cool, dark places

The man Eli ate in the sterile, rotten-smelling break room. The clerk – who had not eaten in the break-room ever, for he hated the smell of biodegrading cardboard and stinky-ass stale fucking coffee and the wonderful accord such olfactory murder struck with the nausea of the fluorescents – reasoned the man would probably be fine by himself. The skies had opened for three more days since they had arrived at the store, and in that time the clerk fed the man from the frozen stock and always delivered the blue and white pills to him. Always the tray came back, set on the photo counter with the pills untouched, and the admiration of the clerk for this particular asceticism grew.

This fellow is altogether picaresque and principled, wouldn't you say so, Sal?

The bird shifted at the sound of its name – servos whirring in the talons, actuators humming as it moved on the glove, the end result of some laudable programmer's dedication to creating a facsimile of impatience. The reassuring and muffled feel of the claws biting into the thick leather.

Yes, you would. Doesn't it make you jealous, Sal, that such an archetypal construct walks this solemn earth? The world of this man and his antiquated ideas are far behind him. I don't know how in the world I should sympathize, and yet... mmmyes, and yet.

Still talking, the left arm extended to hold the bird's perch level, he reached over to the wall and withdrew the lever-action rifle by its strap from the nail where it hung. Pistol and longarm dangling from his body – more like luggage than anything else. The brown fedora perched comfortably on his head and the long brown coat seeming to trail behind him as he went.

The doors whirred aside, and he stepped out into the clearing air. Rain trailing its ghostly, misting fingers downward to tickle the earth to the west. Every so often the petulant murmur of thunder – threats shouted over the shoulder of a bully that has raged impotently and walks sulking away in defeat despite his strength.

No amount of rain would sate the soil. Water flowed into the parched cracks of the hard earth and the cracks remained. In the silence of the morning and the sun's reluctant climb, it was already hot enough to wither a rose.

His ears followed the flowing sounds. Searched for one of the cool, dark places. Every rain was different. The rocky canals, dry most of the time, could fill unexpectedly. A rock might come dislodged – earth might shift or give. God's or the universe's or fate's randomness loosing a torrent unto any unsuspecting fool camping in the otherwise suitably shaded recesses.

He found one with a muddy low-point, the water sparkling and still. In a few hours, when the sun reached its blinding apex, the water would dry up. The earth puckering like scar tissue in the baking heat. Any creatures unfortunate enough to need water were running out the shot clock on this one. Good a place as any, Joe. You listening?

The ersatz falcon made no motion. But for the soothing hum pulsing up the clerk's arm coming from its inner workings, it might have run out of batteries.

Saladin.

The bird straightened – tinny, disembodied voice issuing from within its beak, though beneath the hood it did not move. Recite authorization code, please.

He put on a thick Irish brogue and ended every statement as a question. I am Yusuf ibn Ayyud, the Righteousness of Faith. There is no God but God, and Mohammad is his prophet. Mine shall be the doing of all good deeds.

Remove hood and issue command.

He reached up and undid the hood, pulling it away. The sleek, curved head of the creature did not look at him.

Patrol for small-class. Paint blue. Recon potential hostiles. Paint red. Execute.

The bird shrieked the recording he'd snatched from a movie, adopting the tenor voice of a battle-crazed mameluke.

ALLAAAAAAAAAAAAHU AKBAR!

A single fierce beat of the wings and it took flight, soaring up as if gravity held no dominion over it. The wings briefly eclipsed the sun, the creature's silhouette imprinted on his retina.

They were out in the forest and he was the disciplined one and the serious one and he was the one who was on task. The three others that shared his features and his voice were splintered off among the rocks and he was the quiet in the center. The rifle in his hands, lever out so the action gaped open.

Shut up Danny, nobody loves you, not even Jesus!

I'm telling Mom!

That's because you're a fag.

You stay out of this!

He kept quiet. They'd wasted the .22 long-rifle rounds, the yellow jackets, on interesting-looking rocks and whatever seemed like it needed to get shot – this was the last one. They'd flushed a fawn out of the underbrush and run from the nearby doe that came at them in retribution – his scolding falling on deaf ears.

At present, he did not think of his squabbling brothers, running around in bare feet and swimming trunks. He put out of his mind the unpleasant line of thinking that naturally followed his parents' insistence that the four of them wander off and find something to do while they... straightened up the camp. At present, all of that was noise, and the snake crawling toward his youngest sibling's ankle was the most important thing.

Above him, the hawk circled. His eyes out of focus, the rifle still hanging from the strap, not even at the ready. Always at the ready, on the strap or in his grip and sighted – ever vigilant. He saw the movement before the hawk's gaze fell upon it and the machine painted the target with a wandering blue dot. A snake, moving as slowly and elegantly as it could. Waiting at the water's edge for much the same reason the clerk did.

The rifle was up and sighted. On the front sight he'd dabbed orange-pink neon nail polish from the cosmetics aisle. The straight bar of metal shown between the dark hills of the rear sights, the gyroscopic blue dot staying for one eerie moment fixed perfectly still across the back of the unknowing snake as Saladin pulled up just so – drag canceling forward motion for tiniest fraction of a second and...

The snake's head burst and his brother shouted and jumped what seemed like five feet in the air. The serpent was crawling one moment, dead the next. An absolute and unarguable dichotomy.

His youngest brother cursing and jumping around, the others laughing at him.

QUIET!

They were.

Maybe you'll watch yourself next time instead of relying on me to use the last bullet. He threw the rifle to his youngest brother, who fumbled with it and dropped it. Come on, we're heading back.

He saw the bright blue dot as it settled on the head of the snake. He brought the rifle to bear and he had to time to see it was a kingsnake, a sharp, solid black that betrayed it when it slithered against the alkali. His rifle's report rippled out into the empty air, and he heard the effect even a little bit of residual moisture had on the sound. By the time the crack of it reached the kingsnake, it was dead. The creature was a great granddaddy – nearly five feet long, as long as he'd ever seen one of that type.

Sal couldn't lift something that large, so it fell to him to decide whether or not he wanted to go down to retrieve it. He cast his glance back to the store, sitting on the precipice. The rain had eroded the soil that settled at the rock's edge. He saw no movement there.

He reached into his coat and brought out the little ear-bud with the small microphone next to it, plugged it into his right ear and spoke a simple command to his companion.

Cancel small-class patrol.

It wasn't a treacherous journey down into the muddy canal, but it was a journey. He found purchase and made his way slowly, with the sort of exaggerated care so unlike the rest of his behavior. The reptile lay destroyed, head beside the water, with its blood and brains in a drying splatter alongside it. There could be other things in the dark, hiding in the shadows beneath the rocky overhang, clustered there and waiting to drink the water -- or like him, waiting for those who came to it.

