Hello, and welcome to another installment of Tight Beam, the newsletter that brings you the speedy low down on the state of The Descendant Saga. Since the previous issue in January, I have completed editing the text version of the manuscript and started recording the audio book. The first four chapters are already done and edited, the fifth is recorded and as of this writing, I am working on the audio edits for chapter 5. I have been working with my mix set up and have settled on a system with my mics. I hope now I will be able to get into a routine and make steady progress.
My plan with this progress, is to have the entire audio book recorded and edited by the end of February, so that I can jump through all the hoops, paperwork and what not to do the actual legal part of self publishing and then sometime in March, release the book. The long awaited second edition to The Descendant “Altar of Scales.” I don’t know if it will happen that quickly, or if things will continue that smoothly, but that’s the plan, and I am doing my best. I am sorry life has kept knocking me down and this has taken so long. However, I hope the second book will go much quicker now that I have a more regimented editing process. The plan is to have the second book out, and the second fantasy book I was working on finished before the end of the year. We’ll see what the future holds. Every little bit of support, future and current, is greatly appreciated. Don’t forget the stickers and other associated merch, at, or coming to the Etsy shop: https://nerdsmithconsol.etsy.com
Now, for this edition’s short story, I give you something a little more real world and gritty than some of the other stuff I have posted before.
The Gun fighter
The mechanic had been working all day, his shift had just ended, and he was tired and sore. His hands, his arms, his shoulders ached from the day’s work, turning wrenches working on other people’s cheap, broken cars, and fixing their stupid simple problems, and being accused of thievery because of how expensive parts were and arguing with customers. He was tired physically and mentally. He just wanted to go home and take his boots off, but he needed gas. The Mechanic drove an old truck, older than his parents. It ran well, but cosmetically was in rough shape, but getting better. He had been driving it for a couple of years now, slowly bit by bit, restoring this aging classic to show room floor, shiny chrome glory. It wasn’t done yet, but the old truck had come a long way and was getting better.
He found himself at the gas station again. The sky was dark and the air cool as he leaned on the coffee-colored side of the truck, pumping gas into it. It might have been a ‘small block’ V8 with a four on the flour transmission, but the engines’ apatite was anything but small. The hood sucking carb and mild cam he had put in it didn’t help much either. But he didn’t fret too much, he enjoyed the smiles per mile more than the price of fuel cost him per mile. He closed his eyes and rolled his head back, resting his skull on his shoulders, not fighting his exhaustion for the moment while the cool breeze sucked the heat from his skin and the pump ticked away the gallons. The handle clicked off and roused him from his rest, caught in the strange, soft dark place between sleep and consciousness.
He raised his head and opened his eyes to find a group of five men, with dark baggy clothes, dangling chains, neck tattoos and unkempt facial hair, headed his way. He was the only person, in fact, his was the only vehicle parked under the gas station’s roof, the brilliant pool of white light standing against the cool, quiet unknown of the rest of the night. The mechanic quickly, but not so hurriedly as to look panicked, tapped the nozzle against the fuel tank’s filler port, put it back in the pumps slot, and twisted the fuel cap into the side of his truck. But it wasn’t fast enough. By the time he had his hand on the handle, the five guys had made a semi-circle around his truck. Now, things were going to get greasy, he could feel it.
The mechanic’s mind was racing, looking for words, some way to talk his way out of whatever box these five thugs were trying to shove him into. One of them spoke before he did and checked that minor problem off of his rapidly expanding to do list. “ ’ey foo’ thanks for gassin’ up my truck for me guey.”
Quickly, in feigned nonchalance, the mechanic glanced about the otherwise deserted gas station. ‘I don’t see any other trucks here, so I’m sorry, but you must be mistaken. This old beater is mine.”
“Nah, ese. I don’t think you heard me. I said it’s mine now, dog.”
To which the mechanic, now standing a little straighter and making eye contact, repeated his denial. “And I said I don’t see your truck around here, because this one is mine.”
“Man, don’t make me hurt chu’ because you know damn well how this gon’ work out.”
As he said that three of the five thugs, the speaker included produced folding pocket knives, while the other two pulled their hands free of their sweat shirt pockets and looked more alert, as if the possibility of violence pulled them from whatever stupor they were enjoying on this fine night.
The problem was the mechanic knew where this was going. His house was on one side of town, and his job was on the other. He had to drive through the bad part of town to get from one to the other. It was a risk, he knew that, it was a calculated risk, it was a risk he had prepared for. That preparation was strapped inside his waistband and had come with lots of time on the range and lots of money in spent ammunition.
He was just as prepared, if not more so than these five men, to commit violence, in defense of his life, his property and his pursuit of happiness and this situation included all three of those things. He had never been threatened like this before, not in the nearly five years he had been working at this job across town. Now that he was in the situation, in the moment, and he made the conscious decision to commit violence against other human beings, he decided to defend himself, and this glorious old truck he had worked on so hard, for so long, he found an odd state of calm.
