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9780385512220
1 The bullets discharge from the muzzle of OfFicer Carson Blake's sixteen-round Beretta with the tinny, explosive popping sound of a toy gun. He will not remember exactly how many shots he Fires so wildly. Fires with pure intent. Fires, he is sure, to save his life. In the First seconds after the shattering sound of the bullets subsides, he would say, if asked right then, that he had Fired every bullet in his gun. Never before has his gun been so large. Never before has it weighed so much. He's dizzy and breathless. His heart beats so fast, he can't believe he is still standing. When he shoots the man, everything, all of it, unfolds as if in slow motion. He wants to look away. He dares not turn his gaze. The First bullet boring through the man's thick neck riddled with razor bumps, the force twisting his head to the side, as though he is looking with those astonished, horribly open, not yet dead eyes to see where the bullet comes from. The second bullet piercing the skin of the black leather jacket, lodging in the esh of his shoulder. The third bullet, Fired at his groin, bringing him to his knees and then onto his face, sprawled at out on the parking lot forty feet from the entrance to the Chinese restaurant The House of Chang. Carson stands staring at the man on the pavement, his body a bloody heap illuminated by the uorescence of the mall parking lot lights, and sees the cell phone a few feet from the man's hand, and he prays for the ground beneath his feet to shift in a cataclysmic rumble and swallow him whole. A cell phone, he thinks, unbelieving. A cell phone. Not a gun. He hurls a howl, deep and guttural, into the night. Sinking to his knees, he touches the man, turns him over onto his back, sees the bulbous, bloody wound in his neck, smells the sharp odor of his sodden groin, desperate now to Find, to feel, a pulse. There is none. There is only the cell phone. Looking up in desperation, Carson sees a sky unfamiliar and frightening, in which he can fathom not a single star, a vastness that makes him wish for wings. Carson tries to stand but cannot, and he crawls a few feet away and vomits. When there is no more sickness to spill from his gut, he wipes his mouth and shouts at the dead man, through trembling lips stained with a blistering splash of tears, "What the fuck were you doing? Why didn't you just do what I said?" T here is nothing on this night that hints at disaster. After twelve years on the force, Carson can tell when a shift will be hell on wheels. On those shifts, the dispatcher begins reciting an address and an "incident" (car crash, domestic disturbance, robbery, brawl, accident, murder) even before Carson is belted behind the wheel. Then there are the calm, quiet shifts when hour after hour he's numb with boredom, cruising the nine square miles of his police service area, and after a couple of hours he begins looking for a safe place to park and take a nap. But he can't get bored. Because bored he won't see the obvi-ousthe missing tags on a beat-up hoopty driven by a carload of young punks looking for trouble and determined to Find it. But this night he is bored by 9:45, when he walks into a 7-Eleven near the litter-Filled streets of a housing project known as "The Jungle" to buy coffee and a doughnut. Carson ignores the group of high schoolage boys hanging out in front of the store at almost ten o'clock on a school night, rapping, jonin', joking, lying. Matches waiting to be struck. Don't they have homes?Carson wonders for the thousandth time, then recalls what he has seen in some of the homes tGolden, Marita is the author of 'After', published 2006 under ISBN 9780385512220 and ISBN 0385512228.
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