Text-based gunfight
- Thread starter BerettaNut92
- Start date
- Status
tinygnat219
Member
Sistema1927,
Sounds like you were born in the wrong century with the descriptions of how weapons feel.
Sounds like you were born in the wrong century with the descriptions of how weapons feel.
A brief scene from Mr. Nightcrawler Book I. http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=259444&highlight=central+african+republic
CK
Member
Anybody's wearing ear protection?
What?? What did you say? I can't hear you.
There are this really loud ringing sound in my ears.
What?? What did you say? I can't hear you.
There are this really loud ringing sound in my ears.
Technosavant
Member
It's text-based. You don't need ear protection. DUH.
We're using sunglasses.
Flyboy
Member
>squirt< *>SPLOOSH<*
Super-soaker.
Super-soaker.
686+
Member
ffffffffffffhhhh
splat.
Booger gun =)
splat.
Booger gun =)
arctictom
Member
al g blenny
Member
- Joined
- Aug 18, 2006
- Messages
- 35
BANG! clink clink clink
BANG! cling clink clink
BANG! clink clink clink
shhhklink
"Damnit!"
Ching Ching. Ching ching. Plunk.
BANG! clink clink clink
shhhklink
"Damnit Damnit Damnit!!! Piece of crap!"
Me firing my 1911.
BANG! cling clink clink
BANG! clink clink clink
shhhklink
"Damnit!"
Ching Ching. Ching ching. Plunk.
BANG! clink clink clink
shhhklink
"Damnit Damnit Damnit!!! Piece of crap!"
Me firing my 1911.
alucard0822
Member
ker click
PIFF
Owww! I think I just put my eye out!!!
Irresponsible juvenile use of red ryder limited edition repeater, resulting in occular detachment and a lifetime of impaired depth perception.
and no Ralfie you can't have one.
PIFF
Owww! I think I just put my eye out!!!
Irresponsible juvenile use of red ryder limited edition repeater, resulting in occular detachment and a lifetime of impaired depth perception.
and no Ralfie you can't have one.
Last edited:
mustanger98
Member
BOOM-BOOM BOOM BOOM-BOOM BOOM shekshuck (mag change)
BOOM-BOOM BOOM BOOM-BOOM BOOM BOOM-BOOM BOOM shekschuck, schlack (mag change, slide release)
BOOM-BOOM BOOM BOOM-BOOM BOOM BOOM
Me firing 1911A1... mine works just fine.
BOOM-BOOM BOOM BOOM-BOOM BOOM BOOM-BOOM BOOM shekschuck, schlack (mag change, slide release)
BOOM-BOOM BOOM BOOM-BOOM BOOM BOOM
Me firing 1911A1... mine works just fine.
alucard0822
Member
al g blenny
Member
- Joined
- Aug 18, 2006
- Messages
- 35
Quick someone!! Throw me another gun! I need something more reliable.
Who are we fighting anyway?
Who are we fighting anyway?
mustanger98
Member
al g blenny, Get you some good mags, polish the feed ramp and slide stop, and you won't have that problem.
MachIVshooter
Member
"CLICK".............................
(The loudest sound in a gunfight)
"CLICK...............................BANG!"
(That time you're really glad you remembered what to do with a hangfire)
(The loudest sound in a gunfight)
"CLICK...............................BANG!"
(That time you're really glad you remembered what to do with a hangfire)
Apple a Day
Member
Here's one from a book I'm working on:
...When I hit a red light I made a quick 90 degree turn and kept moving. After three or four of those I drove down a long, wooded lane with stately houses on either side. The road dipped, then split and I picked one branch at random. I hit another side street at random and kept going. Abruptly, the road ended at a wooded lot occupied by nothing more civilized than a sign reading that it was under development by some construction company or other. The final street had houses lining the first three quarters of it, then there were a couple of empty lots which grew up from weeds to trees at the nether end. I did a three point turn and switched off the lights, pretended I was a ghost. The last bloody light of the sunset didn’t reach me in the cover of the trees. It seemed that I was in a dark tunnel leading to a fairy world of twilight under the naked woods at my back. I’d made enough direction switches that it would take Nostradamus with a pack of bloodhounds to find me and the light from the sunset would blind anyone to my little gray sedan hiding in the shadowy darkness.
Just to be safe I checked the pistol to make sure there was a round chambered. Nine rounds in the gun and two extra 8-round magazines. I wouldn’t need them, I told myself. I just wanted to make sure. I would hang around for a half hour, maybe forty five minutes and start heading back by some way other than the interstate. I wasn’t going to go home for a few hours in case they decided to head there and ambush me so I thought about hitting a movie as a way to blow a couple of hours.
