by Wayne Mee
Over the last two weeks they’d worked well together, tending the corn and wheat, weeding the garden and caring for the livestock. Sadat had proven to be very good with horses. For relaxation they’d go riding, fish in the lakes, visit with Doc and the folks over at the Big House or just sit on the front porch and watch the sun go down. Yet the big farmer had not been able to interest the little ex taxi-driver in his one great passion --- hunting.
Sadat was deathly afraid of guns.
“Come on, Saddy!”, Willard urged, taking down the new Marlin and filling his pockets with the extra large shells. “We aint going to shoot nobody. Just scare them the hell away from our town!”
“But what if they shoot back?”, Sadat asked nervously.
Willard hefted the long rifle with the large scope. “They won’t get close enough. This little darling will see to that! All I need you for is to make a little extra noise.”
Somewhat mollified, Sadat accepted the box of 12 gage shells thrust at him. Moments later both men were trotting through the pines towards the end of the headland.
Minutes later, Willard had found the spot he was after, a well concealed duck blind he had watch his father and grandfather build out of the black shale found on the shore of Lake Champlain. Positioned among the large boulders left there 12,000 years ago by the last Ice Age, they could easily make out the yacht. It was coming directly towards them at a surprisingly fast clip .
“They’ve seen us!”, Sadat whispered, though the yacht was still half a mile away.
“Naw,”, Willard replied, deftly loading the Marlin. “The fool driving that thing is just cutting in close to the headland. Serves him right if he rips the bottom out of her!”
“Are...are you sure we should do this?”, Sadat asked.
Willard frowned down at the little man. “They shot at us, didn’t they? They’re heading right for Crown Point, aint they? You want that lot poking around our town? Shooting it up? You remember those young punks who came around last week? You want that to happen again?”
Sadat remembered all too well. Three young men had come through Mt. Hawthorn last week in a large four-by-four. All three of them had been drunk to begin with and a whole lot drunker after raiding the liquor store. The Park is two miles further up the mountain, and they might have kept on going if Mrs. Chan and a couple of the women hadn’t come down for groceries. The three punks spotted them and chased them back up to the Park. Sadat had been tending the corn and saw the two trucks race by. The young men had apparently driven right up to the Big House and demanded that at least one of the younger women come with them.
Doc Gruber had gone out to talk to them. Mrs Chan and Thelma had followed. Those still inside had reached for weapons. When Doc asked them politely to be on their way, tempers had flared. The three punks had drawn guns and Jim Shell, Fred Perkins and Jenny Hill had opened fire. By the time he and Willard had got there, the two of the three young men were dead. Tom Leeson and Jenny Hiller were guarding the third one while Doc patched up a bullet hole in his left arm. They’d sent him on his way, still leaking blood. The other two had been buried out in the forest.
“No, I don’t want that to happen again,” Sadat said. “I just don’t want us to get killed either.”
“Just stay low, little buddy, and do what I say. We’ll have us a good tale to tell at the Big House tonight!”
Willard wrapped the Marlin’s sling around his arm for added stability and leaned against a house-sized boulder. Shadows cast from the pines darkened his face. He looked like a cross between an aging Lone Ranger and a member of the Grand Ol’ Opre’s SWAT team. Looking through the large scope, he squinted at the yacht. The X10 view made it look like the boat was at the end of the barrel. The rifle was zeroed in for 200 yards. Willard calculated he should hold a couple of inches high to hit at 400 hundred. He then winked at Sadat and spit into the wind. All that was missing was a junkyard dog and Superman’s cape.
On the upper deck One Arm put the field glasses down and turned his attention back to more pleasant things. The choices at hand were between Cindy-Lou or a can of beer. Much to the girl’s secret satisfaction, the cold brew won out.
“Any sign of that old bastard?”, Rambo asked.
“Shit,” One Arm grinned over a mouthful of foam. “That old fucker won’t stop running till he gets back to his chicken coop and changes his shorts! Lighten up, man, it’s Miller Time!”
Down below at the wheel, Deadly Doug Snelling was easing in closer to a rocky headland less than a quarter mile away. The town they had seen earlier was now lost from view behind the narrow finger of land.