It was within reach if he just stretched a little...

The overhang gave way beneath him and he fell down into the waterway, plunging into the mud and the wet.

Mike with his bicycle overturned. The second son – always trying to prove himself better and stronger. The front wheel had struck the unyielding muck and he'd been sent flying over the handlebars. The boy's arm was broken.

I'm fine!

Yes, he said, hitting the kickstand on his own bike and dismounting. Why don't you get up and clap your hands in celebration?

Fuck you, I said I'm fine!

Or maybe you could do a cartwheel. Come on. He reached out his hand toward his brother's good one.

Mike slapped it away, and the violence of his motion excited the break and he held it to himself and bit back angry, furious tears. He'd effectively benched his whole summer and he wanted to be angry at everybody.

I can sit here in the mud with you until you see some damn sense, he said to his brother, or I could just carry you kicking and screaming.

I'll kill you.

Yes, yes, I know. I'll bet you could take me with one hand tied behind your back. Let's go.

Finally the younger one reached up and took the elder's hand. After a while, they were walking, the injured supported by his brother's shoulder. It was half a mile down the road to the nearest phone, and the frenzied shouting they got from their mother in the emergency room was just one other thing they couldn't care about.

He was uninjured, and the snake was still recoverable. The dark surrounding him seemed devoid of hostility. He sat there in the cool and found the water to be fairly clear, at least as water went out there. Saying nothing for once, he reached down and drank of it, then leaned back up against the rocky wall of the canal.

He abided there until the sun crested and began its decline, and when he looked up, the silhouette of the falcon perched on the edge with the western sun at its back was somehow not a new occurrence, but some chilling recollection.

real world alert: No Company For Old Walgreens

DEERFIELD, Ill. -- Walgreen's, the company on which I've modeled Patrick Lake's pharmacy (and whose internal paperwork will send any fluent user of the apostrophe into a paroxysm), has just lost the last member of the founder's family.

The woefully-mismanaged chain, which earlier this year announced it would cut 1,000 corporate jobs as part of a "Rewiring for Growth" plan, lost Kevin Walgreen this week, the great-grandson of founder Charles R. Walgreen.

It's worth it to mention that I worked at Walgreen's and it ranks among the worst jobs I've ever had for a variety of reasons. I have to hand it to them on this one, though, for alienating a guy who stocked the shelves as a young man and moved up through the company that his family built and carried through every economic turbulence of the 20th century and beyond.

The Chicago Tribune reports that he's not too keen on talking about it, either:

Walgreen, 45, left his post as senior vice president of store operations of the southern region for "personal reasons," according company spokesman Michael Polzin.

Kevin Walgreen, who gave his notice last week, told Polzin that he didn't want to comment further on his departure.

Blockbuster instilled me with my hatred of customers, but Walgreen's instilled me with my hatred of management, and the fact Kevin Walgreen left on the heels of 1,000 people getting axed from corporate seems to indicate he doesn't like the way things are being run. There is always the possibility he's quitting for something like a health concern or a family concern, but I'm not sure how likely that is considering his very DNA is composed of Walgreen's stock.

[An aside: I really must see about Patrick encountering a customer who huffily says he's a shareholder and having Patrick nod as if paying attention before pulling the Nagant and just blowing the guy's head off.]

In defense of the company, however, I have to say I'm pleased that they decided to lay off useless corporate leeches who sit around investing the company's liquid assets disastrously and/or coming up with bogus new sales strategies. After all, they could've fired a giant swath of clerks who actually do the work that keeps the whole miserable company running.

Considering they probably aborted several pensioned yes-men who were only days away from ending Walgreen's streak as the only chain store without some inane membership card that clerks are forced to push on customers, we should probably thank Walgreen's upper management and wish Kevin Walgreen (who many Walgreen's employees I know have actually met personally and, by the way, attest that he seems a sincere gentleman) good fortune for him and his family, and security in his future career.

wiki update #3: gunman testimonials

Wherever possible, I want to try to incorporate real experiences into The Last Clerks, at least where it's concerned with shooting guns. Firing weapons kind of sucks - it's hell on your ears, in an enclosed space you're inhaling lead gas (which is about as healthy for you as it sounds), and the best-engineered and most studiously maintained weapons are still prone to the occasional hangfire or jam.

Also, in movies and all-too-often in books, guns are just oversimplified. It takes much practice and painstaking maintenance to keep something designed to have things explode inside it from simply falling apart bit by bit. In that spirit, I try to seek out testimonials from folks who have actually fired the weapons (or something like them). My decision to arm Howard Wells with dual 1911s came about because I fired a 1911 in DeKalb, IL once long ago and immediately decided there is no other gun that simultaneously kicks a shitload of ass and best sums up the sort of shooting that character adopts.

My friend was kind enough to work on his birthday today, giving me a testimonial from his days of turkey-shooting with a 10-gauge, as it's the weapon an upcoming character will be using.

Dave's full comments can be found on the wiki, helpfully modifying my info on the Ithaca Mag-10 "Roadblocker" semi-auto shotgun. A sample here:

"When you first start shooting, your shoulder and forearm will be black and blue regardless of what you shoot. If you hold your gun tight to the shoulder and depending on the type of recoil pad you have on the gun, the severity of the bruise increases or decreases. Some autos have very little kick and some kick like a mule. Anything firing 10-gauge shells though you will have some nasty ( i.e. inability to move the arm ) recoil. They do make special shooting vests, which let you carry around 20 shells, game pouch, four large pockets and special extra padding in the shooting shoulder."

Thanks to Dave.

nothing but time

From above, they looked like two rock lizards making their treacherous way along the shaded bottom of the box canyon, picking through the shattered stones and cracked alkali. Following the sightless twists ahead – the settler with his head down – silent and numb to all things. His lips never once touching the waterskin given to him by the man with the dangling pistol.

This new friend would not stop talking. It was a consistent running chatter that came from everywhere and went nowhere. First the damn ground with its various and sundry failings. The inconsistency of the weather, damn it all to damnation. Bugs. The general nuisance of horses beyond the most glaring inconvenience – that being the fact they exploded at the slightest sign of maltreatment. Isn't the distance just a bitch to judge this far out? Flatter even than the myriad girls he'd bedded, a description of each and imitation of their bedroom verbatim he supplied. Kidding, really I'm a gentleman – just ignore all that. You don't say much do you? That's fine.

Maybe a mile, they walked. Maybe three. Finally, a turn in the bend and there the settler laid eyes on the horse, standing at rest, pawing the ground. Its procedural mind paused.

