to get home.”
“I am, but my feet are covered in blisters, my shoes are shredded. I need new shoes if I’m gonna make it. And look at me. What do you think my wife is going to say when she sees me like this?”
“She won’t give a shit how you look, she’ll be glad you’re alive-or the bitch can fuck herself and we end this long walk right now.”
“Fine, forget the clothes. But I need the shoes,” Marty spotted something on the floor. “And socks.”
Marty snatched up the socks, set a fallen chair straight, and sat down, yanking off his shoes. He could feel Buck’s anger without even looking at him. “It’s not about comfort, Buck. It’s about necessity.”
“Yeah, right.”
Marty’s socks peeled off his feet like a layer of dead skin. His feet were red and swollen, covered with burst blisters and festering new ones.
Buck picked up a pair of Doc Martens and tossed them at Marty’s feet. “A hundred bucks, cash.”
“I got the money.” Marty carefully put on the fresh pair of socks, but pulling the fabric over his tender skin stung anyway. He slipped on the shoes and tied up the laces.
Marty stood up and walked a few steps. His feet were sore, but this was an improvement. The shoes were stiff, but in a good way. It was like having his feet encased in concrete. He could walk over anything now.
“You ought to try a pair, Buck.”
He turned to Buck, and that’s when he saw the reflection in the cracked mirror behind the bounty hunter, the reflection of a orange-haired guy stepping out of the back room, cradling a sawed-off shotgun.
Marty whirled around and discovered that having two barrels aimed at him instead of one definitely had an impact-especially when they were held in the shaky hands of a strung-out guy with a face intentionally skewered with a dozen drill bits.
“Hi,” Marty said, his voice cracking. “Nice store you have here. It is your store, right?”
But the guy wasn’t looking at him, he was staring over Marty’s shoulder. Marty knew then, without even looking behind him, that Buck was aiming his gun, too, and that Marty was screwed front and back.
It was a scene out of a Hong Kong movie, repeated in a thousand inferior American homages, remakes, and rip-offs. The stand-off. Two men, standing eye-to-eye, gun-to-gun, the ultimate, obligatory showdown. Only there wasn’t supposed to be an unarmed man standing between them. A woman maybe, preferably the buxom love interest of the hero, but not some terrified network executive quivering in his new pair of Doc Martens.
It was a delicate situation, and whatever Marty said next could very well mean life and death for all three of them. And Marty didn’t want to die over a pair of shoes, so he would have to choose his words carefully.
Unfortunately, Buck spoke first.
“Hey, Ugly, seeing as how you’re so into body piercing, you’d probably enjoy having a couple bullets shot into your face. So, if you don’t drop the shotgun in three seconds, I’ll do you a big favor and start shooting.”
“Wait,” Marty said. “No shooting. Okay? Everybody just relax. This is just a misunderstanding.”
“You’re wearing my merchandise, maggot, that’s my understanding,” the guy with the shotgun lisped. It wasn’t easy speaking clearly with drill bits in his tongue and lips, and he wasn’t trying very hard.
“I was going to pay,” Marty tipped his head towards Buck. “Ask him.”
“One,” Buck said.
“Forget how he looks, Buck, he agrees with you,” Marty yelled, now more afraid of Buck than the guy with the shotgun, who’s arms were shaking even more. “He’s only protecting what’s his.”
“Two…”
“Buck, no!”
“Three.” Buck was about to shoot, when a woman’s voice distracted him.
“If you want to spill blood, good for you,” she said firmly, “Just don’t waste it in here.”
She was standing in the doorway to the street, wearing a Red Cross windbreaker and cap, her long, blond hair tied into a pony tail, her eyes hidden behind aviator sunglasses. Her hands were on her hips, her stance radiating her disapproval and disgust with the three of them.
“I got a couple hundred people who need blood and since you’re so eager to lose yours, why not give it to me instead of the flies? Besides, we’re giving out juice and cookies, and I don’t see either of you providing refreshments.”
Marty didn’t wait for the two men to decide. He immediately stepped aside, out of the narrow field of fire.
“Sounds good to me,” Marty reached into his pocket for his wallet. “Let me just settle my bill first.”
He put some money on the counter then turned back to the woman. “Lead the way.”
She walked out and Marty followed, not waiting to see how, or if, Buck and Drillface resolved their standoff.
N oon, Wednesday
A few blocks west, the grounds of Fairfax High School had become a field hospital, with hundreds of patients laid out on stretchers, sprawled on the grass, or sitting on the pavement, either waiting to be seen or silently enduring their pain. At this point, only the most critically injured were receiving treatment, and they were inside the enormous tents. Helicopters constantly took off and landed, unloading fresh casualties and going off in search of more. It wasn’t a war, and this wasn’t an army encampment, but Marty couldn’t get the theme from M*A*S*H out of his head anyway.
Marty was lying on a cot, watching the blood flow into a plastic bag from the tube in the soft depression of his elbow. There were other donors nearby-Drillface from the store, a Hasidic Jew muttering to himself in Hebrew, and an enormous, fat woman wearing all her finest jewelry, two rings to a finger, twenty necklaces around her throat. Marty assumed Buck was out there somewhere, giving a pint.
The Red Cross woman, Angie, had asked Marty lots of questions about his medical history, but she had to take his answers on faith before sticking him with the needle. With several hospitals destroyed, blood banks depleted, and thousands injured, Angie told him there was a critical need for blood and no time to test it for anything beyond its type. And they were getting to the point where they didn’t even have time to do that.
Angie was forced to go out looking for anyone who was healthy enough to spare a pint of blood. She’d managed to recruit dozens of donors, but it wasn’t nearly enough to fill the growing need. As soon as Marty, and the donors around him, finished giving their pint, she’d go out hunting for blood again.
She came over to Marty now and leaned down to check his blood bag. “How are you doing?”
“Fine.”
Angie wasn’t wearing a bra and he was ashamed of himself for noticing. He was on his way home to his wife in the aftermath of the worst natural disaster in history. Beth could be dead, or critically injured. What kind of guy would leer at a woman’s breasts at a time like this?
Any guy.
Marty shifted his gaze to her face, hoping she didn’t notice where it was before. “I never got a chance to thank you.”
“For what?” she smiled.
Leaning over. “Saving my life. I could have gotten shot back there.”
“It’s what you deserve,” Drillface lisped. “Scumbag.”
Marty turned to him. “I paid for the damn shoes, and I would have paid for them whether you showed up with a shotgun or not.” He looked at Angie again and lowered his voice. “You believe me, don’t you?”
“No,” she said. “And I don’t care one way or the other.”
“As long as you get my blood.”
“Yep.”
“Well, I’m still grateful to you.”
“We’re even.” She gently brushed the hair away from the gash on his forehead and studied the wound. “That’s a nasty cut. Were you unconscious for any period of time?”
“I think so. It’s hard to say.” Especially with her breasts in his face again. He tried to look somewhere else, but his eyeballs were caught by the tractor beam shooting out of her cleavage.
“Uh-huh,” she reached over to a medical kit, poured something on a cotton ball, and dabbed at his cut. That broke the tractor beam.
“Ouch!” Marty squirmed. “Is that soaked with alcohol or bleach?”
