The Untimely Death of Jimmy Gums Read Free Page B

man?”
    Unable to contain himself any longer, William shouted for his brother. He called so loudly it threw him into a coughing fit. His throat hurt terribly. He stopped and listened.
    Hearing nothing, he called again. “Tommy!” Had his brother been attacked at the car, surely his attacker would not have just left William alone, helpless and snoozing in the front seat. After all, had it been a professional job, he thought arrogantly, they wouldn’t have gone for his shit-for-brains brother. But still, perhaps they hadn’t been finished. Maybe they were coming back for him. Could they be stalking him at that very moment, listening to his clumsy footsteps and following his belligerently stupid howls?
    He spun to his rear, letting the flashlight glean what truth it could from the night’s deceiving blanket of darkness. Nothing stirred. A soft breeze whispered through the tree boughs, sending a shiver across the sweaty nape of William’s neck and tickling his spine. Atop its current, the rolling gust ushered forth imaginary whispers.
    The ghostly whispers began to grow, rising and expanding in William’s ears. He rotated in a fervor, letting the light lead his gun to the sound that now consumed his thoughts. Nothing was visible. Still, he could not see through the loitering trees. And then the harsh rasp came to a sudden stop.
    William’s hand was shaking. In all his years, he had never felt the utter despair of loneliness as he did in that very moment. This killer of men was so stricken with panic that he could not hammer down a single line of thought. Words sped round in his skull, unable to be grasped by the consciousness that would have granted them order.
    Again the rasp sounded behind William and he turned his trigger hand with lightning speed. The sight that greeted him stole his breath.
    There in the diffused darkness stood a nearly avenged Jimmy Gums. His body was ravaged and filthy. Clumped blood offered stunted reflection from every surface of him that was not still slick with toxic chemicals. Around his neck, he again wore his trophy string, which was now much fuller. The solitary lidless eye watched William from his monstrously wrenched head. Behind him, he hauled Tommy Zatel’s immense form by a shattered leg: the source of the whispering noise, in symphony with fallen pine needles.
    With a shaking hand, William put the light on his brother’s face. Eyes wide, frozen in a final moment of terror, Tommy’s head was a bloody pulp. No, not his head: his mouth. His jaw hung limp, torn from one mandibular hinge to rest like an empty horseshoe swinging from a bit of flesh.
    For the second time that evening, William’s stomach purged itself involuntarily. There was nothing left to give.
    “You…you fuck,” he whispered. He pointed the muzzle of his pistol at the lumbering wretch. “You sick fuck!” 
    Jimmy Gums dropped with the first shot, dead to the world. But William fired until every bullet in the weapon had been spent. Then he used Tommy’s. Only when that too was emptied was he satisfied that the returned killer was dead. If the man’s body had been a bloody mess before, it now lay a pulverized mess of shredded meat. Trace amounts of the dump’s oozing sludge came to rest in fresh wounds, accelerating and reviving expired cells.
    William fell to his knees at his brother’s side, unable to bring his gaze above the Tommy’s stomach.
    “Shit, Tom. Ohshit. What’d I do?” He rested a hand on Tommy’s arm, again feeling the urge to be sick. “What the fuck were you doing out here? Why didn’t you wake me up, you fucking idiot?” He delivered a solid pound to the dead sibling’s chest and growled. “Why?” His blows intensified as tears worked their way from his eyes, rage and frustration and loss clawing their way out of him.
    “Why, you fat bastard?”
    Had he not been so focused on his grievous beating (and were his ears not ringing from the shots fired), perhaps William would have