His child's head on backwards. Decapitated. Her half-destroyed visage and her suffering. The way her face disappeared and skull imploded with the shell, but her body wouldn't stop moving until he gave her another.

Well now, buddy, here's your missing friend. You can go right on and keep that waterskin there if you like, I got...

The settler raised the shotgun and blew off the horse's face. It charged blindly into the wall directly in front of it, slamming at full speed and continuing to shred the ground with it's paws, no sensory information of any kind making it to the navigation system.

Fucker, you fucker, I had the faith! I had the FAITH you -

The next shell – the last one – hit it right across the broadside and the legs seized in mid-kick and the unit fell flopping to the ground. A wave of heat rolled off of it. Warning. This model fifteen hundred equubot has sustained abnormal trauma. Cooling system is not responding. It is advised that advised that advised that mod mod model fiffiffiffifteen hundreddred equuuuuuuuuuuuuubot advised that advadvadvadv

The settler took hold of the barrel and with the stock he beat the side of the machine. Split the stock to splinters and kept hitting it as it bucked and seized and shredded metal and ground gears. The high-pitched beeping of the inside rose in volume. The voice of doom stuck in an endless loop of its solemn intonation.

He had nothing left in his heart but resignation. I'm coming, fucker. I'm coming and I will go to hell for having mercy on my wife, you fuck, and when it comes time I will stand alongside the devil and tear down your throne. I will be evil. I will kill you, you...

A shattering blamblamblamblamblamblam, all in one single chatter, no stops in between. The settler's eye could not figure out which of the six holes popped up in the horse's ass first, but they were in a hex pattern, perfectly evenly spaced.

A grotesque slurping noise welled up from inside, and the settler struggled back as steam burst forth in high-pressure gouts from the holes. The horse's spasming slowed. Life – or the autonomic imitation of it – draining. No peace in the creature's posture as it seized up for the final time in a harsh, rusty-sounding grind. A final jerk and it came eternally to rest. Heat boiling off it, the air rippling like silk in the wind.

The settler turned. Eyes found the smoking barrel of the pistol, in the man's hand but suspended from the thin leather strap. He'd fired from the hip – his left hand poised over the hammer to fan it. He let go and it dangled tiredly by his side, as if the short exertion had been all it could muster before crawling again to the shadows to slumber in the height of the day.

The gunman's face was shadowed by the brim of his hat, and the settler could only feel the coldness of the stare. The right thumb hooked into the pocket of his brown slacks and the fingers drummed against his thigh – a thoughtful, almost nervous gesture, certainly unintentional. The voice that came from the shadowed face was thoughtful.

I like you. You know why?

The settler couldn't speak, so sat on the ground with his breath heaving, covered in steam, still grasping the barrel of the destroyed shotgun.

I like you because you may be crazier even than my own self. I don't guess you've ever heard the word schadenfreude?

The settler threw the shotgun aside, and his rage turned to weeping. I had to kill her... I had to kill her she made me promise I had to... please I wanna die, I wanna go to hell...

The gunman drew a deep breath and seemed to raise his head to the sky. The light tinted his face – calm and smiling. The settler looked up and through his tears, saw the reflected sunlight on the pale face of the stranger as a blurry halo – wondered for a moment if this was Raphael come to explain away the callousness and irrationality of god to one of his perfect flawed creations, and the effort just as omnipotently doomed to failure.

Nobody goes to hell, old sport. And besides, we just met. You can at least stay for coffee.

---

As they continued, the water from the rainstorm grew deeper – when they were about waist-deep, the stranger walked with a small satchel of his ammunition and the pistol held above his head – the settler dropped the shotgun in the water without comment from the stranger.

The settler gaped when he saw it.

Split aside as if by the power of Zeus himself was the road. The skeletal guts of it bent and twisted away at the gap – a great vein of the fallen country split aside by a force older and greater.

We were searching for it... we couldn't find it.

Amazing what you find in canyons. I-motherfucking 80. The great uninterrupted sea-to-shining-sea outpost, the longest and largest purveyor of heavy metal thunder in these great united states. I do wish I could've been here to see it torn up like that – but I did feel it. Bet my spent shells you did, too, pilgrim.

The settler in bed, having made their youngest with his wife. The televisions silent a week – the phones soon to go the same forgotten way. Outside, the great black hills. He had it in his mind to hunt a buck. It would give them meat for many months. The new cellar for storing food nearly completed. Let the rest of the world fall down from their sin. Here I have my heaven – His kingdom among me as the son of God said. I will build it and it will glorify Him, and he shall be an aegis and to me a tower of strength.

She turned and fixed him with a sightless gaze in the dark.

We shouldn't have.

It's our duty.

He'll starve.

Might be a she. We don't know yet. 'll be nine months before we know, and by then I'll have the cellar done and two bucks frozen in it and we'll have the water generator running and

There're bad men, Eli. If they find we've got things that work, they'll kill us.

I'll protect us, and so will the Lord.

She was silent. He knew what she wanted to say – knew he would hit her if she said it.

Eli...

From below the ground came a tremor unlike anything he'd experienced before. They held tight to one another. The sound outside of the concrete of the road running by their house on the hillside shattering. Windows bursting. The abandoned car down the street had an alarm that went off. The sinking feeling of the entire house dropping.

In the morning light of the bloody dawn he found his wife and his son alive and uninjured, and thanked the Lord. The fact that the quake had filled in his cellar and destroyed three months of labor he saw no reason to need to forgive.

It was before he'd questioned the fucker. When he'd thought the one on high still had some plan for him – when he'd thought that being given a wife and family and the strength of his arm were all gifts granted to him.

I was... home... when it happened. Felt it a thousand miles away.

The stranger nodded. I expect you were. I was, too.

---

They climbed the rocks up to the great destroyed highway, the stranger showing the settler every trick and handhold and safe place to rest. Allowing for the settler's exhaustion, it took them an hour.

There at the top lay the remains of town of perhaps a hundred people. The houses annihilated by the tremor. The fault line of the canyon extended another mile before stopping, taking a sharp northerly curve – the expanse of it went back east and the settler could see the ruins of his car and his life off in the distance and did not look.

In the flat destruction, there stood only one structure – not defiant, but resigned. Rusted and neglected shopping carts out front – the drive-thru window of the pharmacy unusable since the roof above it with the pressurized tubes had fallen down, the edge connected to the building still hanging on and giving it the look of a trap-door halfway shut and dangling from a broken hinge.

The stranger beat the dust off his hat and scraped his boots on an American flag welcome mat, inviting the settler to do the same.

