Saint Oswald by Jay Bonansinga (always you kirsty moseley .txt) 📗

His brain is screaming. His chest is on fire. He tries to get a breath but he can’t, and he feels a warm, tacky sensation spreading up his tailbone—his bowels have emptied themselves, along with his bladder.

The 7.62-millimeter fully-jacketed round has deformed on impact, and now the cold pain slams through Oswald like a battering ram. He opens his mouth and lets out a hiss and raises his hands and claws at the air. He gapes at the dirty sky. He’s a little surprised it feels like this—he didn’t expect this kind of pain.

A shadow looms over him, a man sporting a big mop of an Afro with twin revolvers in his hands.

“Shame it has to end like this,” the Candy Man says, gazing down at Oswald.

“They h-have th-the—” Oswald is trying desperately to get the words out, but all that comes out is a strangled, breathless whisper.

The Candy Man leans down closer. “Got some last words to lay on me?”

“Th-they h-hh-have these things,” Oswald tells him, wheezing and swallowing the pain. He takes a shallow breath and struggles to think straight.

The Candy Man is nodding sadly, as one might nod to a child with a skinned knee. “Go on, brother—what are these things you want me to know about?”

“Th-they h-have these things now, th-they’re c-called Kevlar vests.”

The Candy Man stares. He starts to say, “Kevin Who?” but his words are suddenly and abruptly short-circuited by a swift kick to his groin.

The impact, which drives the pimp’s testicles up into his abdomen, is not much by athletic standards—the inertia would hardly pop a baseball more than a few feet into the air—but the steel-toe of Oswald’s work boot hits the sweet spot perfectly. The Candy Man stiffens and drops both guns and doubles over all bug-eyed and stunned.

Oswald gasps for air, and then scrambles out from under the pimp.

The Candy Man staggers backward as Oswald struggles to his feet and shoves the pimp to the ground. The Candy Man folds like a sack of laundry. He lands on his back, holding his groin and moaning, “M-mother-ffffuck!” Blinking fitfully, he cups his genitals in his hands.

Oswald slams a boot down on the pimp’s sunken chest and holds him there. “I’m going to need you to shut up for a second.”

“Awright, awright!” The Candy Man cringes and holds himself and obeys.

Oswald tears at the front of his fatigue coat and finds the deformed bullet stuck to his vest like a bug smashed against a windshield. The hot metal slug has burrowed in, and it takes Oswald a moment to dig it out, catching his breath and getting his bearings. His ass-crack burns from the unexpected evacuation.

Swallowing back the shock and taking deep breaths, Oswald looks around the deserted picnic area for any sign of the sniper.

Half a football field away, the shooter lies on the ground, holding his elbow. The kid looks like a gangbanger, and his rifle lies in the grass about twenty feet away from the point at which he plummeted from the tree. Looks like Amateur Hour at the Okay Corral.

“Pretty fucking pathetic,” Oswald comments, as he goes around the pimp, leans down, and snatches up the twin .38 Police Specials.

The Candy Man is looking at him through raw, rheumy eyes. “Whaddya expect?”

Oswald cracks open the revolvers and dumps the rounds into the grass. Then he tosses the handguns into the spindly hedge-row bordering the picnic area. “I would expect better, Candy, to be quite honest. You coulda taken me out with a single head-shot.”

“The kid said he could make a head-shot at a hundred yards.”

“Obviously he was full of shit. C’mon.” Oswald reaches down, grabs a handful of the Candy Man’s silk jacket, and then yanks the skinny shylock to his feet with the force of a forklift pulling a weed.

“I got one request, Chief.” The pimp is weak-kneed and woozy with shock.

“No more requests, Candy.”

Oswald unceremoniously drags the emaciated Candy Man across the threshold of picnic tables and fire pits. They make their way around the pavilion, and then hobble awkwardly toward the tree line.

In the middle distance, the sniper is painfully crawling across the ground toward his fallen rifle. It’s apparent the kid’s got a broken arm, and God knows what else from the fall. He’s got maybe fifteen feet between him and the weapon, and Oswald quickens his pace, dragging the pimp along quickly now across the scabrous ground.

Oswald and the Candy Man reach the fallen sniper at the precise moment the kid gets his hand on the stock.

A big muddy work boot smashes down on the kid between his shoulder blades. “Ouch!—Motherfucker!—Ouch!—That hurts, homes!”

“Shut up!” Oswald shoves the pimp to the ground, then reaches into his coat and pulls out his Army .45. He thumbs the magazine out, and then shows the business end to both men with the vigor of a drill instructor. “I want you both to take a look at the mag,” he announces in a flat, no-nonsense voice, giving each of them a good look. “You see the rounds? Eight rounds? You see ’em?”

Neither man replies.

“DO YOU SEE THE ROUNDS?!” Oswald is getting angrier by the second—his ass-crack burning, the load in his pants making him crazy. He increases the pressure of his boot on the sniper’s back.

“Yeah, yeah, I see ’em, I see ’em, homes,” the kid grunts in pain.

“One request, Chief, for old time’s sake?” The Candy Man is shaking now. “Will ya make it quick? That’s all I’m asking, brother—”

“Let me finish!” Oswald slams the clip back into the hilt and aims it at the kid’s head. “You expect me to pop this piece of shit right now?”

No reply from either man.

“IT’S A SIMPLE QUESTION!” Oswald jacks the hammer back, then presses the barrel against the back of the sniper’s skull. “ANSWER THE QUESTION!”

“Yes, yes—hell yes,” the pimp babbles, “I ’spect you’re gonna do us both.”

“Get up!” Oswald yanks the kid off the ground with a single grunt.

Alejandro Rodrigues springs to his