It was Ambience who realized that morning they were out of ellipsis. She’d looked everywhere. Her old zephyr prescription vial in the medicine cabinet was empty, as was the mother lode, the repurposed mayonnaise jar under the dirty clothes on the floor in back of the closet. She thought for sure she’d hit paydirt in the pockets of her Pear&Pumice bouclé jacket. But no, nothing. There wasn’t a single cap to be found anywhere in the suite or the HomoDebonaire, which she’d also searched diligently. What she really couldn’t understand was how she’d allowed their chemical situation to reach such a serious defcon level. What could she possibly have been thinking? Where had her mind been? Forget that last. She knew the answer.
“We’re out of ell,” she said. She told Graveyard where she’d looked.
“No worries,” he said. He knew a place. The Rock Pile, an old-timey boutique down at the south end of Mess O’ Stuff run by a cool green-card dude named BackAlley, who’d once had a lively business in cartridges, cassettes, and CDs until all the music became free. Now you could go there to score rare movies, oop comic books, and various popular substances that would never be free. The place always smelled of incense and zits. “I don’t know,” Graveyard said. “The store may not even exist anymore, maybe the mall, either, but let’s give it a try.”
“I’m horny,” Ambience said.
“Yeah? A second ago you were ready to tear up the carpeting cause you couldn’t find any ellipsis.”
“What do I know? You think I understand myself?”
“You’re rich. You don’t have to.”
“I have my people do it for me?”
“Now you’re working it like a bullion freak.”
“Round me up some people.”
“In a minute.” He was already undoing the porcelain cabochon buttons with the burned-leaf motif on her HeavenlyConcourse hand-embroidered silk blouse. “My God, sweet aubergine, you’ve got nothing on underneath this rag.”
“I believe in going commando top to bottom.”
“I like your taste.” He kissed her on the neck. He licked her neck. “And in fact, I like your taste.” And then the carapaces came off and they slipped seamlessly into a space beyond words, free of comment or commentary. Now it was all about the feels. But after a while the rented living room, for Ambience, at least, ever sensitive to the tone of things, seemed entirely too constricted, and she guided them to the rented bedroom, which, though not as large as the master version back home, contained a bed of at least sufficient cubic feet to absorb the size of their emotions. They rolled around for a while on the stale duvet. First they were groping, then they were making love, and then they were fucking. Ambience’s skin a quilt of knitted nerve endings. The air a pool of warm oil. Her tongue a phantasmagoria of color. She was bathed in metaphor. She was rich.
“I liked that,” she said when they had finished.
“I did, too,” Graveyard said. “Let’s do it again sometime real soon.”
“Capital idea.”
What if, Graveyard said to himself, and not for the first time, lying quietly in an agreeable postcoital reverie, the moment of greatest pleasure you’ve ever experienced in your entire life, the very peak of bliss, was only the mildest hint of what it was possible to achieve on the spectrum of physical euphoria, that there were no limits whatsoever to the boundaries of ecstasy but the intensity you could personally bear, that you and you alone controlled how much good you allowed yourself to tolerate, and that once your private quota was fulfilled the excess was converted instantly to pain. Imagine that. And not the first time he had done so. Changes the face of the whole planet, don’t it?
They showered, adorned themselves in brand new sets of shamelessly expensive clothing, and refreshed, relaxed, and ready to face their public, ventured out into the seasonably cold twilight, loaded the bag of money and the bag of guns (those perpetual twins) onto the rear floor of the HomoDebonaire, climbed in, and exited the parking lot of the Stay ’N’ Pay.
“Think I’ll take the scenic route,” Graveyard said. “It’s shorter and there’s much less traffic. In fact, there is none.”
“Rush hour a real bear out here?”
“You never know. CorrugatedDreams is up along the interstate and Equidolt and probably plenty more pop-up businesses I haven’t even heard of. That’s a mess of people letting out at once. The way we’re going will be short, quick, and hassle-free. Plus you get to see the country.”
“Do it,” said Ambience.
