This story was inspired by my Amazon e-book The 15-Minute Shotgun, but the book gag just seemed to happen all by itself.
Caution: Contains realistic depiction of violence and sly sexual innuendo.
The BOB Queen
She sat in the darkness, waiting patiently for him to come to her again. Waiting for the touch of his hands and waiting for the need she knew that he would feel for her.
She knew she was smaller than the others, and ugly compared to most of them. Some of them were almost achingly beautiful. So very graceful. Not like her.
But he had chosen her. Chosen her to be with him, close to him, almost every day.
She wasn’t jealous when he spent time with the others, because she was with him even then. But she was his secret, and the fact that he kept her secret proved how important she was to him.
She knew that he would be in desperate trouble if they were ever caught together, so she accepted the solitude that she endured without resentment or complaint.
It was her nature that time meant little to her. Almost nothing, just as it was her nature that she never felt more alive than when she was in his arms.
But still, she waited so very long for such a small amount of time with him...
They were on the Costa Mesa Freeway, traveling east toward Anaheim, CA, the day their relationship changed forever. It was one of those perfect southern California days that made simply being alive a celebration. One of those days when the air was so sweet it almost made you cry. One of those days when life was so perfect that it could never end.
He was passing a semi when the city of Los Angeles, just over 25 miles to the north, ceased to exist. The shadow of the big truck--a tanker--and the dark sunglasses he always wore in the old Corvette, saved his vision, but the truck driver was not so lucky.
Flash-blinded by the nuclear blast that ended almost five million lives in a single searing instant, the trucker tried hard to keep his rig under control, to gear it down from 80 miles an hour to nothing at all when that was all he could see.
Nothing at all.
Charles Conrad was a grizzled white-haired veteran of the open road. He was a hard-drinkin', hard-drivin' country boy that had pulled everything from tin whistles to live ostriches in his 30-years behind the wheel. He was no stranger to danger, he knew his rig, and he didn’t panic easily.
He felt the rattling bumps of the Bots dots under his wheels as he drifted across the centerline into the slow lane. He knew there was traffic, so he veered back to the left, driving by feel and the last memory he would ever have of an open road. He wanted to put his left side tires on the rumble strips of the emergency lane and keep them there until he could stop.
He wasn’t aware that he had run a shiny red Corvette off the road, and didn’t see it slide sideways in a cloud of flying dirt and grass as the driver fought to recover. He didn’t see it do a full 360 and finally wind up in the ditch on its side.
And he didn’t see that a lot of other drivers had been blinded by the same flash that had blinded him, and that some of them had simply jammed on the brakes and stopped anywhere they could.
A half of a mile ahead of him a dozen or more cars had all stopped more or less together. Most of them were sideways and tangled up, and several were on their sides. The dazed survivors had only just begun to crawl out of their wrecked vehicles when he reached them.
His tanker truck was still doing almost 70 miles an hour when it arrived.
The blast that accompanied the detonation of almost 9,000 gallons of premium gasoline (containing up to 10% ethanol) was not nearly as loud as the blast that annihilated Los Angeles. In comparison it was small, and cold, and not very bright at all.
But the seething black and red ball of exploding fuel was death to all that it touched.
Almost a half-mile to the west, he was still alive. He had released his seatbelt and taken the painful fall to the passenger door with a single grunt. Bleeding from a gashed and broken nose, he had shaken his head once to clear it, and then reached for her.
For her. First of all. He had dragged her out of the car with him.
Yes.
David Mason had straightened up and turned almost automatically toward the fiery crash less than a mile ahead of him. He knew there was absolutely nothing at all he could do for anyone involved in it. They were all dead or almost dead, and much too far away to rescue.
He scanned the horizon, saw the mushroom cloud still climbing over what used to be downtown Los Angeles. His time sense was warped. He felt like the blast had happened hours ago.
There had been other strikes to the south and west. He knew he was in a position that would soon become untenable. If he could get the battered ‘Vette right side up he might still be able to run south by southeast and beat the fallout to the desert lands that didn’t have any high-priority targets.
If. Maybe.
He knew that now all bets were off. He wasn’t a successful real estate broker any more, he wasn’t a whiz-kid hotshot now, climbing the ladder to success. And he didn’t have a condo in L.A. anymore, either. All of that, and his fat bank account, was now just a small portion of the approaching fallout. Part of the impending Nuclear Winter.
He hoped he’d live long enough to enjoy the change in weather.
“Hey, man! You okay?”
The voice turned him back around. Three men were trotting up the road toward him. Two Angelenos and one Latino.
