Endless Night Part 57

Jody heard the hushed sound of a mild breeze. She heard chirps and clatters and buzzes from nearby insects. A few birds sang.

Then the plastic bag from the gun shop rustled as Sharon reached in. She came out with a handful of small cellophane packages. Inside each wrapper was a pair of bright orange foam ear plugs.

She pa.s.sed them around. "It'll get loud," she told Andy.

They all tore open the wrappers and plugged their ears.

Then Jack took a deep breath and held the pistol toward Andy. "Here you go, pal. It's loaded. Jody always keeps it loaded, a bullet in the chamber, the safety on. I know that sounds dangerous, but her main reason for having the gun is self-defense. If you need to shoot someone, you might not have time to fool around loading up. You've gotta keep it loaded so you can get off a shot fast. Any questions?"

"Not right now. Can I try it?"

"Yep." Dad gave the gun to Andy, then guided his hand until the muzzle was pointing in the general direction of the soda cans. "There's your safety. Push it down with your thumb. That's right. When you see the red dot like that, the safety is off and you're ready to fire."

"Should I go ahead?"

"First make sure everyone's to the rear of your muzzle."

Andy glanced from side to side. "Yeah, they are."

"Fine. Now, just point it at any of those cans ..."

"One of those in the front," Sharon suggested. "A gun like that is for close range."

"Right," Dad said. "Now pop a few rounds, see how it goes."

The pistol jumped a bit and Jody heard a flat bam! through her ear plugs. A yard behind one of the soda cans, a plume of dust leaped off the ground.

Bam! Closer. Behind and slightly to the right.

Bam! Bam! Bam! Two more misses, but then the can hopped high, tumbling away, and fell to the ground at least a foot beyond where it had started.

"Wow!" Andy yelled. His head snapped around. He wore just about the biggest smile that Jody had ever seen on him. "Did you see that! I did it! I hit it!"

Jody gave him a thumbs up.

"Good shooting!" Sharon called.

Dad said, "You did it once, you can do it again. This time, line your target up in the sights. Put your front sight in the center of the rear sight's opening so that all three of the white dots form a straight row. Then make it look as if the target is resting on top of the front sight."

Andy took his time with the next shot. When he fired, his bullet kicked up dust a yard in front of the can. The shot after that missed, too, but came close enough for the shock of its pa.s.sage to shake the can.

"I think I'm better when I don't aim," Andy said.

"It all takes practice," Dad said.

Bam!

The can tumbled backward.

KRA-BOOM!.

The unexpected blast, sharp and loud and shocking in spite of her ear plugs, made Jody jump.

The soda can hit the air like a punted football. It flipped end over end, flas.h.i.+ng sunlight, getting smaller, and landed forty or fifty feet back.

Sharon lowered her rifle.

Dad grinned at her and said, "Whoa, Nelly."

Andy gaped at her, his mouth drooping.

"That's the difference," Sharon said, "between a .22 and a .223."

"Jesus H. Christ on a crutch," Andy muttered. "Can I try it?"

"Everyone can try it," Sharon said.

"Later, though," Dad told Andy. "I want you to stick with the .22 until you're more comfortable with it. Fire another hundred rounds or so. Jody, why don't you take turns with him? And show him how to change magazines, reload, whatever else he needs to know. Okay?"

"You hear that?" she asked Andy. "I'm in charge."

"This is so neat!"

"I know, I know. Now, the gun is empty. You know it's empty because the slide stayed back after the last shot you took. But put the safety back on, anyway. Always have it on when you're not firing."

He pushed the lever upward until it covered the red dot on the side of the pistol.

"Good," Jody said. "Now it's my turn." She pulled the spare magazine out of the pocket of her shorts. "Gimme."

"Can't I go again? If you let me, I'll let you go twice in a row."

She thought about it for a moment. She remembered the look on his face right after he hit the can for the first time. "Okay. You do two magazines, then I'll do two, and we'll work it like that. Here, give me the gun. I'll show you how to reload."

Andy offered the pistol to her.

"Oh, great," Jody said. "Planning to shoot me in the stomach?"

He winced and turned the muzzle downrange. "Sorry."

"That's the sort of goof that gets people shot." She saw her father watching. "Right, Dad?" she asked.

"That's right. Glad you're paying attention." Then he turned his attention to Sharon.

