The Long Dark by Billy Farmer (best book club books for discussion .txt) 📗

told him. There was chaos at the Commons by that time, and I needed to be over there, but I couldn’t leave this guy. “Last time, get inside now!”

His eyes were locked with mine, the look of hate was slathered all over his face.

“Dude, if you don’t move in about two seconds we’re going to have a problem.”

I noticed his hand slowly moving towards his pocket, retrieving a black box. He grasped it with both hands and began to turn a knob. POP! He screamed in agony as he dropped whatever was in his hand and clutched his mangled face. I pulled the trigger. I mean I meant to, I guess. I didn’t have a choice, I thought. But…

“Oh, my God… oh, my God,” I said. “You didn’t talk to me… You didn’t listen to me, dude! It’s your fault… I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to blow your fucking face off,” I said, panicking. “Dammit, you asshole!”

The man tried to say something, but I couldn’t understand him. “Now you try to talk, damn you!”  I heard shouts in a language I didn’t understand. It sounded like Japanese. I then saw people walking slowly towards where they thought the shot came from. The Commons was fully enveloped in chaos.

I had my own problems, though. The people walking towards me had to have noticed me by that point. I tore myself away from what was happening at the Commons, and in the process of gathering my senses, I also gathered up the man’s belongings, plus my own. I ran quickly through the door I had just used to exit the building moments earlier.

I paced for a moment. “What the hell am I going to do?” I asked myself. “I just shot that dude. Damnit!” My self-contemplation of previous events would have to wait. There were footsteps and light conversation close enough for me to hear.

The only thing I could think of was to hide. I had the gun, but if it hadn’t fired when I… Well, I would’ve been completely screwed. I wasn’t going to rely on it for the second time. A split second later I was feeling the cold side wall of the lean-to, between the exit and the bathroom. My probing hands felt for the small raised part of the corrugated aluminum. “There you are,” I said quietly. I moved the piece of aluminum just enough so that there was a gap large enough for me to squeeze through. I then slid the aluminum door back into to place.

When we heard Titouan was taking over at the Patch, we knew he’d put a stop to us smoking weed. So like any good group of potheads, we improvised. There was a light fixture on the side wall, and Sam had requisitioned from Avery a super-powerful fan that vented the smoke so no one close to the lean-to could smell it. It worked perfectly. I hoped it would function half as well as a hiding spot for me.

At least two people were outside the lean-to, talking to the man I’d shot. I didn’t understand what they were saying, but it was clear the woman questioning him wasn’t happy. The man’s whimpering turned quickly to crying. It didn’t matter I didn’t know what was being said. The language of begging was universal. His cries became muffled. Smothered, I thought. Within moments, there was only silence.

They moved slowly and methodically into the lean-to. I could barely hear them over the wind, but I felt the vibrations from the side wall as they passed through the entrance. At some point, they no longer tried to mask themselves.

A woman yelled out to me in perfect English. “We’re here to help.”

Yeah, fuck you all, I thought. Either they thought I was deaf or stupid, because I could hear what was happening over at the Commons. The bastards were not there to help.

“We know you’re in here,” came a third voice.

The woman spoke several curt words in whatever language they spoke, apparently not directed at me. There was a squawk from a radio, followed by a quick and efficient reply. Then there was nothing but silence for what seemed like a solid five minutes. I was sweating it bad. My entire body shook.

I had a lot of other things on my mind, like not dying, but there was a terrible smell coming from somewhere. It filled the lean-to. I sniffed my coat sleeve. I fought back a gag. My sleeve had this nasty, mucusy film covering it. It was so bad I feared they might smell it through the wall.

There were two quick shots into what I thought was the bathroom, then the mirror fell to the ground with a crash. The bathroom door flung open hard; the sound it made when it slammed against the fake wall of the dope room sounded hollower than it should have because there was no actual framing behind the fake wall, just a thick sheet of corrugated aluminum.

I heard what sounded like hundreds of footsteps coming from the direction of what I thought was the Commons. There was another shot into the bathroom. Sensing that there were going to be more shots fired, I slowly got down on my belly. I figured the racket being made outside would obscure any noise I might’ve made moving to the floor. Like clockwork, someone opened fire all along the wall of the bathroom and dope room. I could see the rays of lamplight now shining through the newly created holes in the wall.

The sounds that replaced the gunfire were nightmarish. It will suffice to say that what I heard didn’t sound human, not to me anyway. There was sniffing and snorting with the occasional grunt thrown in for ambiance. I shook even more violently.

“Friend, if you’re in there, we’ll find you,” the woman said, now outside the building. The sniffs and snorts ramped up as she spoke. I heard a disturbance outside, followed by the sickening sound of a