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UNTITLED ZOMBIE STORY
By Wayne Webb
Chapter 4.3
Margaret strode forward and in a
smooth, fluid motion she took the gun from his hand and raised her
arm as she walked at a steady and deliberately fast pace towards
Rusty. She moved in a slight arc away from her son, not wanting to
give him the chance to interfere with her hastily made plan.
Rusty saw the look in her eyes as she
zeroed in on him, the barrel of the gun not drawing his focus as he
might had anticipated. A glint of finality punctuated her expression
and it hit home to rusty that this was the end. He stood at the beach
staring out to sea, seeing the approaching Tidal Wave and
understanding there was no avoiding it. She could not miss at this
range, and she was closing every step. She would not miss based on
her determination.
Rusty waited for his life to flash
before his eyes, while the tension and heat that had built up in his
body in the last few minutes had been amplified by the offer of the
gun and the approaching angel of retribution and death. Rusty did not
know which way the votes had been cast and therefore not know who
wanted it that way. He had been raising his hands to fend off or
dissuade his executioner, but in the space between blinks he let it
all go, his hands fell loosely down and the heat dissipated, a weight
that he had not known was there was lifting and he stood up a little
straighter, feeling lithe and nimble as he accepted the end of his
life as a valid concern.
Margaret was blind, she saw nothing but
the target, saw no expression and no movement she just saw how close
she wanted to be and closed the distance to that point. When she was
within a foot away she pulled the trigger twice and then took another
swing around and fired again three more times.
She was breathing heavily and her heart
was pounding so loud in her chest that she did not hear the gunshots,
she was operating in adrenaline overdrive, beyond anything in the
world that existed outside of what she had to do there and then. She
stood panting and waited for the roaring of blood in her head to stop
and her eyes to focus. She didn't want to look at the blood and the
gore, but there was a need to see the job done. She had taken on the
responsibility, the thing that she saw as a weakness in her son, the
risks he was taking with his life, with all their lives really, and
she had to step in.
As a parent would, and should.
Rusty was still standing when her eyes
finally made sense of what she was looking at, he was swaying and
pale in the face. He looked sick and it was a wonder he could have
survived the barrage of five bullets at point blank pacing.
He was not bleeding.
Wait? What? He was not bleeding? Had
she missed every shot? How was that possible? Margaret raised the gun
and pushed it to his temple, taking the last step between them and
pulled the trigger, but now in the cold and no-longer-heightened
state of passion she heard the empty chamber click and realized that
the gun was empty.
Rusty looked at Ben who was staring at
the both of them in wide eyed horror. He had taken the bullets from
the gun before making his mind up and had planned on using it as a
test in case Rusty turned out to be a little less honorable than he
was making out. The idea that he would let someone in the Team have a
go as well was an afterthought and he did not think it would happen.
In fact he considered it a way to prove the point to Rusty about the
way they did things.
This was something else entirely. Who
was this woman? A person who looked and sounded like his mother but
who had commited to a violent course of action, resolved to do it,
took the steps and barreled into it with full force, not hesitating
for even a second to carry it out, all in the matter of seconds.
“Jesus Mom? What the Fuck?” Ben's
voice shook as did his hands, the tremors and trembling not from fear
but sheer shock and surprise.
“Language, Benji.” his mother said
in a subdued tone, barely above a whisper.
“What the fuck were you thinking?”
Ben took the gun from her hand and this time there was no
condemnation of his language or any attempt to mother her way
forward.
Rusty was holding his breath the whole
time from the first click. He had no time to think or process what
was happening, the whole debacle happened too quickly and gave him no
time to do anything but react.
The expletives from Ben burst the skin
on his tension and the air rushed in and out of him in huge gulps,
driven by adrenaline the same as Maragret had been. Though in Rusty's
case it was fear not rage that it was fueling. His knees buckled and
he fell to the ground, not fainting but unable to support his own
weight he crashed down onto the hard ground.
Ben was staring at his mother, trying
to see behind the dissociation she was beginning to feel.
She would not meet his gaze and she
kept her eyes pointed down at the ground not tracking the weapon as
it left her hands.
“What the hell mom?” Ben shook his
head and saw there was nothing there that was going to make any
sense.
“Derek?” Ben put an arm around his
mother's shoulders and steered her to the man he had decided was
coming with him. “Put her in the car, please.” He pointed which
one and watched them walk over, Margaret operating on autopilot.
Derek was opening the back door of the car and Ben shouted out “the
front, passenger side!”
Derek looked back at him from the side
of the car.
“She gets carsick in the back.”
Derek shrugged and moved her to the
front.
“Are you ok?” Ben asked the pale
and frightened man and the stare he got in reply was all that he
needed.
“Right. So you're good to go wherever
you want, you don't need to...”
Rusty did not wait, he bolted like a
cat doused in water, his body moving the fastest in the nearest,
safest direction he could assume in a split second.
He did not stop running until the
people were out of sight and the air in his lungs burned like fire.
The sun was moving overhead and he just
stood there hardly daring to believe he was alive. The sound of the
cars moving away from the bend where the barricade had been was just
reaching him and then he finally let himself go and the grief
overwhelmed him.
His body wracked with sobs, making
breathing even more painful and the tears streaming down his face
made him half blind.
He was alive enough to feel it all.
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