Gun Church

Again, he didn’t answer. Instead, he bent at the knees and placed the Glock and the Colt on the ground to his left. He took the.38 out of his jeans and dropped it by the other handguns.

I didn’t move. I kept reminding myself that with Jim, nothing was as it seemed.

“What are you waiting for, Kip? Take off the safety. It’s loaded. See for yourself. Go ahead. Do it, Kip, but hurry up. Moreland’s lost a lot of blood and time’s wasting. Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock … ”

I undid the safety and racked the slide. A bullet ejected, spinning in mid-air and then, hitting a rock, tumbled harmlessly in the direction of the shed.

“If I go for any of these,” he said, gesturing at the guns at his feet, “you’d be able to blow a hole in me before I even got close.”

“Probably.”

He smiled. I really hated Jim’s smiles. “You were asking about how you determine who gets out of here alive,” he said. “This is how. You have the edge now and you better use it. You won’t have it again, Kip, not ever.”

“Shoot him for chrissakes!” Amy shouted, jumping to her feet. “Shoot the crazy motherfucker. Peter’s dying. What are you waiting for?”

I looked to Renee for a sign, for some indication of what I should do, but she kept mute and noncommittal and that scared me. Did she know something that she couldn’t say or wouldn’t say?

Just as I put my finger on the trigger, Jim grabbed Amy by the hair much the way Stan Petrovic had done to Renee that last night in the chapel. He twisted it so hard that Amy fell to her knees. She was clawing at him, flailing at his legs. When one of her wild punches landed too close to his groin, he tugged her hair harder, snapping her head back. She stopped flailing and screamed in pain.

“Shoot!” he said.

I raised the muzzle, aiming at the center of his mass.

“Come on, Kip. Amy’s right, what are you waiting for? You’re not very good with the Browning, but you’re good enough. You couldn’t miss me from here … or could you? What if I moved suddenly?” Mocking me, he feinted his shoulders left, then right. “What if you flinch? What if the wind comes up?”

“Shoot him! Shoot him!” Amy was unraveling. “Shoot him, please. Get this over with. I can’t take it anymore. Shoot him, for chrissakes! I don’t care if you hit me.”

Jim said, “But Kip does care. Don’t you, Kip?”

I lowered the gun. “Sorry, I’m not playing that game.” I put the safety on and tossed the Browning back to him. “You just wanted to see if I would shoot, whether I would risk Amy’s life. Besides, the rest of the clip is either empty or loaded with blanks. You chambered one live round as a decoy. Well, I’m a little bit brighter than Stan was, Jim. I won’t let you screw with me the way you did him. What was supposed to happen? I pull the trigger, you get a big laugh, and then what? You pick up the Glock and pump one into my kneecap?”

“You’re a smart man,” he said, dragging Amy with him to collect the Browning. “That was one of the things I admired about you and your writing. Your protagonists were really smart. They could figure out all the angles, but by the end of the book they were always victims of their own overthinking. They were too smart for their own good. Like in that chapter from Flashing Pandora when Kant schemes with Harper Marx to win back Pandora. He doomed himself. You’re just like that, Kip, too smart for your own good. You should have taken the shot when you had it. He who hesitates is dead. Blanks? Empty clip? Let’s see.”

My guts churned as Jim pushed Amy face-first to the ground, turned to his right, and, without a second’s hesitation, put two bullets into Moreland: one in the chest, the second shot blowing off part of his skull. Blood, shards of bone, and clumps of tissue sprayed all over Renee and the shed. Renee fell back, horrified. She furiously wiped the tissue and blood off her face. Amy raised herself up, turned to see the damage, and completely freaked. She was crying madly, pulling at her own hair. As she crawled over to Moreland, her hands slipped on his blood and she toppled forward onto his body. Her face was covered in blood and viscera.

“Now it’s empty, Kip,” Jim said, the slide locked in the open position. He hurled the empty Browning over the shed and toward the falls. “Like I said, too damned smart for your own good.”

Fifty-Two

Ice Cream

Frozen for a moment, I rushed at Jim, but I didn’t get two feet before he’d picked up the.38 and drew a bead on me.

“That’s not how this is going to play out. No, sir.”

I stopped dead in my tracks and threw up my hands. “Okay. Okay, but let me check on Amy.”

“Go ahead, but don’t get any ideas.”

Keeping the.38 on me the entire time, Jim collected the guns he’d placed on the ground and stepped away. By the time I got to Amy, all the fight and hysteria had gone out of her. She was done, spent, in shock. I used my sleeve to wipe the blood off her face. She barely noticed. Her eyes were so distant I wasn’t sure she even recognized me. If things turned worse than they already were, that distant place was probably a better place for her to be.

“Jim, how could you do that, shoot him like that?” Renee asked, still wiping blood off her own face.

“Ask your boyfriend. He had a clean shot at me. He had the chance. I gave him a chance. It’s his fault, not mine.”

“Amy’s done, Jim. Let Renee take her somewhere and you can do with me what you want.”

Renee agreed. “Let Amy go. This is about the three of us anyway.”

“She stays. And you’re wrong. This isn’t about the three of us. It never was. It’s about me and Kip, about him pissing away all the good things I gave him, you most of all.”

“This isn’t a game,” I said.

“But it is, just like in Gun Church with McGuinn. He wanted out and to save Zoe. I don’t see that happening today, Kip.”

Jim maintained a safe distance from us. He tucked the Glock in his pants, took the.38, unhinged the cylinder, spun it, then snapped it shut. When that was done, he did the same thing with the Colt. He tossed the.38 at Renee and the Python at me. He put the Glock back in his shooting hand.

“See,” he said, “Amy’s going to stay here with me while you and Renee go into the woods. Only one of you is going to come out alive. Then you or Renee gets to go back in there with me. If you or Renee gets lucky, Amy gets to go home. If it’s me that walks out of there, I’m going to kill her and I’m not going to do her the kindness I did her husband. I’m going to kill her an inch at a time, piece by piece.”

I didn’t move. “I’m not McGuinn and I’m not playing.”

“Well, I am,” Renee said, placing her fingers around the.38’s handle and standing up. “I want to live and I’m tired of sacrificing for you, Ken Weiler. I loved you even before I met you and all you’ve ever done is hurt me and shit on me. You never once asked me about where I came from or my family or anything. You never even asked me what my major was or if I wanted to go on with school after I got my degree. The only thing you know about me, I mean really know about me, is that I shave myself instead of wax and I spasm when I come. You think you’ve changed, but you haven’t. You’re worse now than you used to be.”

“That’s not true,” I said, even though most of it-maybe all of it-was.

“Okay,” she said. “If you answer this question right, I won’t play either. I’ll toss the.38 away and die right here with you. In your arms, if you want.”

“What question?”

“What’s my favorite flavor ice cream?”

Jim’s smile grew broader and smug. “Yeah, Kip, what flavor? I know Renee’s favorite. I know her parents’ names, where she grew up. Someone’s favorite flavor isn’t the kind of thing you should have to think about if you love somebody. I bet Amy knows your favorite flavor.”

“Butter pecan,” Amy said in a voice as far away as her eyes. Then, thankfully, she seemed to retreat back to that distant place.