Sound track for this late afternoon’s drive was Dub Coroner’s Casanova Hymn, the track in play at the moment, the slammin’ “24K Luv Scraps.” Ambience soon found herself nodding to the beat and singing along with the trippin’ chorus: “You say it ain’t me, so you saying / Pack that piece, now you damn chigging / Milly, flush that fortune down, flush that sweet fortune all the way down.”
The song ended.
Ambience turned to stare out the window into the gathering dusk.
“My God,” she said. “I see cows. Those are actual cows. There’s cows out there on the hill.”
“Lordy me, Maw,” Graveyard said in the appropriate bad accent, “they got real critters on real farms and everything.” He dropped the accent. “You sure those might not be deer?” He glanced quickly over to his right but couldn’t see anything. It was getting darker and darker. “Aren’t cows supposed to be brought into the barn at night?”
“They’re big and fat and standing still and lying down and they’re in black and white.”
“Cows,” Graveyard said.
“That’s what I said.”
“Those are farms over there. We’re in farm country.”
“Where nervous white people huddle together to vote for other nervous white people?”
“Whining always enjoys a big chorus. You know my father is local district chair of the Flying Freedom Freedom Party.”
“You’ve told me often enough. You must be so proud.”
“I used to get free stuff at the annual Liberty roundups.”
“What—a kiddie StreetCleaner and a Make The World Go Away baseball cap?”
“Mostly divinity fudge and unlimited servings of frosted flake crumble.”
“Everything a growing boy needs.”
“Couldn’t get enough.”
“Listen, there any real stores at this so-called mall? Places where you can get real stuff worth buying? I haven’t gifted myself a single party favor on this entire trip that was both ludicrously priced and completely unnecessary. And I’m beginning to suffer serious withdrawal symptoms.”
“Used to be a pretty good Synapsaurus outlet there, but that was twenty years ago, so who knows if it still even exists today?”
“I need to buy something, Grave. Soon. Seriously soon. I’m getting the shakes.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll find some sort of uselessly stupid and glamorous knickknack that’ll get you well again.”
“That’s why I love you, Grave. You always know how to say just the right thing.”
“Well, sometimes.”
“And you were certainly right about this route. Talk about the road less traveled. I haven’t noticed another car since we turned onto it.”
“Sautéed kale and broiled ramps.” He kept glancing up into the rearview mirror.
“What’s wrong?”
“You might’ve spoken too soon. This dickweed’s been hotdogging us for miles now.” He reached up and twisted the mirror off to one side. “Like to shoot out those brights, too.”
Ambience turned to look back through the rear window. “He’s gaining,” she said.
“We’ll see about that.” Graveyard hit the accelerator. But the tailing car not only kept pace, it also moved up to about a foot off the HomoDebonaire, then began knocking repeatedly against the rear bumper, at the same time leaning on an abrasive, persistent horn.
“Didn’t know small-town hicks could be such rude drivers,” Ambience said.
“I don’t think those are small-town hicks.”
As he spoke, the pursuing car began grinding against the rear of the HomoDebonaire, attempting to push it forward. Metal complained and shrieked. Graveyard sped up. The trailing car cut abruptly to the left, moved up rapidly from behind, and began trying to pass him in the oncoming lane. It was a shiny black late-model Fustian XL with darkly tinted windows and an invisible driver who obviously liked its horn. When Graveyard sped up to keep the vehicle from cutting him off, the SUV swerved suddenly to the right, bumping into the HomoDebonaire, scraping its side. More metallic screeching. It pulled away for a moment, then immediately came back again, grinding relentlessly against them. “Jellied liver and lima bean relish,” said Graveyard. His grip on the steering wheel tightened.
“This roach is definitely getting on my nerves,” Ambience said. “What’s he think he’s doing?”
“Well, I think he’s trying to run us off the road.”
The black SUV, which had fallen back behind them for a few seconds, now began accelerating again for another pass. Graveyard reached out to his brushed steel Navigation Gallery, lightly touched an icon on the display screen, and instantly the HomoDebonaire’s deluxe Ultra-Drive function was activated. They easily zoomed out ahead of the receding Fustian.
