by Jim Nisbet
Beyond the house, holding his position among the tractor implements ranged against the south fence, an armed man stood up. It was Scott Michaels.
You should have suggested she jerk off over this one, the little devil squealed, barely audible above the commotion in the control room, there’s Eight Treasures over there, behind a disk harrow.
“Mattie!” Michaels screamed.
“Harris!” Harris yelled gleefully, and his bullets cut a swath in the night.
Harris had known approximately where Michaels would be, but he was running as he fired, and shooting from the hip, and his estimate was a little off. He had to bring the barrel through a few degrees of arc to get a bead on Michaels, firing as he did. This gave Michaels time to flatten himself into the dust behind the disk harrow, with bullets singing over his head and ricocheting among the harrow blades. Michaels hadn’t had time to load a fresh clip. He rolled over several times, away from the harrow, loading the weapon as he did so, and came up firing and cursing. His fire chewed holes in the corner of the house and in the shop beyond, but Harris was far to the right of them, running toward the fence, shooting wildly and ineffectually to his side as he ran. Michaels saw he was heading for the derelict combine, the last machine in the row along the fence, a dark hulk fitfully illuminated by the small fires burning all over the yard. Michaels fingered the pin out of one of his two hand grenades. With a long, accurate toss that came of a skill developed twenty years before and unemployed since, the grenade arced up from Michaels’ hand and down into the foot or so of grain rotting in the hopper at the back of the machine. It made a soft thump, arriving at the combine just after Harris dove behind it. Michaels saw this, but he didn’t wait for the explosion. He opened up with the AR-15. The weapon fired a short burst and quit, the clip exhausted. Michaels cursed and discarded the second clip, even as the grenade detonated.
There was a tremendous hollow rending of sheet metal, it sounded like sewer gas exploding beneath a manhole cover. Scott Michaels dropped to his knees and fumbled a new clip into the AR-15, even as he was thinking that he was violating a cardinal precept of combat. He’d stayed too long in one place.
“You stayed too long in one place,” a voice said aloud. And there, incredibly, twenty yards and sixty degrees from where he was supposed to have been getting blown to pieces, stood Tucker Harris. He was almost exactly where Scott had waited, behind the disk harrow, in ambush when Harris first rode out of the night. It seemed impossible, but the man was a cat. He’d always been like this, and, from the first day he’d met him, the last thing Scott Michaels had wanted to do was get into armed combat with Tucker Harris. Harris was a true hunter, an efficient killer, a genius, in his way, a demented monster in everyone else’s. Nobody had ever understood how Harris had survived the things he’d gotten himself into in Vietnam, and, for that matter, Harris was a long overdue statistic in civilian life. The man knew everything there was to know about death, except for one. He’d never died himself.
Or had he? There’s a question of philosophy to cause Eddie Mertz to snort with disdain and say, he’s about to shoot you, isn’t he?
And it didn’t look like Scott Michaels was going to be the man to teach death’s final lesson to Harris. If he’d been able to see into Harris’ mind, he wouldn’t have allowed himself so much as the luxury of giving himself a chance. But then, Michaels thought fleetingly, still without the prescient wit to commend his soul to the care of his ancestors, looking at Harris in that getup, all in black and dangling weapons, with a night-vision helmet on his head, he looks like a robot. A killer robot. How does one read the mind of a killer robot? With killer software? Where do you get it? SRI? NASA? Hong Kong?
A window had popped into the screen on the little devil’s computer, and the little devil, as if bored, was reciting it. It was an old prompt, one Harris knew by heart. But if Michaels had known what it said, he would have ceased his reflections on Harris’ character and skipped right to his prayers. For there were no such reflections on Harris’ part. Though Harris had fought with Dowd and Scott Michaels from Tet to Danang, up and down the Mekong Delta, and witnessed the terrible massacre at Hoc Bhui that forever changed all three of them, Tucker Harris’ mind at that moment had no sentiment in it. The instructions being recited to him concerned how, the enemy having made his mistake, one has to take care with the AK-47. As with most automatic weapons, when firing full automatic the barrel tends to rise with the discharges. Accordingly, it is a good thing while so firing to keep one hand on the top of the weapon, exerting downward pressure with the palm and arm, in order to control the fire. Once mastered, this technique is very beneficial to the accuracy of the weapon, which, otherwise, might prove only erratically accurate.
