Double Shot

by Chris Bostic

  “Fuck! A bullet!” I rolled to the side as more booms followed.

  Another projectile pinged off the tin.

  CHAPTER 8

  I sprinted back around the corner, headed for the closer side door rather than the one I’d come out earlier. I yanked it open and immediately began shouting, “Get down! They’re shooting!”

  I had to round another corner to get to the outer walkway. Way down the aisle I saw the group still gathered together in the same spot around the table.

  “Gunshots! Coming at us!” I shouted, not sure how else to describe it.

  I gestured wildly as I ran, quickly becoming breathless. Seeing no one except Clarice bother to come toward me, I ended up jogging the whole way. Actually more like fast walking at that point, seeing how I was completely and utterly winded.

  Clarice watched me, saying, “Hope, are you-”

  I waved her off, intent on approaching the whole group. “Someone’s…outside.” I gasped for air. “Shooting…at-”

  Clarice grabbed me by the arm. Her fingers tightened around my bicep as she shushed me. “Oh, you’re so silly,” she said as matter-of-factly as possible, yet squeezing much harder than I thought possible. “I’m sure that’s not what that was, dear.”

  “Boy that sounded a lot like thunder,” James noted.

  Paul chimed in with, “You know I thought there oughta be a storm moving in. When it gets this hot, you know it always brews up an afternoon thunder boomer.”

  “That definitely happens around here,” Tim added. “Pretty much any day as hot and humid as this one.” He pulled at the neck of his shirt as if to confirm his point.

  Aggravated, I shook out of Clarice’s grasp, and pointed at the floors above us. “I swear I hear bullets hit…like right up there.”

  “Now that you mention it, I kinda thought I heard a tiny little ping,” James said all nonchalant. “Had to be a squirrel dropping a nut or something.”

  Tim offered up a different opinion, saying, “It was probably a bird.”

  “Or fireworks,” James added. “Y’all got idiots shooting off bottle rocks all day from now ‘til after the Fourth, right?”

  “Oh heck yeah,” Clarice answered. “It drives my poor cat crazy.”

  “My yard’s a damn mess for a few weeks,” Paul noted, as they all droned on with differing opinions. “Bottle rockets oughta be banned.”

  The squirrel thing was ridiculous, seeing how there were no trees close by as tall as a four-story building. In fact, there weren’t really even that many trees at all on the whole campus, which was a bit of a disappointment seeing how the amateur photographer in me would have appreciated some natural beauty amongst our rustic buildings.

  But, rightly so, the distillery owners didn’t want to risk a storm blowing a tree over and having it take down a whole warehouse.

  Even the barrel loading process inside the building was balanced precisely. Too much weight on one side could be enough to bring one down, let alone a giant tree crashing into the side.

  But that wasn’t important in the moment, I told myself, shaking off my latest distraction.

  I tuned back in to hear Paul say, “Hear me out. Some kind of murder mystery-type thing would be a great little story to include as part of a special tasting adventure. Like the way some of the other distilleries have those ghost tours.”

  “I like it,” Clarice said, hanging on his every word as I stood there incredulous.

  He ate up the attention and kept going, saying, “Imagine if you blended a fake robbery or something into one of those dinner theater show kinda formats.”

  The way he said fake robbery really got under my skin. Before I could say something stupid, James jumped on the murder mystery bandwagon.

  “Oh, yeah. Something like that would’ve really gotten us going,” James said. “What a way to cap an event, like if you added some kind of Jesse James stick up.”

  Tim just went with it, saying, “You know we definitely want to make barrel selection an unforgettable experience.”

  Leave to bubbly Clarice to wrap it all up with, “We’re gonna have to workshop that. You guys are really on to something.”

  I thought she was on something, like illicit drugs or a strong case of denial, and opened my mouth to interrupt.

  She side-eyed me, half proud and half curious. Maybe wondering if I’d concocted a whole shooting story for a little fun, unscripted drama—or wondering if I’d lost my mind.

  I pinched my lips shut and shrugged, letting her think whatever she wanted.

  To be honest, it seemed more like the latter to me. But if I’d really heard what I was sure I had heard, then I didn’t know what the hell was wrong with those people.

  They had to have heard the latest shots.

  In fact, they had at least acknowledged the pinging in a roundabout way, but still didn’t have a care in the world. Granted the booms weren’t all that close, and maybe the pinging wasn’t that big of a deal. Perhaps it had been a bird or some other little critter, or more likely a bottle rocket.

  But that terrified me just as much.

  What kind of an idiot would shoot fireworks at twenty thousand barrels of accelerant? Or guns?

  I didn’t see how anyone could be that dumb.

  Or could they?

  Damned if it all made me wonder if I was inventing the gunshots again, just like the shadows.

  I sat back as the others talked among themselves, reliving the tasting from the moment of banging out the first bung up to me bursting back inside.

  I felt like an idiot, unsure how there could be imminent danger without big black vans racing up the driveway to rob the place. Armed thugs clearly weren’t roving all around the campus.

