“You don’t care about law,” I said. “I don’t care about law.”
“I care about what I can get away with. And that includes shooting your face-tattooed freak of a librarian friend.”
“You don’t want that.”
“I don’t even know what I want anymore.”
All the fuss had attracted some onlookers. We were at the very end of town, but a few people had already filtered over. None of them looked particularly friendly toward us. In their shoes, I wouldn’t be either.
“He’s stalling,” Brynn whispered into my ear. “Waiting for a crowd. We should bring him down now.”
“No, come on,” I said back. “I don’t want Vasilis to die. I’m sick of seeing people die. We’ll talk our way through this.”
Sebastian had a small backpack thrown over one shoulder. Vasilis kept eyeing it, and Sebastian kept moving his body, unconsciously, to keep it as far from his assailant as possible.
The book was in there.
It was a hunch. Nothing to gamble a life on.
I approached, raising my hands over my head.
“Stay back,” Sebastian said. His voice was cracked with worry and exhaustion. For all the world, he could have just been someone’s dad. If things had played out the slightest bit differently, he’d just have lived his life reading thrillers and watching TV and hunting and none of this would have happened.
“Just want to talk this through,” I said. “We’re at an impasse. Let’s find a way past it.”
“I don’t see the impasse. I’ve got the upper hand.”
“You attack us, we’ll kill you. We attack you, you kill one of us and likely at least some of us end up in jail, you included.”
“You’ll end up in jail in either scenario,” he said.
“You think people with face tattoos are the kind of people who are afraid of ending up in prison?” I asked. I stepped closer. I approached from his right side, which was convenient because it’s the harder direction for a right-handed shooter to swing a rifle. I wasn’t near enough to reach his gun, even if I lunged, but I was getting close. “You think you can scare women who’ve spent their lives hitchhiking alone?”
“You think a man who raises the dead would be afraid of a bunch of fucking punk kids?”
“No,” Brynn said, standing shoulder to shoulder with me. “You’re right. You’re not afraid of us. You’re a different kind of coward. You’re afraid of being alone. You didn’t resurrect your wife for her. You did it for you.”
“Take one step closer and I’ll shoot at least two of you.”
“See,” I said, “what was I telling you? Impasse.”
I looked over my shoulder. Thursday and Vulture were with the bikes. Thursday had his hand in his hoodie pocket. Vulture had his phone.
A serious crowd was gathering, maybe ten people already with another dozen on their way. They stayed clear of the line of fire between the two armed men, but were getting awfully close to the rest of us. A few of them were open-carrying pistols at their waists.
Interpersonal crime is so much more annoying to commit in open-carry states.
At the back of the crowd, leaning against the glass front of a lawyer’s office, a man with black sunglasses and a black suit sipped coffee, his blond hair in a tight bun. Next to him, a freckled woman with her hair in a sixties bob, dressed identically to the man, ate a donut. They weren’t part of the crowd. They were just watching.
Fucking magic feds. Hipster magic feds.
“You need any help, Mr. Miller?” a young voice shouted.
“These punks broke into my shop!” he answered. “I scared them off, because they’re chickenshit, but they got me outnumbered out here.”
Fuck this.
I took another step forward. Sebastian started to swing the gun around to face me. Long barrel, terrible for close range. I pushed in closer, knocking the barrel aside. Used my bad arm to do it, which I shouldn’t have—the stitched-up wound in my shoulder complained. Got my knife out of my pocket and open in one motion, brought it up. He flinched, hard, closing his eyes, dropping the rifle to point slack at the ground while he covered his throat.
I cut the strap of his backpack, down at the bottom where the strap is thinnest and farthest away from meat, and snatched it. I stomped the barrel of his rifle and disarmed him.
Too many armed strangers around to kill him then and there.
“Fucking run!” Brynn shouted.
We ran.
Vasilis came with us. Thursday, at the front, put his not-insubstantial mass to bear and plowed through our audience before they had time to react.
We got off the main street, first thing, and Vasilis took us through an alley. Brynn overturned a Dumpster in our path to slow down our pursuers.
“Ahead of us!” Thursday shouted.
Four men at the mouth of the alley barred our path.
We grabbed a second Dumpster and pushed it ahead of us on its caster wheels. I pushed with my one arm; the other hurt like hell. I might have ripped the stitches.
A shot rang out, the ping against the steel side of the Dumpster almost as loud as the report itself. Couldn’t have been a long gun, or it would have gone through—and probably into someone I cared about.
All five of us were packed tight behind our moving shield, and I found that strange clarity I’d only ever really known in riots. The world had always, it seemed, been against me and my friends. These, though, were moments of me and my friends against the world. I know that’s bullshit on a bunch of different levels—hell, the people shooting at us right now weren’t even our enemies. I wouldn’t shoot back even if I could.
But our collective power felt like its own magic just then, in the early morning in some small town in Montana. We picked up speed and shouted our wordless power.
We hit the street. As I’d guessed, the men trying to stop us