“Okay,” said Ambience, “that may have done it. You’ve dusted ’em.”
“Thanks to the Homo’s five seventy hp.”
But then, despite their lead, the trailing headlamps began growing ominously in size. “Think maybe you might want to take up a position in back,” Graveyard said. “Just to be on the safe side.”
Without a word Ambience climbed over into the back seat and immediately turned around to face out the rear window. “Those blinders are like arc lamps,” she said, blinking against the glare. “What’s—he got his high beams on?”
“Yeah, they’re probably customized HIDs, and god knows what he’s got under the hood.”
“Who do you think it is?”
“Well, it’s pretty obvious they’re probably associates of Mr. BlisterPac. And they’re not in party mode.”
“Here they come again,” Ambience said.
The light from the approaching SUV magnified in intensity, eventually filling the HomoDebonaire’s interior. Then the Fustian began bumping again and again against their tail fender as its driver leaned without mercy on his horn. The Debonaire swerved slightly to the left, then slightly to the right. Despite the Ultra-Drive, Graveyard couldn’t seem to shake them.
The first shot struck somewhere in the trunk of the Debonaire. It made a dull thump.
“You hear that?” said Ambience.
“Not good,” Graveyard said. And he already had the pedal to the floor. Ambience pulled the bag of guns onto the seat beside her and began sorting through them. “What did I tell you?” she said. “I knew it was eventually going to come down to something like this. Money and guns. Guns and money. What did I tell you?”
“We can handle this. We’ve got the car and we’ve got the firepower.”
The next shot cracked the rear glass. “Shit!” said Ambience. She ducked down in her seat. Graveyard checked the dash. The digital read on the velocity amplification was flickering up and down around the hundred mark. Suddenly several shots hit the body of the car simultaneously. “Shit!” Ambience said again, ducking again. “Whoever Mr. Big is, it appears he wants his money back real bad.”
“Unfortunately, they always do,” Graveyard said, fighting to maintain control of the rattling wheel. “We’ve arrived at the butt end of the corporate life.” He couldn’t depress the accelerator any further. Under him the car felt alive, an animated being of blood, muscle, and heart that moved in sync with his will. He was no longer looking at the gauges. He had never driven so fast in his life and he was riding on sheer car jockey’s grace. It was like he was flying, the road slithering around like an angry snake before him. And still he couldn’t seem to shake the Fustian. What had they done to that engine? No machine should be able to pace a maxed-out HomoDebonaire. Yet here they were. And this service road hadn’t been built for such speed. So far the stretch had been a relatively flat straightaway, though the steering column was vibrating and so were his arms. What he tried not to think about were curves. How would he handle those? Up ahead, out there in the darkness, beyond the reach of the headlamps, hovered the Red Hole. He was hurtling toward it at max acceleration. But he blinked once, twice, three times, and the Red Hole went away.
“What do you want me to do?” Ambience said. “Lean out the window and let off a few caps?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Give that a try.”
Ambience powered down the left window. A hard wind came howling in. She picked up the first weapon at hand, a converted Gibe & Cloister 418, stuck out her head, hair whipping across her face, pointed the gun in the general direction of the Fustian, and popped a half dozen rounds, which were immediately answered by a return spray of automatic fire that peppered the Debonaire to the accompaniment of sudden pocking sounds. Ambience pulled her head back inside. “Holy shit!” she said. “They got major clout.”
“I’ve had it with these people,” Graveyard said. “Break out the LampLighter.”
Ambience fumbled around in the bag, eventually producing the short, stocky shape of the ever-reliable LampLighter 505, the weapon she’d stitched her initials with into the paper zombie back at Bullets ’N’ Brunch. It felt pretty cozy in her arms. Before she could raise it into firing position, though, several more hostile rounds came bursting through the rear window. She fell flat onto the back seat, heart in overdrive.
“Knock out the rest of the glass and give ’em a big kiss from me,” Graveyard said. This wasn’t really real. This was a flick he’d seen before. Many times before. With an audience. In a darkened theater. Actually being in the cast—in a starring role, yet—occupied an entirely different level of being. A picture of a gun was not a gun. A real bullet was as hard as reality could get.
