“Shut up!” He shouted at me. “Give me all your money and then get out of the truck slowly!”
Give me all your money?
My mind repeated. “Are you serious?” I asked him, still unsure if I had heard him correctly. “The world’s gone to hell and you want all of my money?” I couldn’t, for the life of me, understand what he planned on doing with the twenty-three dollars I had to my name. It wasn’t like he could use it for anything when every store you could possibly come across was vacant of anyone, except maybe the undead, so why did he need my money.
“Then get out of the truck!” He commanded.
Apparently this little punk had been so secluded in the back of the cab that he hadn’t noticed my rifle or the pistol on my hip or he would have disarmed me first thing. That could prove to work in my favor as long as I could keep his eyes from spotting either of them. There wasn’t much room to navigate within the cab and if we got into a scuffle, the last thing I wanted was for his massive revolver to go off and deafen me. It had already happened once tonight in the grandparents’ house and my ears were still ringing slightly, so for it to happen again would be extremely bad.
A sudden tap on the driver window drew my attention from the kid and his hand cannon to the helpless victim, who was now smiling at me with that smile of someone who thought they were about to turn the tables on a person that had wronged them.
The barrel touched my head once more and I was abruptly angered by the lack of safety this little son of a bitch was showing. “Watch that damn gun!”
He moved the barrel away.
“You should have helped me when you had the chance,” she said through a closed window, which made her voice muffled at best. I acted upon that and put my right hand up to me ear, closest to where the kid’s gun had just been and acted as though I couldn’t hear what she said.
“What?” I asked her in a muffled voice of my own.
She grabbed the door and found it locked. “Unlock the doors!”
Once again I toyed with her. “I can’t hear a word you’re saying.”
The Kid behind me piped in. “She said unlock the doors, so do it!”
She threw her attention to the Kid in the backseat. “If he doesn’t unlock the damn doors, then shoot him!”
Time was clicking passing by and I only had maybe a few more seconds before something – either good or bad transpired. I stole another glance to see a hesitant look on the Kid’s face, which told me he had yet to kill anyone and was seriously struggling with what to do.
She pounded on the window and screamed at me. “Open the god damned doors!”
This time in a calm voice that startled me, the Kid spoke. “You have until the count of three to unlock and open your door or I’ll shoot you.”
I grabbed at the door handle.
“What the hell are you doing?” The kid screamed at me. “I told you to keep your hands on the steering wheel!”
“Then how the hell am I going to open the damn door, idiot?” I shot back in an equal tone.
The Kid thought for a moment.
“You know as well as I do, that she’ll eventually get tired of you. And what do you think will happen to you at that point?” I asked him, trying my best to instill a little doubt into his young mind. All it took was a single seed, which could sprout into a tree of choices.
‘We take care of each other,” he replied. His voice lacked any real signs of convincing me of his words. It sounded more rehearsed than anything else.
“Shoot him!” the woman screamed to the Kid.
“Sounds like she’s making you do all of her dirty work. That’s not taking care of each other… that’s called manipulation,” I added.
“Just unlock the doors,” he said.
I hit the unlock button with my left hand the Woman quickly jerked the door open with a shit eating grin forming on her face. “You’re not such a badass now, are you?”
“And the one manipulating kids is?” I said to her and smiled.
She slapped me. The smile was erased from my face and I looked at her with anger flushing my face. She took a few steps back and looked at her accomplice. “Shoot him in the head.”
“What?” the Kid asked her. “He opened the doors, just like you told him to do.”
“We don’t need him starting any trouble, now do what I tell you,” she said. “Shoot him in the head and I’ll pull his body out onto the pavement.”
“You haven’t ruined your life yet, kid. But I guarantee you that if you do this, it’ll eat you alive,” I told him, trying not to sound as though I was pleading for my life, although deep down I think I was.
“Who takes care of you?” the Woman asked the Kid. “I do, that’s who. I also give you every desire you could ever imagine, don’t I?” She added and grabbed one of her firm tits.
“You’re the one with the gun, Kid. You shouldn’t take orders from anyone… you should give them,” I said, doing my best to make a volatile situation even more unstable. However, if the Kid was nothing more than a horny little bastard that had never worked, had no goals in life, then I was about to be dead and I wasn’t ready to die just yet.
“Darren, shoot him… for me,” she said in a seductive voice. “Just shoot him so you can mount me. I want to feel you deep inside me… I want you.”
I had to think quickly.
“How old are you, Darren. Sixteen, maybe seventeen at the most?”
He coldly replied, “I’m sixteen! What the hell does it matter how old I am?”
“I have a nine year old son and a two year old daughter, so if you listen to her and you shoot me. You’ll not only be killing me, but you’re also killing them. Can you live with killing two innocent children all for some mediocre sex,
if that
, from a roaring slut that doesn’t have the courage to get her own hands dirty.” I explained to him.
“Shoot him; he’s just trying to manipulate you!” She countered.
“No, bitch! You’re the only one out here trying to manipulate anyone!” I yelled at her. My anger was coming on like a tornado and it took everything I had to keep from leaping out of the truck and taking her to the ground where I would choke the life from her with my bare hands. My only problem with that was the horny bastard behind me with the hand cannon.
“You think I can’t do my own dirty work?” She asked me.
I had presumed that she didn’t have a gun, which was a mistake to even let wonder through my mind, when in fact she could have one. But having one and using one on someone were two completely different things.
“No I don’t,” I told her.
Her attention, once again, went to Darren. “I want you to shoot him in the head, right now. Show me you love me like you say you do. Prove it to me.”
