by Rex Miller
Sure, he thought, examining his reflection in the mirror, Bunkowski was a repulsive slob of a psychopathic killer but…since when was killing a crime? He broke himself up, laughing inside his mind, locking the door and slamming it behind him. He was heading for the rare bookshop, doing what he always did when he was bored—looking for ways to spend money.
"Hi." The girl seated behind the bookstore counter smiled up at the face of the handsome guy who'd just walked in. What a hunk, she thought, suddenly feeling very hot. She'd been reading a romance and it was as if the guy in the book had come to life, blowing in off the scorching streets, ready to sweep her off her feet—the only difference being that the one in the novel had dark hair. She immediately scoped in on his ring fingers, and brightened at the absence of jewelry. "Anything special?"
"Just looking," he said. "I have lots of interests."
"Make yourself at home." I'll bet you do, she thought. "Feel free to browse." She put a little laugh into her voice.
"Thanks." He moved past her. Athletic-looking guy, maybe thirty-four, thirty-five. Unmarried. Probably not gay but you couldn't always tell. Really cute. She stood up and checked her image in the mirror, busying herself with a stack of books behind the counter. Touched her hair and adjusted the blouse she was wearing, a scoop-necked, off-the-shoulder peasant blouse which she wore demurely.
He zeroed in on familiar titles. Common stuff like Sniping on the Rhine and A Marksman's War Diaries. Immediately, he found a title he'd been looking for: Sniper's Journal: Bound Volumes XI-XIX. He'd heard of these but had never seen them. They were published by a small-press zine that had reproduced sections of lost material. He opened the leather-bound collection of magazines and thumbed through it. Most of it was stuff he'd seen or owned in the original, but he saw an article entitled "An Authentic Account of Sharpshooting in Mexico." Damn!
"How much is this one?" he asked the brunette girl with the nice chest.
She quoted him a price that he thought was way out of line and he let it show in his eyes.
"Wow!" he said, keeping his tone friendly. "That's pretty high—I'll have to think on that one."
"Sure," she said. He went back to the bookshelf he'd been examining, and she watched him carefully put the volume back where he'd found it, "I'm sorry about that. I don't own the shop or I'd make you a better price."
"Oh? This isn't your place then?" he asked conversationally.
"No. I manage it for the owner."
"I was in here once before—I don't think I saw you. I would have remembered," he ad-libbed. "What's your name?" He didn't care but he could never stop himself. He could smell it on them when they wanted him and it was always worth trying again.
"Melissa."
"That's a nice name,"
"Thanks."
"Mine's Bobby."
"Hi, Bobby," she said, thinking how inane she must be sounding. "I don't remember seeing you in here before either."
He bad tuned out on her. In between McBride's A Rifleman Went to War (1935) and McMullen's W.W.I Sniper (1918) was a book he never expected to see.
McLeod, W. D. Edward, Queen's Log. Jesus! Every collector wanted this one. Queen's Log: A Personal Narrative of Marksmanship Under Siege by the Zulu Nation, the full title. Five hand-drawn, tipped-in maps of the Roarke's Drift battlefield. His skin felt ice cold in the summer air conditioning.
"How much for this one?" he asked her.
"Um. That's uh—" She double-checked her typed inventory list to be sure. "Twelve-fifty." He didn't react, so to make certain he understood she said in a soft voice, "One thousand, two hundred and fifty dollars." Only the two of them were in the shop. She was sure he'd be irritated or amazed, but he nodded instead.
"Okay. I'll take this. I'll probably be getting some other books so—is it all right if I leave this here for the time being?" He had placed the book toward the back of the long counter.
"Sure. That's fine."
"That's one I've been hunting," the good-looking guy said, heading back toward the books. Obviously, he was a real collector. She wondered if he'd try to write a check and how she'd handle it when she had to tell him no.
He went back to the stacks with his heart beating. What a find, Twelve-fifty was way, way low. He was so pumped up he bought a dupe of Idriess's Sniping: With an Episode from the Author's Experiences During the War of 1914-18, a common little publication, because it was in perfect condition in the dust jacket. He was stoked.
