The first thing Colley thinks is Yes, the place is wired, it is one of those sonic jobs, and then he thinks No, it is probably a neighbor who heard the glass smashing, and then he realizes it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference, they have got him cold inside here, he is standing here with a huge pistol in his hand, but the pistol is empty, he is standing here naked. The trooper who gets out of the car is a big black bastard. He is wearing the trooper hat and the trooper boots, and he is coming toward the front door of the shop. He has his gun in his right hand and a long torchlight in the other hand. As he approaches the door, a second car pulls into the curb, and then a third one. Two of the cars are state police, the other one belongs to the local fuzz, this is a three-alarm fire here. Colley can see through the two plate-glass windows, and it looks like a movie taking place on two big screens that have the word SNUG written on each of them.
“Watch it, there he is!” one of the local cops yells, and the trooper who got out of the second car throws his light through the window into the shop. The second trooper is white. Colley sees this the instant before the light comes on. He also sees that the black trooper is taking aim along the length of his arm. It is just like the liquor store last night: the bastards are going to start shooting at him, and he is going to have to kill one of them in self-defense. But the gun is empty. The gun in his hand, the big fuckin gun that can tear off a man’s head, has no cartridges in it.
The movie screens up there are splintered with light now, everybody is throwing light onto the glass and it is splashing all over the shop, there are guns everywhere. There are guns inside the shop, on the walls and in the cases, and there are guns outside there on Rock Ledge Road where two state troopers and two local cops are waiting to shoot him dead, he wonders if they know he killed a cop last night. Light is bouncing all over the shop, he can see only guns and light, the plate-glass windows splintering first with light and then splintering with the impact of the bullets that come leaping out of the darkness. The glass shatters, he has never heard such noise in his life, the sound of the guns going off outside and the sound of the glass shattering and then the sound of something angry buzzing past his ear, he must do something, they are trying to kill him.
Instinctively, he fires back with the empty pistol. He hears a dick and another click, and he keeps squeezing the trigger, and he sees the big fuckin gorilla nigger cop taking steady aim again, and he thinks No, you don’t! and fires the empty gun at the trooper, and then sees a flash of light from the muzzle of the trooper’s gun, and hears the explosion, and wonders if the trooper is firing a Magnum same as he’s firing, click, click, and the trooper’s shot takes him in the face.
In the last instant of his life he wonders what they will tell his mother, Jesus what will they.