The drive home was hot and cold. From the car’s stylish vents, the sticky warmth of an inefficient heater made her legs and feet itch and sweat. Streaming in from the windows, the cool night had become a chill darkness, making her face brittle and hard.

“– goddamned little pissant, no good, weasely, no account, chicken, yellow – ”

Next to her, Rob Pommer was ice to her furnace: “I seems ta me, Christina Smithew –”

“– I can’t believe he did that. Of all the no-good, goddamned, childish, moronic, infantile –”

“Christina, I think ya should try and see through this thing –”

“– I’m gonna take my little pearl-handled sweat pea, and I’m gonna take him straight into the choir invisible with one quick shot – and if my aim ain’t true, the damned spirit o’ retribution is gonna make it good enough to make him sing in our earthly choir, just real high – ”

“– I don’t like to stand in the way of somethin’ crazier than fast drawin’ –”

“That’s it! I’m gonna lay real low, take him when he doesn’t expect. No hints, now, something real twisted and mean. When he comes in tonight, no hail o’ lead, just a real quiet house. No expected bombs and no predicted shots. Just a simple little home. Tonight never happened, yep that’s it. In he walks and it’s all gonna be just ‘How ya doin’, worm?’ You know, the usual, nothing with any taste o’ metal. But I’m gonna wait, you see, wait real long – for when it’s all just foggy and faint in his tiny brain before I pull it clear, put it right up to his soft little head and squeeze off something crippling but not killing into his soft tissue and brittle skull – ”

“– ah mean, Christina, you’re a nice girl and all, but I don’t wanna stand in the middle now –”

“– and I’d stay right by his sorry little soul and say that his was a life so short, and so mistreated, especially by me, that I’d stay by his side to care for his stupid crippled body and whacked mind. I’d do a real good act, ah know I can, and when it came time to change his little diapers, or feed him his strained peas –”

“– ah just don’t see what he has fer ya, all in all. But, ah must admit it’s not my place to say who others should care for –”

“– I’d keep him nice and clean, so the others would look on my virtue, and rightly-armed Christianity, and smile at my charity. But at night, now, I’d take my sewing kit and Mama’s longest, sharpest hat pins and –”

“– ah just don’t see it as workin’ – ”

Round a few more bends they came, swerving on the long road back to the clapboard bunkers of Summerville, home, and a few hours away from daylight – Rob frowning into the windshield of the Hunchmobile, Christina, arms folded, staring out the passenger window, steaming.

Sometime past the medals hanging from the WELCOME TO sign (Lions, Rotary, NRA), it dawned on Christina Smithew how close she was to home, and what Rob Pommer had been saying.

It was only her struck stupidity, and his quick skid, dump, and hasty retreat of and from her that saved him from her wrath and shots.

***

Murphy’s Inexpensive Funeral Emporium (In and Under for Under $25) vanished in a hurricane of flying glass, brick, postmortem body parts, surgical steel, and cheap plywood (how else do you think they could plant you for under $25?).

Soon after, in the space of a track and squeeze, the General Custer Grocery similarly vanished with a hail of canned goods, and a soft fog of instant-cook fresh veggies. Where it had stood for generations was now a smoking crater and a plume of foul and sticky smoke.

A quick accompaniment to this clash and burn, another dour member of the Row of Morticians similarly disappeared into a whistling and spinning mass of fragments. So powerful the blast that the next two in the dozens-long row of grave businesses went with it.

The next target in the cross-hairs was the first (normally your prime real estate) on the opposite side: Our Lady of Recoil became something of myth, legend, and debris with an ear-slap of concussion. Built of sterner stuff (for the protection of doctors and their ilk, a noble and particularly targeted group), Our Lady only took its neighboring Holy Order of Right to Bear with it.

Billy squatted, panting, squinting through the smoke, dust, and late- fleeing forms (the parade of destruction having started on the edge of town, giving the more fleet a chance to foot), tracking, looking, hoping, and not at all frightened –

From the woodsmoke and cordite fog that twisted and tumbled down the street, the rocket came – trailing lines of acceleration of a paler smoke towards him – but not quite on target.

Rolling, running, as only young legs and two fevered desires (one being for life, the other being for Christina Smithew) could inspire, Billy sprinted through hot dust – just as the Bullet For Your Thoughts Gun and Ammo Store went up as if it had aspirations of orbital velocity.

As he raced, as he ran, as the remains of store after store chewed the ground at his feet, he thought, maybe, perhaps, could-it-be – there! in the churning hurricane of smoke and dust. Could it be?