So, there I was trying to remember the names of an actor in one of the current films when two pairs of headlights reached the end of the road. They were watery in the glare of the sunset but I could see every detail of the cars as everything was sharpened by the direct light and shadows at the end of the day. It was the Camry which had been chasing me and its partner, the silver SUV. I couldn’t see the guys inside because of the sun glaring off the windows but I was sure they were squinting into the shadows. The SUV pulled up next to the Toyota, blocking the road. Together they slowly rolled forwards. I was caught. How? How in the Hell could they have possibly managed to track me down after all those turns? There’s no way they should have been able to see me hiding down there. They should have passed right on by and kept going. Somehow they’d known.
There were ditches on both side of the street bridged at intervals by concrete driveways but there was no way to make it far enough to zigzag through a yard past parked cars and mailboxes to get past the thugs who’d cornered me. Multiple choice answer “A)drive away” just went out the window, which left “B)fight it out with guys who outgun and outnumber you” and “C)run on foot with heavily armed guys chasing you through the woods” as possible choices. There was also “D)shoot yourself and save them the trouble” but that one didn’t appeal to me either. I briefly considered charging them with the car but since there was no room for me to go around them there wasn’t any room for them to get out of my way. I’d end up running into them and shooting it out at close range assuming I survived the crash. More likely, I’d get mangled by the crash and then shot into mulch after the thugs crawled out from behind their deflating airbags.
The only chance I had was to hoof it. I popped open the door and ran for the woods. I always disable the dome light in my car so the interior lamp didn’t spotlight me when the door opened but they saw the movement. Engines roared as they closed the distance. As I hit the tree line tires screeched and guns shouted.
The Sergeant in the back of my head kept yelling instructions over the chatter of the gunshots, telling me to jink back and forth, keep the tree trunks between me and the shooters, pick up my feet, run faster! The initial adrenaline from the chase had long worn off. My arms and legs felt nerveless and heavy as I tried to run, bullets crackling through the brush around me. One round smacked into a tree trunk directly in front of me sending invisible specks of bark into my face. I kept zigging and zagging, waiting for the flash of pain when a bullet would smash through my back and out of my chest. If it hadn’t been so terrifying it would have actually looked kind of cool with all of the twigs snapping, flying all directions, soggy leaves vaulting into the air as the bullets lashed past or struck random things. I didn’t look back for a drawn out eternity as I ran, trying not to slip on the slippery leaves beaten down by the previous rain and muddy soft earth. I knew if I fell I was done for. Rounding a holly tree I cut off at a severe angle, trying to throw my pursuers off. They were behind me, still yelling and firing. As I turned I threw a look over my shoulder. Over my head the top third of the trees were still splashed orange-red by the setting sun but down on my level it was full twilight. Colors had faded. I could barely sense the waxy green of the holly leaves and the dull yellow-brown as the holly berries turned from green to red. The leaves under my feet were all grey-brown and ghostly buff where minutes ago they’d been crimson and gold. It was nearly like being just under the surface of a murky brown stream. After an eternity of scrambling over the uneven ground the Sergeant observed that they’d stopped shooting at me.
I was sure I’d made an awful racket crashing through the underbrush but they had to have been making at least as much noise with all of them trying to follow me. Their ears were also ringing from all the gunshots so as long as I didn’t do anything stupid they weren’t going to find me by sound. Shadows were moving through the far greyness and I could hear movement coming in my general direction over my panting.
I’d thought I was in better shape. I collapsed against the far side of a tree and tried to slow my breathing so I could hear better and be ready to run after I got my bearings again. I thought about trying to circle back to the car. They might have left someone behind to guard the cars, though. I might also screw up and run right into the thugs coming from the other direction. I could keep running and try to get to a house somewhere, call the police. Somehow they’d managed to keep following me no matter where I went, though. I had no idea how so there was no way to prevent them from coming straight to me all over again. I wasn’t about to bet my life on the police getting to me before the thugs.
It occurred to me that I was still carrying the cell phone Tanya had given me. I was so used to not carrying a phone that it never occurred to me to use it. I should have called the police while I was still on the road and had them direct me to the nearest police station or wherever the nearest unit was located. Heck, they even could have intercepted me on the interstate and I would have happily pulled over. Too late for that now, though. I couldn’t even describe to them where I was at that moment even if I did call.
