All a Distraction

Headlights appear behind me. I turn sharply toward the camp as a truck rolls slowly into the canyon beside my trailer from farther up the road. Its headlights cut through the darkness in long white beams that sweep across the Airstream and surrounding rocks. My blood turns cold immediately.

The truck stops beside the trailer. I start running before the thought fully finishes forming in my head. The canyon blurs around me while adrenaline slams through my chest hard enough to make breathing painful. Gravel sprays beneath my boots as I sprint back toward the camp with the revolver clenched tight in one hand. Then I recognize the truck.

It is the gas station owner’s pickup. This was all a distraction. The fire behind me shrinks quickly as I run. My lungs burn from the cold desert air while panic drives me faster through the darkness. By the time I reach the edge of the campsite, the Airstream door already hangs open beneath the moonlight.

Something moves inside. A massive figure stumbles awkwardly through the doorway carrying my shotgun. The mutant’s head brace catches the moonlight first. Thick steel rods bolt directly into both sides of his skull and neck, disappearing into raw scar tissue and swollen flesh. Red, angry burn marks spread beneath the restraints across a neck thick as a bull’s.

He is enormous, broad enough that his shoulders nearly scrape both sides of the trailer door as he emerges into the night. For half a second both of us freeze beneath the moonlight outside the trailer. He sees me standing at the edge of the camp with the revolver in my hand, and I finally get a clear look at the thing wearing the metal brace bolted into its skull and neck. Then he raises my shotgun toward me.

I barely have time to gasp, “Fuck!” before the blast erupts through the canyon. I dive sideways an instant before the blast detonates through the canyon. The shotgun roar echoes violently off the rocks while pellets shred dirt and stone exactly where I stood a second earlier.

Something hot tears across my upper arm as I slam into the ground hard enough to drive the breath from my lungs. Pain explodes through my shoulder the instant the shotgun pellets tear across my upper arm, hot enough to make my vision blur for a second as I hit the ground. The wound is not deep, just a grazing hit.

The realization that I am still alive feels more like luck than any skill on my part. I roll behind the truck tires just as he racks another shell into the shotgun with a metallic clack that sounds terrifyingly calm beneath the ringing in my ears. Moonlight flashes across the shotgun barrel as he advances around the front of the Airstream.

He advances around the front of the Airstream slowly and confidently beneath the moonlight, moving with the calm certainty of something that already believes I am trapped out here with nowhere left to run. I raise the Colt over the truck bumper and fire twice in rapid succession.

The muzzle flashes blind me momentarily in the darkness. The first round catches him center mass with a heavy wet impact that jerks his body backward. The second slams into his shoulder near the metal brace, throwing sparks and blood into the air. Any normal man would already be dead.

He roars instead. The sound barely resembles human speech anymore. Blood pours down his chest while he staggers sideways and fires blindly toward the truck. The shotgun blast obliterates the passenger-side mirror beside my head. Glass explodes across my face.

I duck lower instinctively while my ears ring violently from the close-range blast. He pumps another shell into the chamber, snarling through blood-covered teeth as he pushes toward me through the dust. I fire again. This round catches him high in the chest directly beneath the collarbone.

He slams backward into the gas station pickup hard enough to rock the entire vehicle. He is still not dead, crashing against the driver-side door while trying to keep hold of the shotgun. For the first time uncertainty flashes across his ruined face. He realizes I am not dying as easily as he expected. I rise from cover and fire again.

The bullet punches through his side. He howls in pain and finally retreats into the truck cab, dragging the shotgun with him while blood streaks across the doorframe. “No you don’t!” I sprint toward the pickup while the engine roars violently to life beneath him. Tires spin uselessly in the dirt for a second before catching.

I fire once more while running. The round shatters the windshield directly in front of his face and punches through the passenger door with a metallic crack. The truck fishtails violently across the canyon road. For one glorious second I think he is going to crash.

Instead he regains control and tears down the canyon away from the camp with headlights bouncing wildly across the rocks. The engine echoes through the hills while dust erupts behind the fleeing pickup. Then he disappears into the darkness with my shotgun still inside the truck.

Silence crashes down over the canyon again. I stand there breathing hard beside the open Airstream door with the empty Colt still raised in trembling hands. My shoulder burns from the grazing pellets while blood trickles slowly down my arm. Far behind me, the old man’s body continues burning out in the desert night.