Another rocket, and the Premium Life Assurance Office, all the bullet proof (see ‘Doctors’) floors of it, skyrocketed and house-of- carded into groaning, shrieking chaos.

We break normal tale-flow to bring you this up-to-the-minute update on the expected and on-going attempt to halt the destruction of Summerville:

– perched on a battlement rooftop with a state-of-the-art (in a state where the only art was in destruction) in arm, Stanley Goodarm sighted his oil-vapor sighted, 35mm recoilless (hunting) rifle down from his near-invisible perch on the All-American Gun Emporium. There! He hovered the microscopically precise crosshairs on the silhouette of his target and squeezed (never pull) – imagining a second before a red bloom of brain meeting air through the intermediary of a high-velocity steel-jacketed projectile –

– before the figure turned and squeezed it’s own, and the All- American Gun Emporium became dust, flying bricks, twisting steel, and slashing glass. Finger absent from his wondrous weapon, he tumbled into the chaos, becoming a red bloom with it.

– and so went many others –

***

“Where is he, where is that no-good, rotten, scum-sucking, lousy, peanut-brained, weak-kneed, yellow, prick –!” Christina Smithew said, searching the dusty, smoking street. “I know you’re out there, you pinheaded, dorky, pile of dogshit. I know you’re here somewhere–!”

Maybe there –? Turn, squeeze, kickback as the Junior Peacekeeper launched another of it’s foot-long ultra-high explosive tipped phallic symbols of doom. Aunt May’s Lady’s Bullet Boutique exploded into a million ricochets and detonations.

“I know you’re out there, somewhere, you chicken-hearted, yellow- bellied, sidewinding, idiotic, dork!” Maybe there –? The Colonel’s (Harlan Sunder) this time: a concussion like a slap in the chops, the stinging of shrapnel and flying junk and a sudden hail of now-flash- fried fryers.

Was that –? A sudden glimpse of something certain running through the smoke, dust, and also-running population of Summerville. She knew (knew!) he was here, somewhere – inexplicably drawn to her, forced on her, confining, ruining her –

And there went the Lt. Caley Memorial Bar and Grill: bricks, bones, steel, glass, in a fine airborne mix of it all.

“Where are you, you asinine, jerk-off, putrid, son-of-a–”

Movement!

The Peacemaker’s slender messenger of explosive doom impacted, and careened off, the solid resistance of some thicker-than-usual, more-reflective-than-usual, armor. A rolling, clanking, banging, coughing and smoking monster of plate steel, duraluminum, adamantine, and arcane alloys that spelled to all a salesman of either extraordinarily poor, or extraordinarily fine, products – also spelling it with brilliantly painted (gaudy circus colors) banners: THE TRAVELING EMPORIUM OF DR. GUNN! A THOUSAND MIRACLES FOR THE HAVING! A THOUSAND WONDERS FOR A FEW CENTS! A THOUSAND CHOICES UNDER A BUCK! AMMUNITION FROM AROUND THE WORLD, GUARANTEED TO NAIL THE MOST SNEAKY OF HORN-SWAUGGLER! COME ONE, COME ALL (NO CROWDING PLEASE).

Christina Smithew frowned with enough muscle to crack teeth. Streamer after streamer leapt from her Papa’s prized Peacemaker, missile after missile dropped from the over-barrel clip into the chamber, recoil after recoil knocked into her pale and petite shoulder.

One after one exploded with much sound and fury (damaging nothing) or bounced and arced back into what little remained of Summerville –

– and, incidentally, taking out one Joshua Sweet, Thomas Little, and Betty Sue-Anne Langfielder, who had all been strategically placed and ready to put their respective millimeters into the lithe and shapely skull of our Christina Smithew. To a one (man and woman) they vanished into their component parts with the hail of the rockets.

During a pause in the fusillade, while Christina ejected the spent thirty-round clip and scavenged in her spangled purse (for another they tended to be big, as no respecting young thing went anywhere without severe firepower and plenty of ammo) a hatch on the gaudy monster dogged open and swung out. The head that followed the opening was similarly gaudy – and dartingly hesitant.

“Lemmie see, lemmie, see, don’t tell me, lemmie get it on my own. Let’s see, let’s see – ” Dr. Gunn said, quite a spectacle with his big purple top hat, warning-red swallow-tailed coat, steel-toed work boots, English riding breaches, yellow silk shirt, and necklace of human fingers (trigger). Christina Smithew’s jacking home of another clip, and slow and precise aim, did nothing to halt his broad gestures, practiced manners, and machine-gun clip – “– I’ll get it, I’ll get it. Don’t help me, no hints – it was, lemmie see, lemmie see – a love drink, that was it, right?” He was good. No self-respecting (and living) traveling salesman could live and not be.

