bravo_six (bravo_six) wrote in birthrightrpg, @ 2020-11-19 21:36:00 |
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Entry tags: | hanna pulaski, npc |
Hanna, Get Your Gun
Who: Hanna Pulaski, NPC
Where: Suburbs of Las Vegas
When: Early
What: A justified shot
Rating: Mild to high for language and violence
Zack Munson was getting paranoid.
He’d seen a quick story on the national news about the deaths of Max Keeler and Trevor Parkhurst, and further investigation told him that the killings were considered connected but remained unsolved. There had been no mention of silver, but the multiple stab wounds on Keeler’s body said whoever did it knew what they were doing. What they were dealing with.
He’d been living in Vegas when he saw the news reports, had decided that a brief fade might be in his best interest. He’d made enemies over the years. They all had, and more in the past few years that might have been prudent. But if someone went after Trevor and Max knowing what the deal was? Yeah, time to get out of Dodge for a while.
Zack owned a rundown rental property on the outskirts of Henderson, and it was thankfully unoccupied when he made his retreat with enough clothes for a couple of weeks and a plan to lay low. He’d considered sending up a flare for Wyatt and Patrick, then decided to hell with those guys. They might have been a pack, but they were also outliers. Outcasts, and among outcasts it usually came down to every wolf for himself.
He woke up early, just as the sun was rising. Ate breakfast in the kitchen while listening to the national news, hoping for more details. Still under investigation, the authorities would release details as necessary, blah blah blah. Idiot humans. He knew why, or thought he did.
At around eight, Zack left the house for a run to the nearest convenience store. The house was located in a cul-de-sac with a driveway that led up to the garage. He’d gotten in late, left the Dodge out because he couldn’t find the remote to open the door. He’d park it out of sight when he got back.
The door clunked shut, and the Were put his sunglasses on against the glare on the newly-washed hood of the car. Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty.
“Hello, Zack.”
Hanna had found him through the car. There weren’t many classic Dodge Challengers in the area, but she’d taken down the license plate from the picture in the late and unlamented Trevor Parkhurst’s living room. From there it was just a skip and a jump to the weather-worn house in the suburbs of Las Vegas. The gun was heavy in her lap.
“Jesus!”
He could only see some of her in the rearview, the set of her mouth and her jawline, and the last thing he’d expected was a woman. Instinctively, he put his hand on the interior door handle, made to get out.
“You don’t want to do that.”
She put the barrel of the Heckler Koch against the base of his skull, in the soft spot just beneath his cranium. Beyond the car, the neighborhood was quiet, made up mostly of people who went to work early so they could get to the city without dealing with traffic. She’d checked with two dry runs.
It had only taken Zack a few seconds to decide that he did not, in fact, want to do that, and he inched his hand away from the door and onto the steering wheel. He was a southpaw, had always considered it good luck. The one time he couldn’t be fast enough, and it being a new day meant that trying to force the shift might give her time to pull the trigger. He looked into the reflective surface of the mirror.
“Let’s just calm down.”
“I am calm. If I wasn’t, you’d be dead already.”
The seat creaked as Hanna sat forward, and she put the hand not holding the gun where he could see it, palm upwards. He was a big son of a bitch, with blocky shoulders and meaty hands. She could see a black tattoo on the inside of his right wrist. Semper Fucking Fi.
“The keys. Give them to me.”
He didn’t want to, but he could feel the cold barrel of the handgun awkwardly pressed to the back of his head. Even if she didn’t kill him, he’d end up a vegetable. The ring made a dull metallic sound as he put them in her hand. The seat creaked again, and the pressure relaxed.
“Semper Fi, huh? Are you in the Marines?”
Perversely, that was almost more offensive to her than the rest of it, the idea that Munson was in the armed forces in any capacity, could put on a uniform and swear to serve and protect while simultaneously being responsible for the slaughter of innocent people. In the mirror, she saw his jaw working as he clenched his teeth. One of those big hands worked on the imitation leather of the steering wheel.
“No. I tried to enlist, but they wouldn’t take me.”
“Good call. So you’re just, what? Compensating? Nice dickmobile, by the way.”
