Chapter Six – Carter

 

I hit the ground prone as the bullets started to fly, the unseen shooter’s gun cracking loudly as he fired off five or six rounds, all of them aimed exactly where I’d been standing just fractions of a second prior.

Bags of chips exploded and ripped apart, showering my back and neck with pieces of both deep fried and baked slices of salty potatoes as I crawled across the floor, trying to get back to the front door. As I crawled, my hand slipped down to my side and pulled out my own sidearm.

Media portrays suppressors as these super silent, clandestine weapons that make the holder some sort of quiet deadly killer as he stalks through his killing ground. That’s not really the case. Guns with suppressors are still freaking loud, especially to a shifter. They just make it so you’re not blowing out your eardrums whenever you fire off a few rounds in an enclosed space.

Another burst of fire, this time into the two-liter bottles of soda over my head. Sugary, syrupy, carbonated sweetness sprayed over my head and jacket, coating me in Pepsi, Sprite, and Coke.

“Goddammit,” I growled as the liquid trickled down my neck, onto the backs of my ears, and into my beard. Whoever was shooting at me, I figured was a shifter. The only problem, though, was that I hadn’t grabbed a magazine of my silvered ammunition when I’d gotten out of the Jeep.

Three more rounds, this time catching a six-pack of orange soda, rupturing the aluminum packaging.

Who was shooting at me? And, more important, why were they shooting at me?

Why not just ask? I’d always been a fan of the direct route, after all.

“Stop!” I shouted. “What the hell did I do?”

Silence for a moment.

“Hey!” I shouted again. “What the hell did I do to you?”

The silence was thick in the store, or maybe it was just because my ears were near ringing from the noise already. I took a sniff of the air, trying to catch a whiff of something, anything, that might give me an idea of whom I was dealing with.

Rodent? Mouse? Something musky and small. Yeah, definitely a rat.

I hated rats.

“You Carter Grant?” asked a man’s voice from the backroom that seemed to run parallel with the aisle I was on, his words thick with what sounded to me like a British accent. “The bear shifter with PRB?”

I don’t know if it was because I was stunned that someone here knew who I was, or that the adrenaline in my bloodstream was doing the thinking for me, but I didn’t respond at first. How the hell would a rat shifter in Shamrock know my name? Or that I’d been with the PRB? And someone with a suppressor, no less? Were they involved with the demonic possessions? Some kind of outside hitter called in by another organization, like in a domestic terror situation, but with demons?

Jesus, this could be worse than I thought.

“You working with whoever summoned these demons?” I shouted back.

“Demons?” A laugh. “Those even real?”

Shit…were they here for me, then?

The rat shifter opened fire again.

I pressed myself harder into the floor on instinct, covering my head and ears with my hands.

More chips, and a bottle of what tasted like root beer, exploded over my head in a hail of diabetes-fuel. As the chips rustled in the following silence, the bags crinkling and crackling, I resumed my crawl down the aisle.

That’s when the revelation hit me. If he knew who, and what, I was, that meant he might have silver bullets loaded in there. I couldn’t stay here. Of course, it wasn’t like I could stay before I’d realized he had ammo that could actually kill me, or anything. Eventually, the cops were going to show up, suppressor or no suppressor, to see what the disturbance was.

“Shit, shit, shit!” I scrambled forward on my knees and elbows, dragging myself as quickly as I could across the tiled floor, already sticky and salty with soda pop, chips, and other snacks.

More bullets over my head, then a pause as he reloaded.

Down at the end of the aisle closest to the door, I rolled onto my side, pistol in hand, and began to fire. The gun leaped in my hand like a collared wild thing, bursting bags of pre-popped popcorn and more chips, spraying them over me as I fired a cluster of shots towards the source of the bullets.

“Motherfucker!” shouted the man from the other room, his accent somehow thicker with his agitation. “Goddamn, how’d you do that?”

“Practice,” I shouted back before firing three more rounds, spraying myself with bits of a Snickers bar and some hardened peanut butter whatever from a Butterfinger.

He was fast on the reload, though, and was already firing back, his shots grouping perfectly around me, inching closer and closer with each one.

And then, as I lay there, my pistol’s barrel leveled and my finger on the trigger, I heard it.

The sound of a car pulling up outside, the driver’s side door opening and closing.

Shit.

Either it was civilians, or reinforcements for this guy.

Which meant I had to make a choice. Did I stay, and potentially allow my escape to be cut off, or a civilian to stumble into the crossfire? Or did I leave, and take my chances?

Should I stay, or should I go?

I needed to go.