Family Values
“That’s it. Keep the stock tight against your shoulder because this gun KICKS. Site your target. Now a lot of people say you should breathe in and then exhale gently while you pull the trigger, and maybe that’ll work for you, but not me.”
“What works for you?” asked the incongruously intense, yet still unchanged, pre-teen voice.
“Just yank away. It doesn’t matter. You’ve got the body and the muscle to hold it steady, that stock ain’t going anywhere.” And it was true, the kid had the body. Those Grabber genes. The little fuck was already nearing 6’0 and that was about 6 feet of young muscle and bone. Solid bone. Pretty much through the whole male side of the Grabber clan the bone was almost entirely hard with just the thinnest streak of marrow running through the very center. Just enough marrow to stay alive. Too much marrow for Jack Grabber. Too much marrow, also, for his little bastard of a son.
The child yanked the trigger repeatedly, putting his whole body into it each and every time, the muzzle jerking up and down, side to side, bullets unseen but nonetheless travelling through the muzzle flash, out into the world, and shattering their targets. They didn’t necessarily hit the targets where the little fucker had been aiming, but they hit alright. And those that didn’t hit something. And as Jack Grabber had said for years, “‘something is a target, too”. Some people could use such logic as a kind of fuzzy math to obscure their lackluster shooting skills. Grabber said it because he meant it. Completely. That creeped some people out. Grabber had saved the lives of just about eighty percent of those people.
The kid looked up from from the smoking barrel. Smoke was even leaking from the firing mechanism and out of just about every seam of the old Viet Cong sniper rifle. Sniper rifles aren’t meant for rapid fire. At all.
Ahead of them was the target area. They crossed the street and walked toward it. Most of the diners were still on the ground, covering their heads. Almost every wine-glass on the outdoor cafe table was shattered. The wall looked like it had been painted in a combination of light brown and duck confit. One child, a little older than Grabber’s, was crying.
Just as Jack was about to make a remark he was seized from behind and dragged back about 20 yards by an absolute monster of a human being. His arms were pinned. They weren’t pinned physically, of course, no one could accomplish that. They were pinned in the sense that he was letting them be held down because a gun was being held to his head. A very large gun. The kind of gun that when you pulled the trigger didn’t just spout out a flag that said “bang.”
Grabber looked at his son. Saw hesitation in his eyes, and fear. He was still an untested warrior. By the time he turned 13 that fear would be gone. There was fear but there wasn’t much. He just needed encouraging. “Take him out”, Grabber said, feeling the grip holding him get tighter. The kid raised the gun and sited but didn’t shoot.
“I can’t, dad, I’m not accurate enough to hit him with you in the way.” Which was true. He wasn’t. At all. Didn’t need to be. He could sense the figure (undoubtedly an old enemy) behind him beginning to feel that he had won. Could sense the man thinking, beginning to phrase together his demands.
“Son,” Grabber said with all the intensity he could muster, “who said I was going to get out of the way… TAKE HIM”, he roared.
The little asshole didn’t need time to think or process it, he UNDERSTOOD. Yanking the trigger four times he saw his father’s body convulse at four points. The man behind staggered more, beginning slowly to fall to the ground. The son yanked the trigger nine more times for good measure until with the last shot the barrel burst into flames and fell from the stock. He spiked the barrel into the ground and ran over to his father.
The kid offered Grabber a hand to pull him up. Grabber pretended he needed the assistance. 13 holes smoked in his chest and thighs. His son took a now burnt out half cigarette from one of the scattered cafe ashtrays and lit it off the smoking hole closest Grabber’s heart. Grabber looked, adrenaline pumping, at a priest who had been sitting nearby. The priest looked back at him, stunned by what he had just seen. “Now there’s a stigmata,” Grabber said. “THERE is a stigmata,” both Grabber’s said in unison.
They began walking to the local whorehouse. It wasn’t far away.