Extract from ‘The Eternal Man’ by Tom Kane. Available on Amazon Kindle & Kindle Unlimited.
The Eternal Man
July 23rd 2012 00:14:04 GMT
There was no point in beating about the bush. Jimmy slowed his car and came to a stop in front of the smouldering vehicle blocking his way. Beyond the simmering hulk, Jimmy could see the mob of gangly teenagers milling around and drinking beer, waiting for a hapless motorist like Jimmy to stop. Jimmy was anything but hapless.
“Hey, you guys. Are you going to help me pull this wreck out of my way?” It was a windy evening, and Jimmy’s longish blond hair blew about his head, giving him a wild look. His thin features made for a hawkish expression, all in all, Jimmy always likened himself to a bird of prey, a predator.
The youths turned to Jimmy and started towards him, clearly the worse for wear for their alcohol consumption.
A sallow faced; thin youth of no more than fifteen stepped forward from the crowd and offered Jimmy a half smile. “What’s in it for us?”
“Nothing,” Jimmy said, smiling back. “You’ll be helping a poor sap that needs to be somewhere else pretty fast.”
“What if I tell you we started the fire, man?”
“Then I would say, you can put it out, and you can move the wreck for me.”
The youth snorted in derision and hurled an empty Corona bottle at Jimmy’s head. Jimmy barely ducked and the bottle missed him, smashing to the floor close behind Jimmy, sending sparkling shards of glass scattering and twinkling in the early evening light.
“You can clean that up as well, for good measure.”
The youth snapped his fingers, clearly, he was the leader, and his mob walked toward Jimmy.
“Nice of you to join us, guys. Let me introduce you to my friend, the persuader.”
The mob chuckled and carried on their swaggering, menacing walk, toward Jimmy. Jimmy let them get to within a few feet and then pulled out his Magnum 44 pointing it at the leader’s head. The mob stopped in their tracks, looking slightly bemused by this turn of events. It was the biggest gun most of them had ever seen but even so, it was obvious that it would do a lot of damage whoever was on the receiving end of Jimmy’s wrath.
“He has an official name, but I just call him the snake. He can be a mean sonofabitch when he bites, know what I mean? However, he does have an important job to play.”
The leader of the mob was clearly breaking into a nervous sweat. His crew, standing close behind, began to mumble, obviously agitated.
“Not interested in his job?”
The sallow youth, the leader, was sweating and looking behind him at his mob. No one moved, but the leader began shuffling his feet.
“Seen it all before,” Jimmy muttered.
The leader suddenly bolted and ran to Jimmy’s left. Jimmy took his time, aimed and fired. The dum-dum bullet hit the youth squarely on his back and the force took him off his feet. As the body flew forward and slightly tumbled, the mob stood stunned, watching the spectacle of their leader’s demise.
The body finally hit the ground with a slight thud and was engulfed in a hazy shower of dust, blood and sweat.
Nobody moved. Stunned silence permeated the air and Jimmy turned to the mob. “Number thirty-two, dispatched. Over and out.” Jimmy blew down the gun barrel and smiled at the mob.
“What the fuck man,” someone in the mob said, his voice quivering with fear.
“Only doing my duty.”
“You a cop?”
Jimmy pointed the Magnum at the crowd. “No, I’m a fucking pissed off citizen whose home world is now a garbage basket-case and who feels the need to exert a little pressure on shitty people like you, to urge you to clean up your act.”
“Where you from, man?”
“Your future and it isn’t a bed of roses.”
“My future?”
“Yeah and I’m here to clean up my past.”
End of Sample
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