The map on the chart table showed a series of 3’s, 4’s and 5’ all around the peninsula. Doug wondered if the numbers meant feet or yards or fathoms. He had no idea what the fuck a ‘fathom’ was, and right now he didn’t give a shit. The two little red honies he’d swallowed half an hour ago were kicking in and he himself was just about ready to blast off for the stars. Shoving the twin throttles all the way forward, the speed leapt up to 20 knots. He also had no idea what a ‘knot’ was either, except that right about now it felt like Warp fucking III. Beam me up, Snotty!
Just as the yaught surged forward, the windscreen on the upper deck exploded, shattering One Arm, Rambo and Cindy-Lou with hundreds of plexiglass chips.
“Whathefuck?!!”, One Arm bellowed. Blood was streaming down his cheek from a cut from the space-age windshield.
Cindy-Lou had started screaming. Rambo drew his .45 and slammed it alongside her head, dropping the girl like a stone. Three hundred yards away, Willard saw this through his powerful scope. Cursing, he lined the cross-hairs on Rambo’s muscular chest and began to gently squeeze the Marlin’s trigger. At the last second he swung the barrel down. The 500 gram jacketed Hollow Point streaked its way across the sunlit water, punching into the wall under the shattered windscreen. Its momentum far from spent, the expanding slug came out the other side, tumbled to the left, ripped through the cooler filled with Miller Light and buried itself in the exterior wheel seat One Arm had just vacated.
“Jesus Christ Almighty!”, One Arm gasped. “What was that? A fucking cannon?!”
Rambo ignored him. Squinting into the distance, he was looking for a muzzle flash. The yacht’s diesel drowned out any chance of locating the shooter by sound.
Down below another slug ripped through the wheelhouse, shattering the large front and back windows. Deadly Doug Snelling, oblivious to the sizzling death that all but parted his hair, continued blissfully to pilot his own personal starship.
Weasel Weasilski pushed open the head door and was about to step out onto the deck when the door suddenly banged back into his nose. Dropping the Playboy, his hand went up and came away bloody. The flash of anger turned to amazement as he looked up and saw a ragged porthole where none had been before.
Willard’s fifth and last shot before he had to reload slammed into one of several 45 gallon gasoline drums lashed on the forward deck. Gas began pissing out one side and pouring out the other.
One Arm, his .38 clutched uselessly in his hand, turned to Rambo and screamed: “DO SOMETHING!”
The soldier-of-misfortune was already on the stairs leading down to the wheelhouse. Seeing both windows gone and gas pouring out on the lower deck, he yanked smiling Space Cadet Douglas Snelling out of orbit and deposited him on his butt.
“Hey, man, no need to ...” His voice trailed off as the last batch of chemicals reached his brain. Deadly Dave seemed to have momentarily lost his train of thought.
Rambo, however, hadn’t. Yanking the wheel around, he yelled at Pete Welter to haul his candy-ass up there and take the wheel. Pete, sweat beading on his receding forehead, scrambled to comply. Gas sloshed around his feet.
By now Willard had reloaded. Through the powerful scope, at a little over 200 yards he saw the sweat on Pete’s forehead. Willard shifted slightly, searching for a non-human target. His sixth bullet went directly into the wheelhouse, tore the expensive sonar unit t
o rat-shit, then ricocheted off a steel strut. The mangled piece of copper whizzed around the room like a mini meteor, entered Deadly Dave’s open mouth and exited out the back of his skull. Bits of bone and brain splattered what was left of the white walls.
Pete’s eyes were wide with wonder. “Hey! Somebody’s shooting at us!”, he managed to get out, proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that there were certainly no flies on Mrs. Welter’s little boy Pete. He turned to pass on this information to Rambo, but that particular military mastermind was once again already on the move.
Having caught a glimpse of Willard’s muzzle flare, Rambo now knew exactly where this little problem was coming from. He also thought he had a ready solution.
‘Must be the old fucker in the pick-up!’, Rambo reasoned, his cold eyes straining for a sign of the truck. “Head for that point up ahead!”, he yelled as he tore down the passageway to his own room. “Zig-zag a bit to throw off the old bastard’s aim, but GET ME CLOSE TO THAT FUCKING POINT!”
