Don’t run, Annie. It’s only one of them.
Annie revved the engine with the handle grip, pushing forward a few feet. She had her bearings. She could do this whole snowmobile thing, no sweat.
Annie, stop. Stop. Don’t act like a coward or you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. The others aren’t coming yet. Listen close—you can only hear one engine so he must be way ahead of the other two. Take this motherfucker out. Grab that gun. Annie, get your gun. Annie, get-your-gun. Annie, get your fucking gun!
Annie froze, pondering all the instincts that were telling her to flee, while simultaneously weighing those against that terrible, monstrous mother-slash-whore-slash-semen-dumpster that lived inside of her, those brutal pulses that told her to kill-kill-kill, to make up for what they’d done to her, though that could never be fully healed. Annie was sure that she would die with thoughts of it.
Turning the ignition off on the snowmobile, she braced herself.
She palmed the gun that was tucked into her jacket pocket. She’d never shot one before, but she’d seen it plenty of times in the movies. Charles Bronson. Clint Eastwood. Steven Seagal. She pictured all of them from her memories, taking stances and positioning their arms nice and stiff, coolly wrapping their fingers around the trigger. There would only be one chance, as the approaching snowmobiler would be off and shooting with return fire only seconds after the first bullet hit (or more likely, missed) him.
A voice came from afar, from the approaching snowmobiler. The tone of that voice didn’t seem alarmed at all, and in fact, it had a pitch to it that almost implied a sense of whimsy or joking.
That’s because he doesn’t know it’s you. He thinks you’re Midget Man. Crouch low, just like when you were looking for those keys. Crouch low and teach this creep a lesson once he gets close enough. Act like that short stack, and let him get nice and close, and then you shoot his fucking face off. Do it, Annie. Do it.
She drew the insulated hood tight on her jacket, pulling the drawstring, hoping to conceal her face for the most part. Crouching on the opposite side of the snowmobile, trying her best to look comfortable and short and breast-less, she felt partially shielded by the drifts of snow that her enemy combatant was toiling through. Now she could hear his voice more clearly, “Where’s the bitch? Didn’t kill her did ya’?”
Annie contemplated responding for a moment, but resisted that urge. Even if she masked her voice, it would not buy her much time. The snowmobiler would be close enough to shoot at… any second now. Playing quiet was a smarter move than exposing herself as a fraud.
You’ve always been a fraud, though, haven’t you? As a wife. As a mother.
“Shut the fuck up,” she whispered to herself.
“You hear me?” his voice echoed. It wasn’t The Shiny Bald One and it wasn’t The Yeti, based on the general shape and size of the body and the sound of the voice. It was The Chuckle Machine, who she had only heard disturbed cackles from thus far. Unless it was somebody else altogether, which might be a blessing.
No. It was The Chuckle Machine. No such luck for another wayward, terrified stranger in the cold.
On the back of his snowmobile, it looked like he had large cardboard boxes strapped into place, most likely filled with groceries or supplies of some sort. Or maybe guns. They had said something the night before about Pepper’s purported arsenal, which would only make them more dangerous to her and to the world in general.
And all Annie had at her side was a dinky six-shooter that made her feel like an ill-equipped cowboy. It was small and silver. She always expected her first gun to be bigger than this one, to be something closer to what Dirty Harry might have brandished. She wasn’t even entirely sure that this one was real. Maybe The Midget Man couldn’t be trusted with a real weapon, so Mister Shiny had given him a beginner pellet gun or even a child’s toy. Annie pictured herself pulling the trigger and just like with the Wiley Coyote, a little white flag would come out the barrel, unfurling to reveal the word BANG!
She used her left hand to pull back on the little nub at the top, like they did in the movies. The hammer? Was it called the hammer? She seemed to remember Christian calling it that once, like it was the thing that clubbed the bullet and sent it flying.
Speaking of bullets… she wasn’t even sure that the thing was loaded, and in fact, had no clue how to verify it one way or another. The only true test for whether it was loaded was to cock back the hammer-thingy and pull the trigger. If it made a bang and the bastard’s head exploded, then it was loaded. If it didn’t, then—Annie chose not to think about that scenario. Instead, she reached the gun out in his direction, narrowing her left eye as she aimed it at the approaching chuckler.
He was less than twenty feet away, with no other snowmobilers in sight yet. “Put that away!” he shouted, still not putting together that it was somebody besides The Midget Man crouched beside his snowmobile.
She made eye contact with him in the next breath, and she held herself still, training the weapon on his chest. A head shot had too many chances of missing. If she went for the midsection, and if she was off by a hair or two, it would still do some damage. The chest, she remembered hearing in a movie, was the strategically smart move.
It felt empowering to train her weapon on him and she suddenly understood the macho surge of it all.
The Chuckle Machine put it all together just as Annie pulled the trigger. “Fuck!” he cried out, jerking the handles of his snowmobile away from her, towards The Purple Cat. Her bullet whizzed by him, but she hadn’t missed by much. And in one moment, she turned from John Wayne back into the scared wife-and-mother who had just held a gun for the first time. She’d missed him, and there most likely wouldn’t be a second chance. “Shit, shit, shit,” she said, looking down at the weapon, pulling back the hammer a second time. There had been a bullet in the chamber, but there might not be another one if The Midget Man only loaded one bullet at a time.
She aimed at The Chuckle Machine, who was cursing and moving farther and farther away from her on his gas-powered chariot. He’d maneuvered on pure gut instinct, seeing that he’d been duped by her pretending to be somebody she wasn’t, and he wouldn’t be duped again.
Her thoughts moved in slow motion, just like her hands and fingers: This is really your last chance, sweetie. He gets off that snowmobile and you’re a dead woman.
She pulled the trigger a second time, wincing as the blast pierced her ears and made her jolt in terror. The Chuckle Machine dropped from his snowmobile with a powdery thud, sending a spray of fluffy white snow into the air around him. His snowmobile continued on, slowing down as it drifted towards the side door of The Purple Cat, where a wall of snow and ice had abutted up against the building.
She couldn’t tell if she’d killed him, but he wasn’t moving. He was either playing possum, or he was dead. If he had simply been injured, he would have been howling in pain. Annie was sure that the bullet had clipped him near the shoulder, but it could have very well got him in the back of the neck or the heart. The moment of impact had been a blur, though it was a moment she was sure she’d never forget.