Installment Ten




You point the Sig at Farmer’s chest and tell him to hand over his weapon.

“Whoa whoa whoa there, buddy . . . calm down,” Farmer says as he takes a step forward.

“I said, drop your gun, Farmer! I’m not going to have you arresting me while I try to figure out what the hell is going on around here.” You take a few steps back to keep the distance between the two of you constant. One of the million things you know about scenarios like this is that distance favors the gunman.

“What’s going on is you’re getting yourself in deep here, Cairo. Just give me the gun, and you won’t be in any trouble. You haven’t done anything wrong yet . . . just hand it over.” His hand strays to his gun belt. In the distance, you hear a woman scream.

The second of the million things you know about this scenario is that a walking penis like Farmer is never going to hand over his gun. Regardless of the fact that you’re being perfectly reasonable, there’s no chance that your words are going to get through that big fat cop ego – Farmer, like most cops, would probably rather die than hand over his piece to the likes of you. Better to go down in a blaze of gunfire than humiliate himself in that fashion.

Luckily, while you’re not particularly bright, resilient, charismatic, or connected, you do have some moderate skill in one area . . .

You slowly point your gun away from Farmer’s chest, and try to noticeably relax.

“Gee, I don’t know,” you say. “ . . . maybe you’re right . . .”

“FREEZE!” Farmer yells as he whips out his gun and points it at you.

“OWWWWWWWW!!!!
A millisecond later, he’s clutching his hand and shrieking.

If this were a scene in the movies, at this moment you’d be making a smart-ass comment about his being slow on the draw, while he shook his hand, stinging with pain. His gun would have flown through the air after you shot it out of his hand, and landed safely in the dirt about ten or fifteen feet away.

This is not the movies, however; no smart-ass comment comes to mind, and instead of shooting the gun out of his hand, you shot . . . his hand. His gun lands at his feet. Farmer stares at you with hate as he bleeds profusely. You point your gun at him and he scuttles back – even Farmer seems to realize there’s no hope left to win this battle.

“Um . . . sorry about that,” you say as you pick up his gun. Farmer backs up slowly, then backs up quickly, then turns around and runs.

Well, at least that crisis is over for the moment.

Yep, things are back to normal. What would you like to do next?

1) Shoot the Pasty-Foamy Girl hammering on the windows of the grey Cavalier about 50 feet away. It looks like there’s a blue-haired old lady in there -- you think that it was the old woman you heard scream.

2) Walk over to the bookstore – all the students that were hanging out there are gone, but the front window is smashed, and two students lie in front of it in a pool of blood.

3) A disheveled man in a suit is clutching his arm and running in your direction (but not at you) -- stop him and ask him what the hell is going on. And, in general, take a little time to take in the scene.

4) Check on Pete, who just started to groan. He’s twitching a little. I guess he survived that neck bite!

5) Get the hell out of there.