  I shook my head and blew out an exasperated breath. It sure sounded like a good time to take a couple sick hours and go home to bed.

  Then I heard another round of shooting.

  From inside, they sounded much more muffled. More like deep, distant booms that could have been anything from a truck bed slamming to the shutting of a door.

  No one reacted to the noise, other than some mumbling from Paul that sounded like he was talking about summer storms again.

  Thankfully, nothing pinged the building, but it didn’t have to. I knew what I had heard, and I was done. My chest seized up tighter than the motor of my tired old Ford. I tried to force myself to walk or talk or anything. But mostly to just leave.

  If only I could breathe.

  Finally, as I leaned over by a rick trying hard to not throw up from the heat and recent exertion, Tim said, “We should probably make our way back to the gift shop.” He pointed toward the center aisle, away from the direction of the shooting. “There’s a back way out that’s a bit shorter.”

  “About time,” I mumbled under my breath.

  I fished my phone back out of my pocket. Still nothing from Lee.

  He knew what was going on. He would believe me.

  My fingers flew on the keypad as I fell in behind the others.

  Shots fired from woods

  I went back and added a question mark to the message just in case, and hit send. Then I sent a couple more texts.

  Or fireworks?

  Headed to gift shop

  I looked up in time to avoid running up the back of James. He’d been talking to Clarice and Tim about some other brands they might want to sample and select sometime for their stores.

  As unbelievable as it seemed to me, none of them showed the slightest concern.

  “We keep the Master’s Collection in the next building over,” Tim explained. “We can stop in there at G on the way back. It’s right on the way.”

  I wasn’t opposed to ducking into different buildings along the trek back to the gift shop. That seemed like the best way to minimize our exposure outside, though there was substantial space between just about every building on the property.

  Tim showed no sign of rushing. He led the group toward the rear entrance, with the clients ri
ght on his heels, hanging on his every word about mash bills and aging.

  I lingered back, fine with leaving, but also happy to have the less concerned take the lead.

  In the darker depths of my mind, I thought, better them than me. That’ll teach ‘em if they’re wrong.

  I shook my head to clear the thoughts. There was no reason to actually be a bitch just because no one believed me. If that was the case, I’d be a miserable old hag all the time.

  No one deserved that. Not even me.

  Tim paused before he opened the back door. It seemed like he even subtly took a wide look outside before holding the door open for the clients.

  Clarice rushed ahead so she could take the door from him, thereby allowing Tim to keep the lead of our little caravan. She passed it off to me.

  I couldn’t have been more surprised at how much heavier that door was than the others. My tired grip let the door slip and clank shut behind us unintentionally.

  The impact shook the entire rack house. It echoed all the way across the complex, reminiscent of a gunshot. Singular. Clearly not the dozens I’d thought I’d heard earlier.

  The others turned back to look at me, and I managed a short, embarrassed apology.

  “Keep it together, Hope,” I told myself as we took off across the complex. Having already determined no one was out moving around other than us, I put my head down and worked on putting one tired foot in front of the other.

  CHAPTER 9

  We cut across a grassy field, seemingly avoiding the longer gravel path that ran from Building H over to Building G.

  I kept to the back, still staring at my feet as I went—mostly. Every few steps I felt compelled to glance around the property, seeing nothing.

  Clarice caught my eyes when I looked up at about the halfway point.

  “What happened to that million-dollar smile of yours?” she asked.

  That was a surefire question to piss me off. The effects were magnified given the stress, so I knew there was no chance of holding back, even though my fury ended up directed at my boss.

  “Not much to smile about,” I told her. “It’s like y’all don’t believe me. You heard the shots, right?”

  “Probably fireworks, don’t you think?”

  “Not really,” I said, and hoped she wouldn’t accuse me of not thinking.

  “We sent you to check it out,” Clarice said, nonplussed.

  “Gunshots,” I said slowly for added effect. “Listen to what you’re saying. Even if it was fireworks, how does that make it any safer? The whole place could burn down.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic, dear.” She slackened her pace so we could talk more privately. “Look, Hope, I’m sure it’s nothing or I would have heard something by now.” She checked her phone again as if to prove the point. “We don’t want to scare the clients for no reason.”

  “Say what?” I held back a couple of unkind curses. “So you’re seriously letting them think this is all an act? And I’m the clown?”

  The last part bothered me more than I cared to admit, but not nearly as much as the idea strange things were going on close to the property and no one cared. Then again, we weren’t under attack. It all made no sense, and that just made it worse for me to stomach.

  Clarice’s voice dropped to a full whisper to show me a whole different side to her.

  “We get text alerts if there’s a real reason to lock down.” Before I could jump on her words for questioning Lee’s advice, she said, “Sadly, it wouldn’t be our first active shooter situation. Or our second. We’ve had particularly bad luck with some of our barrel house workers.”

  My eyes bugged out, wondering what kind of place I’d gotten myself into. I knew morale was poor, but….

  “Ever since the Bison Fork incident that you know all too well, we’ve been thinking about ways to deal with that,” she continued with a shrug. “Our last security consultant said avoiding a panic and carrying on was the best option. We just send a quick text to employees, and then go about our business, if we can. We keep things quiet but alert, and resort to hunkering down in safe spaces only if deemed necessary by the public safety director.”