I was pondering on how to use the cell phone to get out of the corner I’d painted myself into when a shape formed out of the gloom. It was a man shape with a gun wandering my direction. In its other hand it had a cell phone which made a shrill bleh-DEEP to get his attention. The thug halted a few seconds to talk into it.
I froze, crouched behind the tree, and forgot about my own phone. The Makarov was in my hand, hammer back. I’d painted the tiny sights on it with fluorescent paint from the same Michael’s that I’d passed on the way here. The front sight was gostly green/white while the rear blade was lined with orange. They were supposed to absorb light and release it as a soft glow. I’d been in the darkness so long they’d faded but I could still see them as lightly colored smudges as I lined them up on the form in front of me. The thug pushed a couple of buttons on the phone without looking at them and spoke again.
“ Call them back,” I shouted the command in my head but not out loud. “ Say that we’ve lost him. Let’s turn around and go home. Go have dinner at Cracker Barrel or some damned thing. Take the night off.”
The phone hand came down. He turned. I swear he looked straight at where I was crouching. Maybe he actually saw me, maybe he didn’t. I couldn’t tell. Behind him another shape began to form to the shushing sound of feet shuffling through soggy leaves. I was cornered and outnumbered. If I stood or moved they’d definitely see me.
The guy shifted his stance. His gun hand moved.
POW!
I’d thought about pulling the trigger. My hand had automatically responded by doing exactly that. It was terribly simple as it happened, a lot more simple than I’d imagined, shooting a man. The air seemed to shake with the hollow ear-slapping pop. It was too late to hide, to do anything else but follow up so I fired again and make sure I accomplished what I’d begun. The nearer thug hunched down, turned, and scrambled back the way he had come, disappearing onto the underbrush. How in the world had I missed? Did I miss? I’d aimed straight at him, right at the center of his chest. Did I wing him? I couldn’t have missed but I had to have. He’d just turned and run off!
The second figure wasn’t running away. He ran towards me instead, firing wildly in my direction. I returned fire, the Makarov dancing in my hands until suddenly it stopped by itself. I could tell by the balance that something was wrong. “Jammed! S**T!” I howled at myself. The little gun had never jammed before! What had I done wrong?!
I experienced about a third of a second of panic before it registered in my head that the second thug had flopped down on the ground. I didn’t know if he was dropping for cover or if I’d hit him but I had no intention of standing around with a jammed pistol to find out. I took off in a straight line away from the thugs with the tree I’d been hiding behind directly between us. Adrenaline was hammering through my system again and I felt like my head was floating along while my body churned along like a locomotive underneath.
To my shock I nearly fell into someone’s pool. I’d sprinted into someone’s backyard along a string of houses running both directions away to my right and left. It was another subdivision. It could have been on the moon for all I knew because I was completely disoriented. The owner might think it strange to find some weird guy standing around in his back yard by his pool panting with a gun in his hand so I ducked back into the shadows of the trees. At best I’d have the police show up and get arrested. At worst the homeowner might pull out a shotgun. I ducked back farther when a dog next door began barking.
While I tried to figure out where to go next I tried to unjam my pistol. I pulled back the slide and tried to release it forward but it refused. I held the gun up slightly so that I could see into the chamber by the light of the porchlights. It was empty. I could also see the magazine follower poking up at the top of the magazine telling me it was empty. The gun wasn’t jammed… I’d somehow fired all nine shots. I would have sworn I’d only fired two or at most three rounds at each of the thugs in the woods. Either I was thoroughly mistaken or some of the rounds had magically evaporated because I could still remember loading the magazines and checking to make sure that they were fully loaded. Even if I could somehow make it back to the spot where I’d fired there was no way to find the empty cases without a metal detector since they were made of mild steel coated with dull gray polymer. Even if I’d had a metal detector I wasn’t curious enough to ever come anywhere near this place if I ever got out of it alive. Instead I dug another magazine out my jacket pocket, slapped it into the gun, and dropped the slide into place. I had eight rounds left.
