was it beginner’s luck, or can I do it again?” I ask the air around me, and I’m afraid it’s the former but hoping for the latter.

  Not wanting to push my luck too far just yet, I abandon my previous spin and instead just raise the gun so that I can sight down the top of it and bring the sign into view. Slowly closing my left eye so that the world comes into focus solely through my right one, I aim for the top curl of the “S”, exhale and pull the trigger. There is a miniscule, almost unnoticed, jump in the gun as the bullet leaves the barrel, and then the pop I was expecting. Now that I know what is coming and can brace my senses for the onslaught, the sight, sound and smell of the shot are much easier to ignore. The Darkness wells up just the slightest bit to help tamper their impact, and I realize as long as I use it just a little then it shouldn’t be a problem. My senses may be super-sensitive, but the Darkness will help keep them under control. I just have to make sure I stay aware of how much I tap into it. It could become an issue if I let it go unchecked.

  Looking out across the yard, I watch the tiny missile sail across the open space before slamming into the red sign. The hole that opens up is slightly lower than where I had intended it to be, and I realize I had forgotten to adjust for the “drop effect” of the bullet with the distance. I had punctured the “S” right across its mid-slash instead of in the upper part of the curly-cue. Again not a big deal, but something I would have to compensate for in the future. I remembered something about how bullets drop over long distances because of wind resistance or gravity, but I’d never had the opportunity to witness it myself. It was a fascinating bit of science to see in action.

  “I guess that first shot was a bit of luck, then,” I continue. “Can’t get too far ahead of myself with this,” I say and lift the gun up so that I can see it in its entirety in my hand. The small, silver lump of metal doesn’t look like much, but it sure might be able to accomplish quite a bit if used well. I’d certainly like to learn how to do that.

  Lowering the gun back down into my shooter’s grip, I say, “And with practice comes skill. And I’ll take skill over luck any day.” The phrase makes me smile and remember my days with my padre and our Krav Maga instructor. It was something they both said often.

  This time I pull up just the tiniest bit of the Darkness before I even squeeze the trigger, and the result is immediate. Everything around me slows down, and the sign comes into perfect clarity and focus. Even with it being just over a hundred yards from where I’m standing, I can see every tiny reflective square of the surface as if it were inches from my face. I study the hole I had just made and judge the distance that the bullet had dropped from my original intended location. I make a small adjustment in my aim to compensate, exhale again and squeeze the trigger. The subsequent pop, flash and whiff of burnt ozone that follow are virtually unnoticeable now as the Darkness works to filter them away from my senses.

  Watching the bullet make its slow progress away from me, I get an idea. I wonder if it would be possible for me to hit the exact same hole on the sign twice. I figure it’s worth a try, right?

  Adjusting the sight of the gun, I look down the barrel again to make the same adjustment I had done previously. The difference this time is I can still see the first bullet moving away from me and hindering part of my view of the sign. It’s an odd sensation to aim for the sign trying to hit a hole that hasn’t even appeared, yet. It’s even more surreal when the object that is about to make the hole is partly obscuring my view of where I’m hoping the hole will soon be.

  Trippy, I think briefly and then squeeze the trigger.

  Again the gun bucks slightly as I feel the volatile powder explode and the bullet leave the chamber.

  Raising my head slightly, I release my hold on time enough to let the two objects speed up and race towards their destination. I refrain from completely releasing my hold, though, as I want to see the impacts to determine how true my aim was. Was hitting the same hole twice in a row a hilariously unachievable dream, or am I onto something?

  I watch as the first bullet tears into the sign exactly where I had been aiming with a beautiful BWANG sound, and a perfect little “o” appears to punctuate the curl of the letter. A mere moment later, the second bullet hits the sign in nearly the same spot. The hole widens slightly from the passage and the much more muted woong sound that follows it almost makes me giggle. I didn’t hit the hole perfectly, but it’s hard to tell if that was because of my aim or something else entirely like sign vibrations or the wind or just the bullets being slightly different sizes. Regardless, I pretty much did something I would have thought was impossible previously.

  Not only did I shoot a gun, but I managed to make a shot that I don’t believe would even be possible for most humans to even contemplate, let alone attempt or achieve. On top of that, and even more incredibly for me, but the firing of the gun didn’t incapacitate me. I barely even noticed it. The Darkness made this not only possible, but almost pleasurable.

  “I don’t know if I’ve just stumbled upon something really incredible, or just incredibly awful,” I say out loud. “But I do know one thing for sure.” I pause and hold up the gun in my hand, and the sight of it makes me smile. “It’s going to be a whole lot of fun to find out which one it is.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  I spend the next two hours of the evening practicing with the pistol. At first every challenge I present for myself is almost frustratingly easy. Every target I select, not matter how absurd or far away, is achievable after only a small number of attempts.

  Hit a particular brick on the side of the warehouse? Done.

  Hit an old, unused telephone wire that hangs next to the building? Done.

  Knock a can off the picnic table, and then hit it again on the way to the ground? Challenging, but done.

