Bullets and Fire

by Joe R. Lansdale

  One way, I thought, one easy way, is I isolate Juan and Billy, take them out. That would be the good way, the smart way. But it wasn’t satisfying to me, not even by a little bit. I imagined Tim squirming with his feet nailed to the floor screaming, the unbearable heat, the flames licking, him ripping his feet apart to get loose.

  While I was doing this, Juan went out of the room. I thought, shit, I got to get it together and keep it together. Here I am in my head and outside my head the world is moving on.

  “I’ll go with him,” I said.

  And I was out of the door and going down the hall, could see Juan’s back as he turned the corner into the room where I had met the guy I thought was the Headmaster. I was almost to the door when I heard Headmaster yell at me.

  “Hey, I tell you to go anywhere?”

  I didn’t look back, said, “What’s it matter?”

  “It matters cause I say so,” Headmaster said, in that way of his that lets you know even when it isn’t important, he wants you to know he’s the swinging dick of the operation.

  I looked in the room, and there behind the desk was Hummy, guy I thought originally was the Headmaster, and was probably his replacement. One day, the Headmaster would look South and a bullet would come from the North, probably out of Hummy’s gun.

  Or that’s the way it might have gone over had I not decided to change everyone’s plans. I was the fucking fly in the ointment, the crab in the ass. I was gonna mess things up worse than a politician.

  Headmaster yelled at me again, told me to stop. I shifted the AK-47 to my left hand and pulled out the automatic and turned and looked at him and Billy, and then I fired. I was a good shot, and I was proud of that, because my first shot caught Headmaster between the eyes, and he went down so fast it was impossible to believe it. Billy, blood and brains from Headmaster splattered across his cheek, tried to pull up the rifle he had in his hand, but I shot him through the heart before he got it lifted, and then I was in the room with Hummy by the time Billy hit the floor.

  Juan had already gone through and was at the far door, and he had turned, drawn the automatic he had, and now there were guns coming out from under coats and out of pockets, and from behind the desk. Juan fired twice and the shots slammed into the door frame and I shot at him once, but missed, and then I stuck the pistol in my belt, almost casual like, switched the AK-47 to my right hand, lifted it firing, bullets going all over the place, crazy like.

  I hit a couple of the guys and one of the girls, and they did a kind of hop and a twist, like they were grooving at a party, and then there was blood everywhere and people were going down. I felt something hot in my side and I shot Hummy a bunch of times, and then I was walking, just straight out, not thinking about anything but killing, feeling the fire in my side, but not thinking much of it. I walked right through, whipping the weapon left and right, mowing flesh.

  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.

  · · ·

  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 th
ought. 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.

  I said, “That boy, whose feet you nailed to the floor. That was my brother. My father committed suicide over it. I don’t like you are any of your gang. I’m glad you hurt bad.”

  He tried to say something, but he couldn’t. All of his air was being used to stay alive.

  “I just wanted you to know how much I hate you. You fucked up my life, and this sure fucks up yours. And I got Billy too. And the Headmaster, and a bunch of you fucks. You had a plastic Jesus in your pocket, I’d snap it in half. That’s how much I hate you. How you feeling, Juan?”

  Juan looked at me, and his mouth came open, like a fish on a dock, hoping for water.

  “I could kill you,” I said. “Make it stop hurting. But, I don’t want to.”

  I stayed there on my knees until blood came out of his mouth and the smell of it and the shit in his pants became too strong for me to take. Then I stood up and looked at him. It was all I could do to stand up, and I should have moved on, maybe found a doctor. But I didn’t want to miss a second of it.

  I watched until he was dead and his eyes were as flat and lifeless as a Teddy Bear’s.

  I went away then, moving slow, but moving. I dropped the automatic somewhere. I walked until I came to some lights, and down the way I could hear traffic, and I could see people. People who weren’t in gangs. People with lives. People, many of which would live long and die of old age and have families. Stuff I wouldn’t know about.

  I leaned against a brick wall, under a street light. The first I had come to since leaving the bowling alley. I looked up and watched bugs swarm around the light. They didn’t know they had short lives and didn’t care. They just did what they did and had no thoughts about it.

  I grinned at them.

  I took the little girl’s wallet out of my back pocket and opened it. It had five dollars in it. I looked through it and found her picture, and found a picture of her with a man, woman, and little boy. Her family, I figured. I found a little card behind a plastic window that had her address on it. It said: RETURN TO, and then there was the address. I knew that address, the general locale. It wasn’t far from where I had lived as a kid, back when dad owned the store and he and my brother worked there, and I hung out there from time to time. On that day my brother was murdered, set on fire, I had been at a theater down the street, watching a movie. It was a good movie, and now, because of my brother’s death, I couldn’t think of that movie without feeling a little sick, and I couldn’t think of it now. I thought about the girl again, and that was almost as bad as thinking about my brother or my father.