Somewhere in the distance I could hear police sirens. The homeowners had called the cops no doubt when they’d heard the shooting. Standing around with a gun probably wasn’t the wisest choice and I probably shouldn’t just walk up to a house from the woods after all the shooting. Finding my car made the most sense. The only problem was actually finding it and getting out before the police hemmed me in. I imagined a dragnet sweeping the woods with dogs and helicopters. After what had probably sounded like the beginning of World War III I was sure half the cops in the state would show up. In my head I tried to fashion some sort of mental map, drew a line between where I thought I’d ended up and where I hoped I’d left my car and began walking. I kept the pistol in front of me and my eyes open. As the light completely failed, though, I had a hard time not bumping into trees much less spotting bad guys hunting me in the dark.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been in the woods but soon I spotted the lights from more houses slightly to my right. I veered over that direction and found myself at the edge of the street where I’d parked. I must have looped way around because I was nearly ninety degrees and forty yards from where I expected to be. The houses were off to my left while my car was to my right under the trees where I’d left it. I approached carefully, trying to listen over the ringing in my ears and see through the darkness. I even had enough sense not to walk straight in and silhouette myself with the lights behind me, giving someone a clear shot. There was no none around, however. I checked the back seat for hitchhikers, then climbed back in and started the car. Those old seats had never been more comfortable than they were at that moment. I was cold, damp, and exhausted. I drove for several blocks without turning on the lights. I had the heater turned up as soon as I got rolling, though.
It took me some time to find my way back to anyplace I recognized. That more than anything else kept me from being intercepted by the police. At least twice I saw flashing blue lights around corners reflecting from house windows, prompting me to turn the other direction. I didn’t see any helicopters, though. At last I found highway 60 and drove back towards home, cut across onto highway 17 and returned home.
In the parking lot of my own townhouse I sagged back into my nice comfortable seat, still wondering how the thugs could have possibly kept finding me. With all the lights turned off the interior of the car was a black pit… except for a slight glow coming from under the passenger side seat. I could see it reflecting off a steel travel mug that had been rolling around on my floor for a week or three. Cautiously I bent all the way over to see what it was. Under the seat lying open was a cell phone, still on. I reached under and pulled it out to see the screen. It was a cartoon grid resembling a map. I recognized it from television commercials advertising cell phones that you could use to locate your five similarly equipped friends in your “circle”. Each showed up as a brightly colored dot on the map. As I stared at the map I could see two other dots nearly on top of each other on the other side of the grid from me. I was willing to bet money that one of those other phones was aboard the Camry while the other was aboard the silver SUV. That was how they’d continued to hunt me no matter where I’d gone. The only way that phone could have ended up in my car was Triss. She had slipped it under the seat when I’d dropped her off. It had all been a setup after all. I thumbed through the phone’s call history and address book to see if there was any information but it was all blank. The phone had been set up as a tracking tool, nothing more, probably with cash rather than a credit card and a fake name on the contract. It didn’t matter. I knew to whom it belonged.
What really irked me was that the whole meeting with Triss had been a fake. Sitting down and talking, her telling me sensitive details about her parents refusing to send her back to college, of the abortion… what had all of that been? Did she tell me those things just to get me to let my guard down? Maybe she figured it didn’t matter what she told me because I would be dead by morning anyway. Man, had I been a gullible moron.
Before I got out of the car I pulled the battery. I didn’t even trust the phone shut down. They knew I was headed for home in any case. I didn’t figure they’d have the guts to pull off two murder attempts in the same night when I was already alert. I was going to dump the cell phone in Dinky’s tank to short it out completely on the way upstairs to reload and get the bigger gun. Let them come.
I was about to reach for the knob with the key in my hand when I noticed that it was already slightly ajar. I swapped the key for a pistol before I went through. It didn’t matter. They were already long gone. My townhouse was a wreck. They’d gone through everything. Every piece of clothing was scattered on the floor. Every bookshelf was topped. Even the drawers in the kitchen had been pulled out and dumped. What was broken seemed more a function of fragility and gravity rather than intentional malice. It was probably done while I was eating dinner with Triss, before I’d shot any of them or there would have been more damage. Not much was missing; I didn’t own much of value to begin with. I don’t wear jewelry. The electronics are big, cheap, and from Wal Mart. They’d gone through my CDs and DVDs, taken the ones they felt like taking. The revolver was gone. They’d had some trouble getting the locked gun chest open from the beating it had taken on the outside. Somehow they’d missed or ignored the long guns in the closet. I wondered if one of those b@stards had been firing at me just a while ago with my own gun. I wondered if it would be pointed at me again. I also wondered if Triss knew the whole time that her cronies had been in my house tearing the place apart while she was smiling across the table at me. I used to say that we are raising a generation of lawyers because they all know how to bend the system around and cheat. I sat in my living room after blocking the door shut with a dresser and realized that we’d raised a generation of sociopaths. When a group of kids can look you in the face and tell you about intimate details of their lives knowing that they are going to rob and murder you later then the Republic is already on a steep, short slide into Chaos.