  “That’s completely insane,” I uttered. And not at all like any security protocols Lee had ever described to me.

  “Well, no need to incite an unnecessary panic.”

  “Who’s the public safety director anyway? Lee?”

  She ignored the question to say, “Besides, keeping things under wraps is much better for our corporate image.”

  “Not if someone gets hurt. How’s that gonna work out?”

  “Alright so far. It’s just been a couple, uhm…false alarms. Well, not really false, but it’s not been anything super serious yet.”

  “Glad to know it’s nothing super serious,” I replied, using air quotes on the later part.

  “Well…so far, so good.”

  I felt like Lee when I replied, “That’s a lame slogan, not an actual plan.”

  She shrugged at that too. “I hear you. I don’t know how I feel about it, but that is the policy.”

  “Policy is just that. Best laid plans need to change to match the situation,” I said, parroting Lee again.

  Clarice motioned for us to hurry to catch up to the others. Tim already had them close to Rack House G. He stooped over to open the door.

  She looked back over her shoulder one last time at where we’d come from. “Besides, if those were shots, and I doubt it, they were miles away.”

  Like you’d know.

  “They were shots,” I fired back, testy enough to stand up for myself. “No way they weren’t.”

  “I guess you would be the one to know,” she said as patronizing as humanly possible. She might as well have patted me on the head and said, “Poor dear.”

  “Damn right, I would,” I mumbled under my breath. To think anyone would belittle what I went through back at Bison Fork stung, though not completely shocking. Social media, and the media in general, could be brutal. But my own boss? That hurt, even though I should have expected such little compassion from her.

  I quieted to keep from saying something I might regret. I decided I should follow up with James about that assistant manager job—and hope he didn’t think I had been overly dramatic.

  Either way, Old Tyler no longer seemed like the place for me.

  James and Paul paid me less attention at that time. They seemed thoroughly enthralled with Tim’s little impromptu tour, completely oblivious to what might be going on around us.

  After checking inside, Tim held the door open for them and invited them into the warehouse with a flourish. Then he waited for us to catch up.

  “We won’t take long,” he told Clarice, “unless….”

  “I think we’re good. Still nothing about the, uh…you know.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” he replied. “Probably another false alarm, if anything.”

  “More like no alarm at all,” Clarice said without bothering to acknowledge my existence.

  Tim leaned in closer, but I could still hear him when he asked, “So you definitely didn’t get a text either?”

  “Nope. So you might as well take your time and see if you can work out another sale like we were talking about earlier.”

  “It’d be nice to have them come back for another.” Tim looked to me. “Might get to be your regular gig, showing off new barrel picks to their clientele.”

  “I could handle that,” I said, perhaps more enthusiastically than I should have. Anything to get away from Clarice.

  The way I figured, no one had the kind of bad luck with bosses as I had. Not even Lee. He’d only had to deal with Alyssa. At the distillery, he was more or less in charge of himself, other than periodically checking in with the owners.

  I’d only seen them a handful of times in three months. A borderline elderly man and somewhat younger wife, they lived way off in Louisville, and didn’t tend to stop in more than once a week. Typically less. Even for a client as
well-heeled as the grocery store gang, they didn’t bother to stop in to share pleasantries.

  No doubt their absence, and the lack of an overall plant manager or CEO-type figure to fill in on-site for the day-to-day, contributed to the dysfunction.

  I couldn’t imagine being that hands off. I could barely control things right in front of me, much less from long distance.

  Once we were all inside the rack house, Tim took us down the middle aisle in relative silence. The clients seemed to enjoy the trip through another warehouse that looked about exactly the same as the first one.

  Tim didn’t have a sampling display set up in G, since he obviously hadn’t planned on visiting there. But, like any good Master Distiller, he had the tools available to sample anytime, anywhere.

  “Let’s go up on the second floor,” he suggested. “There’s some real honey barrels in the middle of the house. The heart is always perfect for weather fluctuations.”

  “Sounds good,” James said. “Lead on.”

  “It’s not far,” Tim threw over his shoulder. “Just as far as the elevator.”

  “Cool,” Paul said. “I always wanted to ride one up.”

  Truth be told, I had too. All my visits for product and ambiance photography had been taken on the first floor.

  I assumed the other floors didn’t look any different other than the first, except ours didn’t have any bars on the higher windows. That seemed customary for most facilities, where in the olden days they hadn’t expected thieves to try to scale a slick metal building to get inside a higher window.

  At the elevator, which entailed little more than the same wooden floorboards surrounded by a flimsy wood railing on three sides, Tim stepped inside and picked up an old metal box with two oversized buttons. Presumably up and down.

  Tim squeezed to the back and motioned for Clarice to slide in next to him.

  The elevator seemed smaller than normal, not that they were usually very large. Surely it couldn’t have held more than two barrels at a time, if that.

  “Come on in, gentlemen,” Clarice said, motioning for the others.