“Yeah! I’m good,” he yelled back, and reached for her.
At last! She almost couldn’t wait.
He knew from forty feet away that he was already in trouble because both of the Angelenos were wearing prison ink. The hard-core kind that says “Career Criminal” to anyone that can read.
But by then he had already unzipped the big leather gym bag, reached inside and pulled out a fat telephone book and his shiny black walking cane with the faux-ivory White Lion pommel.
The White Lyin’ pommel. That was a little joke that he had always privately enjoyed.
His cane looked like something a stage magician might carry, and, like every good magical apparatus, there was more to it than met the eye.
He quickly twisted the pommel off, revealing the shiny brass base of a 12-ga. shotgun shell.
Casually, but with the quick ease of long practice, he pushed the end of the cane into an inconspicuous hole near the binding in the top end of the phone book.
And Two became One, once again.
Even in his odd state of mind, still in pain, still shaken by the crash, and with a thousand gallons of adrenaline rushing through his bloodstream, he found the motion almost sexual.
Somewhere off in the distance his mind was telling him that he was holding the barrel of his 12-ga. slamfire shotgun in a Freudian grip.
“Stop right there, guys!” he ordered. “Don’t take another step.”
They had slowed to a walk when he first answered them. Now they didn’t slow down at all.
“Wha’chew gonna do, white boy? Dispute us?” That was the leader. A little older, a little larger, and certainly the most dangerous of all. He would have to be the first to go.
“Last chance,” he said. “Stop or die.”
Three laughs. Three grins. Three knives. The leader started to sprint toward him.
He must have never seen a shotgun before. Or, at least, not one that looked like a phone book having unprotected sex with a walking stick.
Time to die.
He slammed Bobbie’s barrel deep into the phone book that concealed her breech tube and stock.
The blast of 00 buckshot hit the leader dead in the chest, literally. It didn’t blow him backwards at all because he wasn’t in front of a Hollywood camera. It just shattered his sternum, shredded his heart and lungs, and dropped him down on the pavement like a 240-lb sack of slack.
His crew thought they were close enough to get to him before he could reload. They were almost right.
The rubber pad on the bottom of his “walking cane” had blown away with the first shot. Now he quickly stuffed another 12-ga shell into the muzzle of the shotgun, pulled the barrel out of the “phone book” and swapped ends.
Like really good sex, it went in all the way with one smooth…practiced…motion, and the resulting explosion was both loud and satisfying.
The Latino tried to duck sideways and slid into the grass with half his face missing.
There was no more time to reload.
Number three was on him.
He swung the shotgun towards his attacker and watched the man’s hands come up to catch the butt. That took care of the knife, for the moment.
He short-stroked his swing at the last instant and let the unconnected “phone book” containing six pounds of wood, steel, and lead, fly straight at the man’s face.
Just like the mother of all lacrosse balls, only a lot heavier. And with more corners.
David didn’t wait to see if the man made a game-saving catch or took one for the team. He came in right under the phone book, fast, low, and dirty.
He swung the 24-inch long piece of iron pipe that was Bobbie’s barrel against the side of his attacker’s left knee as hard as he possibly could. He distinctly felt the crushed match-box sensation of shattering bone.
He hit the man twice more in the same place before he had time to fall. His screams sounded like something mechanical that had run out of oil a very long time ago.
He stepped away, suddenly aware that his legs were like rubber, and locked them straight to stay on his feet. Then he bent over and picked up the “phone book”. Almost absently he peeled away Bobbie’s thin paper disguise as he debated what to with the last of his attackers.
Mercy, at least, he could grant. But not at the cost of another shotgun shell.
He swung the steel barrel one last time and the screaming stopped.
Ten minutes later, with the car tipped upright and still apparently drivable, David Mason took a precious few minutes to clean the blood off of Bobbie’s barrel, and swab the worst of the powder residue from her bore.
He knew the clock was still ticking and that time was running out.
But Bobbie had saved his life three times over, and he’d be damned if he’d treat her any other way than honorably.
She had been a BOB Queen from the day he made her and had never even been to a gun range. But of his entire collection, only she had been there when he needed her.
That was worth a few minutes of care and attention, no matter what the cost.
“Well, Bobbie,” he said, running his hand across her square wooden stock, now free of its paper disguise. “It looks like it’s just you and me, now. All for one and one for all.”
Yes, David. Forever.
Last edited by Lmorgan; Today at 05:02 AM.. Reason: Yypos.
The BOB Queen
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