Subtended to this reminder was a note on technique. When uncertain about the enemy’s exact location, as when firing into dense cover or in darkness, trace an X pattern with the bullets on his suspected position. This will maximize the potential for a hit.
These precepts were virtually instinctual in Harris. He cut the X. A tight X.
Since Harris could see Michaels plain as day, if red as hell, most of the fire forming the X fell within the silhouette of the target.
Michaels crumbled, dead of twelve wounds.
The devil’s keyboard beeped the first sixteen notes of “The Marine Hymn.” Just like a triumphant video game.
Eddie Mertz’ anguished cry rent the air as he valiantly emptied the Browning in Harris’ direction, the birdshot spraying directly over the spot where his friend had just fallen. He screamed Scotty’s name and vainly sought revenge and safety in the elimination of Harris. But Harris had run and rolled, run and rolled, run and rolled again, before Mertz was finished firing.
Mertz had known from the start they didn’t have a chance against Harris, and would have counseled surrender, if he’d known Harris might have considered taking prisoners. But Harris’ reputation had long preceded him, he was a man feared for what others saw as his merciless ferocity, and his inscrutable purpose brooded over his enterprise like a triumphant zeppelin of despair. Mertz and Harris both knew it wasn’t merciless ferocity so much as insanity that drove Harris to the worst sort of excesses. But, as Michaels had noted, just before he died, the larger insanity was that Harris had never managed to get himself killed. Physically killed. As the Lord well knew, he’d been trying.
Scott’s death confirmed everything Mertz knew of Harris’ reputation, and he expected the same from him as Curly, Scotty and, presumably—undoubtedly—Jed and God knew how many others had gotten. A lame death, in Eddie’s opinion, to be violently butchered in the middle of a goddamn pot deal. You’d think the forces of destiny would have something better to do, them and their stern winds of volition.
He took a last look at Scott, stretched out in the shadows of the yard, hand grenades and clips draped over his paisley shirt, an AR-15 smoking at his side, blood soaking his jeans, his worn western boots curled up and away, toward the Milky Way, asymptotes to nowhere.
With a curse he flung the empty shotgun toward the flickering form of Tucker Harris. The bird gun cartwheeled over the yard and broke its stock off on a rock, even as Tucker Harris was firing under it. Eddie’s intuitive gesture had in fact been fairly accurate, and it had surprised Harris. He was lying pressed to the ground behind the rock, nearly invisible, a shadow in spite of the light from the burning barn, and the barrel of the shotgun cracked him a good one on his shoulder blade.
But Harris didn’t even flinch. Nor did he utter a sound, not a peep of complaint. The matrix of pain knitted itself beside him in the dark, but he paid it no mind. He kept firing. Let the little devil get his damage report, and the little devil could have, had he cared to, but he was too busy with his Joystick. The AK-47 pumped bullets at the house, one, two, three four five six at a time.
