Anything But Luck
Darlene Bobich never believed in luck. There was a reason for everything, and whether it was the good graces of God Above or skills and experience that got you through, it was never a random occurrence. Things happened for a reason, as her daddy used to say.
This morning she put a bullet through her daddy’s heart. He didn’t stop trying to kill her, so she put another through his stomach.
The one between his eyes and the one through his left eye stopped him.
The gun, a Desert Eagle gas-operated semi-automatic, was given to her as a gift from her daddy. This was one of the first that he’d had a hand in creating when the Israeli manufacturer had moved its operations to Maine.
A small five year window before the Desert Eagle was once again back in Israel. Her daddy had been working in a factory in Dexter making footwear for twelve years. When it was announced that better paying jobs were right in town instead of thirty miles away, he’d jumped at the chance. Her daddy knew nothing about weapons but it didn’t stop him from being hired, and he was a fast learner.
Darlene remembered the look on his face when he handed her the present, a large box wrapped in Christmas paper with a silver bow. “I made this for you,” he’d said and kissed her cheek. Darlene was seventeen, on the verge of graduating high school and going off to college in the fall, when he’d given it to her.
Ten years of weekends on the gun range with daddy had taught her how to handle the weapon and defend herself. She’d never needed to until the dead started to rise.
Fittingly, ironically or just plain horrifically, the first zombie she’d had to kill was her own daddy. Her aim hadn’t been off; she thought that a bullet through his heart would stop him, but now she knew that his heart had given up the fight already. The second shot was meant to slow him down so she could think, but he didn’t double over in pain. Pain was not an option for him anymore, only the hunger.
Darlene took the last two shots in quick succession, hitting both targets perfectly. Daddy would have been proud of the accuracy. Even as he fell, lifeless, to the kitchen floor she knew that it wasn’t luck that had put this weapon in her hand and the skill to use it.
It was her sweet daddy that had.