Some useless columnist made a piss about these thingies – I waited for the government to be totally gone before I started using 'em, you see, because I just hate to offend.

The settler felt a sort of shock upon entering. The same precise layout... the same products in the same places. Cash registers of the same type. As if he were there all over again... back home.

The stranger removed his duster and the settler could see now, for the first time, that he wore the uniform of the store, a nametag hanging in its proper place at his breast.

PATRICK

He threw the duster across the checkout counter to the right and walked behind it, grabbing two wrapped cigars from the case there.

We'll get you on something happy tomorrow – haven't ever used 'em, myself. Until then, I think we got some stories to tell and nothing but time to tell 'em, old sport.

(Author's note 02/27/2009: Through my own negligence, the next post I posted actually skips over one. Click here to go to the next post if you want to keep reading the main story in order. Sorry for the confusion.)

wiki update #2: guns

Writing about gunfighting has always been a problem for me because I am one of those guys who needs to be specific about what the heroes and villains are packing. It's annoying for a motorcycle buff to watch a movie and see bad guys on motorcycles suddenly taking their left hand off the clutch lever to open fire with an Uzi (What, is your bike automatic?). It's just as annoying for somebody well-versed in the poetry of Shakespeare to hear somebody flub the inflection on one of the bard's lines when they quote it in a movie ("wherefore art thou Romeo?" has got to be the single line in history most hated by drama teachers).

So my problem: How do I go into the specifics of a weapon without interrupting the flow of the narrative and inducing eye-rolls among those in the gallery who don't care when I (and other people) surely DO care about it?

While perusing one of my earlier incarnations of the Last Clerks, one friend of mine got to the paragraph where I went into Howard's armament and he saw a block of exposition that likely looked something akin to:

At his hips sat blah blah blah blah blah in .45 ACP blah blah blah Colt Python blah blah blah blah blah .38 Long Colt blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah single action...

and he said "This is WAY too much about his guns," and he would be absolutely correct.

It's a legitimate concern: My brother was once reading a book where the author only said "gun" in every instance, maddeningly never specifying if the broad term used for projectile-based weaponry referred to a rifle, or a pistol, or a shotgun, or an isolated soliton wave disruptor, or whatever. My brother had just cause to be pissed, because there are readers for whom a detail like that makes a huge difference - it would also seem to betray some ignorance on the part of the writer if they can't be bothered to look up just a little bit about firearms.

Author William Sanders, the source of my knowledge on the Nagant Model 1895 used by Patrick Lake, rather cogently vented his frustration in Hardboiled Magazine at authors who betray firearm ignorance in their works. Follow along on that last link and Sanders will even give you a crash-course on some basic firearms facts which for some writers is sure to be enlightening.

For me, a person who doesn't own a gun but can't get enough of writing about them, a wonderful solution has presented itself: The convenience of the Internet and hyperlinking has allowed me to easily link to detailed descriptions of the hardware a particular person is carrying while at the same time not throwing away a paragraph of writing that will bore the disinterested and at best interrupt the flow for those who actually care about the specifics.

I love progress. It's one of the ways I'd like to think web-based fiction can get a leg up on books. In that spirit, I've added some firearms specs to the wiki, including one on Howard's pistols and documentation on the shotgun of the as-yet-unseen Spencer LaSalle. More gun facts to come.

all the corners of his wide earth

The sun fell below the horizon and left its heat behind it. The moon gathered about her the shroud of storms, mortified in her pristine nakedness. All around in the dark there were only the brief, searing bursts of fire from the sky to light their pathless way.

The settler sat in the cab of the pickup truck with its missing windshield. The stick popped into neutral, never to leave it. The reins in his hand slapping across the hood as the two horses continued their steady, inexorable pace. Tireless facsimiles. The only things that still worked in the expanse of after.

He had the window to the bed open behind him and he heard the wife telling stories to the boy and the girl under the tarp tent. The tailgate rattling at the bumps. At each rumble of thunder, the sound of the girl hugging onto her mother – the boy too proud even though he wanted that embrace against which all fears fled.

If He takes them from me, I will tear aside the sky and pull down the very throne.

And there was a time, in Babel, when every little boy and little girl knew the same language, and spoke to each other the same way, and they all worked together for the same thing.

When wuz...zzzat?

Sssshhh, sweetie. That was a long, long loooooooong time ago.

'Fore you and daddy?

Shut up 'n' let her tell!

Now you be nice to your sister! Yes honey, it was before mommy and daddy and before our mommies and daddies and theirs and theirs. And the people all loved each other and everything was good. And they were building a tower that would reach up and up and up so they could meet God. But when they did, they forgot to glorify Him – they forgot His teachings and who was their Lord. So he punished them by knocking their tower down, and if any looked upon it they were consumed, and in the ruin of its shadow you could walk for seven days and still not be out from under it. And to all the corners of His wide Earth he hurled the people, and he made their skins different colors and confused their languages so they couldn't understand one another. That's why we are all of different colors and all believe different things, and that's why we must always remember to work for Him and for His glory and not for ourselves.

They did not listen very much to what she said. Only felt the comfort of her voice – the first voice they'd ever known – wash over them. He felt the first drop. The second. He put the tarp on with the hole cut for his head, and the fishing hat.

There rolled the thunder and there fell the rain. The water seeping out the sides of the cab and dribbling onto the cracked dirt of the plains about them. He could not see – the wife could not tell her stories for the noise. He shut the window behind him so the water would not blow onto them – the glimpse he caught of them was good, the boy forsaking his pride now and letting his mother hold him to her as he had in the times when she fed him from her own body.

He made sure the small bit of tarp on the seat next to him was covering the shotgun properly. It had the four shells in the tube and nothing more. Nothing ever again. The settler had long meditated on what he would do with the four shells. The settler had asked Him what to do with them, and in keeping with what the settler had experienced his whole life, He stayed silent and offered nothing but more tribulations.

Four shells. If on the horizon there are three, use the shells on them. If on the horizon there are five, use them on us. Mercy for them – hell for him.

Beneath the dimensionless dark of the lachrymose sky, they continued their pathless way, the children safe inside the paper-thin tarp, and in his lungs the gathering cough that the wet brought with it.

His wife did not know.

---

It was a hole and He, the fucker, had put it there. In the impenetrable dark and solid rain there was no avoiding it. No accounting for it.

It was right in the path of the horse on the right, and wide enough that it pitched face-first into it, but narrow enough that the body became wedged. The momentum shoving the horse into its own head, crushing it against the stone and bursting its face apart.