Then he was inside his room. Pete had only been in there once, but once was enough. It looked like a fucking arsenal! Weapons of all kind filled the tiny space. Rifles, shotguns, handguns. Pete had even caught a glimpse of something that looked like a fucking bazooka! Glancing quickly at Dave’s body on the floor, Pete began working the wheel. The headland was about a 100 yards away and coming up fast.
Rambo reappeared a moment later and Pete nearly shit his pants. The tall man was holding what looked to Pete like something out of the tail gun of a B-52! Long, dark and ugly, (which also described its owner!), with a half dozen rotating barrels and a belt that was bigger than the World Federation Wrestling Trophy and longer than his sainted mother’s sermons on the many virtues of a good education!
Straw Hair appeared at the missing front window, took one glance at this real-life movie idle striding towards him and ducked for cover. The barrel of the Heckler & Cotch Rotating Cannon lowered, centered on the finger of land now no more than seventy-five yards away and began to speak. Over its continuous, powerful bark, Rambo screamed unheard words of wisdom. Laying on his stomach on the middle deck, Straw may not have been able to follow the words, but he didn’t need the Gift of Tongues to catch the drift. The bark of a H & K was universal, its meaning crystal-fucking clear. ‘Move over Sony! God’s here and He’s pissed off!’
The H & K spit out death in the form of seven caseless rounds per second. Fire and brimstone delivered to your door. Don’t forget to write!
Despite the recent ‘air conditioning’, acid smoke and ear-splitting sound filled the wheelhouse before the yacht had advanced another twenty yards. Through it all Rambo stood with legs apart, a Primal Scream erupting from his curled lip as death and bloody destruction vomited out of the rotating barrels.
By the time the long belt was emptied, both Straw and Pete thought Quasimodo had given up his bell-tower condo in Notre Dame and taken up permanent residence in their heads. The girls, Cindy-Lou the Second, Betty-Sue, and Big Bertha Butt, were on their knees offering up unending devotion and unlimited blowjobs to whoever or whatever would make the thunder stop. Weasel Weasilski had dove back inside the head with a serious case of the Hershey Squirts and One Arm was standing on the front of the upper deck screaming at the top of his considerable lungs to:
“KILL-THE-COCK-SUCKING-MOTHER-FUCKER!!”
His head still pounding, Pete pulled back hard on the duel throttles and yanked the wheel to the left. The yacht’s diesel dropped from a growl to a purr as the bow swung to port. The wash from the wake caught up and rocked the large boat like a babe in a cradle.
When the rocking passed, all eyes strained towards the headland now just a little over a hundred feet away. Where once a dense pine forest had stood, their now was only shattered wood and large boulders. Severed tree limbs lay about. Large trunks bled sap from dozens of holes. Rocks, both large and small, had gouges and chips torn from their age-old surfaces. The headland looked like a hurricane had passed over it --- Hurricane Asskicker.
As the yacht slowly came parallel with the killing ground, Straw gave a ragged cheer. Pete joined in, followed by One Arm himself. Weasel Weasilski stuck his head out of the can, blinked into the fading sunlight, and stepped out, fully intending to join in the celebration. The next slug from Willard’s 444 blew yet another porthole in the head door, taking a good deal of Weasel with it.
As the body crumpled to the deck, the three women began wailing again. From the top deck, Cindy-Lou the First heartily joined in.
“He’s still there!”, One Arm bellowed. “The stupid old fuck is STILL THERE!”
“Not for long!”, Rambo hissed, sprinting back towards his room.
One Arm turned and bellow at Pete to put some distance between themselves and the old bastard who somehow refused to die. As he bent over the rail, Willard’s Marlin spoke again. With the engine idling softly, the thunder from the long rifle could clearly be heard by everyone; the blinding pain it caused, however, could only be felt by One Arm. A searing gout of agony enveloped his head. The crown itself felt like someone had laid a cherry-red poker on it. He fancied he even heard the hiss as hair and skin sizzled. Already bleeding from the cheek, rivulets of sticky wet crimson now poured down his entire face.
“I’m shot!”, One Arm squealed. The words came out at such a high pitch that every dog in the area must have uttered a sympathetic whine. “Shot in the fucking head!”
