Part 4
Late the next morning.
“I can’t tell if that was two or three,” Nepotism whispers.
“Shut up!” I hiss, inching toward the door. “Start shooting!” I pump a round into my shotgun and dive into the hall. One guy, black hair, red and black plaid jacket examining a smashed bookshelf. Spitting image of Jack Kerouac. His head snaps around in shock. An AK-47 is slung over his shoulder and I unload when he grabs it. The force knocks him into the wall.
Nepotism runs past me, gun before him like the sword of a crusader and blasting the intruder in the throat. Nepotism looks back over his shoulder. “This is the kind of girl you involve yourself with. Why? Why do you do this to me?”
I saw Nepotism hit solidly, but Kerouac is back up, throat intact. “My fault, my failure,” the intruder says, lowering himself into a defensive crouch by the chair. “Is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.” This, of course, is advance warning that they will be shooting to kill on sight.
“Fuck! Nep! Get down!” I cry, pulling the Desert Talon out of my armpit, jumping to the corner of the hallway for cover. I spray the living room with fire, filling the torn and rent couch with blasted holes, tearing apart the ruin of the entertainment center, sending flakes of press-board showering over the intruder, who dives behind a wrecked table.
“Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion!” he shouts. The sound of the AK in here is deafening, and plaster explodes around me. “Maybe that's what life is...a wink of the eye and winking stars.”
“What is he doing here?” Nepotism whispers.
Creeping to the corner, I shout. “What are you doing here?”
“I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't make any difference,” sarcastically says Kerouac. I voice my discontent with two shots to the table, unfortunately missing my target. He shoots twice and the slugs slam into the wall across from us, sending out a little puff of plaster.
“Ask him how many guys there are,” Nepotism whispers.
“You ask him,” I snap. “Why don’t you announce your presence here?” I fire three times at the table, knocking it over, revealing my target has moved. “I’m here with Bureaucraticus!” I scan the room with my weapon-hand, ready to shoot at any sound.
“Not cool, dude,” Nepotism says and yells past me. “How many people are outside?” He waits. “Are you here with anyone else?”
“He’s not going to tell you that,” I say disapprovingly. “Why don’t you ask who sent him, and why they are doing this!”
“Dude,” he says and points past me.
“What?” I ask, and follow his finger to see Kerouac jump from the destroyed couch to a smashed recliner. “Fuck!” I cry and shoot twice at the chair.
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