One of them caught Eddie in the thigh as he dove back through the front door and he screamed. Blood leapt from the wound, artesian, though Eddie couldn’t see it. All he knew
was he couldn’t stand up. An unending string of curses emanated from his mouth in a foul concatenation of invective for which Catullus would compliment him, at the gates of hell. He dragged himself across the floor of the dark room toward the hatch in front of the woodstove. Eddie was making so much noise and giving away his position so badly that Harris thought it was a trick, and wasted a little time changing his position every few seconds, every couple of shots. Bullet holes in the outside wall of the house traced Eddie’s path across the floor inside. Only one of them hit Eddie, in the back, a flesh wound, but this only set Eddie to screaming all the louder. When he got to the hatch he pulled out the service .45. His uncle kept one just like it he’d brought home from World War II, and he and Eddie had spent a pleasant afternoon once, blowing holes in snoose cans in the Sierra foothills, thirty years before. Eddie had been a pacifist ever since. It had been a real problem, in police school. He’d never fired anything fancier than a service revolver, not unlike the one Scott had left in the cardboard Dos Equis box under the aluminum lawn chair with green and white nylon webbing beside the metal detector—he even remembered the brand of the metal detector, Mtlgrd, the white enamel of its parts, the black rubber mat over its threshold—behind the goddamn grayish brown fourteen-foot-high front door of the goddamn burning down Douglas fir barn with the goddamn dry-rotting corners on the goddamn northern exposure right goddamn now, where it goddamn belonged…
He propped himself up against the couch. He felt in the dark and found a clip already in the gun, and, though it made him nervous, assumed Jed would have made sure it was full. How many shots was that? Seven? Eight? Nine? They were big slugs. He couldn’t remember how to dislodge the clip to check, the blood on his hands made it a slippery proposition, and besides, he didn’t have the time. So assume six. Six it is.
That’s five for Harris, one for Mertz.
He was beginning to be light-headed from the blood loss, but it might have just as easily been the result of having hit the wall of Fear, then passed beyond it. He’d had a similar experience nearly every time he’d gotten into a shooting, of his nerves accelerating to what he felt must be their limit and then, finding himself up against a cokehead with a gun, unable to go forward or backward, he’d discovered within himself a renewed energy, a fund he didn’t know was there, and persevered. Even now, some part of him was operating calmly, on the assumption that he would be saved.
Well, it was vaguely possible.
He pulled back the slide to jack a slug into the chamber, and found the safety in the dark. The older service .45 automatics have two safety devices on them. One is a sliding tab just back of the trigger guard. The other is a piece that runs the length of the back of the pistol’s grip, along its spine. In order to fire the gun the first safety has to be deliberately clicked off, and then the grip has to be squeezed against the palm, simultaneously with the trigger.
Harris had stopped firing.
“Come and get me, Harris,” Eddie snarled, terrified, “you yellow-bellied sack of patriot-guano!” He had to grit his teeth against the pain. Maybe it was shock he was experiencing. Yeah, that’s it. Shock.
He fired a slug at random, through the window to the right of the front door. The big gun filled the room with noise and smoke, and kicked like a Rockette.
“Come on, Harris! Bite the nose of death!”
Something thumped against the screen door and bounced back onto the boards of the porch.
“Cocksucker!” Eddie screamed, firing blindly as the grenade went off.
The explosion blew all the glass out of the front window, and the screen door off its hinges. Bits of shrapnel peppered the panel ceiling, the paperback books, the wainscot in the front of the room, and Eddie heard a piece of steel whine through the woodstove beside him. But other than the severe ringing in his ears he remained alive, bleeding on the floor in front of the couch.
He fired two more slugs through the smoke in the front door, holding the big pistol with both hands. The smoke eerily reflected the light from the burning roof of the barn.
“Shell-shocked dipshit among upright penguins,” Eddie screamed, laughing and crying, “why did you never ask for help?!” thinking, why in fuck don’t I ask for help?
A burst of automatic fire stitched across the front of the house. Splinters and slivers showered to the floor inside, beyond each hole. The Charles Russell reproduction behind the woodstove fell to the floor, its glass shattered. “Laugh Kills Lonesome.” Psycho Slugs Riddle Frisco Booster.
Eddie wrapped his arms around his head and soiled his pants. When the bullets stopped, he fired straight through the wall in front of him, out of embarrassment and fear and shame.
“National-Anthem-For-Brains, justice will prevail!”
More automatic fire. More splinters. To his right, the unique sound of lead smashing into pulp, as bullets raked the bookcase full of westerns. Eddie cringed, waiting to die. Scott had told him about nightmares filled with the chatter of automatic weapons and screams. Eddie bit his lower lip until it bled. The firing stopped. Again, he wasn’t touched.
How many shots had he fired? Three? Four? Four. That was it, four. He wondered where Mattie was. He’d heard her scream in the back of the house, right after the explosion: Since then, nothing. How long ago had that been? An hour? He knew better. Harris had been wreaking havoc for all of sixty seconds, and at least two people were dead, if Mattie, three, and now…
A shadow flitted in the drifting smoke in the doorway.