I did dump the cell phone into the fish tank. Dinky hid under a fake coral outcropping and dared not a peek. I think he sensed my mood. I reloaded my spent magazine and got two more. I rigged the door so it would close and lock, made some ugly repairs which I promised myself to pretty up some other time. I went up to bed with a pistol on the nightstand and a shotgun by the bedside. It took a long time to fall asleep. I forced myself to stay in bed with the television off. I had to go to work the next morning and deal with the next generation of sociopaths, making sure they had grades good enough to make their parents happy until their own kids hit the brick wall of reality at college and had to come back home.
Somewhere in the back of my mind the little part left that was still sane held desperately onto the idea that none of this changed the overall plan I was cooking up. I could still work things out. I could still turn the tables and get through this. I kept telling myself that until I nearly believed it. It wasn’t much of a lullaby but it got me to sleep.
...When I hit a red light I made a quick 90 degree turn and kept moving. After three or four of those I drove down a long, wooded lane with stately houses on either side. The road dipped, then split and I picked one branch at random. I hit another side street at random and kept going. Abruptly, the road ended at a wooded lot occupied by nothing more civilized than a sign reading that it was under development by some construction company or other. The final street had houses lining the first three quarters of it, then there were a couple of empty lots which grew up from weeds to trees at the nether end. I did a three point turn and switched off the lights, pretended I was a ghost. The last bloody light of the sunset didn’t reach me in the cover of the trees. It seemed that I was in a dark tunnel leading to a fairy world of twilight under the naked woods at my back. I’d made enough direction switches that it would take Nostradamus with a pack of bloodhounds to find me and the light from the sunset would blind anyone to my little gray sedan hiding in the shadowy darkness.
Just to be safe I checked the pistol to make sure there was a round chambered. Nine rounds in the gun and two extra 8-round magazines. I wouldn’t need them, I told myself. I just wanted to make sure. I would hang around for a half hour, maybe forty five minutes and start heading back by some way other than the interstate. I wasn’t going to go home for a few hours in case they decided to head there and ambush me so I thought about hitting a movie as a way to blow a couple of hours.
So, there I was trying to remember the names of an actor in one of the current films when two pairs of headlights reached the end of the road. They were watery in the glare of the sunset but I could see every detail of the cars as everything was sharpened by the direct light and shadows at the end of the day. It was the Camry which had been chasing me and its partner, the silver SUV. I couldn’t see the guys inside because of the sun glaring off the windows but I was sure they were squinting into the shadows. The SUV pulled up next to the Toyota, blocking the road. Together they slowly rolled forwards. I was caught. How? How in the Hell could they have possibly managed to track me down after all those turns? There’s no way they should have been able to see me hiding down there. They should have passed right on by and kept going. Somehow they’d known.
There were ditches on both side of the street bridged at intervals by concrete driveways but there was no way to make it far enough to zigzag through a yard past parked cars and mailboxes to get past the thugs who’d cornered me. Multiple choice answer “A)drive away” just went out the window, which left “B)fight it out with guys who outgun and outnumber you” and “C)run on foot with heavily armed guys chasing you through the woods” as possible choices. There was also “D)shoot yourself and save them the trouble” but that one didn’t appeal to me either. I briefly considered charging them with the car but since there was no room for me to go around them there wasn’t any room for them to get out of my way. I’d end up running into them and shooting it out at close range assuming I survived the crash. More likely, I’d get mangled by the crash and then shot into mulch after the thugs crawled out from behind their deflating airbags.
The only chance I had was to hoof it. I popped open the door and ran for the woods. I always disable the dome light in my car so the interior lamp didn’t spotlight me when the door opened but they saw the movement. Engines roared as they closed the distance. As I hit the tree line tires screeched and guns shouted.
The Sergeant in the back of my head kept yelling instructions over the chatter of the gunshots, telling me to jink back and forth, keep the tree trunks between me and the shooters, pick up my feet, run faster! The initial adrenaline from the chase had long worn off. My arms and legs felt nerveless and heavy as I tried to run, bullets crackling through the brush around me. One round smacked into a tree trunk directly in front of me sending invisible specks of bark into my face. I kept zigging and zagging, waiting for the flash of pain when a bullet would smash through my back and out of my chest. If it hadn’t been so terrifying it would have actually looked kind of cool with all of the twigs snapping, flying all directions, soggy leaves vaulting into the air as the bullets lashed past or struck random things. I didn’t look back for a drawn out eternity as I ran, trying not to slip on the slippery leaves beaten down by the previous rain and muddy soft earth. I knew if I fell I was done for. Rounding a holly tree I cut off at a severe angle, trying to throw my pursuers off. They were behind me, still yelling and firing. As I turned I threw a look over my shoulder. Over my head the top third of the trees were still splashed orange-red by the setting sun but down on my level it was full twilight. Colors had faded. I could barely sense the waxy green of the holly leaves and the dull yellow-brown as the holly berries turned from green to red. The leaves under my feet were all grey-brown and ghostly buff where minutes ago they’d been crimson and gold. It was nearly like being just under the surface of a murky brown stream. After an eternity of scrambling over the uneven ground the Sergeant observed that they’d stopped shooting at me.
