2018: An Uncivil War

In the truck’s large and spacious cab, Layman pulled the air horn strap one long time followed by two quick ones in an effort to urge the Hummer’s driver into clearing his path. But then he watched as an armed man in an orange polo knit shirt quickly withdrew from the cab holding some sort of automatic handgun he could not readily identify. He immediately pondered: What the hell is this guy doing? But the fellow surprised him by running alongside the big truck instead of taking cover behind his own. But then he realized why. An armed policeman came running up from behind the Hummer, probably after its driver. He decided to take the truck over the curb. But after the front passenger-side tire cleared it, he barely heard gunfire coming from the left rear of the vehicle, followed by a large pop. When the vehicle suddenly became increasingly difficult to steer, he knew that the fellow had shot his left steering tires. Outside the cab, Stuart fired two more times at the two pull wheel tires on the driver’s side. Two more loud pops followed each gunshot. Now he had to wait for the driver to disembark the vehicle. Next, he heard automatic fire ripping through the windshield of the truck, sending shattered glass clanking to the pavement. Then he watched the surprised and panicked cop, who had followed him, almost walk directly into a hail of automatic gunfire. The startled officer somehow miraculously managed to dodge toward the cover offered by Stuart’s Hummer. Stuart felt joy for the guy, but had to focus on Layman now! He took cover behind the driver’s side rear end of the truck, watching carefully and waiting keenly for the driver to depart the cab. But Layman had tricked him by quickly departing from the passenger side door and then stealthily as possible coming around that side of the vehicle toward the rear. Thankfully for the awkward noise made by heavy body armor when someone is moving quickly, he actually heard Layman coming. He barely had enough time to dodge most of the gunfire that accompanied the terror leader when he came around the corner in a blaze of peril! But he immediately felt a sharp burning pain in the lower right side of his abdomen. For Layman, everything had happened so quickly! He knew he had hit this do-gooder. But before he could see the extent of his damage, the fellow had dodged toward the driver-side door of the cab and disappeared behind the large, now deflated, wheels of the truck. Maybe the guy was dead. But he would still have to be very careful when he investigated the situation. He did so slowly and carefully. He promptly darted one quarter of his face around the corner to take a quick survey of the situation, and then back again. He had seen the guy on the ground, his weapon off to the side. But the guy was no longer armed, so he carefully stepped slowly around the corner. The first thing he noticed was a lot of blood coming from a wound in the guy’s lower gut. Then he finally recognized the face of this individual: one of the two pencil-pushers at the gun club. Maybe they had overheard his phone conversation after all. Last time I will make a mistake like that, he thought as he stepped up to the seemingly lifeless body before him. If he had known how right he would be after this engagement, he would have immediately loosed another round into the body. But now it was his turn to be tricked. Everything that happened next seemed to occur in a blur followed by complete darkness. First, he had noticed the guy’s light grey eyes come open, a judgmental and wrathful empty fire burning behind them. Secondly, he noticed his opponent’s left leg bent at the knee, foot level with his own knee. At the same time, he thought he saw the guy’s right hand move upward as well. Thirdly, he felt the most intense pain he’d ever felt drive upward through his knee like a train jumping a ramp! It was at this point that everything blacked out. Even though the terrorist leader, now responsible for the single greatest domestic attack on United States soil, did not know what was happening, Stuart extinguished the man’s life in the most aggressive manner possible. And it all happened too quickly for him to realize as well. His instinct dropped into cruise control, leaving him alone as a single passenger on a trip to vengeance, which may or may not have been his to take. But in that moment of heightened adrenaline, he had wielded his old Marine Ka-Bar knife, which had been hidden underneath his lower right arm. Unable to use the reverse grip in which he was trained, he used a regular grip while thrusting his knife up and into the groin of his enemy. Layman slumped over, still in a state of shock from having a compound fracture through his calf, even though he could not see the broken bone protruding up through it! Next, Stuart gave a complete twist of the blade prior to mercilessly removing it from the wound. The warmth of the man’s blood did not even register as it drained down all over his hand. Then he flipped the blade upward and caught it with his right hand in the reverse grip. After grabbing the man’s head with his left, he drove the knife into the man’s skull through his temple. He did not even bother removing it after kicking the corpse off him and then dropping back down onto the ground, succumbing the pain and the unconsciousness that followed.