Standing in front of him, gripping a short-handled wood-splitting ax, was a small, elderly white man, bewhiskered and filthy.
Carrie was at Jim’s heels, Heather right behind her, both gasping with horror and shock. In the room at their backs, Jim could also hear Sly lumbering to his feet, asking plaintively what was wrong.
“Nigger wrecked my store and was stealing pictures off of me, but I done for him.”
The ratlike face turned toward the group in the doorway, alight with a malign cunning. Threads of yellowish drool dangled from his parted lips into the stained beard.
“No!” began Jim Hilton, part of his mind struggling to reject the unbelievable image of his good friend sprawled on the floor.
“I done for the thieving nigger bastard. Give him forty whacks when I seen what he done.”
“Oh,” said Sly Romero in a tiny voice, peering over the shoulders of Heather and Carrie.
“Now I’ll give him forty-one.” He lifted the ax again above his scrawny shoulder.
Jim’s finger tightened on the trigger of the Ruger Blackhawk Hunter, but the explosion that filled the devastated store wasn’t the powerful boom of his revolver.
It was the waspish crack of the Smith & Wesson 2050, Carrie Princip’s 6-shot revolver.
The .22-caliber bullet hit the old man through the side of the chest, on the right side, making him stagger backward and drop the ax.
“Bitch,” he growled, stopping and fumbling for his blood-slick weapon.
Carrie shot him twice more, once through the ragged shirt that flapped over his belly and once through the throat. The first bullet made him grab at the gut wound and gasp in pain. The second put him on his back amidst a scattered pile of old rental vids, his blood spouting all over them.
“That does it,” said Jim quietly. “Don’t waste another one on him.”
The old man struggled to sit up, gargling in his own blood as he fought to speak again. But the bullet had nicked his spine, and all the lines were down. He flopped back again and choked to death, breath rattling noisily in his throat, crimson froth mottling his beard.
Jim had moved quickly to kneel by Kyle Lynch, putting an arm around the slender shoulders.
“Christ, man, he’s done me,” whispered Kyle, eyes still gazing blankly out at some limitless vision of eternity.
“Guess he has,” agreed Jim. He wiped some of the blood off with his sleeve. Kyle was dying in front of them, and there wasn’t the smallest hope of doing a thing for him.
“Want me to pass on any word to your girl, Leanne, if I ever meet her?”
“No.” He managed a slow shake of the head. His hands were becoming still. “Rosa. It was Rosa I loved. If… tell her…”
Jim felt a slight shift in the body he held, and realized that Kyle was gone
.
AS THEY WERE getting ready to bury Kyle the next morning, Jim went out into the store, where the old man’s corpse had already stiffened. One of the vids that lay beslobbered under the body was Sunstrokers, the biggest hit that his own dead wife, Lori, had starred in. He picked it up and stared at the familiar face, speckled with brown stains. Her hair was tied in a garish bandanna, and she wore a tiny maroon leather skirt and matching bra top, and thigh-length boots. Lori had been so proud of herself in the part, though his own, private feelings were that it wasn’t likely to do all that much to advance her acting ambitions. As it turned out, he’d been right.
Sunstrokers had been both the low spot and the high spot for her career.
“Lori Hilton is the vixen queen of Bel Air,” the copy on the box screamed in rainbow hologram lettering.
He gave his head a sad shake and dropped the box down alongside the body. Then he went to work with the others, to ensure a decent burial.
Then they said goodbye to their companion in so many adventures and misadventures.
“Kyle Lynch. 2015-2040. Navigator of USSV Aquila and a good friend.”
Heather and Sly had worked on the wooden marker that was driven in at the head of the long pile of dirt. The temperature had dropped, and morning frost speckled the raw earth like sugar dusted on top of a cake. Heather had written the words out carefully on an invoice from the camera store, and then helped Sly with the painstaking lettering.