Christina lowered the Peacemaker, eyes round, blue and wide. “Yes. Yes, you did –”

“That’s it, I remember now. The Dr. Gunn MIRACLE LOVE DROPS. Oh, yes, wonderful stuff – simply WONDERFUL –”

Christina jacked a rocket with loud and menacing assurance: Intent and target very obvious.

“Er, ah, um. Now, now, little lady, don’t you be gettin’ all fired up. Is there some kinda problem with my little pharmacological wonder? All of my products, after all, are 100 PERCENT GUARANTEED...”

Christina matched the fine threads of her sight on the slight wrinkles (now beginning to shimmer with perspiration) on the forehead of Dr. Gunn.

“...the effects, you know are one hundred percent effective. A wonderful stuff, powerful stuff, magical stuff. Just the thing to put the whistle back in your beau’s flute, the pied in your husband’s piper –”

The rockets missed due to the quick (had to be) reflexes of the traveling salesman. Off they went, with a ricocheting melody off the armor of his battlewagon. Arcing they went, to land in many places, including the partially-demolished roof of the Prospero Prosthetic Company with a clap and hail of plastic body parts (and some real, as they had nailed flat dead another would-be assassin).

Before Christina could smack home another clip and get lit by her finger on the trigger, this spilled out of Dr. Gunn’s trembling lips: “BUTTHEEFFECTSARETEMPORARY!!”

Christina’s mouth hung open, the weapon slowly dropping from her shoulder and it’s dead-on-site fix on Dr. Gunn’s panicked face. The facts didn’t immediately register through to her, but the basic idea made it. That one word.

“That’s right, er, ah, dear lady –” the doctor said, mopping his floral face with a large purple and gold handkerchief he’d produced from his kaleidoscope clothes “– while the effects of my MIRACLE LOVE DROPS are wondrous in the extreme (and loads of fun at parties) the sad fact of life is that their awesome and powerful effect will suddenly depart, like love itself is apt to do, after, say, some two or three days–”

“It doesn’t last?”

“That’s right, you dear, sweet, thing, the effects of my MIRACLE LOVE DROPS will soon be nothing but a faint memory in the mind of the subject, and a glow on your cheeks – ”

CLICK! Dead on target, finger tightening on trigger.

“UNLESSYOUDON’TWANTTHATNATURALLY–! My dear, sweet thing, you have my complete, money-back assurance, that whatever problems my little MIRACLE LOVE DROPS might’ve caused, they should be gone one, slim day past their ingestion.”

Christina lowered the weapon again and took in the town. She lowered the gun and surveyed what little remained of Summerville: a broken line of businesses and homes stretching as far as the eye could see (towns tended to be small, so it was not an extreme distance): Smoke swirled up from a few out-of-control fires, wooden beams were left blood splattered, bare steel posts and cinderblock remained. A body part here. A body part there. Dust made the air thick and sandy, the color of pure bile. A moan here, a persistent scream there.

– and the rooster-trail of Dr. Gunn’s armored warehouse barreling bat-out-of-hell style away from the scene, pennants crackling with acceleration, top-hat tumbling in the air behind.

“Temporary–?” Christina mumbled to herself. “Christina Smithew – did you do this?” She turned, eyes wide again. “This is hideous. It’s inhuman. So many people, so many – all these people. All the fires. It’s psychotic, it’s cruel, it’s so-so mean. You’re burning, flaming, unhinged, bonkers, nutso, crazy! You’re sour milk, bullets and babies crying for their dead mothers! You’re a blood-drinking, bone-breaking, eye-eating, thumb-chewing, loony- tune sort of person. You’re demented, deranged, and dangerous, Christina Smithew. Dangerous and mad and, and, and... .”

Click, click, Click CLICK! But she was dry, her birds had flown. Nothing but an empty clip in her gun. Nothing at all in her bag.

“– and reckless, and spiteful, and so, so, so TWISTED! All these people, all this destruction. Christina Smithew, I-I-I don’t know what to say –”

Her eyes got wide and she started to back up, too slowly, like in transparent molasses, or a dream. Nightmare –

“– it’s so psychotic, so crazy, so MEAN – ” Billy said, walking towards her with this particular expression. Wide-eyed, awed, taken, struck by her, by Christina Smithew, taken by her, and, mainly, what she’d just done.

“Christina “Billy started, “I–”

And she turned and ran, laughing, high and mad, into the destruction–