Wrath White - The Resurrectionist

Josh returned to the car and after tipping the valet for letting him leave his car there, he drove out of the garage and back onto Las Vegas Boulevard. The 215 expressway was only a couple blocks away and soon they were headed southwest at seventy miles per hour. It took them less than twenty minutes to make it across town and soon they were exiting the freeway on Eastern Avenue.

American Marksman was a big store that looked like a supermarket from the outside; located in a strip mall on Eastern Avenue, it was by far the biggest store on the block. Sarah was surprised by how many people were packed into the store shopping with their families. Apparently, small-town folks weren’t the only people who clung to guns when the economy went bad.

Some of them had infants in strollers as if they were just out bargain hunting at Wal-Mart. She was even more surprised by the number of single women, young and old, shopping for handguns, rifles, and shotguns. There were the typical rednecks, cops, and wannabe gangsters too. She wondered how often criminals were in here shopping for guns right alongside the cops who would later arrest them?

Josh and Sarah walked over to one of the many display cases. A salesman with a thick Alabama accent walked over to them.

“Good morning. What can I do ya fer?”

“I’m looking for a handgun for my wife.”

“Something little?”

“No. Something big,” Sarah said.

Both Josh and the salesman looked at her, surprised.

“Well, okay then little lady. You ever handled a weapon before?”

“My father was a lifetime NRA member. He taught all of us how to shoot. It’s been about fifteen or twenty years though, so I’m sure I’m rusty.”

“You wantin’ this for home protection or to carry around witcha?”

Sarah looked at Josh, who shrugged in response.

“Home, I guess.”

“Then how about a.38 Special? Smith and Wesson makes a nice one and it’s relatively cheap.”

“I don’t want a revolver.”

“Okay. Well, the customer’s always right.” He reached under the counter and took out a small semiautomatic. “How about a.380? It has about the same stopping power as a.38.”

“Too small. I want to put a big-ass hole in whatever I shoot at.”

Sarah didn’t smile when she spoke.

“Then you want a.40. It has more stopping power than the nine-millimeter but it doesn’t have the extra kick of a.44. Glock and Sig Sauer make nice ones but they’re pretty pricey. We do have a used Sig on sale for five hundred dollars.”

“That’s a sale? How much is it regular price?”

“Nine hundred dollars.”

“Wow. I guess that is a sale then.” She turned to Josh. “Can we afford it?”

“Well, the mortgage is paid and we don’t have a car payment. We’ll have to tighten the belts a bit but, yeah, we can afford it.”

“Then that’s what I want.”

“How many bullets you want?”

“I want two or three boxes so I can practice.”

“How about two boxes of target ammo and then a box of hollow points for that stopping power ya want? How’s that sound?”

“That sounds about right.”

“You want to try it out first? We got an indoor range here in the back.”

“Sounds like a great idea to me. What do you say?” Josh said.

Sarah shrugged.

“Then let’s go for it. I guess.”

The salesman handed them both a pair of plastic goggles, headphones, and a couple of paper targets with a bull’s-eye in the center.

“Do you have any of those targets that look like people?”

The salesman cocked an eyebrow at her, then looked at Josh as if to say, “Are you sure you know what you’re doin’ here, buddy?”

Josh held up his hands in surrender.

“Yeah. They’s two dollars a piece.”

“I’ll take five.”

The salesman shook his head and took five targets out of a cabinet behind the counter. The targets had pictures of men in ski masks holding guns. They looked like the type of criminals Batman beat up in between fighting supervillains in the comic books Sarah had read as a child. The salesman handed the targets to Sarah, then opened the door and led the way into the shooting range.

“My name’s Mike by the way.”

He held out a big, meaty hand with hairy knuckles.

Josh shook his hand first and then Sarah did the same.

“Josh and Sarah Lincoln.”

“Pleased to meet you both. Go ahead and put the goggles and headphones on before we get in there.”

He put on his own, then waited while Sarah and Josh donned their own protective equipment.

The range was full of people lined up putting holes in paper targets. There were couples like Josh and Sarah, fathers with their sons, and single men and women. The sound of the gunshots was deafening. They walked up to an empty booth and the salesman put the gun on the table along with two boxes of ammo and ejected the clip, laying the gun and the clip side by side.

“Now you load the clip like this.”

The salesman shook out eight bullets into his hand, picked up the clip, and began pushing the bullets into it one at a time with his thumb. Then he took them all back out and handed the clip to Sarah.

“You try it.”

Sarah loaded the clip, pushing the bullets in with her thumb just as Mike had done.

“Then you slide the clip into the gun like this, click the safety off. See that red dot? When you see that dot that means the safety’s off. You just pull the slide back like this and that puts a round in the chamber there. Now you’re ready to go. Just line up the sights, like this. Take a deep breath. Hold it. And squeeze the trigger.”

Sarah went through a hundred rounds of ammo. By the time they were done she felt like an old pro. She was almost eager for someone to come walking into her bedroom uninvited. She wanted to see what those hollow points would do to human flesh.

“Why didn’t we ever do this before? This is fun. We should go shooting every weekend,” Sarah said.

“So, I guess we’re buying the gun then?” Josh asked.

“Hell yeah we are!”

They walked back into the store area with Mike.

“Do you have a blue card?”

“I do. I just bought a gun here a few weeks ago.”

“Then you should register it in your name. Otherwise you’re going to have to go through a two-week waiting period while we do a background check on her. If it’s just going to be in the house and she won’t be carryin’ it around, then it won’t matter whose name it’s in. Eventually, you’re probably gonna want to get one registered in her name though.”

Sarah watched Josh hand the salesman his gun permit and his driver’s license. She felt amazingly relieved. If anything happened now, at least she’d be able to defend herself. The salesman copied down the information and took a Xerox of it along with Josh’s driver’s license. He handed both the license and the permit back to Josh and Josh handed him the credit card. Minutes later, Sarah and Josh were walking out of the store with her new gun.

“We need to make one more stop.”

“Where at?”

“I want to get you something to hide that in where you can get to it fast if something happens. Just in case.”

Sarah leaned closer to him and kissed him.

“Thank you, Josh. I know you think I’m losing my mind but I appreciate you doing all of this to make me feel safe. You could have just taken me to the psych ward to get my head examined.”

“Don’t worry. I’m going to do that too.”

Sarah punched him in the arm, then kissed him again.

When they pulled up at The Spy Shop, Sarah looked confused.

“Trust me. This place is cool. You’re going to love it.”

He looked like a little kid in a toy store as Josh rushed through the door, nearly forgetting to hold the door for Sarah, then catching it just before it swung back and almost smacked her in the face.