Sharon stood off to the side of the car, but near enough to reach her open box of ammo on top of the trunk. She was taking out long, pointed cartridges and thumbing them into a banana clip that glared like chrome in the sunlight.

"Jeez," Jody muttered. "Look at that."

Andy looked. "Holy smoke."

Jody took the pistol from him. Careful to keep it pointing away from everyone, she pressed the release b.u.t.ton. The slim black magazine dropped down out of the handle and into her palm. "Ours are just a teensy bit smaller than hers."

"No kidding."

"Dad's gonna make me move up to a .38 one of these days. He thinks I need to have more stopping power. I've always tried to talk him out of it, but ..."

"Why talk him out of it? It'd be neat to have a bigger gun."

"Yeah, but I like this one. I don't wanta change." She slipped the full magazine into the pistol and slammed it home with the heel of her hand. "Watch me, not her. I'm making you do this next time."

"I'm watching."

"Okay. You've gotta make sure the magazine is all the way in and locked into place. Then you push this gizmo and the slide rams forward and chambers the round that's on top. Watch." She did it. "Now it's loaded and ready."

"Except for the safety," Andy added as he accepted the pistol from her.

"Right. You're learning."

Her father, she noticed, had stepped over close to Sharon. They were talking softly as she fed more cartridges into the magazine.

"Should we go ahead and shoot?" she asked.

"Fire away," Dad said.

"My can's gone," Andy complained.

"Pick a different one," Jody told him. "Any of those four in the front."

"Is there any special way I should stand?" he asked.

"Any way that feels comfortable. I prefer the Weaver stance, myself."

"What?"

"Never mind. Spread your feet and crouch a little bit so you're good and balanced. Then just stick out your arm and shoot. If you want to really take careful aim, you can use your left hand as sort of a platform under your gun hand."

"Like this?"

"Yep."

"Here goes!" He squeezed off a shot. A can hopped straight up and dropped back to the ground. "Hey!"

"Great!"

"I wish I could really send it flying."

"The main thing is. .h.i.tting it, not seeing how far you can make it fly."

"Yeah, but this little peashooter might not even kill somebody."

"It'll kill just as good as that big cannon of Sharon's."

"Oh, yeah, right. Every day and twice on Sunday." He fired again. This time, he missed.

"I'm not kidding. I happen to know that a lot of professional a.s.sa.s.sins use .22 caliber pistols. Like the secret Israeli hit teams that go after terrorists. They use them. At close range, a .22 is just as good as anything. And it's quiet enough so that it makes almost no sound at all when it has a silencer."

He fired again, winging a can so that it fell over but didn't jump. Then he looked at Jody. "Have you got a silencer for this?"

"You can't have 'em. They're illegal."

"Guys on TV always have them."

"Yeah, and guys on TV are always putting silencers on revolvers, too. TV is stupid about guns. They never get it right. After this out here, you'll spot crazy stuff every time you watch something."

"Really?"

"Sure. Movies are like that, too, most of 'em. Just wait and see. Uh-oh."

Andy fired and missed. "You made me miss."

"Sharon's about to go."

Andy turned his head to watch.

"You don't have to stop," Jody told him. "I'm still waiting for my first turn, you know."

"I don't want to miss Sharon."

Sharon glanced over at them. "Go ahead. I'll wait till you're empty."

Andy emptied his gun with four quick pulls of the trigger. His first shot knocked a can spinning backward. The next three missed, but none by more than a few inches. "Nuts," he said.

"That was good," Jody told him. "If you'd been firing those at a bad guy instead of at a little Pepsi can, you would've caught him in the chest every time."

"Really?" He grinned. "Hey, yeah, I bet you're right."

"Everybody have your ear plugs in?" Sharon called. "Okay. See that dried stump of wood sticking up, way out there? There, just in front of the hill?"

Jody spotted it. Not a very large target, and quite a distance beyond the farthest of the cans that Sharon had set out. To Jody, it appeared to be less than a foot high, and not much bigger around than her arm. It looked like the remains of the trunk of a small, dead tree.

"Do you see it?" Andy asked her.

"Yeah, do your "Yeah, I think so."

"Okay," Sharon said. "Here goes. I'm gonna let her rip."

Taking a few steps back, Dad yelled, "Rock *n' roll!"

Sharon's gunshots hammered the air.