Ambience used the barrel of the gun to break out the remaining bits of window glass and once she’d gotten a clear field of fire she propped the weapon on the top edge of the back seat, took aim, and let loose. A whole magazine’s worth. One of the Fustian’s headlamps went dark. She reloaded and shot off a volley into the black space above the remaining light, where she imagined the windscreen to be. She fired and fired.
“I’m trying to take out the window,” she said, “but nothing.”
“They’ve probably got that freaking Hexigard sheeting with spall face. If you can, keep knocking at the same spot. Might weaken the glass enough to get in.”
So she did. No dice. The Fustian kept coming. The Fustian kept shooting.
“Go for the tires,” Graveyard said.
So she did. And, for a moment, the Fustian appeared to actually begin slowing.
“They’re dropping back,” Ambience said. As they did, they released several additional bursts of fire, the flashes speckling the night.
Then, up ahead, at the very forward edge of the Debonaire’s headlights, a sharp curve began bearing rapidly down upon them. “Hold on!” Graveyard shouted. He tried braking. He tried twisting the wheel. But it was too late. At terrific speed the luxury sedan slid sidewise off the road, bounced off a telephone pole or a cable pole or an electric pole or whatever the hell kind of pole it was, crashed through the guardrail and on down into a dead cornfield, the dry, brittle stalks thrashing against the grille and side doors of the careering car until it came at last to a shuddering stop somewhere in the midst of the field, dust, tiny bits of dirt, and withered leaf settling over the ruined body of the car.
“You okay?” Graveyard said.
“Yeah, I think so,” said Ambience. “The fucking gun bag slammed into my face. I think my nose is bleeding.”
Graveyard tried restarting the engine. Nothing. He tried again. Still nothing. He leaned forward, turned off the headlamps. The clear sky was utterly moonless. Except for the faintly illuminated windows of a farmhouse in the far distance, there was absolutely no light. It was the darkest dark Graveyard had ever experienced, country dark.
“Ready for what comes next?” he said.
“Bring it on,” she said.
The Fustian had slowed, turned off the highway, made its leisurely, crunching way down onto the tattered field, and edged up to a position somewhere between unnervingly close and eerily distant from the rear of the Debonaire, where it came to a deliberate stop. Its remaining headlight switched off. Its doors remained closed. Silence.
“Give me the MojoMaster,” Graveyard said. “If you can find it.”
Ambience felt around on the floor. “The MojoMaster the one with the HiggledyPiggledy rails?”
“No; other.”
She passed him the rifle over the seat. She turned around to scan the quiet darkness framed in the busted-out rear window. “What’re they doing? No one’s gotten out of the car yet. At least that I can see.”
“Old mob technique,” Graveyard said. “I read about it once. Or maybe I saw it in a movie. They want to give you plenty of time to contemplate all the pretty stuff that’s going to be coming your way shortly.” He retrieved a box of rounds from under the seat and got busy loading magazines.
A cold wind had begun blowing in through the open back window. Ambience could feel the chill through her clothes. “Should’ve worn a heavier coat,” she said.
“Don’t worry,” Graveyard said. “We’ll all be sufficiently warmed up in a couple minutes.” He inserted a full magazine into the MojoMaster, clicked it into place. He looked back at Ambience. She looked at him. They didn’t need to exchange a word. Then Ambience heard a sound and quickly turned back toward the window. “Somebody’s getting out,” she said.
“Try giving them a sweet wake-up call.”
Ambience opened up with the LampLighter, let it run for a few deafening seconds. In the dark at least two people answered, the muzzle flares clearly visible and shockingly long. She immediately answered, aiming right toward where the last flashes had appeared. Out there somebody yelled something.
“What’d he say?” Graveyard said.
“Fuck if I know.” She fired off more rounds into the dark. “How many you think there are?”