I was sure I’d made an awful racket crashing through the underbrush but they had to have been making at least as much noise with all of them trying to follow me. Their ears were also ringing from all the gunshots so as long as I didn’t do anything stupid they weren’t going to find me by sound. Shadows were moving through the far greyness and I could hear movement coming in my general direction over my panting.
I’d thought I was in better shape. I collapsed against the far side of a tree and tried to slow my breathing so I could hear better and be ready to run after I got my bearings again. I thought about trying to circle back to the car. They might have left someone behind to guard the cars, though. I might also screw up and run right into the thugs coming from the other direction. I could keep running and try to get to a house somewhere, call the police. Somehow they’d managed to keep following me no matter where I went, though. I had no idea how so there was no way to prevent them from coming straight to me all over again. I wasn’t about to bet my life on the police getting to me before the thugs.
It occurred to me that I was still carrying the cell phone Tanya had given me. I was so used to not carrying a phone that it never occurred to me to use it. I should have called the police while I was still on the road and had them direct me to the nearest police station or wherever the nearest unit was located. Heck, they even could have intercepted me on the interstate and I would have happily pulled over. Too late for that now, though. I couldn’t even describe to them where I was at that moment even if I did call.
I was pondering on how to use the cell phone to get out of the corner I’d painted myself into when a shape formed out of the gloom. It was a man shape with a gun wandering my direction. In its other hand it had a cell phone which made a shrill bleh-DEEP to get his attention. The thug halted a few seconds to talk into it.
I froze, crouched behind the tree, and forgot about my own phone. The Makarov was in my hand, hammer back. I’d painted the tiny sights on it with fluorescent paint from the same Michael’s that I’d passed on the way here. The front sight was gostly green/white while the rear blade was lined with orange. They were supposed to absorb light and release it as a soft glow. I’d been in the darkness so long they’d faded but I could still see them as lightly colored smudges as I lined them up on the form in front of me. The thug pushed a couple of buttons on the phone without looking at them and spoke again.
“ Call them back,” I shouted the command in my head but not out loud. “ Say that we’ve lost him. Let’s turn around and go home. Go have dinner at Cracker Barrel or some damned thing. Take the night off.”
The phone hand came down. He turned. I swear he looked straight at where I was crouching. Maybe he actually saw me, maybe he didn’t. I couldn’t tell. Behind him another shape began to form to the shushing sound of feet shuffling through soggy leaves. I was cornered and outnumbered. If I stood or moved they’d definitely see me.
The guy shifted his stance. His gun hand moved.
POW!
I’d thought about pulling the trigger. My hand had automatically responded by doing exactly that. It was terribly simple as it happened, a lot more simple than I’d imagined, shooting a man. The air seemed to shake with the hollow ear-slapping pop. It was too late to hide, to do anything else but follow up so I fired again and make sure I accomplished what I’d begun. The nearer thug hunched down, turned, and scrambled back the way he had come, disappearing onto the underbrush. How in the world had I missed? Did I miss? I’d aimed straight at him, right at the center of his chest. Did I wing him? I couldn’t have missed but I had to have. He’d just turned and run off!
The second figure wasn’t running away. He ran towards me instead, firing wildly in my direction. I returned fire, the Makarov dancing in my hands until suddenly it stopped by itself. I could tell by the balance that something was wrong. “Jammed! S**T!” I howled at myself. The little gun had never jammed before! What had I done wrong?!
I experienced about a third of a second of panic before it registered in my head that the second thug had flopped down on the ground. I didn’t know if he was dropping for cover or if I’d hit him but I had no intention of standing around with a jammed pistol to find out. I took off in a straight line away from the thugs with the tree I’d been hiding behind directly between us. Adrenaline was hammering through my system again and I felt like my head was floating along while my body churned along like a locomotive underneath.
