Shoot the bastard

The plastic handle of the handgun feels heavy and cold in your hands as you aim it carefully. You sight down the barrel and press your index finger against the trigger. The trigger gives some resistance for a second and then moves back with the pressure. And then….

Nothing. A hollow boom sound. That’s all. You’d expected a horrifying explosion of sound, or for him scream and die in some gruesome manner that would give you nightmares for weeks. Not this, this horrible quiet. The gun worked, it did its job but…..

But you’d killed a man. Taken a life. A human life. Something that walked and breathed and lived and spoke and stole hotel towels.

Sure this wasn’t the first time. There’d been that maniac back when it had all started falling apart, back in the final **** throes of civilization, but that had been self-defense. You could have let this guy go, let him live and maybe change, become a decent human being.

But if you had let him go he would have run right back to his little crew and come back to kill you for what you’d done to him. You’d met the type before. Small minded men with nothing in life to hang onto but a meager bit of pride. Letting him live would have just made him all the more vengeful, all the more filled with impotent fury. It’s better this way.

After giving yourself fifteen minutes or so (the only watch store in the mall had been set on fire, so rough estimates and the position of the sun in the sky are all you have right now) to calm down, you get down to planning the next move to take. In this situation the old adage “you can’t fight city hall” is true. It is likely to be too heavily guarded for one person with just a handgun. The brothel might be a little bit easier to take on, in the same way fighting a wolf is easier than fighting a bear. Heading out, away from the city seems to be the sanest route at the moment. There should be less people about, and anything that puts distance between you and this mad colonels army of thugs can’t be all bad.