The pickup lurched over the rump of the horse and came to rest on it. Bodies thrown around in back, and he saw red burst across the window before he went sailing out the empty windshield. He could hear the beats of the other horse's hooves as it tore free of the trailer harness he'd rigged.

Find purchase. Blood. Their blood. Get up. His fingers slipping to find something firm in the mud, the water beating on him still, cold and stinging. Warning – this Equubot Model twenty-five hundred has sustained damage – cooling unit is not responding – it is highly recommended you vacate the area and notify a peace officer. The fake, recorded voice drowning out the screams from inside the bed. Got to get up. Get them out.

Stumbling toward the screams. Tearing aside the tarp.

The girl decapitated raggedly through the window to the cab. The boy's head on backwards. She wouldn't stop screaming, throttling both the bodies and saying their names over and over. She kept asking the fucker what she had done what had she done why wasn't it enough why weren't her prayers enough wasn't she good wasn't she His servant why why why why why

The concussive force of the horse's overheated reactor bursting open sent him sprawling again, and he passed out in the mud with the rain beating on his unknowing face.

---

He looked down at her for a long time. The scarred half-light of the morning shone cherry-red across the hair on the left side of her scalp. The rest a patchwork of ravaged scabbing. The eye on that side lidless, and he hoped unseeing.

Every few seconds, a single, rattling, heaving breath. The body forcing it. Incapable of letting itself go.

He was whole. Not unscathed – dizzy from the concussion, but not seriously injured. Water sluiced and sparkled through the deep-set cracks in the earth, reflecting the sun. The morning as peaceful as the night had been apocalyptic. Concussion. I'm not thinking clearly. If I wait another hour, it won't make sense to blow my own wife's head off with a shotgun. If I wait another few hours, something else will make sense. Something else will be the right thing. Something. Wait. Something.

Another breath. Deep. Shivering. Misery unending. Every breath a different circle of hell. The eye peering at him. You promised you wouldn't let it hurt if you could stop it. You swore an oath to Him.

Something else will be the right thing.

His finger rested on the trigger.

If I wait... something... something else will make sense...

---

The horse had run toward the only thing in the featureless flat of the plains – a range of mountains with a large gap in it, a canyon spewing forth water as it flowed from the hills surrounding. The tracks of the horse were deep enough that the remaining hour of rain had still left them – in the dry morning that followed the settler could see them clearly enough to follow along.

He tramped on, the shotgun over his shoulder.

Stopped next to a rock big enough to lean against and puked until he had nothing left in his stomach and then sat there heaving emptily over the steaming liquid.

When he looked up, he saw a man standing before him. Lanky, tall, hair the color of dirty straw with cloudy grey eyes. A long brown duster and a brown hat, an improbable navy-colored vest.

The revolver dangling by a loop of rope slung at the shoulder, connected to a metal loop in the gun's grip. An ugly, foreign thing, but so nonchalant as to appear as a tourist's camera.

Well now well now well now. You look like you've just had a wonderful day.

wiki update #1: the wiki exists

The idea here is that it's actually kind of difficult to follow along if you don't at least briefly peruse the wiki.

Somebody was talking to me and actually said "I thought the wiki was going to be stupid and lame, but you like, actually have cool stuff on it."

To that I say: "Aw, shucks."

If you want to hear Charles Clark get all post-apocalyptically lyrical, mosey on over there.

Clerk with no name: HOWARD WELLS

Special thanks go out to Sean K, who has actually crafted every one of the pieces of art for The Last Clerks across the time I've always done it. To commemorate the (apparently) dead Howard Wells, we have a first-rate wanted poster, proving once and for all that the last video store clerk wasn't even supposed to be here today. As we transition to the next story, hopefully he'll be able to pony up another one of these.

what do you mean, "everyone?"

He felt it coming the day that it did. Wind moist in the morning. Carrying with it a wet chill, and the cement smell of rain. It was a favorite trick to try to influence the weather adversely in the hopes of catching somebody off guard.

They sent the test of the three stooges, and I passed it. They probably won't deal in such half-measures any longer. I got an extra week out of it – more than I could have hoped for if this was a trap like I suspected. Did they plant the store here? Invent Unk and his killers? It does all seem pretty perfect, in retrospect. Nothing's ever that perfect.

It was gloomy and windswept by noon. Tower clouds hovered on the horizon from the west, sweeping in on the gales that were strong enough to rattle the windows and send discarded pop cans and plastic bags sailing down the street. Everybody stayed inside. The video store unmanned and derelict.

The clerk sat up in his room at the motel. The girl he'd saved from the customers slept in the next room on the clerk's money. The innkeeper kept having discussions with her about maybe staying, maybe taking on some work you know, but nothing bad or anything, just you know, a little fun for the fellas comin' inta town – lord knows they don't hardly show up so what's the harm in a little extra money?

The clerk felt no need to go to her rescue a second time, mostly because it didn't appear to him that the woman understood anything said to her. She hadn't said a word since her salvation at his hands. The only thing she had done was kick the dead customer's face until his nose popped like a grape. This after the clerk dragged the ruined body out of the fountain's water in preparation for dragging it out to the desert.

Since then, she'd done nothing, accepting food when Kayla brought it and staring blankly whenever the clerk or anybody else went into her room to see if she would respond to anything. She seemed happy enough to be left alone. The clerk didn't seem to mind paying for her. She recoiled at his attempts to touch her, so he left that whole line of inquiry alone.

A thoughtless animal with the humanity raped out of her by a bunch of clowns. One of the ones that did it still running around out there somewhere, probably. Has there ever been any clearer indication that you can't save anybody – that the time for saving was before any of this, and you fucked up and now here you are?

---

The clouds spread across the sky by noon. The distant thunder rumbling – the complaint of a tired old man. The clerk looked out into the perfect blackness to the west from the other side of the motel. There came a chill gust. Inadvertent caterpillars dancing up his spine. He turned to see the girl Kayla watching him from the back stoop of the motel, eyes still desirous after all the rebukes and indifference.

He did not acknowledge her as he went back up to his room and sat at the desk. There stood the ridiculous pony doll, standing obedient watch over his courier bag. He undid the gunbelt at his hips and slung it over the desk, removing the guns and opening the back pouch. The back pouch held a few spare magazines, each brimming with the little glints of brass.

From the bag he removed more empty ones and two boxes of .45 ACP. He became aware of Kayla and Henry watching him – the boy evidently come from leaving the store unoccupied. It was he that piped up first.

They comin'?

Silence from the clerk. The girl moving next to him, body tense with worry, talking low, on the verge of tears.

You can go and hide under the rock, in the cave. We won't tell nobody. I promise we won't. They'll just go if they don't see you here.