"This is a great store. And I love the name of the place: Dog Soldiers!" He laughed and the girl made an appreciative chuckle.
"Thanks." She felt tongue-tied. One of the sides of her blouse was riding a bit low on the shoulder. She didn't care.
He looked for another ten minutes and came back to the counter with an autographed first edition of Daoust's Cent-Vingt Jours de Service Actif: Récit Historique Trés Complet de la Campagne du 65 Eme au Nord-Ouest (1886), Shooting to Survive: Indian-Fighting at Adobe Walls and Buffalo Wallow, an original FMFMI—3B manual, Memoirs of a Marksman at Peachtree Creek, and an ultrarare edition of Tagebuch: Eines Ordonnanzoffiziers Von 1812-1813 that made Bobby's ticker start thumping hard again when he saw the hand-drawn map in color! He loved this store and everybody in it.
"You must be a real collector," she said, not keeping the awe out of her voice. He had peeled off twenty-seven pictures of the late, great Benjamin Franklin, then went back and got the bound book of Sniper's Journal magazines, which brought his purchase to nearly three thousand dollars. Hardly the biggest sale she'd rung up but Bobby Beautiful paid for these as if he were buying an armful of paperbacks at B. Dalton or Waldenbooks, instead of plunking down three grand for a few books and booklets. He was gorgeous, single, and rich. She wasn't going to let him out of the store alive.
"Didn't you see anything else that you liked?" she asked him boldly, the heat evident in her voice. Not caring about what a bimbo she might appear, or how far the blouse was slipping down as she leaned forward on the counter.
"I saw a lot that I liked." He had ferocious eyes, and he ate her up with his gaze—just the way the man in the romance novel had devoured the heroine. "I didn't think I could afford it. It looked too special," he said. She thought she was going to have a heart attack.
"You're never going to know unless you ask." She colored at her own chutzpah. She boxed the books very carefully.
"I need somebody who really knows these things to act as a guide. You know what I mean? Like—well, you know this stuff. I wonder if I could get you to help me? Say, later, when you get off work? Would you have time to advise me in these collecting matters?" Why did he go through this over and over? He knew it wouldn't amount to anything but he insisted on putting himself through it. Maybe he'd get one who'd do what he wanted without having to pay for it.
"But we hardly know one another," she said, coquettishly, telling him yes in every other way but words.
"Sure we do. I'm Bobby. You're Melissa. What more do we need to know?"
"Are you married—for one thing."
"Uh-uh." What an airhead. He was already regretting it, but the blouse and bra had fallen away from her breasts and he couldn't help but notice a distinct nip in the air. "Are you?"
"Free. White. Twenty-one. Female."
"What time do you get off…work?"
"Four-thirty. I live down the street."
"Hey—that's great. Would you mind if I drop by? Take you out for dinnah?" he asked. She thought his accent was cute.
"That'd be nice."
"Seven?"
"Sure." She was used to eating at five, but for him she'd eat at midnight. "Sounds great."
"Okay, Melissa. Sounds real good. Where do you live?"
"Oh, yeah!" She snapped out of it and wrote her address and phone number down, then her name, in big, circular, loopy script, and dotting the i of Melissa with a small heart. "See you tonight, Bobby." She started to ask him his last name and decided she didn't care. Bobby Beautiful was his name.
Why did he go through the motions? he asked himself again. He wasn't stupid—why do it? They wanted the same thing. He couldn't give it to them. They never liked what he liked. Why didn't he pay for it? Because it wasn't any fun to pay for it. One of these days he'd find a girl, just like the girl that …he whistled the last five syllables to himself. Loading the books in the trunk, packing them in a cammo-cover and wedging the box in with SAVANT and the tracker, the items nearly filling the small trunk of the car.
Fuck her, he thought, as he drove off. Knowing that he couldn't. His mind now on the rare books.
Bobby woke up in one of those terrible fuzzies between sleep and the fully awake stage, head pounding softly with the dull precursor to what could be the front edge of a bad dream, but he forced the thoughts through, replaying a totally real experience from his groggy memory banks.
