him. Trying to shield him with the last of the strength in her failing body as she goes into terminal shutdown. She’s doing his job. His duty.
June’s weight pulls them both into a slide on the bloody vinyl bench seat and he lands hard on the sticky floor, under a dark canopy of broken plastic and petrified gum. The man—his name is Billy Earl Rames, but Tyler doesn’t know that yet, won’t know that for days—is laughing. It’s not a supervillain cackle, it’s not crazed, deranged—everyone, all the reporters, will ask Tyler about this as they paint their lurid pictures in the press—it’s the confused and surprised laugh of a boy who has dreamed of doing this his entire life and now wonders what took him so long. He has a gun and no one is stopping him. He is God and no one is stopping him. “How did this happen?” people will ask, and the shooter has no answers.
Click.
Tyler choked on the stench of blood and gun-smoke and he knew where he was even before he opened his eyes. The rough tile floor was sticky under his palms, his body squeezed in a crouch under the mustard-yellow plastic table, and he stared out across a battlefield.
He waited, frozen. The nightmare was playing with him. Making him wait for the replay, wait to be yanked back to the beginning so his heart could tear open all over again. How long had he been here? How many times?
So this was his personal hell. The same fucking nightmare. The same day he’d been reliving for years, every time he closed his eyes. Tyler’s lips twitched. It was almost a smile, as a light dawned in the darkness. A distant torch, shining to guide his way.
If this was supposed to be his hell, its architect miscalculated.
He got out from under the table. He stood tall.
Billy Earl Rames strolled around the bend of the ball pit, stood there, and gave Tyler a curious look. His wet mouth curled in a smirk as he sauntered up, the big pistol swinging at his side.
“Well, well. Brave one here. You look like a finey foe indeed, friend.”
“How about you shut up and get it over with?” Tyler said.
Billy Earl blinked. He squinted at Tyler, suddenly uncertain.
“See,” Tyler said, “here’s the thing. I’ve been here. In this day, in this hour, living it again and again, so many times. And all I could see was my failure, how I froze, everything I did wrong. But finally I learned how to listen. To my friends. To myself. To the truth. Here’s the truth.”
Tyler walked toward him. Billy Earl brought the gun up, pointing it in his face. Tyler kept walking and closed the gap between them.
“The truth is that nothing I could have done would have saved my wife and daughter’s lives that day. Nothing. I was powerless, just like you wanted me to be. And I won’t be ashamed of that, because being ashamed just gives you more power. And you don’t deserve that. I won’t give it to you.”
The smirk came back in full force. “You could have saved the others if you didn’t turn coward and hide under that table.”
“Could I?” Tyler asked. “Maybe. Or maybe you would have shot me down. I’ll never know, and I’m okay with that. Tell you what I do know. In the last few days I’ve seen things I couldn’t imagine were real. I’ve gone toe to toe with a walking dead man and a goddess, and I’m still standing. And when my friends needed me, I was there to protect them.”
Tyler reached out, grabbed hold of the Desert Eagle’s barrel, and pointed it straight between his own eyes. He took one last half step forward, pressing his forehead to the muzzle of the gun. He didn’t blink.
“I’m no coward. I’m no failure. I know that now. And compared to everything I’ve done, everything I’ve faced? You’re just a pissant little nobody who couldn’t find his balls without a pistol in his hand. Go ahead. Pull the goddamn trigger because I am done with you.”
They froze, two bodies joined together by the chrome muzzle of a gun. Billy Earl’s finger tightened on the trigger. Tyler didn’t move, didn’t flinch, eyes locked dead ahead.
“You think I’m what’s keeping you here?” Billy Earl asked. “You got it all wrong.”
“How’s that?” Tyler asked.
And then he was gone. The gunman vanished, leaving Tyler standing alone.
The sun plummeted outside the restaurant windows. It was midnight