To my shock I nearly fell into someone’s pool. I’d sprinted into someone’s backyard along a string of houses running both directions away to my right and left. It was another subdivision. It could have been on the moon for all I knew because I was completely disoriented. The owner might think it strange to find some weird guy standing around in his back yard by his pool panting with a gun in his hand so I ducked back into the shadows of the trees. At best I’d have the police show up and get arrested. At worst the homeowner might pull out a shotgun. I ducked back farther when a dog next door began barking.
While I tried to figure out where to go next I tried to unjam my pistol. I pulled back the slide and tried to release it forward but it refused. I held the gun up slightly so that I could see into the chamber by the light of the porchlights. It was empty. I could also see the magazine follower poking up at the top of the magazine telling me it was empty. The gun wasn’t jammed… I’d somehow fired all nine shots. I would have sworn I’d only fired two or at most three rounds at each of the thugs in the woods. Either I was thoroughly mistaken or some of the rounds had magically evaporated because I could still remember loading the magazines and checking to make sure that they were fully loaded. Even if I could somehow make it back to the spot where I’d fired there was no way to find the empty cases without a metal detector since they were made of mild steel coated with dull gray polymer. Even if I’d had a metal detector I wasn’t curious enough to ever come anywhere near this place if I ever got out of it alive. Instead I dug another magazine out my jacket pocket, slapped it into the gun, and dropped the slide into place. I had eight rounds left.
Somewhere in the distance I could hear police sirens. The homeowners had called the cops no doubt when they’d heard the shooting. Standing around with a gun probably wasn’t the wisest choice and I probably shouldn’t just walk up to a house from the woods after all the shooting. Finding my car made the most sense. The only problem was actually finding it and getting out before the police hemmed me in. I imagined a dragnet sweeping the woods with dogs and helicopters. After what had probably sounded like the beginning of World War III I was sure half the cops in the state would show up. In my head I tried to fashion some sort of mental map, drew a line between where I thought I’d ended up and where I hoped I’d left my car and began walking. I kept the pistol in front of me and my eyes open. As the light completely failed, though, I had a hard time not bumping into trees much less spotting bad guys hunting me in the dark.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been in the woods but soon I spotted the lights from more houses slightly to my right. I veered over that direction and found myself at the edge of the street where I’d parked. I must have looped way around because I was nearly ninety degrees and forty yards from where I expected to be. The houses were off to my left while my car was to my right under the trees where I’d left it. I approached carefully, trying to listen over the ringing in my ears and see through the darkness. I even had enough sense not to walk straight in and silhouette myself with the lights behind me, giving someone a clear shot. There was no none around, however. I checked the back seat for hitchhikers, then climbed back in and started the car. Those old seats had never been more comfortable than they were at that moment. I was cold, damp, and exhausted. I drove for several blocks without turning on the lights. I had the heater turned up as soon as I got rolling, though.
It took me some time to find my way back to anyplace I recognized. That more than anything else kept me from being intercepted by the police. At least twice I saw flashing blue lights around corners reflecting from house windows, prompting me to turn the other direction. I didn’t see any helicopters, though. At last I found highway 60 and drove back towards home, cut across onto highway 17 and returned home.
In the parking lot of my own townhouse I sagged back into my nice comfortable seat, still wondering how the thugs could have possibly kept finding me. With all the lights turned off the interior of the car was a black pit… except for a slight glow coming from under the passenger side seat. I could see it reflecting off a steel travel mug that had been rolling around on my floor for a week or three. Cautiously I bent all the way over to see what it was. Under the seat lying open was a cell phone, still on. I reached under and pulled it out to see the screen. It was a cartoon grid resembling a map. I recognized it from television commercials advertising cell phones that you could use to locate your five similarly equipped friends in your “circle”. Each showed up as a brightly colored dot on the map. As I stared at the map I could see two other dots nearly on top of each other on the other side of the grid from me. I was willing to bet money that one of those other phones was aboard the Camry while the other was aboard the silver SUV. That was how they’d continued to hunt me no matter where I’d gone. The only way that phone could have ended up in my car was Triss. She had slipped it under the seat when I’d dropped her off. It had all been a setup after all. I thumbed through the phone’s call history and address book to see if there was any information but it was all blank. The phone had been set up as a tracking tool, nothing more, probably with cash rather than a credit card and a fake name on the contract. It didn’t matter. I knew to whom it belonged.