  Then I realize why I’m able to succeed with every shot I take. I’ve been unconsciously using the Darkness to help steady myself. Instinctively I’ve been letting it slow down time so that I can aim, and then I use it again to crank up my mental processing power to anticipate where I need the bullet to land.

  Useful? Absolutely.

  Impressive? Without a doubt.

  A true representation of my abilities, and a good demonstration of what practice can achieve? Nope. Not really.

  Unfortunately, that was what I truly wanted. I wanted to improve and prove that I could get better at this. Not the Darkness that I was constantly trying to keep at bay within me. I might have to live with its existence inside me, but I don’t have to let it rob me of every success in life.

  Plus, and this one might be the more important part, I can’t always rely on it. There might come a time when I can’t tap into the Darkness for one reason or another, and I would need to be able to do this on my own. Always relying on the Darkness to bail me out of situations is a surefire way to set myself up for failure or disappointment in the future. With the situations I tend to get myself into, a failure like that could be the one that leads to death. Or worse…whatever that might entail.

  Using this knowledge, I do my best to push the Darkness away and down into myself until its presence is barely perceptible. I then attempt the same shots I had been so successful with over the past couple of hours. The successes that had been coming so frequently before dry up almost immediately.

  I’m not horrible. Even without the additional assistance I was given before, I’m still able to make some fairly miraculous shots. My heightened senses and abilities on their own make what I can do a leap beyond incredible. But to accomplish exactly what I want in a shot takes more tries than it did before. To offset that, though, when it does succeed the feeling that goes with it is exponentially more powerful. These shots are my doing, and they happen because of what I am pushing myself to do. It’s not from some supernatural presence that aided me. Althoug
h what I am doing now might not be as spectacular, the sense of accomplishment I am getting from it easily offsets that.

  This continues until only one thing can stop me: a lack of ammunition. After several hours of committing to the activity, I finally can’t continue it anymore as I have no more bullets to load into the gun. Actually, I’m amazed I had managed to draw out the activity as long as I had. I would have thought most people would have emptied the box long before I did. Instead I had managed to make the entire box last for hours. And how? Because I never emptied the clip when I fired. I never used more than a couple bullets per attempt, and I also rarely missed. I may not have hit exactly where I wanted each time, but I also didn’t usually miss by much. I didn’t need to use an entire magazine to adjust my aim when I could do it with only a handful of well-placed shots.

  “That was certainly efficient,” I say to the gun as I rack the slide to make sure I don’t have a stray cartridge left hiding in it. “And cost effective,” I add with a smile.

  As I lay the pistol on the table, my eyes drift towards the other weapon I had brought out with me earlier, and I realize my evening isn’t over quite yet. In fact, it may just be beginning.

  “Hello you,” I say to the suppressed rifle still leaning against the stack of wood I’ve been using as a staging area all night. “I’d forgotten all about you in the excitement of your little cousin.” Picking up the shiny black and chrome weapon in my hands I turn it back and forth and marvel at how much larger and more powerful…and more exciting…this gun is compared to the one I’d been using for the past several hours. “Neglecting you is a mistake we’ll just have to take care of right now, won’t we?”

  Examining the rifle more closely, I double check for where the magazine release button is located and thumb it down and pull out the rectangular container. Pushing gently on the top shell to make sure there isn’t any give, I verify that it’s fully loaded and re-insert it into the bottom of the gun. I estimate that there must be close to thirty bullets in the gun which should be plenty enough for me to see how effective I am with it. If more tests are needed, then I did bring one of Ren’s boxes out with me with more ammo in it.

  Raising the rifle up so that I can sight down the top of it, I notice something I hadn’t paid attention to before: there’s a small scope mounted along the top rail. It isn’t one of the big, round tube-like ones I always expected to see on guns from the movies. This one is just a small box with little windows on either end of it. It seems non-intrusive enough, but as soon as I look through it, I realize there is a small red dot hovering in the middle of the window. It isn’t a fancy projected laser dot, but just one that seems to exist within the box.

  “Ok,” I say quietly. “That’s certainly interesting. But how useful is it?”

  Holding the rifle up so that I can see down the length of it, I attempt to place the red dot in the center of a discarded paint can I had thrown out into the parking lot earlier in the evening. I figure it will make as solid of a target as anything else to begin with.

  Exhaling slowly, I pull the trigger and wait to see how much of an assault on my senses this new gun will bring.

  Shh-crack.

  The sound that rockets out in front of me is much more than I anticipated it being, and my ears sting from the impact of it. It’s loud, but not unbearable. It was more unexpected than painful. For some reason, even though I knew it would still have sound to it, I thought it would be quieter. I thought I remembered it being quieter during the firefight when I first found it being used against me. I think my senses were already being dampened by the Darkness at the time, though, and that may have skewed my perceptions.

  But it’s ok. Now that I know what to expect, I can brace myself for it and not let it hit me as hard. It was a learning experience, but not a completely detrimental one.

  Inhaling deeply to fortify myself for the struggle I know is coming, I accidentally get a painful reminder of one of the other drawbacks to using guns: the acrid odor. The rancid burnt egg reek of the gunpowder slowly drifts back towards me, and I can tell its influence on the surrounding air is much stronger than the smaller caliber gun’s was.