“As many assclowns as could fit in that tacky circus car of theirs. Or, more likely, as many as BlisterPac’s mysterious overlord is willing to shell out for. I wouldn’t be surprised if, on the grand all-encompassing spreadsheet, we haven’t already been written off as an unfortunate minor liability. We’re probably not worth anything more than an economy mission. I’d say four at the most, if that. Give them a friendly ‘Hi, there.’ See what happens.”
Ambience let off a five-second stream of rounds. Loud and bright.
Silence. No response.
“Maybe they’re already out of the car and slipping toward us,” she said.
“You’d think we would have heard a door opening or something. Give me a turn. These shitholes are really pissing me off.” Ambience crouched down in her seat. Graveyard pointed his MojoMaster over her head and out into the night, squeezed the trigger, and held it until his ears hurt too much. Again, there was no reply.
“Time for a recon,” Ambience said. “I’m going out.”
“In the open? You’ll lose your cover.”
“Number one rule in the Rangers: keep moving.” She opened her door as cautiously as she could. From out of the dark came a sudden violent eruption of intense fire that made lots of twinkling lights and plunking sounds. Ambience and Graveyard ducked down behind their seats.
“Did you see where it was coming from?” Graveyard said.
“I‘ve a good idea.” She raised up and fired off into the night. Nothing came back.
“Cute,” Graveyard said. “They’re playing with us.”
“I’ve got no patience with games.” She took out her pack of Daredevils, lit up, and proceeded to smoke what she hoped would not be her last cig. The effect was better than ever.
“Give me one of those,” Graveyard said. She did. She lit his for him. He noisily exhaled. “I’d forgotten what these can be like,” he said. They sat smoking together in silence. When Ambience finished, she tossed the still-glowing butt off into the night. Then, clutching the LampLighter, she started to climb almost delicately out of the car. “Time to woman up.”
“Where you going?”
“To do what has to be done.”
“Maybe we should both go.”
“You stay here, sit on the money. You’re good at it. I’ll do the moving around. I’m good at that. Remember Bubu Bugaboo?”
“Where you almost got killed?”
“But I didn’t.”
“Yeah, truffle mouth, you should most definitely try to remember that.”
They shared a look, all their lives summed up in the silence. “See you in hell,” she said. She’d always wanted to say that. Now she had. She slipped back toward the front of the car and then stepped silently off into the night. Graveyard leaned over his seat back, grabbed the bag of guns, yanked it into the front with him. He picked out his favorites—the BoxcarSystem 20/10, the StreetCleaner, the trusty HoiPolloi, along with the MojoMaster—and, balancing the unwieldy weight as best he could, exited the driver’s side of the Debonaire with a surprising amount of stealth and made his way to the front of the car. He wanted the solid cover of the engine block. He leaned against the warm hood, metal still ticking like a can of trapped insects, cradled the Boxcar in his arms, and sighted down the barrel. He couldn’t see a thing. Should have sprung for a fancy pair of those night-vision specs, but frankly he hadn’t ever planned on needing them. Live and learn. Without those lenses there wasn’t anything to see but total night. Trick, of course, was to keep focused in the proper direction and wait for the darkness to begin breaking apart into pieces that moved around in a suspiciously humanlike manner. After a while he started seeing white spots, and of course they were moving all over the place. He wondered how Ambience was doing. If anything happened to her…Then suddenly there was a rapid burst of light off to the left. Then another burst even closer. As soon as Graveyard shifted to the left side of the hood to cover that action, someone opened up on him from the right side. He crouched down behind the engine. He could hear the rounds pouring in like a bucket of pebbles being tossed against the car. Bits of window glass showered onto his head. And whoever was shooting was shooting seriously. Even when Graveyard thought the blistering fire was going to stop, it didn’t. Then abruptly it did. In the interval the silence seemed deafening. My turn, Graveyard said to himself. He stepped out briefly into the clear, raised the Boxcar to chest level, and let go. He put all of himself into the machine rattling between his arms. It felt good. But before he could finish, something bit him on the left calf. Ow! he said to himself. That hurt. Then something bit his right arm. Ow! again. He was being nibbled to death. Then, just as he was ducking back behind the safety of the car, he took a sudden kick straight to the gut. Scones and smoked marrowbone, he said to himself. Definitely not good. He didn’t want to, he couldn’t help himself, but