As he pushed himself up from the carpeting he took stock of his surroundings. Melissa's place. The bedroom white with a surfeit of wicker and bric-a-brac. He got back on his bare feet and went in and urinated, splashing into the center of the bowl, flushing, running water. Melissa said something from the next room, a sleep-muffled comment, which he ignored.
Their coupling had started out as it often did, with an exchange of tender kisses and endearments, the romantic prelude to lovemaking heating up into a wild mating game. Four days of this.
She was dressed in a flimsy camisole top, spike heels, and nothing else. He loved the way the sharp heels felt against his legs and feet. He was ready to be punished.
"Stand up," he said to her, warming inside.
"Huh?" She didn't understand, What was wrong?
"Stand up in the bed. Come on."
"Right now?" She couldn't figure him out. Bobby was so weird.
"Yeah." His voice sounded hoarse. "Come on." She stood up on the bed as he directed.
"I'm going to punch holes in the bed with these heels."
"Turn around. Let me see you. Yeah. Turn—like that."
"You like me like this?"
"Put your foot here." He offered his testicles to her.
"Do which?"
"Yeah. Put your spike heel right on me there."
"I might hurt you, Bobby."
"That's okay—come on. You won't hurt me."
She tried to comply, gingerly placing her shoe in contact with his genitals. "Put your weight on it." She did and he moaned.
She thought she might have hurt him and she dropped down on her knees in the bed.
"Please, honey—let's just make love, okay?" She tried to kiss him and he pushed her roughly away.
"Make me call you Mistress Melissa and squeeze my balls real hard."
"No," she whined. "I don't want to do that. Please? Just hold me."
He held her, but he had grown very cold. She tried kissing him again, then she lowered her face over him, letting her hair sweep along his flat stomach and thighs. It was a trick of hers, and it had enflamed other men. But when she tried to take Bobby in her mouth he merely rolled over away from her. He had lost all interest.
In the bathroom mirror, Bobby Price's reflection was pale, but his face felt suffused with something akin to anger—a combination of embarrassed guilt and rage. He wanted to strike out.
Four times they'd been together and he'd get her so hot she thought she'd go up in flames—then he wouldn't do anything. She'd never been with anybody like Bobby. She knew that she had a body that turned guys on. But he never got—excited. He was so small. She wondered how big it was when it was erect. She'd been with another guy who had a small one when it was soft but it was plenty big when he got a hard-on. He was so uptight. She had to make this new man in her life respond. Maybe if he could relax…
"Bobby?"
"Huh?" He came out of the bathroom with his clothes back on.
"Don't go, honey," she said. "Let's have some wine."
"Um." He grunted, wishing he had an excuse to hit the bitch. She returned with a tray. Two wine goblets and a little plate of snacks. Cheese and crackers and stuff. "Sit on the bed there. No. I'll sit and you be the priestess." She had no idea what he was-saying. He took one of the wine goblets and sat on her bed. "Now…you put a cracker in my mouth." For some reason he started rubbing himself, trying to get turned on.
"Huh?"
"Feed me a fucking cracker. Stand in front of me and act like you're feeding me a cracker." He was a puzzle to her, but she stood in her little see-through camisole and the spike heels and started to comply, holding a cracker in front of his mouth as if he were a parrot or something. A cockatoo.
"Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam tuaam in vitam aeternam," he intoned. She recoiled in shock.
"Don't!" she said. "That's blasphemy."
He'd had enough of her ass. Price stood up and, for no real reason, tossed the wine into her face.
"You dirty—" Wine dripped from Melissa, her camisole, staining bedclothes and white wicker. She came at him, a tough girl and a strong fighter, and he took a couple of punches before he had a chance to clobber her a good one with that weight-lifter's power arm. She went down in a wine-stained heap on the bedroom floor and he turned and walked out, forgetting her the second the door closed.
He unlocked the car, plopped into the seat, keyed the ignition, and then the engine roared to life as he sped away from the apartment house.
He drove north in silent rage and self-pity, finally getting his shit together when a familiar street sign nudged him. He realized he was on busy Linwood Boulevard, and he drove a few blocks and turned. Bobby knew what he was going to do before he did it, and when he saw the field in back of the gas station he turned, taking a service road until he'd reached just the right isolated spot.