  With more power comes more stink, I think and try to exhale heavily to prevent it from coating my throat even more than it already has. I wonder if I keep moving around after I fire this thing if that will help keep it from burning out my lungs?

  Then I realize there was one surprise benefit to using the rifle: the muzzle flash was almost non-existent. The suppressor on the end of the barrel may not have completely killed the sonic boom of the bullet leaving the end, but it seems to have done an effective job of tamping down the explosive gases that I’m sure would have flared out. I barely even noticed the light when the slug came out. It was on par with the pistol I was firing earlier, and I would have thought that a bit unlikely.

  “I’ll take that as a small win,” I say, and then thinking of the bullet reminds me of the one I had just fired. “So how accurate was I?” I ask.

  Looking out across the parking lot, I locate the paint can and notice that it is still slowly spinning on the pavement. Apparently I had hit it, and the impact had not only moved it but set it dancing in celebration. It was hard to tell if I had hit the can exactly where I had been aiming, but the fact that I hit the can at all was a success I was willing to accept.

  Bringing the rifle back up to my shoulder, and this time bracing myself for the sound I know is coming, I bring the cylindrical shape into view inside the little scope and center the red dot on as much of the “center mass” of the thing as I can while it is still in motion.

  “Bang,” I whisper while exhaling and squeeze the trigger.

  Shh-crack, the rifle repeats just like before, but this time the report doesn’t hurt nearly as much as I let the Darkness dampen the impact. The sound is noticeable but also far from distracting.

  Instead of using my abilities to filter out the burnt powder smell from infiltrating my respiratory system, I just stand up and step back and put immediate distance between myself and the offensive odor. I can still smell it and know it’s there, but by just moving backwards I managed to lessen its impact enough to prevent my need of the Darkness. It might not be the best solution, but it’s one that will certainly suffice.

  Looking up and out, I watch as the paint can comes down from the sky where it has just hopped up like butter that’d been thrown onto a hot skillet.

  “Dios mio!” I exclaim barely noticing the Spanish slipping back to me. “That was fast. And hit hard.” I had barely had enough time to even glance up after the shot, and the bullet had already torn through the paint can and launched it into the air. When I had fired the pistol, I could follow the metal projectile through the air on occasion or at least see the moment of impact so that I could adjust my aim for the next shot.

  But this rifle? The bullets moved so much more quickly. It had to be almost three times faster than the ones from the pistol, I guessed. It was almost as if the bullet teleported to the target rather than flew there. That couldn’t possibly be true, but the difference was astounding. And it was something I would have to take into consideration later. Both when firing the gun, and I realized, when someone was firing one at me. I was understanding these things so much better already.

  Not only did it move faster, but they hit harder, too. When I fired the pistol, it felt like the bullets would slap into the target. Solid and impressive, and what I had thought had been powerful. Until I fired this rifle. That paint can hadn’t just been “slapped” by the impact of the slug, it had been punched. By a dump truck. Carrying a load of lead-covered boulders. No wonder the sound was so much more extreme. It had to be.

  As the can landed and bounced and slowed down, I noticed something that I had missed before. When I’d shot the can with the pistol, I had put a number of nice, little holes into it. Made it look like a container of silver Swiss cheese. But this rifle hadn’t just put a hole through it. It had crushed one side of the can li
ke it had been kicked by an angry giant. And the opposite side had a volcanic eruption of splayed metal where the bullet had torn through on its way out.

  “Ok,” I told the gun resting in my hands. “That was impressive and scary. I guess I should have expected something like that. That’s on me.” Looking down at the gun, the realization of just how much power and destruction I’m holding begins to dawn on me. “You could help me solve a lot of our problems when I go out,” I say. “Or get me into even more trouble if I’m not careful. I’m going to have to remember that. So…let’s get a little better with you to help keep you out of that ‘trouble’ category.”

  And I do get better. Considerably better as I continue practicing my aim and my ability to tamper my senses to prevent them from being overwhelmed. It becomes difficult to analyze my shots and improve my aim without tapping into the Darkness to slow down time and watch the bullets travel through the air. They just move too quickly for me to be able to track them in any other way. In the beginning I do allow the Darkness some free reign in assisting me, but as I improve I do my best to limit its influence. As with the smaller handgun, I want to improve on my own terms and without the need of an artificial assistant. Even if that assistant is incredibly useful.

  Partway through my emptying of the second magazine, my thumb brushes a small button on the handgrip that I had ignored previously. I hadn’t thought much about it as I assumed it was just one of the many parts of the gun that I just didn’t understand. Aside from the loading and firing of the gun, I didn’t believe my knowledge of firearms went very deep. But as I was looking around the backyard for my next target, my thumb bumped the button again. This time instead of removing my thumb from the small switch, out of curiosity I went ahead and depressed it. Part of me had subconsciously been fearing this was some kind of “game ending” button that would either cause the whole rifle to fall apart or lock up. I wasn’t sure which direction it would go, but I feared it would lead to my not being able to use it anymore, and I wasn’t done enjoying myself. But sometimes curiosity can be a powerful motivation. This was one of those times.