he went down. He could feel himself falling and knew the ground was going to be hard before he even hit it. It was. Scallop crudo and apricot cream cheese, he said to himself. I am fucked. He felt wet, so he touched the front of his jacket. He didn’t need to look at his hand. Everything seemed to be running out of him. And if this was the part where his life was supposed to be fast-forwarding through his screen, why wasn’t it? No memory train whatsoever. What could that mean? The show must not be over. Maybe there was going to be another beat or two and several more after that. So in this important climactic scene, he would act it extra. Before the martini shot there would be at least one other random player, maybe more, who would find his parts unexpectedly and brutally trimmed. Bracing himself against the body of the car, he rose by separate considered stages to his feet. He stared out into the armed obscurity. As he watched, a firefight broke out off in the distance, stopped, then started again. Kill them, Amb, he said to himself, kill all of ’em. Then some pieces of the darkness got loose and came charging toward him. He didn’t even aim. He didn’t have to. He just fired. The MojoMaster did what the MojoMaster was built to do. The piece of darkness on the left tumbled to earth. Then the piece of darkness on the right. He settled back against the front fender. His chest hurt. His right leg hurt. His left arm hurt. It was all hurt. Pictures of Ambience came stuttering through his mind. If anything happened…Then he decided it would be a good thing if he could just lie down on the ground and rest for a while. So he did. He lay there listening. All he could hear was his own heartbeat, strong and steady, and his own rasping breaths, short and weak, and then, beyond that, heavy feet stumbling clumsily across the frozen ground from behind. They neared. They stopped. He tried to turn to see who it was, but he couldn’t move. “Ambience?” he said.
“No,” said a voice and put a cold barrel to his head and pulled a trigger.
And the final astonishment passing through his mind before the final astonishment: casu marzu and lutefisk, none of this is at all what I thought it was.
Gun in hand and scuttling along close to the ground like one of the Lower Marginalians in Planet of the Speckled Souls, Ambience made her stealthy way up around the roaches’ right flank. In the distance she could just make out a boxy, squat shape darker than the surrounding dark: the damn Fustian. No movement around it that she could see. All was tensely calm. She pressed on. She hoped to surprise the roaches with a classic end around and hoped the result would be equally classic. She had never wanted more to propel hard bits of metal into a deluxe assortment of soft, juicy targets. If only the ground weren’t so broken and rocklike and covered in all these horrible mangled stalks. It was like trying to traverse an expanse of rubble from a demolished building. She’d already tripped and nearly fallen an embarrassing number of times. What a klutz. Suddenly flashes of light began cracking the darkness around the Fustian. These were immediately answered by similar flashes off in the direction of the Debonaire. Graveyard, she said to herself. Do it. Then the lights started talking back and forth to each other for several minutes, and then they stopped. Now her turn. She could see shadows detach themselves from the night and begin shifting around the larger shadow of the SUV. She got onto one knee, aimed, let off a crackling torrent of fire, and immediately threw herself forward onto the ground just as the angry response came whizzing over her prone body. When it stopped, she got up, ran about twenty yards to her left, aimed in what she hoped was the proper direction, fired, and before she could flatten herself completely against the ground took a hard blow to her right thigh and collapsed between the stony furrows. I am shot, she said to herself in amazement. She couldn’t believe what was happening. More bullets looking for her began exploring the clods of dirt scattered randomly about in front of her. Something searing brushed furiously against the side of her face. It felt like a length of hot wire being drawn sharply across her cheek. She was shocked. Then she was angry. I am not dying here, she said to herself, in a crappy shithole, in the crappy dark, in the crappy middle of total crappiness. Somebody called out. She couldn’t understand a word. She didn’t move. She didn’t speak. Somebody called again. Then what she’d been waiting for began to happen. Something was coming toward her in the dark. She didn’t move. She waited. Under her finger the comforting curve of the trigger of her LampLighter felt hard and cool. She waited until the dark shape was close enough to talk to. She quietly raised the weapon and pointed and squeezed the hard trigger. Everything