“Look guys, just leave me alone. I’ve got four friends too, and we don’t want to hurt anyone.”
Now the thug who had been doing the talking looked around in mock scrutiny at his companions. “Dumb foo’ these are my people. You ain’t got no one here but yo’ self.”
“I have three, five, seven and Magnum with me.” With that, his left hand jerked to the hem of his plaid button-up shirt and yanked it hard and high, up to his right armpit. So hard the bottom button tore from his shirt and skittered across the pavement like a beetle, its plastic just as black as any shell. With his right hand wrapped firmly around the textured rubber grip of his blued steel revolver, he yanked it up sharply from the leather sleeve inside his waistband, pulling all four inches of its barrel clear of the cow hide enclosure.
The five guys had all now moved around to the front of his truck, trying to look menacing, and half succeeding, but now just like on the range they were all in a row like a bunch of cardboard silhouettes and their expressions quickly changed as they saw the gun. From muscle memory he rolled the revolver out, his right hand meeting his left hand just in front of his sternum and sliding the gun forwards and upwards until the big orange front sight blade filled the spot it was supposed to be in, and he started the long, smooth double action trigger pull of his well-worn revolver, pulling the hammer back for him, just like it had thousands of times before.
The hammer fell. Boom. As soon as he registered the recoil impulse, the mechanic’s eyes moved to the next thug to the right, the gun following, the muzzle coming back down after the flipping from the recoil. His index finger hooked through the curved trigger, squeezing again, that long smooth stroke, until the hammer broke. Boom. His eyes moved, his gun moved to follow them, and when the orange front sight filled the spot where his eyes were looking. Boom again. By now the others were moving, he had taken almost two full seconds to draw and get off three rounds, and he had to search for the fourth man, Boom, a miss. He saw the spray of concrete as the round passed between the diving man’s legs and struck the hard top beneath him. But he had dove for cover behind the truck, and he hadn’t dived far enough. Boom, a second round scored a hit above the knee. His eyes moved on, searching for the fifth and final thug, the loud mouth that had done all the talking.
The fifth man had by now scrambled to the back end of his truck. Boom, a sixth shot, chased the man’s heels as he slipped around behind the back bumper, but hit nothing but concrete. The leader thug leapt up in to the back of the mechanic’s truck, triumphant now, shouting.
“Damn, country boy, though you could come to the city with your red neck guns. That’s six shots, you out foo’.”
The thug, now standing, grinning down at him from the bed of his old truck, didn’t move an inch as the Mechanic raised his gun again. “Am I?’ Boom. Putting the seventh round from his Smith and Wesson Model 327 through the man’s sternum.
He glanced over his shoulder at the other four men on the ground behind him, taking in their various wounds at a glance. The one he had hit in the leg had managed to roll over and was now screaming profusely. His knee blown out sideways. His hands full of shards of his own bone as he had clutched at the immobilizing wound desperately. That’d be hard to put back together. He was going to need a knee replacement and lots of therapy. The third he noticed he had overcompensated for the muzzle flip and put the shot lower than he wanted, instead hitting the man’s gut, just above where his belt buckle should have been if his pants weren’t in a constantly perilous state of droop. He wasn’t making any sound, and instead just pressing his hands to the rapidly spreading stain on his shirt and blinking very hard. Was he already fighting shock? Further up the row of wounded, the second man had taken the hit in the collarbone. The heavy, high velocity hollow point had expanded well and blown out the back of his shoulder. Leaving a tennis ball sized hole dripping with gristle meat and bone fragments. That arm might not be salvageable. It certainly didn’t have a ball in its socket anymore. The first thug had taken the hit right where the mechanic had wanted. Right in the chest, just off center, where the heart should have been. The pool of blood spreading from that man was so large the mechanic could actually smell the strange coppery scent of blood. That guy wasn’t moving at all.
With a sigh, knowing his long night had just begun, the mechanic flipped out the wheel of his revolver, and his eyes quickly caught the one primer that hadn’t been struck, placed his thumb over it and rotated the whole gun upwards, running the plunger with his left index finger he dumped out the seven empty brass cases. Then he rotated the muzzle back to the concrete between his feet and pulled a rubber strip from his pocket and stripped seven of its eight rounds into the gun, before pocketing the last round and then using his left hand to roll the drum back into the frame until it clicked. With another glance around the gas station to make sure yet more thugs weren’t running to help their screaming friends, he stuffed the revolver back into his pants and pulled his phone from the other pocket. The longest seven seconds of his life were about to become the longest night of his life.
“Yes, ma’am, there’s been an incident at the gas station at the intersection of Valencia and 6th. We’ll need medical on scene, Four bleeding pretty badly….”
“…. The fifth guy? Nah, he ain’t bleedin’ no more.”
The Descendant Saga 