Had they run, some might have lived.
A quick but delicate squeeze of the trigger and the pistol recoiled in Hennessey's hands. His mind provided details his eyes could not possibly have seen; a burst of flame, the spinning half-ounce lump of bronze-jacketed lead, the bursting of shirt and flesh and blood and bone. The first target's back arched as he was impelled to the ground.
A chorus of screams arose from bystanders, Christian and Salafi both, as the crowd ran and sought cover.
The four still standing didn't have time to close on their victim before the next of them went down with a slug that ripped through his arm and one lung. Again, Hennessey smiled slightly at the satisfying recoil. His victim, now fallen to the street, wheezed faint screams, blood bumbling from his mouth and the hole in his chest.
The other three, torn between fight and flight, made the worst possible decision; they did nothing, frozen in fear. Quickly but carefully aligning the barrel, Hennessey shot one through a head that burst under the impact like an overripe melon dropped from a height. Recovering the pistol from its heavy recoil, his smile grew broad now as he squeezed the trigger yet again to ruin the left side of another assailant's chest. Hennessey didn't need X-ray vision to know that he had exploded the man's heart.
The last Salafi standing was like a deer caught in the headlights of a semi-tractor, frozen, helpless… already dead.
He did not shoot that last one standing; not immediately. Instead he walked forward calmly, spit in the frozen man's face, and then kicked him in the crotch. The Salafi bent over and melted to the ground.
"Attack MY family will you? Celebrate their murder?" He took a short step forward, bent over at the waist, then calmly placed the hot muzzle against the man's head. Again, he shrieked, "Attack MY family will you?" The Salafi barely registered the pressure and the smell of crisping hair as his brain went scampering like a frightened rabbit. With such a helpless target, Hennessey had leisure to rise and walk around to a better firing position. He didn't want an innocent bystander to take a bullet that passed through his intended target.
Carefully gauging angles, he knelt down and pulled the thug's head up by the hair, jammed the pistol- hard, hard enough to break the skin and the bone beneath-into the man's face. Then he grinned even more widely, withdrew the pistol slightly, and fired. David, standing nearby, was spattered with blood and brain.
Hennessey stood again and turned his attention to the first man, the one who had tried to brain him with a sign. The Salafi began to beg for his life in mixed Spanish and Arabic. Hennessey said, "Fuck you," then shot him through the stomach, savoring the resulting scream.
Hmmm… one bullet left. He looked over the bodies. One, the one he had lung-shot, was still breathing. Hennessey shot him again, in the head. The slide locked back and Hennessey pushed a button to let it fall forward. Then, from habit, he flicked on the positive safety and turned the pistol in his grip, his index finger passing through the trigger guard. The pistol was now a hammer, not a firearm.
He walked forward, face lit by a glowing smile. Speaking with unnatural calm to the former celebrant, Hennessey explained that shooting was really too good for swine like him.
The pistol swung almost too quickly for the eye to follow. There was a crunch of bone, a spray of crimson, and another scream. Again and small chunks of hair attached to flesh joined the crimson spray. Again and teeth flew.
Again… again… again… again…
"Patricio? Patricio, stop. He's dead. Please stop."
Hennessey became conscious of a hand gripping his shoulder. "What?"
"He's dead, Patricio. You don't need to hit him anymore." David shook his brother-in-law's shoulder to pull him back to the present.
Dully, Hennessey asked, "Dead?" He looked down. "Yes, dead. Good."
"We need to get away from here, Cunado. You know, before the police come. Christ! I am the police. Shit!"
"No," Hennessey answered. "Better to take care of it now."
He calmly wiped the blood- and brain-stained pistol on the shirt of his victim. Then he laid the pistol on the ground, stood, and turned to lean again against his automobile. In the distance a siren shrieked.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, Hennessey realized that he actually felt good for the first time in just over a week. He pulled out and lit a cigarette, enjoying the first puff as he had not enjoyed anything since his family was murdered.
"So you see," Lieutenant David Carrera explained to the investigating police corporal, "my brother-in-law here was minding his own business, watching the demonstration, when these foreigners simply attacked him with their signs. I don't know why, though. They were speaking their foreign gibberish. Perhaps they thought to kill another harmless and innocent gringo to add to the tally of those they murdered in First Landing."
The corporal looked skeptical. Hennessey, seeing the skepticism, suggested, "Why don't you call Major Jimenez, Cabo? I'm sure he can set this all straight."
The call was unnecessary, as it turned out. As soon as Jimenez, the local Civil Force commander, had heard the words on the radio, "gringo… shooting… Salafis" he had put two and two together, come up with the name "Hennessey," and set out for the scene.
Jimenez didn't ask Hennessey anything. He is just too likely to tell me the truth. And I think I don't want the truth. Instead, he asked David, who repeated the story he had told the corporal.
Jimenez looked at the six dead Salafis and the spreading pools of blood. He looked at Hennessey's blood-spattered and bone- and brain-flecked pistol. He looked at the corpse nearest the car and noted that his head was more a misshapen lump of mangled flesh and crushed bone than a human being's. Then he pronounced his learned judgment.
"An obvious case of self-defense, Corporal. Let the gringo go."
Cochea, 25/7/459 AC
Hennessey looked better than he had, thought Linda's mother. He had even told her that the nightmares had, if not quite stopped, at least lessened since he had shot those demonstrators. May they go away and never come back. Poor man.
Around a small hillock overlooking the Carrera family ranch and the stream Linda had swum in as a girl, Hennessey, the remaining members of Linda's immediate family, a dozen and a half aunts and uncles, her last surviving grandparent, and about seventy of her one hundred and four legitimate first cousins (and a half dozen or so illegitimate but recognized ones) stood in the rain for a funeral service. A five-foot tall marble obelisk rose above a shorter plinth placed on the hill. It was blank for now but would soon bear a bronze plaque inscribed with the names of Linda and her three children, plus a gender neutral name for the unborn. As the priest went through the funeral service, Hennessey wept.
I will never see her again. Never hold her in my arms again. All my dreams for the two of us, all my-our-dreams for the children are gone; dead. What's left? Nothing.
Oh, Linda, you were… are… my life and my love. I wish I were with you, wherever you are. I wish I were wherever I could bask in your approval. I wish I were wherever I could be warmed by your glow. I wish… I wish… I wish.
At least you are there with the children. Someday, maybe soon, I will join you. There is nothing for me here anymore. Nothing.
Linda's mother had arranged for the funeral. Hennessey himself had the monument cut, polished, and set in place. He hadn't been able to think of anything else positive to do.
Hennessey's mind wandered back to the thought of being with Linda. However, the one place he would not permit the thought of was the precise place, wherever it might be, where Linda's and the children's bodies rested. He could not bear the idea of the unknown, unmarked grave. He could not bear the thought of them rotting unprotected, of being eaten by worms and insects. No! screamed his mind, whenever his thoughts ventured anywhere near that subject. Too far, too awful. Do not trespass.