(7.3) Decisions

Chapter 7, Part 3

I’d thought about checking Tom’s pulse before realizing that in the world I lived in, a pulse isn’t always indicative of someone being alive. So I kicked him instead. When his mouth and eye-sockets failed to respond, I took it upon myself to do what any responsible person does in this situation and looked around for anything that I could find useful.

What I really wanted to do was to get in touch with Angel and figure out what the hell was going on. Too bad my dumb ass pushed her out the door too quickly to get a cell phone number from her.

“Sometimes I hate myself,” I said to no one in particular. “James my friend, you need to learn to be a little less impulsi- Ooh! Car keys!” They had been sitting on his desk, underneath several books with titles like Thaumaturgy and You and Advanced Conjuration for the Budget Conscious Hedge Wizard.

After pocketing the keys, I spend another half an hour wading through broken glass and wet books before finally giving up and heading to a door that I had noticed earlier. I’m not going to go into the specifics of the car, but I will point out the only thing about it that matters.

One word. Hemi.

I got in there, started it up, kicked it into reverse and blasted out of the garage door. Oh it was glorious. So glorious in fact that I almost didn’t see the station wagon that I’d driven in, stopping inches before crashing into the thing.

“Well,” I said to myself. “The brakes work.”

I gathered my things from the wagon and got back on the freeway. I had to figure out my next move and so the drive into town became decision making time. I knew where the Heroes were, but the display they’d put on with the ghouls had instilled a desire in me to catch them apart rather than face them all at once. I’d need some firepower of the bullet variety as there would be no way that I’d be able to take them all out with magic alone. In fact, Sam was probably my best and only bet when it came to an easy up-close kill.

These thoughts made my decision for me. I needed to kill people and I needed to make sure that my face wasn’t within punching distance when I did it.

The sun was getting ready to rise when I pulled into the parking lot of the first gun shop I could find. Places like these had a bad habit of being wired against intrusion so I did a quick walk-around of the place, trying to find the gun I wanted through the windows. I saw it behind the counter and was about to kick in the back door when someone came barrelling out of it and slammed into me.

I picked myself up from the ground as the man screamed obscenities and scrambled to pick up the guns he’d dropped. When he got his hand wrapped around an assault rifle and started to level it at me, I took the opportunity to kick him in the stomach as hard as I could.

Generally, when I kick a person like that, they tend to roll a good distance. When he didn’t, it caused me to look up and realize that the sun was peaking up over the edge, and Mr. Assault Rifle had the gun pointed at me again.

I tried to whip up a spell to send him back to the ground. However, I only had enough time to say “Aethr-!” before the gun gave its report and the bullets ripped into my stomach, sending me into darkness.