Hope and Undead Elvis - By Ian Thomas Healy Page 0,100

and stared in unabashed fascination at the flames licking around his fingers. Onlookers shrieked in horror as the fire spread up his arm, as if he'd bathed in gasoline. His face contorted into a rictus of silent laughter as he burned, as if he'd at last found his true purpose.

Hope glanced back toward Duce and her father just as Shades elbowed Duce in the ribs and tried to twist away from the man's pistol. They both fell to the cement, wrestling over the gun.

Chris' rifle barked and Margaret slumped down, her rifle slipping to the ground. Josh's pistol fired and Chris pitched forward without a sound. Undead Elvis swept Hope down to the ground, covering her with his own body, as another weapon fired nearby.

Hope cried out in pain and fear as her baby shifted. Had she hurt him when she hit the ground? She didn't even care about her own potential injuries; just that her baby was all right.

"Margaret? Oh shit, Margaret!" Josh pulled open the car door and lifted the woman out. Hope saw a wound in her neck and a look of terror frozen upon the woman's face. Her blood had already soaked her blouse.

Shades lay on the ground in a spreading pool of blood. Two of the onlookers, galvanized into action at last, had hold of Duce. His pistol had been kicked away. "Elvis!" gasped Hope. "Let me up!"

A moment later, she was kneeling down beside her father and cradling his head in her lap. The bullet wound was in his belly, just below his sternum, and blood leaked from it with every heartbeat. "Daddy," she whispered.

"I'm sorry, Li'l lady." His voice was weak with pain. "I wanted to give you… the chance to leave." Tears streamed from behind his sunglasses, like those running unabated down Hope's cheeks to fall upon his face.

"No, you can't! Not now, not when I've just found you again!" Hope screamed. "Daddy, don't go!"

He reached up with a shaking hand to caress her wet cheeks. "I'll always be with you, Hope."

Anger surged through her and she raised her gun to point at Duce. The two men holding him jumped back. Duce froze. "I should kill you," said Hope. "Like you killed my daddy."

"You better kill me now," said Duce. "Or you're going to wish you had someday."

"God, Duce, don't you get it?" shouted Josh, still holding Margaret's lifeless body in his arms. "It doesn't have to be this way. You don't have to be King Turd of Shit Hill. People can work with you instead of for you. They will if you just give them a chance. You've started something here that could be great. A place of safety. Just stop treating it like your own goddamn little kingdom!"

A bubble of blood burst from between Shades' lips, but he managed to mumble loud enough for everyone to hear, "Normal life is… what we make it now. Make it… better than this."

Hope's anger died as quickly as it had arisen, as if her father's words had been water on a fire. She lowered her pistol. "He's right, Mr. Duce. We can't have the past back anymore. This is the new beginning. We can make it a place of death and fire, like that guy…" She nodded toward the fire truck's driver, now an unmoving lump of smoldering charcoal. "… Or a place of love and life. A place where we don't have to repeat the mistakes of the past."

She snapped open the cylinder of the Shepherds' pistol and shook out the last bullet. It clattered to the cement, the metallic clink echoing off the front of the Casino.

Duce didn't appear to be moved in the least. "So what do we do now?" he sneered. "Farm? Wear tie-dye and sing kumbayah?"

"Do whatever you want," said Josh. "But these people aren't going to follow you if you're not thinking about what's in their best interests. I know I wouldn't. And it starts by not killing people for your own comfort. Go make new mistakes. Learn from them. Build something to be proud of instead of something out of fear and jealousy."

Duce folded his arms. "Make me."

"There's a truck there right in front of you," said Josh. "Take it and go."

"Go?" asked Duce, as if the notion were incomprehensible.

"Go," called someone else. "Leave us. We don't want you here."

"You're not welcome here anymore," said another man, whom Hope recognized as the first one to meet her when she'd arrived. "Go away. We'll do better without