Death Mark – Nick Thacker

Which was when I realized that it was certainly not creeping toward us at all. It was barreling toward us, and it wasn’t slowing down. “They’re going to hit, Dixon,” Frey said. “I can see that.” I turned to Joey, still laying on the floor next to me. “You have a piece?” He didn’t, but he was closest to the case I’d brought along. There was another small armory in my room belowdecks, but I wasn’t about to run out and get shot at.

Joey crawled over to the couch and grabbed the case. It was unlocked already, so he opened the lid and extracted two 9mm handguns. There was a third inside, but I was glad he hadn’t offered one to Frey. I grabbed the pistol and checked it, knowing already that it was loaded but going through the motions anyway out of habit.

Joey did the same, and when I felt ready, I popped up and onto my knees. I fired off three quick shots, only one of which landed anywhere near the boat. Thankfully, however, the man who had been standing and firing at us ducked out of the way instinctively.

“Now’s our chance,” I yelled. “Keep him down.” “What about if they hit us?” Joey asked, still aiming toward the boat, waiting for the man to try to rise up again. “It’s a suicide mission if they do,” I replied. We’re bigger. We go down, they definitely go down.” I didn’t wait for his response.

I ducked and ran out the door again, heading for the stairs at the stern of the Wassamassaw. I could hear the engine of the other boat, still right on target, still threatening to collide. They hadn’t slowed down. Joey fired, two shots, but I’d already reached the set of stairs that led to the engine deck and the door to the cabins down below.

It would have been faster to just run through the main living and dining room to the spiral staircase, but I wanted to try to stay behind the railing and out of sight as much as possible.

I HAVE THIS IDEA THAT maybe morality is like death: we can buck and fight against it as long as we want, but eventually it’s going to get us. And we’re all given a specific amount of morality; a certain flavor of it we can’t change or cash in, or alter in any way. We can mask it, like our faces, but it won’t do any good.

At the end of the line, wherever that line is, we’re as moral as we’re ever going to be. We’re as good or bad as we’re ever going to be, or as ‘us’ as we ever were. Okay, enough with the philosophical bullshit. What I’m saying here is that I have no idea how the world works. I don’t really care, either, because I know, generally, how people work. I get how they tick, what they want, how they intend to get it. I’m good at that part of it.

I’m not so good at the part of it where I have to decide what to do about it. You see, I’m good at my gig — I tend bar at a little place I own, and I like it. I love it, actually. The oldies take care of me, and I get to silently judge the younger idiots that come in and ask for things that no bar menu should even suggest to offer. Like light beer. And I don’t mean ‘beer that is light,’ like a proper Belgian or some of the summer Germans or the pilsners and IPAs that are vying for hipsters’ attention out west.

I mean beers that were designed to be tasteless, so men, women, grandparents, and children alike could hate them all the same, pretend they like them, and drink them by the bucketful just for the sheer hell of saying they could drink a bucketful of them. Those beers are the types I don’t anywhere my bar. I’ve got a few taps, and I keep those taps full of whatever I can get for a reasonable price that comes out of Charleston, or when I’m feeling fancy or festive I might spring for a shipment of kegs of something a little more exotic.

But I don’t have your typical Applebee’s-on-a-Sunday-night fare of brew selections. So when these youngsters — anyone younger than me, I should say — come in and try to order something like that, I just shrug and serve them whatever I’ve got on tap in that’s in a real beer format. Want a Coors? I’ll give you whatever I’ve got from Revelry. Have a hankering for a Bud Light?

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: c3d96891392b34e4
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 1,267,846 bytes (1.209 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 244
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 313.23 minutes
• Total Words: 62,645
• Total Characters: 332,671
• Average Words per Page: 256.74
• Average Characters per Page: 1363.41

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