Still no answer. The fingers, callused with work and killing. Moving like acrobats with the bullets, each clinking sharply and just-so into the magazine. He'd filled four of them – six of them – eight of them. He kept filling them.

The boy tried to say something, but the clerk cut them both off.

Go unlock the store, but turn off all the lights. Go hide. Not in Unk's cave. They might know about it. There's a basement under the big empty cardboard box in the stock room. Door swings down, box is real light. Hide in there with the box on top of it. There's food. After you know it's over, wait three days before you come out.

Twelve magazines – fourteen – sixteen – he kept bringing more out of the bag and filling them. There were more than could fit in the back pouch at that point. He kept filling them.

Kayla ran away sobbing – the boy stayed.

Are you gonna die?

I reckon probably.

Why don't you run?

I am running.

Who are they?

It doesn't matter.

Who are you?

It doesn't matter.

Well it matters to me!

He turned and looked at the boy. Tears in the boy's eyes, his fists curled into balls.

I know it does. That's why it hurts. That's why things stopped mattering to me. Go now.

The footsteps of the boy fading down the stairs. Quiet, deliberate, perfectly controlled. Stop being proud of that damn kid. Put all of it out of your mind. This is what getting ready to die feels like. This is what it's like to know there isn't any tomorrow.

---

The boy did not say goodbye to his mother. He took Kayla by the hand and dragged her down the street while she sobbed and carried on. There was the old man and his wife around the corner from the motel – they watched lazily from their front porch. The boy looked at them and they just stared back. Nothing in their eyes. Nothing behind them.

Inside some of the houses, the telltale glow of TV sets brought back to life by the clerk's business. He could warn everybody, but there wasn't time. The dark on the western horizon had spread to completely blot out the sun as it dipped toward that resting place. The boy heard the sound of the rain hours before it arrived.

The first drop had not yet fallen when he shoved Kayla down into the cellar, her hands slapping at him, wailing and shrieking in hysterics. He kicked her in the nose and dragged the cardboard box back over the hole, shutting the door behind them. There was a single fluorescent light that buzzed eternally without stopping. Three crates filled with sealed bags of beef jerky, peanut butter, some vitamins, and bottled water. A cot in the corner, and a small bound book laying on it – the boy recognized it as the clerk's.

In the corner was a small, deep hole with the sound of flowing water far down at the bottom, and the boy understood it was for pissing.

He nodded. We've got everything here, for a little while, I reckon.

---

The clerk heard the roar of the vehicles beating their rhythms across the ground. There would be no horses this time. He had a few minutes left. He checked his rig one last time – both guns secure. The horse doll tucked into the very bottom of the back pouch so that it would not fall out while he retrieved mags. He slid the leather jacket back on, then reached for the name tag.

Paused. Looked at it.

J A C K

He hadn't looked at it in what seemed a long time – hadn't read it in what might have been years, for all he'd been counting. Not my name. Not fitting to die that way – mislabeled. That would be ironic, to end misshelved.

He'd cast aside the actual one. He remembered the glint of the pin as it stuck up in the air after it fell to the ground – stabbing his retinas in one last accusation as he turned away from it for the last time.

I wish I hadn't done that. I suppose this is me regretting it at leisure. Have to make do some other way, I reckon. His hands searched inside the bag and dug out a thin black marker.

---

It was by then pitch-black outside, but it did not matter to them, because they could see in the dark. The helicopter did not touch down. It glided two or three dozen feet off the ground and the men in black armor with glowing red goggles and masks and machineguns came down on ropes.

The chopper disappeared above the black clouds. Below came little flashes – deafening thunder following them, but hardly any screams. Surgical. Precise. Calculated. By the time people knew, half the town was dead. By the time people started trying to escape, better than three out of four were dead. When the booted foot of the gentleman struck the ground as he swung off his horse, there were only a few struggling with their last breaths – and then there were the three people in the motel.

One of them was dangerous – the other two were too close to eliminate, at the risk of provoking him before they'd had a chance to chat.

---

The clerk descended the stairs calmly, with the same practiced nonchalance with which he'd waited for the customer to arrive with his late video.

Five of them. Two at the inside of the batwings, machineguns trained on him. Two flanking the fifth – a foppish man sitting at a table facing the stairs. His back to the batwings and the outside. A coy smile on his face. The innkeeper rested his head on the counter – shot through his left eyehole. Blood all over the mirrored back wall of the bar. The innkeeper's hand clutched around a bottle of Bacardi 151. The clerk had not heard the shot. Somebody, the fop probably, had a silencer on something somewhere – and on a very small weapon, too, for there not even to be the high-pressure pop of a gun too big for anything other than a suppressor.

The clerk did not look at any of the men assembled, or at least none of them knew for sure if he was. He wore the circular-frame shades again, his eyes hidden behind them. As he moved forward, his leather jacket swung as if the pockets were weighted down. He clinked noticeably as he pulled out the chair opposite their apparent leader.

They sat that way for a while – the gentleman making no move, the clerk making no move. Both staring at one another. A drip – the innkeeper's blood pattering to the ground over the edge of the counter. Another. The rumble, barely audible, of the chopper as it circled by again, accompanied by a brief snippet of gibberish from the radio at the shoulder of one of the men at the batwings, to which he did not respond.

The gentleman lost his patience first.

This wasn't necessary. I know you blame me, that you're angry and disenfranchised, but options were made available to you earlier and it is not our fault if they were not taken. Your reputation is that of an intelligent man – surely you're intelligent enough to know when you must accept the consequences of your action or inaction.

The clerk continued staring right at him, not moving, not saying anything.

You should feel honored. I'm the last man in Loss Prevention. Aside from a few false alarms, I haven't run across any of you in... I want to say years, but I haven't been counting. It certainly seems like it.

Silence from the clerk.

Fine. You don't want to talk. You're smart like me, so I know you'll listen. That's why we have watched you, you realize. Such anomalies. The rest of the world folded, and you and perhaps a couple hundred others did not. You've come the farthest of any of them. We set up this toy town some time back to catch any of you that wanted to come west. Here you are. Not content to live out your days quietly. Determined to show that you must pick a fight at the slightest and most trivial provocations. Who do you think you are, I wonder?

The clerk leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling. Bored. Impatient for it to be over.

Recalcitrance, then. Very well. The offer. He reached into the dapper folds of his jacket, pulling forth what looked like a photograph or postcard. Here – it should explain everything. He slid it across the table to rest before the clerk.

He looked down at it, a dubious expression on his face. With a careful hand, picked it up and turned it over.

