Reed Coleman - Gun Church

I understood. To Jim, standing outside the woods, it would sound as if we were firing at each other. After I fired, she fired again. That left one round between us. She moved quietly around in front of me, putting her face close to mine so that we could speak more freely.

“Renee, I’m sorry. I have pissed away my time with you. If I had it to do over, I would-”

“Forget what I said back there. I had to make Jim believe I was really mad at you or none of this would work. I love you and I guess, in your way, you really do love me.”

“Strawberry,” I said. She smiled so that I barely noticed the absence of the sun.

“We don’t have much time. One of us has to walk out of the woods and the other has to-”

The sound barely registered above the wind and the rush of the water. It was only when Renee’s eyes got big and she coughed blood that I understood what was happening. There it was again. She slid sideways against my knee and to the ground, the left side of her sweater dark and wet. White bubbles formed in the blood at the corners of her mouth as she struggled to breathe. Her lips were moving and I pressed my ear to her mouth.

“Your back pocket,” is what I thought she said. Yourbackpocket? If I survived, I’d worry about it then. I pulled away to check on her wounds, but it was moot. The St. Pauli Girl was dead. Of all the possible sounds in the woods, crying was the most distinctly human.

Jim was on me before I could raise the Colt, not that I could have seen him clearly through my tears. I tried to make the heaving in my chest stop by taking big gulps of air, but it would not stop. Even breathing became difficult.

“If I thought it was your idea to trick me, Kip, I would have killed you just the same as her,” he said, his voice strained and woeful. “She thought she could fool me with that angry act down there, but I knew how much she loved you.”

“Why did you kill her?”

His tone reverted to form. “Don’t ask stupid questions. You killed her just like you killed Haskell Brown and Mabry and Stan Petrovic. If you had accepted her love and my other gifts to you, she’d still be breathing.”

Jim’s cold nature put me back in the moment. “What did you do with Stan’s body?” I asked.

“He’s rotting in your Porsche in one of the old buildings at Hardentine. I used him as added leverage to get Renee to come up here with me. She would have done anything to protect you. And now … ”

“I’m going to kill you, Jim.”

“Good, that’s what I like. You’re not going to be a pussy and just lay down and die. If I counted right, you’ve got one round left. Let’s see what you can do with it. Now when I tell your story, I won’t have to make anything up about you dying like a man. Go ahead, I’ll give you-”

I wheeled and fired, but if I thought I would catch Jim sleeping or in mourning, I was wrong. He fired too. I was down and my right side burned as if there was a white-hot sword sticking through me. My shirt was wet under my jacket and I didn’t need to look to know it wasn’t sweat. Jim had stumbled several feet backwards and I couldn’t quite see him, but I could hear him howling in pain and rolling around on the forest floor. The thing about it was, Jim wasn’t dead and I wasn’t going to stick around to see how badly wounded he was. I got up and ran for the falls.

For some reason I held on to the Python, but a low-hanging branch smacked me in the cheek and I dropped the gun. For about twenty yards, I thought I might get to the river. But when another branch on a tree a few paces ahead of me was sheared off at its base and the shot echoed through the woods, I knew I was probably going to die.

I looked back and, in spite of the shadows, saw Jim dragging himself through the underbrush. His right wrist and thigh were wet with blood, his arm dangling off his shoulder like a useless piece of rope. He carried the Glock in his left hand. Jim was good with his left, but not nearly as good as with his right. He was probably losing a lot of blood and in pain, and adrenalin would carry him only so far, so fast. None of that was apt to help his marksmanship. The same was as true for me.

I weaved in and out of the trees trying to keep as many between Jim and me as possible without letting him get too close. Shots came in fast succession so that their echoes seemed to catch up to one another and overlap. I tried counting the shots-one into Moreland’s calf, two into Renee’s side, one for that first branch … and so on-but I gave it up. For all I knew he had ten clips on him and I stopped looking back altogether. I focused my energies on the opening up ahead and the ever-increasing noise of the river.

I came through the trees, caught my foot on the edge of an exposed tree root and tumbled head over ass into the river. The icy cold water sapped my strength and will, but oddly it did little to extinguish the fire burning in my side. It would’ve been so easy to surrender, to let myself be swept away over the falls and downstream. If Amy was already dead or if Renee were still alive, I might have given myself over to the water. But when I felt the sting of something bite into my left arm, I gave up any thought of surrender. A bullet whistled right overhead. Looking up and behind me, I saw Jim at the edge of the woods where I’d tumbled into the water. As I was pulled downstream I lost sight of him behind some dirt mounds and weeds. I willed my way to the riverbank and fought my way out of the water.

The bullet had taken out a small chunk of my bicep and it was bleeding, but not as badly as my side. As I came up over the bank, I could see the maintenance shed ahead of me, off to my right. Jim was nowhere in sight, but I decided not to take any stupid chances. Instead of making a dead run at the shed, I combat crawled. I wasn’t paying much attention to the damp, winter-hardened ground under me. About halfway to the shed, my leg brushed over something metal with angles and edges. I rolled on my side, the pain ripping me apart. There was the old.45 that Jim had thrown over the shed towards the river after killing Moreland. I laughed to myself. Unless Jim was willing to toss the Glock away and stand still while I beat him to death with the Browning, an empty gun was useless to me. I stopped contemplating the Browning when the ground kicked dirt into my cheek.

I looked behind me over my right shoulder and saw Jim about forty or fifty yards away, his head, shoulders, and left arm extended over the rise of the riverbank. If he made it up the bank he would have a clear shot no matter where I went or what I did. Now I understood what the term no man’s land meant. But he was seriously wounded and wouldn’t be able to work his way up those last few feet to more level ground without expending a lot of energy. Another shot kicked up more dirt. It kicked up something else with it: an idea. The odds of it working weren’t very good, but I was out of other options.

Jim had been a little too comfortable and in control for too long. It was time to see how he would act when he didn’t have all the advantages. Besides, I had to buy myself some time. I picked up the empty Browning, stuck it in my pants and rolled to my left. Christ, it felt like my side would split wide open. I was lightheaded. Jim wasn’t the only one losing blood.

“You’re a fucking pussy, Jim, a coward,” I screamed at him, crawling as fast as I could in the direction of the shed. “You going to shoot an unarmed man hiding behind a riverbank like a total pussy? What about all your high-minded bullshit about two people facing off across a room? I thought you were special, but when push comes to shove, Stan was right about you. You’re just a scared little boy. You disappoint me, kid. No wonder the Colonel used to beat the shit out of you. He was trying to make you a man. I guess it didn’t work.” I took a big breath and rolled as quickly as I could.