Saturday, January 8, 2011

Until Dawn - 2

Cameron Coyle waited in the car, the engine running but the headlights off. He looked idly at snow and smiled a bit. Luck was on his side. It usually was. Time wasn’t, though, and Coyle was growing impatient. This was taking far longer than it should have, and Coyle sighed when he heard the gunshot. Typical.

He wasn’t worried about the gunshot, in and of itself. Most people, even people out here in the boondocks, won’t recognize a gunshot out of context. Especially not when it was muffled by coming from inside a bank. But it meant that something had gone wrong, which meant that Coyle was going to have to bat clean up. He glanced at his watch and then out the window, waiting.

The bank wasn’t much of one. It was barely bigger than a mobile home, if it was bigger at all, and it sat beside what could loosely be considered a convenience store, albeit one of the home grown variety. Its main charm, in fact, was that it was more forty miles in either direction from any kind of real town, and the towns that were at the forty mile border had less than twenty thousand people.

Which meant that any kind of police response was a good half an hour off, unless they had the very bad luck for there to be a State Police cruiser somewhere in the area. The snow would actually slow that down even more, with the added benefit of making the car harder to spot. That made these kind of rural banks easy pickings. It did not mean that there should be guns going off.

Coyle watched the door open and the little old lady who was watching the counter at the store step out on to the concrete steps. She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. She had that look on her face. Coyle pull a black watch cap over sandy hair and stepped out of the car.

“You heard it too, I guess?” he said.

She looked at him, faintly startled.

“Sounded like someone was shooting.”

“It was my car. Backfire. I need to fire my mechanic.”

She looked at him. She frowned. She was starting to say something else when Coyle put a bullet through her chest. She stumbled back and set down hard, mouth working, and Coyle put a bullet through her forehead. She kept the gun on her for a second. Even with headshots, even with old ladies, death could be tricky sometimes. She just sat their, eyes open but not seeing.

The doors to the bank opened, and Coyle’s partners ran out and stopped. They were young, dumb and in love. They thought, Coyle suspected, that robbing bank was something kind of romantic. Dangerous but sexy. They’d probably think of themselves as a modern day Bonnie and Clyde, if they’d ever heard of Bonnie and Clyde. They jogged to the car as Coyle slid behind the wheel. They both got in the back. Gym bags with case beside then.

“What the fuck?” the Girl, delicate as ever, stopping short at the sight of the dead old lady as they pulled away.

“What happened in there?”

“What happened out here?” the Boy, this time.

Coyle shrugged. No explanation would be worthwhile.

“What happened?”

“This fucking thing went off.” Despite patient instruction, the Boy had still not grasped the basics of gun safety.

“Give it to me. Was anyone hurt?”

“No, no Casey had the zipties on them. Are they going to be okay?”

The Boy and the Girl handed their guns forward. Coyle, as carefully as he could while driving the car, checked the safeties and dropped them onto the front seat.

“They’ll be fine.”

“Why did you shoot that old lady?”

Coyle looked in the rearview mirror. They were a couple of miles out from the bank, but out here that meant they were in the middle of nowhere. Coyle pulled off into an access road, far enough from the road that in the near dark and with the increasing snow fall that he figured they wouldn’t be seen.

“We need to get this stuff in the trunk.”

“Here?”

“Here is fine.”

He stepped out of the car and pulled his gun out of his pocket. He kept it down by his legs as Bonnie and Clyde got out of the car. He half expected and half hoped they’d slide out on the same side.

The Boy said “I don’t see –“ and Coyle shot him in the back of the head. He dropped down hard, cracking the taillight as he fell. Coyle expected the Girl to scream or shout or breakdown, but she took off running immediately, without a glance behind. So much for true love. She didn’t make it ten steps before Coyle cut her down. He shot the Boy again to make sure he was dead and walked around the car to the Girl.
She was trying to crawl, without much success. Coyle rolled her over with his boot.

She was crying.

“Please.”

Coyle shot her twice in the head. The snow was picking up, and the Boy already had a light covering by the time he walked back around. He considered dragging them into the woods, but it didn’t seem like it was worth the effort or the time. Coyle dropped the gun beside the girl. No need to be carting around more evidence than necessary. He wanted to get over the mountain before the snow really kicked in. It looked like it was going to be a big one.

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