A crowded line of people, dressed to the height of fashion, a window behind them looking out upon a city of towering steel and elegantly sloped glass. A movie theater? Concert hall? So many faces, laughing, shouting, looking annoyed, looking worried, looking bored, looking in love.

Among them and one of them, her. Taller. The hair different. The eyes and shape of the face the same. So alien to him, to see a healthy face.

The man from loss prevention gave it a moment. The clerk showed no outward sign of recognition – but he knew he'd hurt the clerk deeper than perhaps he'd ever been hurt before.

It wasn't any difficulty finding her, you know. Oh, it was time-consuming, certainly – took some historical research, some interviews, you realize – but how worth it. I wish we'd taken a picture so you could see how she smiled when we mentioned your name. You could surprise her. Tonight, even.

The clerk looked down at the picture again, then back to the man from loss prevention. He shrugged, shaking his head, and slid the picture back.

I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about.

The man from loss prevention stood to his full height, knocking over the chair he sat on, slamming his hands down the table between them, thrusting his face forward into the clerk's. His eyes glazed over with the redness that had only been telltale in the halflight of the motel. The voice echoing in the clerk's mind though the man's mouth made no movement.

We are not here because we WANT to be, JACK. We are here because you insist on leaving little twos of diamonds on dead men that belong to US and we will LEAVE here with you one of two ways – in our favor or in a bodybag. Tell us, JACK, HOW ARE WE GOING TO GO HOME TONIGHT?

The clerk raised his left hand up to his shades and inched them down his nose just enough to reveal his eyes. The man from loss prevention found himself staring back at two pits of fire as cold as his own. The clerk's hand returned to where it had been – under the table with his other hand – and the man from loss prevention heard two sharp metal clicks just as the clerk's voice spoke independent of his own mouth.

Go home happy.

Two roars simultaneous, bursting from beneath the table. Both the fop's thumbs blown from his hands. Blood, fat, bone, splinters, smoke in his eyes. One of the severed extremities bouncing off his cheek. He felt the fingerprint of the thumb on his cheek but did not feel the cheek on the tip of his thumb. The redness fading from them as he heard some inhuman howl. His own voice rising in panic. When he could see again he found himself staring at the vacant spaces where they used to be.

A deep-throated yell, the panicked shouts of the other four men and so many gunshots. The man from loss prevention felt the table fall on his knee – he realized he was on the ground in a sitting position. The clerk's guns pounded bullets into the two men that had flanked the thumbless man. Goggles shattering and issuing forth blood. The impossible force of the .45 ACP drilling straight through the body armor and burying in flesh. The two men collapsing in heaps with the machineguns spraying randomly and then dying.

The clerk crouched behind the table as the two other guards alternated between screaming into their radios and firing in his general vicinity. When they both clicked empty he stood and emptied the forty-fives into them.

Magazine releases – let them fall to the ground, don't bother going for them. Hit the slide release on the right and holster it. Reach into the right jacket pocket for another mag and jam it in, give the slide a little tug and let it slap home. Holster it. Out with the right gun. Left jacket pocket for a mag and jam it in, jack the slide good. Left gun back out and we're hot.

He looked down at the cringing form of the man from loss prevention. Blood flowing freely from the wounds. Making a noise like a trapped rabbit. The clerk looked over at the batwings, then down at him again.

Tell me how many. Don't lie... you've got plenty more little pieces I can shoot off.

Please don't... please, I'll...

Can. you assholes. understand. how much. I HATE. BEGGING.

F-fifty. Brought f-f-fiffty.

I reckon you brought about a thousand too few. He stooped down and unhooked the radio from one of the men fallen to the ground. The guard gasped at the clerk's touch. The clerk shot him in the head, the bullet striking the interior of the guard's helmet and bending the metal outward. He clicked on the radio.

I will kill all of you. It is already too late to run or to beg or to apologize. I am wrath heretofore unseen, and when I am through with each and every one of you, I will write down your names and I will seek out your children and your families and your friends, and I will one by one describe to them how each of you died before I kill them, too. I will burn your city to the ground, forever snuff out the light you have made at the end of the world at the detriment and to the suffering and through the betrayal of those who live outside of it. And when you arrive in hell, it will be my face you see first.

As he spoke he grabbed the thumbless man by the back of the shirt and dragged him behind the counter, throwing him into a corner. Before he'd finished his speech, he had the belt of one of the dead guards over one shoulder. As he signed off, the entire front of the motel shattered as an ocean of bullets struck it in unison. Glass shattering. The slats on the batwings bursting and flying across the room, altered in their course by yet more lead. Chairs and tables swept aside by the tide of metal sweeping through the room.

The clerk laid prone and covered his ears as the gunfire rattled like a hailstorm. Finally, silence punctuated by bits of falling plaster and the delicate noise of splinters settling to the ground.

He turned to the man from loss prevention, who was going into shock and could not move.

I want you to know that all silent treatment and de-thumbing aside, I really appreciate you coming out here today. I didn't think I had a reason to live. Now I reckon I do, and it's all because of that nice bit of candid photography you showed me. That's why I'm going to make sure to come back and take my time killing you proper, after I'm done with this rush job on your friends. Don't go anywhere now.

Outside there was a sea of red eyes, though mechanical. The chopper hovered low, facing the motel and shining a spotlight across the face, into the wreckage within. The cloud of hot dust defeating infrared imaging – the spotlight meeting with debris fog. The chopper came in closer. The men in their neat little rows and columns advanced, trying the radios again, trying to make contact again.

I want green and gold element to circle around the back – get the tear gas. We're going to smoke the place and then advance up by squads and just breach bang and clear every room until we're sure...

From the gap between the top of the batwings and the door frame came a single object trailing dust in its wake. Striking one of the armored men on the head. A struggle of booted feet to move away from it – some dashing to try to pick it up, but with the goggles it could not be seen amidst the scrambling of feet and the panicked -

Human shrapnel. Hair, blood, teeth, eyes, bits of ceramic plates. Fingers. Smoke and misery. Ringing as ear drums screamed their last.

The chopper's machineguns opened up on the front of the motel, strafing it from side to side. As it swept past the batwings, the clerk strode out of them just at the moment he was safe and hurled the last bottle of the innkeeper's at the cockpit, a lit rag stuffed down the neck. The pilot shouted into his radio as the bottle burst across the cockpit window.

The clerk looked upon the writhing mass of confusion and dismemberment and horror before him. He'd hit them with the whole belt of four grenades. He'd never seen what that could do to fifty people all standing in a neat crowd before. A single moment of reflection that was not regret. I did warn you.

