Stephen Hunter - Dirty White Boys

You'll have it all. You'll be the king.”

Lamar didn't respond.

Was he yelling to a ghost? Had Lamar sped through the trees and was he closing in on some fine family to murder and steal a Lincoln Continental and get clean away?

No. He couldn't have moved that fast.

“Lamar!”

A gun flash blossomed before him, spangling his vision, but Lamar's best shot missed, and Bud drew the Beretta onto the fire and returned.

The gun bucked and rose in his hand, but Bud was in love with shooting it. The gun flashes illuminated the cathedral under the trees, etching each detail in the bright light if only for a millisecond.

Bud fired eight or nine times.

Now he was pretty much goddamn blind, but he heard the scrape of something moving before him and before he could stop himself, he fired again, the flashes even larger this time, like flares or star shells, that seemed to turn the night to day, catching in their shards of blaze the seething smoke.

Damn, he thought, and then Lamar hit him full in the chest.

Lamar watched him come. He had a moment of doubt in his course, for so slow and clumsy was the man, he seemed an easy target. But not at night, when you couldn't see your own gun to aim and you only had one shot. You'd have to wait until he was at contact distance and maybe he wouldn't ever come into contact distance.

You figured fine, he thought.

He watched as Pewtie hesitated, caught in doubt.

Can't make up your goddamn mind, boy.

Then Pewtie put one gun away and got another out. Now what was that all about? Some secret meaning in the guns?

Didn't matter. What mattered was that Lamar now knew Bud was carrying two, one in hand, and one high on his right hip.

Bud gently entered the trees.

Then he halted, and yelled something at Lamar. Lamar couldn't quite make it out, because he was so low into the forest floor, about six feet to the right of where his pistol was- wedged into the crotch of the tree. He controlled the sapling that reached its trigger with his left hand, but he was concentrating real hard on not making a sound, not hardly breathing, on not hardly being alive. At the same time he tried to focus his mind on Bud, to somehow reach out through the trees and take over the lawman's brain, to bring him on. So far it was working.

Bud moved in closer and yelled something else. He seemed to pause, unsure which way to head. Then he seemed to make up his mind, and pivoted as if to head off to the right. If he got too far, Lamar could never reach him.

Okay, Lamar, he told himself. Do it now. Do it and be done with it.

But something in Lamar now held back.

What? Fear, regret?

Whatever, Lamar just watched as the man, twenty-five feet away, seemed to turn in slow motion, just a dark shape in the woods, almost not there unless you'd seen him come in.

Do it, Lamar, he told himself.

With his hand, he nudged the stick forward, and it didn't take long.

The report was crisp and not loud, the flash momentarily lighting the lawman's taut face and then disappearing.

Pewtie fired back almost instantaneously. Lamar looked into the earth to preserve his gradually returning night vision, and heard the cracks and the echoes lashing out, almost like a whip snapping over his head, so many, so fast.

Oh you scared. You so scared. Not two shots, not three, but six, seven. Pray and spray, motherfucker.

A moment of silence. Then absurdly, Pewtie fired again, like a crazy man, rushing forward on the surge of adrenaline and under the roar of the shots. Lamar rose like a lion and bounded the few feet to him on an oblique angle; and if Pewtie ever saw him coming, it was too late, for he thundered fully against the man and felt the surprise and the shock disorganizing Pewtie's body, turning it to water, and Lamar was on him, crushing his thrashing body under his own.

First thing was the gun hand, which he controlled with his own left, then, slithering up to gain control, he hit the cop a hammer blow in the face because with two fingers gone, no way could he make a fist; he hit him right over the eye, and thought he felt a bone in the face break as the man screamed and with his other hand rose to ward the blows off.

It was like terrible fag sex, the two strong men pumping against each other in a rising fog of body stink and fear.

Lamar saw how it would go in a second and knew he'd win easy. He'd pound the head of the man he controlled for another ten seconds, smashing him into submission, then twist across the body to get both hands on the gun wrist and corkscrew the automatic out of his grip and pull it back and shoot the lawman with his own gun.

But Bud's hand shot up to his throat and began squeezing, the thumb driving desperately for the Adam's apple.

Lamar gagged, then threaded his hand under Bud's and gave him a knuckle thrust to the fleshy side of the neck, feeling the body beneath him go rigid in the awful pain. He hit again and thought he felt the tremor of surrender quivering through his opponent. Quick as a big cat, he pivoted and now had both hands on Bud's gun wrist, cranking it counterclockwise to rip the pistol from the grip, seeing the hands turn white as they lost their purchase. Something hit him lightly in the leg and then the gun fired, its flash blinding him gain, but it didn't matter, for the slide didn't lock back and the recoil further weakened the man's grip and now he had it. It was in his hand.

He leaned back, fiddling to get it in his hand right, and then thrust the muzzle against the man's body and pulled the trigger.

Richard heard shots. They seemed to come from out beyond, out on the prairie.

He looked around again, seeing nothingness, and then headed toward the sound. He walked in the darkness and paused for just a second, to see the farm spread behind him and before him only the darker band of the trees.

A shape suddenly appeared before him.

“Lamar?” he said, but it was only the girl, who looked at him in horror and then slipped off. He watched her disappear and wondered why she had such revulsion on her face.

He stood there for a few seconds, wondering what to do.

The world had never seemed so empty to him as it did at that moment.

Then he saw a single shot coming from ahead in the trees; by a trick of fate he had been looking exactly where the flash so briefly blossomed.

It occurred to him: Lamar may need help.

He walked toward the shot.

I have to help Lamar.

He took out his gun.

Bud felt his strength vaporizing, and with it all his will.

He had nothing left to fight with, and Lamar had hit him so hard in the face and throat he was seeing nothing but flares of light as his throbbing optic nerves shot off. But still he clung to the Beretta, knowing it held his purchase on survival.

Lamar was above him, over him, hitting him gigantic hammer blows against which he had no defense. His face swelled like a rotten grapefruit. He saw his sons before him in the strobe effect of the optic nerve and for just a second forgot where he was. Lamar's face was a savage mask, so rigid with hatred and power it seemed like something from ancient times. Lamar's dark eyes glowed and his nostrils flared and Bud could smell sweat and dirt and blood and then Lamar hit him a giant clout on the nose, breaking it, filling Bud's mind with red mist.

Lamar pivoted, and Bud felt Lamar's other hand coming onto his wrist, Lamar's weight still pinning him, and the gun was being corkscrewed from his grasp until it was only a second before he lost it.

Magazine button, he thought.

He pushed it with his thumb and felt the magazine slide out, and then he pulled the trigger, the gun firing pointlessly off toward nowhere, as Lamar then seized it and with a blast of triumph broke contact with Bud and pivoted to jam the pistol against his ribs and squeeze the trigger.