Joe Lansdale: Bullets and Fire

As I reached the far open door, I saw they were coming for me, maybe twenty guys, couple of the girls, but there were some holding back. The ones coming had weapons, all hand guns, and when they opened up the world went crazy and my ears went deaf and began to ring. And I don’t remember it all, but the bullets cut all around me and one went through my left arm and it hurt like hell, and the next thing I know it’s hanging at my side, and I got the AK-47 lifted, pushed up against my hip, and I’m rockin’ and rollin’ and bodies are jumping. I’m having a better day than they are. Probably because they couldn’t hit an elephant in the ass at ten paces with a tossed bar stool, even spraying. I’m like the luckiest mother fucker that ever squatted to shit over a pair of shoes, cause except for that one hit, I’m doing good. It’s like I was fucking charmed.

I saw my bullet jerk B.G. and Rhino around and take them apart, and a lot of the others, they went down too.

I started walking sideways, along the wall, and I came to the counter where the shoes used to be given out, slid behind that. I kept firing and their shots kept coming and the wood on the counter jumped and splintered and the shoe racks behind me came apart, and I wasn’t hit again. I just kept pushing the AK-47 up against me, firing.

I was almost to the door, and I could see that the bodies were heaped. And there was that damn Juan, still alive, and I pulled the trigger on the AK-47 again, but it was empty, and I remembered that I had picked up another clip, but couldn’t load it with only one hand working, so I dropped the AK-47 and pulled the pistol and fired one shot and didn’t hit anyone, heard the lead bounce off a bowling ball, and then I was at the door. I ran out of there, my arm dangling at my side like a puppet that had lost a string.

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IT WAS COOL OUTSIDE for a change and there was a thin rain blowing in my face as I ran. I felt a little dizzy, but for the most part things were all right, but the colors of the night, lit up by distant lights, were mostly shades of black and gray. I was glad there were no streetlights, because I got behind a parked car and dropped behind it and laid on my belly and looked under it and down the street at the bowling alley. As I was laying there, I felt the AK-47 clip sticking in my stomach, and I lifted up and pulled it out of my belt and left it on the concrete. I touched my pocket. The extra load for the automatic was gone. It must have fallen out of my pocket. I looked around under the car for it, and then I saw beneath the car that it lying in the street between the car and the bowling alley. I hadn’t stuck it in good, and it had gotten bumped out. I felt like an idiot.

After awhile the door opened a crack, and a head poked out, and then another, and then one other. They looked my direction first, then the other direction. I wondered how many were still in there. I had pretty much wiped out the crop of the gang, scared the shit out of the others. Only thing I hadn’t done was blow up their meth lab, which was in a little house down the street from the bowling alley. There were some of the gang there, but, way I felt, they were going to get away. Maybe I’d come back and get them too, just for the hell of it. Kill them all and blow the place up and shit in the ashes.

I kept watching, and then I saw the heads move, and then the guys were out in the street. And then another guy showed, and then a girl. She had long black hair, and I even noted she had a good figure, and thought that was funny. Here I am, lying on the ground, people wanting to kill me, one of them that girl, and I’m taking note of her tits and ass.

They all had guns. Hand guns. I could see them moving them around in the dark. Altogether, there were five of them. Three of them broke off and went the opposite way, and then the other two, Juan, limping a little, and the girl, started my way. They saw the clip I had dropped, and Juan stopped and bent down and picked it up.

They looked back for the others, but they had long gone. At least it was just this two knew which direction I had gone.

It was all I could do to make myself move. The concrete felt good and cool. I lifted up on my hands and knees, and when I did, I could hear the sticky blood that had run out of me make a Velcro sound; it had dried enough to stick me to the cement. I realized then that I hadn’t been as charmed as I thought. I had been hit a couple of times, but not anywhere too bad, or so I hoped. I did feel a little light headed.

I backed on hands and knees a few paces, then backed into an alley and hoped it wasn’t a dead end. It wasn’t. I went along it and tried not to breath to heavy or too loud. I looked up. The sky was just a kind of slick glow. There were no lights where I was, but the city lights slicked the sky like that and gave it this gauzy look. I thought of where I had lived when dad and me moved away from here. There you could see the sky and at night you could hear crickets and frogs and there were tall trees.

I went over a grating, and when I did steam came out of it like devil’s breath, and I jumped a little. I went on and around a corner, and then I started feeling as if someone had opened up a spigot in my heel and the soul of me was running out of it.

I stopped and leaned against the alley wall and moved my shirt back and looked at where I had been hit in the side, realized it was a bad hit, worse than I thought. The other wounds weren’t so bad, but they were all bleeding, and I felt as if there was something tunneling around inside of me.

I could hear Juan and that girl coming. I thought about running, but my body wasn’t up for it. They knew where I was, and it was a matter of time before they caught up with me. I looked around, saw some garbage cans by some metal stairs. I made my way there and got behind the cans and eased over behind the stairs and watched between the garbage cans as Juan turned the corner, and then the girl.

They spread out, maybe trying to act like movies they’d see, where the cops search rooms. But this was a big ass room, this wide spot in the alley, and when she went left, Juan came along the wall, and then he stopped as his arm brushed the bricks. He put out his hand and rubbed the wall, and I knew he had found my blood there.

He turned and looked toward the trashcans, and when he did, he saw me between those cans. I knew it. I could tell. I lifted the gun and fired and it hit him and he went down and his pistol skittered across the alley.

Bullets banged around the cans and along the stairs and a light went on somewhere above me, and the girl, panicking, fired at the lighted window. I heard glass crash and then someone smartly turned out the light. I stood up and kicked the trash cans over and came out blazing. I fired twice and both shots missed. She fired and hit me in the shoulder, and this one was solid, not just passing through. It knocked me down and I felt as if all the wind was out of me. I couldn’t believe how hard I had been hit.

I lay on my back and she came toward me. She was smiling. She had a revolver. She pointed it at me. She straddled me and pulled the trigger. And it clicked empty. She had shot at me in the bowling alley, maybe one of her shots had hit me, but now, she was all used up.

I grinned and lifted the pistol and shot her in between the legs.

She seemed to jump backwards and then she hit the ground on her back, made a noise like someone trying to squeeze out a silent fart.

I could hardly get up, but I did. I staggered over to her and looked down at her. She looked young. Not a whole lot older than the girl I had punched.

“Shit,” I said.

She quit moving, except for one leg that wiggled a moment, then quit.

I went over to Juan. He was breathing heavy. He had his hands on his belly. I got down on my knees by him.