The Kid turned his attention from her to me, and then back to her. The struggle was immense and I could feel that he was slowly wearing down and the pure need to prove to this woman that he would do anything for her was swiftly becoming apparent. I only had one shot at changing all of this and my words had done nothing. I’d have to try a more hands on approach if I wanted to ever leave and continue my search for Gage.
The Woman reached for something behind her and withdrew a small revolver, probably a .38 of some sort and held it by her side, trying to display dominance over me and Darren as well.
“See, she has a gun as well, so you don’t have to do this,” I told him. “Make her do it and see how it ruins her life.”
“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” She screamed. “Shoot him, Darren! Do it god damnit!”
I felt the barrel touch the right side of my head and with my hands still up I could easily grab the hand cannon, although I wouldn’t be fast enough to deal with both threats simultaneously, so I’d have to face them both one at a time. I wondered which one of them actually had the balls to pull the trigger though.
“We’ll let him get out and take the truck,” Darren told the Woman.
The words the Kid spoke were like music to me ears, but, the only problem with that that I could see was the Woman not going for it and alerting him to the fact I was armed, or I could be wrong and she would just shoot me herself. Since all of this had started in the truck, I had told myself multiple times that I needed to do something, yet still I had done nothing but try and twist words around and get them to fight one another… which hadn’t fully worked. As much as I hated to attempt it and risk getting shot from either direction, sitting here doing nothing more than talking would get me just that.
“Shoot me, Darren,” I said, instantly stunning both of them. “Go ahead and put a bullet through my head. What difference does it make whether I have kids or not? What difference does it make if she doesn’t have the stomach for it? Just do it and get it over with, because frankly I am sick and tired of arguing, as well as even looking at both of you!”
In the instant I had calculated the outcome and gained myself a few brief seconds to do whatever it was I needed to do in order to survive. I spun to the right and grabbed the hand cannon with my left hand, pushing it upward in case it went off and using my right hand to thrust toward the holster and my eagerly awaiting pistol. The Kid, caught off guard, wasn’t able to put up much of a fight and as I ripped my .9mm out a single shot rang out and I could feel a growing pain form in my lower back, which was followed by a massive burning sensation.
I removed the hand cannon from Darren and swiftly pointed my pistol at the Woman. There was no hesitation in my next move. I wasn’t swayed by the growing look of fear on her face or the fact that her gun would not fire, although she was still trying to get it to work. I held no remorse or pity for her and pulled the trigger three times. She jerked repeatedly until the last round entered just above the bridge of her nose, to which she stopped instantly and fell to the ground, the shots echoing back to me from the front of the store.
“Holy shit, you shot her! Jesus, Christ man you just blew her away!” Darren screamed as the fear took full control of him.
Not wanting to base my next move on pure luck, I dropped the hand cannon, which had turned out to be a Smith and Wesson model twenty-nine .44 magnum. The gun was a beast and could easily have taken my entire head off if he had shot me with it. I offered him, instead, the barrel of my Beretta. “Get out!”
I exited the pickup as he did and slammed him hard against the side, shoving the pistol in his face, the barrel pressed hard against his forehead. He was still spewing negative surprises about me gunning down his slut, although once he could feel the barrel press against his head he forgot all about her and shut up. The fear he held at knowing these were the final moments of his life should have put a smile on my face. It didn’t this time; I was still too pissed off.
Standing there in the rain with a gun to his head, looking at the blood pool around the Woman’s head, he quickly grasped the seriousness of the situation and the total amount of danger he was now facing. “Please don’t kill me, mister!”
“You were about to blow my head off, but now that the roles are reversed you want me to show you mercy!” I shouted to him, sure that with the gunfire any undead we had not seen were well on their way to investigate, so time was limited. Plus there was the growing pain in my lower back, to which I wondered if the bullet had missed the vest and buried into my body? A gunshot was not something to play around with, even when the world was normal. Now that it was hell bent, it could mean death in a slow agonizing way.
“I didn’t even have any bullets in the damn gun!” He continued, slipped a hand into his front right pocket and pulled out four live rounds. “I just thought once you saw the gun you’d run away.”
“Well, she had bullets in her gun and had it not been for the gun misfiring, you’d have this truck right now. Unfortunately for you, I’m holding a gun to your head now, so tell me how it feels,” I said to him, wanting more than anything to pull the trigger and just be done with it.
The bullets fell from his hand and hit the pavement, rolling in a few different directions.
“And what if you would have had to use that thing, then what?” I asked.
“I didn’t want to… I just pulled it to keep her happy,” he told me.
There was a lot I could say to him; however the odds of him retaining any of it weren’t there. He was young and impressionable – an easy target for anyone with the least amount of manipulation skills and boobs. I could yell and preach until the sun came up or the undead arrived, whichever came first, but still he wouldn’t understand any of it.
“Get out of my sight,” I said to him.
He looked at me with confusion burning rampant in his eyes, as I backed away and lowered the .9mm to my side.
“What?” He stammered to me.
“Go before I change my mind!” I shouted and he shot away from the truck and headed for the dead Woman, stopping to look down at her bleeding body. His eyes crossed the small revolver she had and he looked back at me, knowing that I would cut him down if he even thought about going for it. His life, and whether he lived or died in the next few seconds, depended fully on his intentions.
I crawled into the truck, started it and began backing up.
“Wait, you’re just going to leave me out here?” He asked with a shaky voice.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I am,” I replied and began driving off. He chased after me, running as quickly as he could to keep up.