lit up and got quite loud. When she let go of the trigger, nothing was moving anywhere around her. For a while there was a brief twinkling of light coming toward her from off in the distance near the Fustian. Nothing too serious. Then it stopped, too. She felt her leg. It didn’t feel good. But it didn’t feel all that bad, either. It was one of those infamous “licks from Satan’s tongue.” You probably wouldn’t die, but depending on where that tongue had been recently, you might wish you had. She began paying attention to her breaths, counting them methodically off, one by one. Breaths were energy, and when she determined that her tanks were near full again, she decided to risk rising to the vertical. It wasn’t as painful as she’d expected, and she discovered she could actually put a surprising amount of weight on the injured leg. She could even move forward, even if it was only by way of a pronounced limp. Thank goddess, she said to herself. Time to reset. She moved off about thirty yards from where she’d been, eased herself down flat onto the ground, and focused through the sights of the LampLighter, seeing what she could see. Which wasn’t much. The night refused to break up into recognizable moving pieces. And then abruptly it did. Two, possibly three, figures were fidgeting about the Fustian. She slowly zeroed in on one moving blob, aimed directly into the center of the mass, and squeezed the trigger. The blob stopped moving. And when a second blob began shooting back in her direction, she simply centered on the muzzle flashes and kept firing until the flashes stopped. Then she lay there waiting until the silence became complete. When the silence had lasted long enough for her to feel safe, she gingerly climbed to her feet. The leg had begun to stiffen. Limping badly, she cautiously approached the dark Fustian. She found two bodies sprawled near the rear of the car. They were both decidedly dead. She didn’t look at either one of them for very long. She didn’t care what they looked like. Then she saw the flash off in the dark back near her car and heard the sharp crack. Without knowing, she knew instantly what that light and that exact sound meant. She went on. Out in front of the Fustian she found two more bodies, one of them still struggling for breath. The sound was like a clogged drainpipe. Don’t bug me, she said to herself. I’m shot. She let him struggle. She had taken only a couple more steps when she caught another flash out of the corner of her eye and heard something nasty whizzing past her right ear. She dropped to the ground. She looked away from the point where she thought he’d be and, sure enough, caught him in her peripherals: a single figure frozen in a half crouch out in front of the Debonaire. She aimed the LampLighter and fired and continued firing until the figure wasn’t there anymore. When she got to where the figure had been, she found him motionless between the furrows. She didn’t look at him, either. She walked on past. How many was that now? Four? Five? We were worth five whole roaches. Imagine that. Behind the HomoDebonaire she came upon what she had expected to find: the remains of Graveyard lying on the ground behind the right rear tire, ominously still, severely silent. She looked down at the knotted wreckage of what had once been her only husband ever. Never suspected she’d be confronted with this version of him. Her eyes filled and she got down on her knees and then fell helplessly across his bones and began kissing his cold cheek again and again. She couldn’t help it. He’d been an entire third of her life. After she’d worn herself out with her grief, she slowly struggled to her feet and turned and pointed the LampLighter in the general direction of the Fustian and started firing and kept firing until the magazine was empty. She was crying now and realized she’d been crying for quite some time. Then she opened the back door of the Debonaire, pulled out the bag of money, and, dragging the bag and her leg behind her, started hobbling toward the road and the nearest house on the road with lighted windows. It seemed awfully far away. It had numerous strings of multicolored bulbs framing its eaves and windows. It’s Christmas, she said to herself. She’d forgotten it was Christmas. As she watched, the porch light came on. She headed for that light. She tossed the LampLighter off into the darkness. It landed with a satisfying thump. She struggled on over the rough, uneven furrows, cursing her leg and the pain and the night. She was now, she supposed, occupying the role she had always secretly imagined for herself: The Last Girl. Halfway to the house she softly opened her hand and allowed her end of the bag to fall limply to earth. She didn’t know why. In the far distance she could hear the approaching sirens and she could see the flashing lights. Society come to make everything better.