Blinded now by his own blood, One Arm raised his hitherto forgotten .38 and began firing. The first four shots went winging off into the wild blue yonder. The fifth one struck the large brass bell mounted on the upper deck to mark the changing of the watch. The sixth gave Cindy-Lou the First a second navel. Looking down at the neat little hole below her breasts, her long legs gave way and she sat down on her often ill-used ass. A look of surprise drifted over her once pretty features. ‘Free at last. Free at last. Great God Almighty, I’m free at last!’, her somewhat whimsical expression seemed to say. The look soon drifted away, her soul or spirit or life-force following quietly.
Just above her, the brass bell ceased its tolling.
“Willard! Willard!”, Sadat yelled. “You’re bleeding! “
The grizzly old farmer turned and looked down into the little man’s worried face. “I aint dead, you dumb Turk! Just winged me is all!”
Willard looked a whole lot more than ‘winged’ to Sadat. In fact, if he wasn’t dead, he should be. His face and hands were covered with scrapes and cuts and he was leaking blood from three or four places. Most of it, however, came from the rock-chips that had been flying around. There was one nasty gouge in the old man’s left shoulder that might have been caused by a bullet, but Sadat couldn’t be sure.
He himself wasn’t exactly feeling in the pink of health. The house-sized boulder they had hid behind had shielded them from Rambo’s own version of Armageddon, but the ‘fallout’ had been something else again! Besides the rock-chips, there had been the bloody ricochets! Led had whizzed and wined all around them like kernels of corn in a hot-air popper. Sadat had a cut on his forehead, another on his left arm and a hole in his right shoe. His toes still moved, but they hurt like hell.
“We got to get out of here!”, Sadat said.
Willard smiled. Through the blood it looked like a grimace. “Here’s what were going to do, Saddy. When they’re heading away from us, we both jump up and let go a few rounds, then run like hell for the truck!”
“Why not just sneak away now?”, the little man demanded.
Willard’s friendly eyes narrowed. “’Cause I aint going to run till I get me one more lick at ‘em!” Sadat swallowed, then nodded agreement.
This time Willard’s smile reached his eyes. “We’ll learn ‘em to come snoopin’ around our town shootin’ at peaceable folk!”.
Rambo pulled the tab that extended the Laws Rocket and flipped up the sight. The whole thing was less than a yard long. Built as a one-shot disposable bazooka, it launched a mini-rocket a quarter of a mile or m
ore.
“Jesus wept!”, Pete intoned as he looked on, his shell-shocked mind dredging up a quote from a youth spent in revival tents and pool halls.
Rambo placed the tube on his shoulder and peered through the sight. As the yacht cruised around in its slow circle, the cross hairs lined up on the largest boulder less than 50 yards away.
“Better stand to one side, ladies. This baby blows out both ends.”
Straw and Pete almost tripped over Doug Snelling’s body jumping out of the way. One Arm, now at the controls, a blood-soaked bandana tied round his forehead, giggled like an old maid on her first date. The three remaining women were nowhere to be seen.
As the yacht came abreast of the headland, Rambo pressed a red button on the side of the stubby tube. “Fire in the hole!”
A ‘whoomphing’ sound like a lion’s cough followed and the mini-rocket streaked out over the water. A moment later the large rock that sheltered Willard and Sadat went super-nova. The earth trembled. On the side hit by the Laws Rocket, ancient granite formed millennium ago vaporized in a heartbeat. What didn’t turn into gas was transformed to lava. The great rock shuddered and cracked. The shock wave spread out, dragging dust, smoke and rock with it. Sadat, crouching at the base of the huge rock, was protected from most of it. Willard was not.
The farmer had been on his feet, leaning against a split in the rock when the rocket hit. Blinded by the blast, the shock wave had pushed the large older man back like a leaf in the wind. Luckily the bows of a downed pine twenty feet away broke most of his fall.
“Willard!” Sadat yelled. Still clutching the shotgun, he scrambled over to the still form. Acidic smoke from the dozen or so small fires filled his lungs and stung his eyes.
“Willard!”, Sadat repeated, cradling the older man’s bleeding head.
No response.