The Stand

About an hour later a sign came up on their right: BURRACK 6.

“Burlap?” Lloyd said foggily.

“Burrack,” Poke said, and began twisting the Co

“You want to stop there? I’m hungry, man.”

“You’re always hungry.”

“Fuck you. When I get stoned, I get the munchies.”

“You can munch my nine-inch hogleg, how’s that? Whoop! Whoop!”

“Seriously, Poke. Let’s stop.”

“Okay. Got to get some cash, too. We’ve thrown off enough fuckin pursuit for a while. We got to get some money and shag ass north. This desert shit makes no sense to me.”

“Okay,” Lloyd said. He didn’t know if it was the dope working on him or what, but all of a sudden he felt paranoid as hell, even worse than when they had been on the turnpike. Poke was right. Stop outside this Burrack and pull a score like they had outside of Sheldon. Get some money and some gas station maps, ditch this fuckin Co

“I’ll tell you the truth, man,” Poke said. “All of a sudden I feel as nervous as a longtail cat in a room fulla rockin chairs.”

“I know what you mean, jellybean,” Lloyd said gravely, and then it hit them both fu

Burrack was a wide place in the road. They shot through it and on the other side was a combination café, store, and gas station. There was an old Ford wagon and a dust-streaked Olds with a horse trailer behind it in the dirt parking lot. The horse stared out at them as Poke wheeled the Co

“This looks like just the ticket,” Lloyd said.

Poke agreed. He reached into the back for the .357 and checked the loads. “You ready?”

“I guess so,” Lloyd said, and took hold of the Schmeisser.

They walked across the baked parking lot. The police had known who they were for four days now; they had left their fingerprints all over Gorgeous George’s house, and in the store where the old man with the mail-order dentures had been pokerized. The old man’s pickup had been found within fifty feet of the bodies of the three people who belonged with the Continental, and it seemed reasonable to assume that the men who had killed Gorgeous George and the store owner had also killed these three. If they had been listening to the Co

The gas was self-service; the clerk had to turn on the pump. So they went up the steps and inside. Three aisles of ca

Lloyd put the wire stock of the Schmeisser against his shoulder and fired a burst at the ceiling. The two hanging lightbulbs shattered like bombs. The man in the cowboy clothes began to turn around.

“Just hold still and nobody’ll get hurt!” Lloyd shouted, and Poke immediately made him a liar by blowing a hole through the woman looking at the sauces. She flew out of her shoes.

“Holy gee, Poke!” Lloyd hollered. “You didn’t have to—”

“Pokerized her, ole buddy!” Poke yelled. “She’ll never watch Jerry Falwell again! Whoop! Whoop!”

The man in the cowboy clothes kept turning. He was holding his smokes in his left hand. The harsh light falling through the show window and the screen door pricked out bright stars on the dark lenses of his sunglasses. There was a .45 revolver tucked into his belt, and now he plucked it out unhurriedly as Lloyd and Poke were staring at the dead woman. He aimed, fired, and the left side of Poke’s face suddenly disappeared in a spray of blood and tissue and teeth.

“Shot! ” Poke screamed, dropping the .357 and flailing backward. His flailing hands raked potato chips and taco chips and Cheez Doodles onto the splintery wooden floor. “Shot me, Lloyd! Look out! Shot me! Shot me! ” He hit the screen door and it slammed open and Poke sat down hard on the porch outside, pulling one of the aged door hinges loose.

Lloyd, stu

The man in the SHELL cap dropped behind the counter with such sudde

The Schmeisser put three bullet holes in the cowboy’s khaki shirt and most of his i

Lloyd, bullshit with fear, continued to fire. The machine pistol was growing hot in his hands. A box filled with returnable soda bottles tinkled and fell over. A calendar girl wearing hotpants took a bullet hole in one magical peach-colored thigh. A rack of paperbacks with no covers crashed over. Then the Schmeisser was empty, and the new silence was deafening. The smell of gunpowder was heavy and rank.

“Holy gee,” Lloyd said. He looked cautiously at the cowboy. It didn’t look like the cowboy was going to be a problem in either the near or distant future.

“Shot me! ” Poke brayed, and staggered back inside. He clawed the screen door out of his way with such force that the other hinge popped and the door slapped onto the porch. “Shot me, Lloyd, look out! ”

“I got him, Poke,” Lloyd soothed, but Poke seemed not to hear. He was a mess. His right eye blazed like a baleful sapphire. The left was gone. His left cheek had been vaporized; you could watch his jaw work on that side as he talked. Most of his teeth were gone over there, too. His shirt was soaked with blood. When you got right down to it, Poke was sort of a mess.

“Stupid fuck blew me up! ” Poke screamed. He bent over and got the .357 Mag. “I’ll teach you to shoot me, you dumb fuck.”

He advanced on the cowboy, a rural Dr. Sardonicus. He put one foot on the cowboy’s butt like a hunter posing for a picture with the bear which would soon be decorating the wall of his den, and prepared to empty the .357 into his head. Lloyd stood watching, gape-mouthed, the smoking machine pistol dangling from one hand, still trying to figure out how all of this had happened.

At that moment the man in the SHELL cap popped back up from behind the counter like Jack from his box, his face screwed up in an expression of desperate intent, a double-barreled shotgun clutched in both hands.

“Huh?” Poke said, and looked up just in time to get both barrels. He went down, his face a worse mess than ever and not caring a bit.