seymoure

Death as a Buffet

“Struggle is strengthening.
Battling with evil gives us the power
to battle evil even more.”
-Ossie Davis

The chatter of machine gun fire was picking up, and all the shots were coming more frequently.

Jill and I were moving up the ramp to find the next point to move from the garage to the next building.

Suddenly I saw a huge arm and bigger hand hold a gun out from a window below. It couldn’t be anyone else.

“Stop,” I said in a normal voice; we were too far away to whisper. Besides, we wouldn’t have been heard if we had. “I know that mitt. That’s MacPherson right there!”

When she saw where I was pointing, Jill might as well have been a junkie noticing someone drop their stash on the floor and not realize it. Her adrenaline was instantly pumping in a way that did not bring a rose of calm to either of our cheeks.

Within 10 seconds, the thundering reports gathered like a storm smashing into the shore. The blasts came from all sides and centered on our area. I knew they had located their main target, but it sounded like we were it rather than just being close to him.

She said something to me that was completely lost in the maelstrom of every kind of gunshot I have ever heard.

Despite what my more generous and nurturing angels advised, I made the choice to survey the scene before us.

The range of my vision only reached about 4 city blocks, but that one look delivered like a midwife.

“We have to be really careful,” I warned Jill.

“Yeah,” she responded sarcastically. “People seem to be shooting at each other.”

“But, it ain’t like we thought it was,” I told her. “Look for yourself.”

She was not happy at the prospect. I’m sure she thought that, since I had looked, she wouldn’t have to take the chance. But she had never been a shrinking violet, unless that flower was carrying a broadsword and a notebook.

She turned back to me, and I knew that she got it. “The police are in a circle around the gun fight, but their guns are not being shot,” she reported in totally confusion, “They have them drawn, but they don’t seem inclined to shoot anybody. So who is doing the shooting?”

“The police could only turn away the bounty hunters and freelancers who come in on airplanes and trains, but they couldn’t get everybody,” I suggested. “Those must be the Greyhound and highway assassins out there.”

The chatter of guns became an 1812 Overture all around us. Chunks of concrete were flying.

“Damn,” I said. “It’s like they’re shooting right at us.”

At that point, we both saw why.

Encircled by about a dozen very young gun-toting punks, MacPherson was walking up a ramp towards us. Every one of the group was discharging random blasts of death, seemingly without any kind of actual target.

Since they hadn’t seen us, I grabbed Jill’s arm and we moved behind a VW van.

Jill was sitting with her back against the door and then she looked around and hit me in the ribs. Not the best thing to do to someone who has recently been hit in the chest so hard as to bring about the cessation of pulmonary function, but I didn’t say anything about it. I couldn’t breathe, so I was not about to talk.

Jill stuck out her arm and swept the area before us.

That was when I noticed that this van was the only vehicle on this floor of the garage.

That was when we heard the doors at the back and on the other side open.

I got the idea that they would know where we were very soon.