Bullets of Rain by David J. Schow Read Free Book Online

if you wanted to destroy an intruder by blasting both halves of his sundered body through a cinderblock wall, and maybe tear a hole in the space-time continuum.
        The tang of gunsmoke hung in the air only long enough to be instantly blown away. Too damn windy. Art gave the shotgun a raincheck. He had planned to make a ham and cheese sandwich and mountaineer out onto the jetty, about halfway to the dish-the Sundial, sunless today-but the ocean had other plans. Spume from incoming waves whitecapped and shot straight up when they crashed against the rock, indicating the violence and speed of their delivery. Art stowed his artillery and looked for Blitz, closer to the beachline, which was sizzling with foam. Blitz disliked the aural shock of gunfire; another reason for his low grades in police dog school.
        Art thought ruefully about the gun story-the rest of the gun story. The punchline. The winning gambit.
        
***
        
        "Okay," says Lorelle, incapable oh detouring from topic despite the good sex. She extends her fist as though holding an invisible microphone. "Why don't you tell our studio audience what they really want to know, apropos your sick gun fixation?"
        "Which I'd what?"
        "Have you ever actually shot anybody? Like, pointed a gun at another human being and made him or her, ahem, eat lead?"
        "No." Art knows that to hesitate is to raise suspicions. "I have never shot anybody."
        "Aha. So all this you were saying, about defense and logic and realistic options-it's all theoretical, then, since you don't have any experience with what you're talking about?"
        "I don't ever want to have to." Pause. "But I want to be able to, if I have to."
        Their discourse had shriveled and died with that. Bottom line: Art had yet to apply practical experience to his lofty justifications. Easy to become a dead shot when your enemy is a paper target or plastic bottle. He had not lied to cover some past transgression-he was a virgin when it came to shooting people. He had never been burglarized, or assaulted or held up or simply mugged, not once in his entire life.
        And he intended to keep that record as spotless as he could manage, striving not to become the guy who never leaves his house for fear of getting mowed down by a bus, or perhaps struck by a wayward meteorite.
        
***
        
        There was a bottle jutting out of the wet sand near where Art caught up with Blitz. It was not truant garbage of Art's. It was glass, which flared his temper quick and hot as a strike-anywhere match. Whoever had left this goddamn litter hadn't thought about it breaking, or slicing up his dog's feet.
        It looked like an Old Crow whiskey bottle. There was a message inside. The sea had scoured the exterior of the bottle free of all labels and paste, and it was as blunted and lapidary as driftglass, which meant it had been rafting around in the water for some time. The screw-on cap was edged with rust.
        Art opened the bottle and extracted the single page, vainly trying to get it to uncurl from the stubborn tube into which it had formed. He saw neat handwriting in blue ink on mellow linen paper. The wind made his effort to read useless, nearly comic.
        It might have been a runaway page from a forlorn diary, but it had a legible beginning and end. Moisture blotted out some of the words. It might have been a circumlocutiony confession of suicide. It was a pocket mystery that deserved later thought. Blitz came capering back from his latest thrilling excursion, clearly ready to retreat to the house for the day. He had what looked like a human bone in his mouth.
        " Was ist das derm ?" he asked the dog. What have you brought me?
         … are conhused and hurt and angry and lost (the note read), and it pains me to witness your own pain when I heel torn between the things I feel I should do versus the things I know I must do. I don't want