He parked on the shoulder and opened the trunk and got the big case out, carefully stepping over a barbed-wire fence after he'd snagged his shirt on the top strand in the darkness. With a small penlight he worked his way to a position where he could look back down the hill on a side road. There was a brightly lit tavern and another business of some kind next to it, and a few cars in the gravel lot. He opened the case.
"The U.S. M-3000.50 SHERFSAVANT Weapon System, is referred to by the abbreviated acronym SAVANT. It is a unique sniper rifle with a maximum effective range of nearly two miles, well over three thousand meters. With Laco 40X sniperscope It weighs 29.5 pounds. The rifle is equipped with a fiberglass transit case with fitted sponge rubber compartment liners. The cased weapon system weighs approximately thirty-one pounds." Bobby said his rosary as he assembled the piece by touch.
"Classification and type: silent, extended range, covert. Operation: bolt-action. Caliber: .50. Capacity single-shot. Length: 48 inches. Barrel length: 27 inches. Scope and Optics: Laco 40X, Lenses are Magni-coat. Reticle: mil dot duplex. Silencer and Flash Suppressor: Ultronics. Eye relief: 3.5 inches. Lands and Grooves: 9. Twist: right hand, I turn in 9 inches. Trigger pull: 3.25 pounds. Magnification: 40 power. Ammunition: Red Rock Match Grade (Silent S-type). Main elevation: Ballistic comeups built in. Elevation, fine-tune. adjustable Windage adjustable. Muzzle Vel: hypervelocity Manufacturer: USARCO Mfg. Division of Quad Cities Tool and Die, Rock Island, Illinois." "Tool and Die." He liked that. He always enjoyed saying that to people who asked him what line he was in. "Tool and die," he'd tell them, meaning it.
The stock and shoulder rest had been custom-molded to fit his face and body, and the finger indentations and palm moldings on the grips in back of the trigger housing and forward of the action had been cast from his hands. Sighting the piece in darkness was as simple as pulling on a pair of comfortable old leather gloves. She fit him perfectly. But the stock hurt him a little when he put his face down close to his main squeeze, and he whispered to her, "Not you, baby. Melis
sa hurt your daddy." He: fondled her knurled bolt, snicked it, and a big, hard sniper round filled her oily mouth.
"Anti-Personnel APEX(X) rounds consist of a full steel-jacketed shell containing propellant, Anti-Personnel EXploding projectile (extended range), high explosive, and detonator." He looked down through the calm green of her and clearly saw a man step out of the tavern and into the parking lot. There was no one else in sight. "When a round is fired and the bullet strikes the target a detonator causes the high explosive charge to explode the fragmentation material. This material consists of soft, scored penetrators that fragment like miniature bomb shrapnel, and which are designed to tumble at hypervelocities, mushrooming and disintegrating at the point of impact. This round is particularly effective against human beings and other soft targets. "
"Corpus Domini nostri—" Bobby Price whispered to the soft target below as he applied the requisite three and a quarter pounds of pressure to his favorite squeeze.
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7
Victor Trask was feeling semi-shitty. He'd woken up with a terrible, pounding hangover and since he didn't drink that was not a propitious beginning to the day. Neither did it auger well that he cut himself while trying to shave his face, the right side of which was pockmarked with old acne scars. He knew that others, women particularly, found his face appealing—women used words like "character" and "interesting-looking" when describing him—but he thought he was ugly as sin, with a face like the landscape of the moon. Actually he wasn't half bad-looking. His features were sufficiently chiseled and decently proportioned to give him a craggy profile, and he'd been blessed with a tight cap of hair that never seemed to be in need of a comb. Trask, true to his inner character, tended to see only the worst. He saw the salt and pepper in his prematurely graying hair, the residual complexion of a zit-ridden childhood, and a bulbous "clown nose." Pulling clothes on he briefly examined himself in the door mirror and saw a thirty-six-year-old guy with a body the color of a dead bluegill. Make that carp. He had to get out in the sun one of these days.