It happen like that

  The sedan must have taken a right turn behind the gas station and made a quick u turn in the small lot betweeation and the little self-serve automatic car wash in the back. They had their rear bumper backed up to the dumpster, so any would be good Samaritans couldn’t read the pte from the street, and everyo the driver was standing with their door ajar, aimiween the jam and the frame, when Viper pulled around into the alley.

  The sound of the gss breaking, of the rounds crag through the air and ringing on the frame, Spatu screaming a guttural animal noise, Gutterslug’s groan that became agonal breathing in an instant, and finally the crashing crushing noise of the vehicle swerving into the wooden fend crashing halfway into someone’s backyard before smming to a g stop into a thick oak that had grown up the fence, all these noises were far louder than the gunfire.

  The guard team had short-barreled rifles with thick suppressors on the end. Half of them probably firing subs. The noise was thus dampened and bounced around by the walls and alley, ending up nearly uifiable as gunfire. Probably buy them a few minutes before the cops got called. Huh. Defense don’t want to deal with the w either.

  Luke thought all this as he dropped down to the floorboard, which he started to do the moment the front bumper of the sedan peeked out around the wall as they came down the alley. The memory of that first job gave him no illusions about his ces at returning fire. Still, it felt like it took ages for him to hit the floor, and most of the team was dead by the time he did.

  There was a still moment of silehen, he heard the voice clear as day.

  “Check them.”

  Luke looked around frantically, then spotted Spatus head hanging above him. The guy had actually been wearing his seat belt. Luke reached up, got a good handful of brain matter and ore off the seat, and spttered it on the side of his head then closed his eyes three quarters of the way.

  He heard footsteps on the crete and remembered something else. A fragment of training. He took his pho of his pocket and slid it across the carpet.

  Just in time. The passenger side ter door ope his feet. Dimly, through hazy shes, he saw a Carhart jacket and jeans, face mask and ballistic gsses, ball cap, suppressed MCX with nothing but irons. He also saw his Glock, bounced out of the seat pouch, inches from his hand in a pool of gore. Somehow, he stopped himself from reag for it right there, and pyed the corpse real well.

  “Shit. Toss me a faraday bag!”

  Luke veo open his eyes a milimeter more. The SUV had crashed at an angle, and he couldn’t quite see the Mercedes, but he had line of sight on two gunmen, probably each standio a door. Oossed something overhand as he stepped up, then checked both ways down the alley. Carhart guy caught it and flicked it open. A thick bag just big enough for a ptop. He stuffed Luke’s phone in it and s closed, all with one hand without taking his other finger off the trigger, then shoved it inside his jacket and got both hands on his rifle again.

  “Snagged a phone. Let’s go!” He aimed both ways down the alley, then booked it back towards the car. The other two gunmen covered him, then disappeared from Luke’s view and he heard car doors sm.

  That was his cue.

  He reached up and grabbed the door handle behind him, eased it open, and slinked out, pnting his feet behind the tire. He heard the Mercedes roll ravel ss, and khe driver and copilot would be cheg down the alley o time before they pulled out. In their mind, the SUV was already cleared.

  He accepted that he robably about to get gunned down for no good reason, and sprinted out around the bad of the SUV.

  The car had moved about four feet and straightened up a bit. Sure enough, the driver and passenger had their heads swiveled either dire down the alley. It seemed like it took them years to notice him, and in that time he realized he had absolutely no pn of a. He was running at an armored car with a pistol, and all of his enemies were inside.

  “Fuck it. Nothing to lose. Let’s just py it by ear.”

  Time slowed, and all Lukes smiled. The adrenaline had made it feel slow motion at the time, the repeated repys in his realm had itted it all to deeply textured memory, and the extractor re slowly, sav and studying every detail.

  The driver saw him first. Hands went down to his p. Yelled something. Copilot looked over, put one hand up on the driver’s chest without looking away from Luke, their eyes locked, Luke smiled, a a bit of brain matter bounce off his face from the impact of his sprinting stride. He was already clear of the SUV, almost to the front of the sedan. He sidered running to the driver’s side, an instinct caused by the driver’s scared expression, screaming vulnerability, until he heard the passenger door crack open.

  A slight pivot in his stride. The Berretta gliding up through the air. The copilot, to his credit, sliding up out of the seat and behind the door as fast as pressurized steam, and the suppressor moviween the door and frame just as fast.

  Luke fired off one round at it, and the fsh and the noise made him realize just how quiet the unfire had been. 9mm Gold Dot g flying through the air, catg the sun. Sudden white-grey smear on the suppressor, a hole in the ter, sparks on the door, the copilot fling, just a millised, before shouldering bato his stand bringing the rifle into position, aimed right at Luke, head height.