The forty-fives had waited for just such a sea of immobile, helpless targets. They could not kill enough to be satisfied – not ever. He'd shot them until their firing pins turned to ashes and he'd replaced those – until he'd needed to figure out how to replace the barrels. Thousands and thousands of rounds he must have shot. Never aiming with particular care. What need? Fire enough and you'll hit – hit once and the story is over.

He turned them loose and they ended so many stories. The brass casings flashing in the red of the fire on the out-of-control chopper. Impossible in the roiling chaos to tell which men were in the act of dying and which were dead and which only thought they were as they struggled toward the outside, only to meet with those so disoriented they thought out was in.

He clicked empty as the chopper plowed into a squat little building kitty corner from the motel and exploded grandly, flinging rotors and fire and debris into the street. The process was so practiced that he didn't need to watch his hands as they did their work. The guns out and hot again and he hadn't moved an inch. Had made no attempt to seek cover or show in the least that he expected to be answered.

Some of them were coming around, and one aimed a wild salvo at the clerk, scything across the front of the motel. Missing him, blasting the top hinge off the right batwing so that it dangled down like when Jerry slams Tom in the mouth with a sledgehammer and Tom's teeth sort of dangle before they all fall out.

He pointed the forty-fives in the general direction of the offender and unleashed a torrent of hatred and lead. Only two of the bullets hit the man, but they popped both his lungs, and the rest hit a pair of troops trying to get up. Others were firing, and he knew it was time to move. There was a gap to his left – away from the video store, but he would have to take it – the helicopter was burning down everything to his right.

The clerk darted forward as if to run and the gunfire tracked in front of him – he slowed back to a double-time walk and strafed them until he'd emptied the pistols again. Mags falling to the ground and he reloaded while moving.

Pain in a single flash, right in the meat of his right arm. He had the left gun reloaded already, and pointed it at the troop. He was right there in the shadows – the clerk hadn't seen him in the blackness. He shot the man four times in the stomach, forcing his back up against the wall of the building with the force of the bullets. The troop stumbled to stay on his feet, to lift his rifle again to get off another three-round burst. The clerk shot him once more. Snap back goes the head. What light in the eyes... how it vanishes to where we know not, and how the body so balefully crumples.

He was down another street and behind the building and momentarily at least out of their immediate range. He heard their enraged and fearful footfalls. They had some semblance of tactics left – coming at him from both sides of the building. He wound up his leg and kicked in the back door, ducking inside as another arc of bullets tore the air behind him. Keep reloading. Don't run. Damned if you can aim while you're running.

He reloaded the right gun. There were dead people in the place already – machinegunned down by the invaders. They knew the layout already, then, and wouldn't be afraid to hit the place again. He didn't have time to examine the wound. Grabbed a chair and hurled it through the back door – machineguns chattering as they fired at anything that moved – some of them shot each other in the confusion as they attacked it in a pincer. The clerk turned to the front door as three men came in and shot and shot until he was empty again, spilling their bodies into the street head over heels, shattered rag dolls in heavy armor in the dust.

Front door clear. He still did not run as he reloaded. Hot again just as the first one of them overcame the confusion and rage from the chair ruse and burst past the back door, firing wildly and inaccurately. The clerk was in the act of shedding the leather jacket – now a burden without any ammunition left in the pockets. He hurled it at the troop, then pulled both guns free and gave each trigger three quick pulls. The bullets burst through the leather as the man struggled to get it off of him. He fell dead – the only body anyone had taken the trouble to cover.

More followed, the clerk backing out the front door and firing at the bottlenecked enemy until he again clicked empty. Another stinging bite – this one in the right ankle. He bit back a cry of pain and stepped off to the right. Stumbling on the damaged foot. The hands still doing what they did – now reaching back for the pouch to get at the mags. They were whispering to one another, trying to figure out some avenue of attack – maybe a dozen of them left at the very most, maybe less.

He backed toward the video store. The fire of the helicopter to his left and behind. Backing slowly, the right foot seizing and complaining. God, I fucking hate getting shot.

A grenade. He had long enough to realize it was a flash-bang. Closed his eyes. Wait for the explosion, and just hit them. The inside of his eyelids flashed with the color of his veins and his ears went numb and he pulled the triggers. Opening his eyes he saw them pour out of the building. His own bullets popping along the frame of the door and some burying themselves in the faces and chests and arms and legs of the last of them.

He reached the courtyard, took cover behind one of the trees as their machineguns ripped across the whole face of the world. Wood shrapnel raked across the back of his neck. He thought he felt a bullet graze his left shoulder.

DO YOU FUCKING KNOW HOW MUCH I FUCKING HATE GETTING SHOT?!

He was hot again as he stepped from the tree and fired at anything that had the shape of a man. Half a dozen of them went down while they reloaded. The others didn't have any ammunition left. Fumbled for grenades as the clerk advanced on them, reloading with his last mags. They couldn't drop a grenade that close. One of them remembered he had a sidearm in time to put a bullet in the clerk's left side before catching one in the throat.

The clerk caught another in the right collarbone as he clicked empty. His last bullet turned a man's face into the gruesome sort of smiling cross-section of flesh/fleshlessness found in medical textbooks. One of them was alive for sure. On the ground, wailing as blood burst forth from a stomach wound. The clerk stumbled over to him.

Lifted his left boot above the shrieking man's throat.

Quit complaining.

---

He had enough strength in his ravaged shell of a body to reload the 1911s a final time. Enough left to walk the town and make sure he hadn't missed any of them. Blood seeping from everywhere. A haze of pain. The world spinning with it – the ground uneven with it.

He checked on the thumbless loss prevention fop. There had been a silenced pistol, tucked right next to where the photo had been. In a move that brought a touch of bemused admiration to the clerk, he had somehow eaten a bullet without the use of his thumbs – it was no mean feat.

Spurn my friendship? I'm hurt. He spat across the dead man's face.

Back to the store. The first soft drips of rain. He would be dead in minutes. I'm sorry. I gave up for so long, and when I saw you again it was already too late. I'd already let them take me. I'm sorry. His hand reached into the back pouch, dislodging magazines onto the ground behind him, closing around the pony doll. I was so stupid to give up. You can't even forgive me. You'll never even know.

He sat, his back to the fountain rim, resting. Pain draining out. Eyes becoming heavy. In one hand, the pony doll. In the other, a gun. Always a gun.

A fat raindrop spattered on the name tag. He let go of the gun and lifted the other hand to cradle the name tag. So ironic, for a video store clerk to go to his maker misshelved.

It rains now. To weep for a hero's passing or to give life to whatever might have survived his final rampage. She will not see the name beneath the sheltering hand across his chest. But if we look, we may be privy to it.