  I thought about her nose. I hoped she could fix it, or maybe it wasn’t broken too badly and would heal all right. I thought about the guy whose knee I had taken out for the lack of payment to the Headmaster. I didn’t really care about him. He was in bed with the skunks, so he got stink all over himself before I did anything to him. He had it coming. Maybe he didn’t have it coming from me, not really, but he had it coming, and I didn’t feel all the bad about him. I didn’t feel bad about any of the gang. I just wished I had killed them all.

  I read the address in the wallet again. I knew where that was. I started walking.

  · · ·

  I STUCK THE AUTOMATIC under my shirt and went along the back streets as much as possible. When I got on a main street, people began to pull back from me, seeing all the blood, way my face looked. I saw it myself, reflected in a store window. I looked like a ghost who had seen a ghost. The shock was wearing off. I was really starting to hurt.

  I probably didn’t have long before the police got me, before people on the street called about this blood covered guy.

  I took a turn at the corner, and started walking as fast as I could. I felt as if most of what was left of me was turning to heat and going out the top of my head. I went along until I got to the back alleys, and then I darted in, and I went through them. I remembered these alleys like I had been here yesterday, though it had been a few years. I remembered them well because I had played here. I went down them and along them, and somewhere back behind me I heard sirens, wondered if they were for me.

  I finally went down an alley so narrow I had to turn sideways to get down it. It opened up into a fairly well lit street. I got the girl’s wallet out again and looked at the address. I was on the right street, and I memorized the number and put the wallet away and walked along the street until I found the number that fit the one on her little card in the wallet.

  There was a series of stone steps that went up to a landing and there was a door there, and above it was the number. I climbed up to the top step, and that was about it. I sat down suddenly and leaned back so that my ass was on the stoop and my legs were hanging off on the top step. I could hardly feel that step. My legs seemed to be coming loose of me and sinking into something like quicksand. I had to take a look at them to make sure they were still attached. When I saw they were, I sort of laughed, because I couldn’t feel them. I pulled myself up more with my hands and put my back at an angle against one of the concrete rails that lined the steps on both sides.

  I took out the wallet and I put both my hands over it and put the wallet up against my stomach. I tried to put it some place where blood wouldn’t get on it, but there wasn’t any place. I realized now that the warm wetness I was feeling in the seat of my pants was blood running down from my wounds and into my underwear. I hated they would find me like that.

  I sat there and thought about my dad and my brother and I thought about what my sensei had said about you can’t correct what’s done, and if you try, you won’t feel any better. He was right. You can’t correct what’s been done. But I did feel better. I felt bad about
the girl though, but I felt good about all those dead fucks being dead. I felt real good.

  I felt around in my shirt, and my hand was like a catcher’s mitt trying to pick up a needle. I finally found my ball point and I opened the girl’s wallet, which was bloody, and I pinched out the little card with her address on it, and I wrote the best I could: I’M SORRY. REALLY, I AM.

  I laid the wallet on my knee, got out my own wallet. I had three hundred and twenty-five dollars in there. I put the money from my wallet in her wallet, along with her five. I turned and looked at the door. I didn’t know if I could make it. There was a mailbox by the door, a black metal thing, and I wanted to get up and put the wallet in that, but I didn’t know if I could.

  I thought about it awhile, and finally I got some kind of strength, and pulled myself up along the concrete railing, and when I got up, it was like my legs and feet came back, and I made it to the mail box, opened it and put her wallet in there with the card I had written on.

  Then that was it. I fell down along the wall and lay on my face. I thought about all manner of things. I thought of my brother and my father, but the funny thing was I began to think about my sensei. I was on the mat and I was moving along the mat. And I was practicing in the air. Not traditional kata, because we didn’t do that. But I was practicing, punching, kicking, swinging my elbows, jerking up my knees. It felt good, and I could see my sensei out of the corner of my eye. I couldn’t make out if he was pleased or angry, but I was glad he was there.

  The sirens grew louder.

  I thought of bullets and fire, and a deep pit full of darkness. I wished I could see the stars.

  —

  If you enjoyed “Bullets and Fire,” maybe you’ll like The Big Blow, too. It’s a historical novella by the inestimable Mr. Lansdale, available as an e-book from Gere Donovan Press.