  But Luke hadn’t been head height for over a quarter of a sed. He had already started his move, dropped down, half sliding half bear crawling over the st yard of crete t himself around the front of the car, and there was his target, pin as day, close enough to see how he had tied his ces.

  Luke put a round through the top of his foot, ohrough the ankle, ohrough the shin, then bounced up and enced move two.

  He swung around the passenger door and started firing. His first round caught the falling copilot in the neck. The sed got him in the head. The third almost blew the drivers forearm apart, leaving blood and gore and a ched fist oeering wheel. The fourth smacked into the window behind him, but the fifth, sixth, seventh, ah all met flesh; shoulder, neck, jaw, and brain.

  Something shifted in his peripherals, that foggy area outside his tunnelvision. The three passengers in the backseat. The far passehrew the ter rider down in the seat and put himself between Luke and the VIP. Two things happened simultaneously, f Luke’s hand, and ultimately, doomed them.

  The far passenger opened up with his short AR, and the guy in the near, passenger side back seat opehe door and began to get out.

  Luke grabbed the inside passenger door frame with his left hand and swung his entire body weight into the back door as it opened. Not only did he get clear of the doorway as a burst of fire cracked out through the passenger seat, ripping the headrest to shreds and ricocheting off the passenger door window, but Luke also shattered the esg gunmans arm with the door, smmed his head in the frame, ahe ch of bone vibrate through the dht into his shoulder. His smile widened.

  Using the sudden impact as a bounce, he swung himself bato the passenger door frame as the back door he had just used as a human mouse trap went white from the desperate fire of the guard ihe moment his berretta cleared the t-post, he opened fire. The first rou wide, boung off the inside of the back windshield, but Luke easily corrected his fire. From his position, he was able to use the swinging back door as a kind of transparent bullet resistant shield, ae the white circles, he could see clear enough to line up his shots.

  Luke’s Beretta, which ushed so far into the car that the shell gs bounced off the closed sunroof, was under half a foot away from backseat-guard’s head. The guard took twh the face before duy was finished crumpling.

  But crumpling aint dying. Before Luke could even think about aiming at the target, duy shot up to his feet and brough his rifle around.

  With a thunk that, give then status of his eardrums, Luke may have imagihe suppressor struck the top of the car door. Lukes arms went to work like pistons. His left hand shot out and grabbed the suppressor in a vice grip, while the other pumped the Beretta back up to his chest, so that the st two rounds in his 92x were fired frht under duy’s . The bullets caught duy in the froh and eyeball, and the rounds expanded somewhere in his brain and bsted out the back of his head. He hit his on the door frame on the way down, and the slide on Luke’s Beretta locked back, smoking.

  Silence. Ringing. Wet dripping noises. Gunsmoke and iron mixed with dumpster fumes. He stood there, his grin trying to rip his mouth off his face, until he saw something move in the back seat.

  The target, struggling to push the dead weight of 250 pounds of guard, ptes, and gear off of him. Luke reached under his holster, pulled his spare mag out and reloaded his pistol. As the guy struggled, he reached in the passenger side and dropped the seat forward.

  “I got it,” Luke said, and pulled the dead man by the belt down off of the target and to the floorboards.

  The target was a twenty something guy with a weird little twirly moustache and eyes like a shocked rabbit. The extractor blurred his face, but up there Luke would never fet it. Down there Luke ughed at him, and the poor bastard tried to work some words out.

  “Wait. So what—”

  That was it. Luke put five rounds through his fad emptied the rest into his torsood measure. Some of the rounds zipped off into the seats and he realized the guy had been wearing a chest pte under his soft armor.

  More silence. Ming.

  Luke stood up and looked around. It felt like no one even knew he existed. Cars kept going by on the road. There were no sirens, and he wondered for a moment why the cops hadn’t showed up yet, till he realized it had only been about twenty seds since he started shooting.

  Slowly, methodically, he got to work. He dropped his pistol on the seat. He closed the doors. He dragged the driver out of the seat awo on the crete outside and didn’t even look at the other two corpses in the back seat as he put it in drive, ahe lot at 15mph.

  It was the greatest drive of his life. Not even the adrenal dump could bring him down. In half an hour, he was flying down the Gee Bush turnpike, a swarm of glittering lights behind him, helicopter overhead, screaming at the top of his lungs with all the windows down and the big blue Texas sky flying by, like an endless psma o full of white cotton clouds for icebergs. He let them catch him on a mixmaster, a hundred feet up in the air, a single crete branch ready to break off into the sky. He shot one of the short-barreled Ars at a cloud, and the cops cut him down in an instant. He died looking at that big magical sky, so that when he dropped bato the Allcity, he was falling backwards towards the ground, with big cloudcrafts and cloud towers floating by overhead.

  two addis coexist? Is Luke lucky or just a natural? ime, a first kill in the Hardworlds means the Hardworlder gets to pick a name, but success es with a priext episode, Mr. MOA.