“Agh!” Eddie screamed. “Genderless clone!” and fired his next-to-last shot as the shadow disappeared. That was it. The shadow reappeared. A thinner shadow across the front of it looked like the barrel of a gun.
With a wail Eddie turned the gun on himself. He put the hot barrel in his mouth, Only then did he notice that the slide was still back, locked open, and the acrid breech yawned empty. This is what these .45’s do when they’ve shot their last bullet, they prostrate themselves for more. He couldn’t see this, but he could feel it. It was almost as if the gun were mocking his own open mouth, yawning to receive the bullet that wasn’t there, that neither of them could find.
He pulled at the trigger anyway. It couldn’t budge, and nothing happened, though he involuntarily flinched as if it would. With a choking sound, his voice caught between a scream and a sob, Eddie threw the pistol, left-handed yet, at the shadow in the smoking doorway.…
Tucker Harris batted the useless pistol away with the forepiece of the AK-47 and wasted the enemy.
Another X.
The little devil didn’t miss a stroke. You still haven’t used your knife.
That’s true, Tucker said, changing clips.
She’s in the back, maybe. He peered through the haze of acrid smoke. Orange light tending toward a hotter yellow flickered through the house windows, giving its silent interior the aloof, eldritch quality of a very old film. Loud pops and cracks came from the dry barn wood as the fire consumed more and more of it. Tucker had subliminally noticed the intense heat on his back through the nylon parachute cloth of his black jumpsuit, while he’d crouched on the barn side of the front door. Even through the smoky haze and darkness, he’d been able to see Eddie perfectly, as he enacted his quaintly defiant death throes. It reminded him of other enemies he’d known. Not throes, but antics, really. These men had been defeated before they fought, and it had been ever thus. For twenty years their combat had never been anything more than holding actions, fought solely to stave off death, rather than to tempt, cheat, perpetrate, and defeat it. And they’d wondered why Tucker Harris had always shunned them, and the likes of them, in Vietnam! It had gotten to the point where they all, to a man, had convinced themselves that it was they who shunned Harris, instead of the other way around. It was the only way they could rationalize the indignity of their own cowardice, to opine openly that Harris and his ilk were of a different, inhuman species, not fit for comradeship. A likely story. It was they who were not fit to fight with, who shied away from dea
ling death, who risked their lives and the lives of those who fought with them by their socialized cowardice. Think of it! A peer group of cowards! Who created an acceptable hierarchy of timidity and retreat, “better judgment,” “restraint,” “holding actions,” and, finally: defeat! All socially acceptable mores in an ethos of loss!
Take it easy, said the little devil. You’re introverting and proselytizing: You’ll lose concentration.
Harris was grinding his teeth, a habit he’d been working on for some time. A dentist at a VA hospital had pointed out that he had teeth like a cocaine addict, and, he suggested, his face looming over Harris’ upside-down mouth, stainless steel tools and latex gloves and a bored assistant and a bright light beyond, would he be amenable to some counseling?
That had been the last time he’d set foot in a VA facility. Counseling! Advice from losers! Those people understood nothing. He kicked a wooden chair to one side, into the bookcase, and advanced toward the back of the house.
The gas tank of the Winnebago, or perhaps it was the bar, exploded with a tremendous concussion. Debris peppered the side of the house and began to fall on the roof.
The knife, the knife, the devil shrieked, you can shave her with it.
She might be armed, Tucker snarled, dodging to one side of the kitchen door, why should I put my ass on the line for your cheap thrills?
That chick, the little devil squealed, armed? You broke her wrist! She’s probably passed out from the itty-bitty throbbings of osteo-trauma!
Harris ducked into the kitchen, low. Before him the screen door lay crumpled like a campaign poster the day after the election, blocking the threshold. Refrigerator, stove, Formica dinette, two chairs overturned, pantry—empty. Beyond the door the dust glowed beige in the light from the burning barn.