What really irked me was that the whole meeting with Triss had been a fake. Sitting down and talking, her telling me sensitive details about her parents refusing to send her back to college, of the abortion… what had all of that been? Did she tell me those things just to get me to let my guard down? Maybe she figured it didn’t matter what she told me because I would be dead by morning anyway. Man, had I been a gullible moron.
Before I got out of the car I pulled the battery. I didn’t even trust the phone shut down. They knew I was headed for home in any case. I didn’t figure they’d have the guts to pull off two murder attempts in the same night when I was already alert. I was going to dump the cell phone in Dinky’s tank to short it out completely on the way upstairs to reload and get the bigger gun. Let them come.
I was about to reach for the knob with the key in my hand when I noticed that it was already slightly ajar. I swapped the key for a pistol before I went through. It didn’t matter. They were already long gone. My townhouse was a wreck. They’d gone through everything. Every piece of clothing was scattered on the floor. Every bookshelf was topped. Even the drawers in the kitchen had been pulled out and dumped. What was broken seemed more a function of fragility and gravity rather than intentional malice. It was probably done while I was eating dinner with Triss, before I’d shot any of them or there would have been more damage. Not much was missing; I didn’t own much of value to begin with. I don’t wear jewelry. The electronics are big, cheap, and from Wal Mart. They’d gone through my CDs and DVDs, taken the ones they felt like taking. The revolver was gone. They’d had some trouble getting the locked gun chest open from the beating it had taken on the outside. Somehow they’d missed or ignored the long guns in the closet. I wondered if one of those b@stards had been firing at me just a while ago with my own gun. I wondered if it would be pointed at me again. I also wondered if Triss knew the whole time that her cronies had been in my house tearing the place apart while she was smiling across the table at me. I used to say that we are raising a generation of lawyers because they all know how to bend the system around and cheat. I sat in my living room after blocking the door shut with a dresser and realized that we’d raised a generation of sociopaths. When a group of kids can look you in the face and tell you about intimate details of their lives knowing that they are going to rob and murder you later then the Republic is already on a steep, short slide into Chaos.
I did dump the cell phone into the fish tank. Dinky hid under a fake coral outcropping and dared not a peek. I think he sensed my mood. I reloaded my spent magazine and got two more. I rigged the door so it would close and lock, made some ugly repairs which I promised myself to pretty up some other time. I went up to bed with a pistol on the nightstand and a shotgun by the bedside. It took a long time to fall asleep. I forced myself to stay in bed with the television off. I had to go to work the next morning and deal with the next generation of sociopaths, making sure they had grades good enough to make their parents happy until their own kids hit the brick wall of reality at college and had to come back home.
Somewhere in the back of my mind the little part left that was still sane held desperately onto the idea that none of this changed the overall plan I was cooking up. I could still work things out. I could still turn the tables and get through this. I kept telling myself that until I nearly believed it. It wasn’t much of a lullaby but it got me to sleep.
Piedmont Plinker
Member
- Joined
- Nov 19, 2006
- Messages
- 941
BANG
click...
click...
click...
"(angry gangbanger swearing)"
click...
Lorcin
click...
click...
click...
"(angry gangbanger swearing)"
click...
Lorcin
jaholder1971
Member
I'm sorry, I can't hear any of you for all 8 engines on my B52 running at FL450...
Just how many B83's can I get on a BUFF, anyway?
Just how many B83's can I get on a BUFF, anyway?
CPerdue
Member
ka-ZOT
ZOT
ZOT
-ZOT
-ZOT
-ZOT
-ZOT <FLASH> <BOOM>
Phased plasma beam rifle in the 40-watt range.
-- And another ...
<Ominous flash>
<Profound silence>
<Burst of hard gamma rays>
<More silenece>
Space battle.
ZOT
ZOT
-ZOT
-ZOT
-ZOT
-ZOT <FLASH> <BOOM>
Phased plasma beam rifle in the 40-watt range.
-- And another ...
<Ominous flash>
<Profound silence>
<Burst of hard gamma rays>
<More silenece>
Space battle.
tinygnat219
Member
Here's another:
Crack! @)#$_@*$_@#)_*)@# UNJAM! Crack! SPROING!
The infamous Chauchaut of WWI.
Crack! @)#$_@*$_@#)_*)@# UNJAM! Crack! SPROING!
The infamous Chauchaut of WWI.
Michigander
Member
pop
Piedmont Plinker
Member
- Joined
- Nov 19, 2006
- Messages
- 941
CLUNK
Lebel
Lebel
DRZinn
Member
KABOOM! (Earth-shattering)
--Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator
--Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator
- Status