“Now, look...”
“Yeah, you’re right. No point in being insulting.”
There was a silence, and she was thinking about Brian. Friendly, helpful Brian, who had been victimized just as she had. The thing sitting in the front seat now would have done it to him as soon as he’d done it to her friends, and it was just another reason not to hesitate. She had to be strong, strong and determined.
“You don’t know who I am, do you?”
Zack had been looking at the old tattoo, black lines inked into his flesh seven or eight years previously. The question made him look up, and he studied what he could see of her in the narrow mirror. She’d taken the gun away, but he could see it resting against the window in the backseat, her grip not entirely practiced but firm. He’d have given anything for just one nosy neighbor.
His shaggy head swung to the right, then farther as he twisted around halfway in the driver’s seat. She was looking at him, the H & K in her right hand as they eyed each other. The day was going to be warm, and the interior of the Challenger was already heating up.
The memory struck him as he swiveled back in the bucket seat; the five of them standing in the trees watching the soldiers meander around the campsite talking in low voices, and it had been asshole Trevor’s idea. He’d wanted to initiate Max ‘properly’, or so he’d said, and they’d all gone along with it for the sake of meanness. Zack’s throat worked as it sank in.
“Yeah. Yeah, I recognize you.”
“I remember you too. ‘Course, you didn’t look like this, did you?”
He’d been the one who chased her up the tree, snarling at her heels as she ran through the rain, boots squishing in the sodden grass and the mud. He’d never seen a human run so fast, had laughed about it later when recalling the incident. They’d all hoped she’d died of exposure, the long night in the bad weather taking its toll. Later, when the news reported a survivor, Patrick, their erstwhile leader, had shrugged it off. What could one person do when no one would believe her?
“Max and Trevor? That was you?”
“What do you think?”
Thinking back on it, Hanna could only reflect on how surprised Parkhurst had looked to wake up and find her in his house, standing over his bed. His death had been the quickest, since she’d been in no mood to fuck around after Max tried to bite her. She’d opened his carotid artery, then his jugular, watched while the blood stained the sheets and the mattress a dark red. The gurgling noise as he’d died was weirdly comforting.
“Jesus…,shit, lady…I…”
“Do you believe in God?”
Any explanation (excuse, because Hanna knew that anything out of his mouth would be at best a lie and at worst an insult) Zack might have made was derailed by the new question, and he swore under his breath before making eye contact in the mirror. His large right hand wiped over his mouth. The car was becoming stifling.
“No. No, not really.”
Hanna sighed, a long breath of air escaping from her mouth, and the gun barrel tapped lightly against the window. Tick-tick-tick.
“Yeah, me neither. Not anymore.”
There was an instant where she paused, then lifted the handgun.
“Goodbye, Zack.”
“No, wait…!”
The noise was very loud in the backseat, and blood and brains spattered the steering wheel, the dashboard. Hanna shot him again just to be sure, steadying her right hand with her left because she could feel the shakes threatening. But it felt so fucking good to watch Munson slump forward, all of his weight sagging onto the faux leather protecting the plastic steering wheel. She sat where she was for another minute, breathing in the smell of blood and cordite, maybe waiting for the cops to magically show up.
The passenger door of the Challenger swung open, and she climbed out with an effort. She was still holding the keys, dropped them onto the driveway next to the front tire. She’d invested in a second pair of gloves, ones that doubled for hand protection when she was working her courier’s route. No prints, just a corpse. There was something that might have been a laugh locked up behind her voice box. Or maybe it was a sob, she really couldn’t tell.
She checked the street, noticing for the first time how quiet the neighborhood really was. Wouldn’t take Zack’s next door neighbor long to see the dead man slumped in the driver’s seat. Hanna pulled the gloves off, stuffed them into her pocket. The gun had been tucked into the back of her waistband, beneath her jacket. The barrel was warm but not hot. Maybe silver bullets made less friction?
She started off at a deliberately casual walk, just a random passerby on a quiet street. There was a newspaper in a plastic bag at the end of the driveway two houses down. She took it. The shakes were gone. Her car was parked three blocks further away.
It was closer to being finished.</cut>