CHAPTER 49: HEAVY ON THE TRIGGER

  GARLAND HEIGHTS—NOVEMBER 22th, 1992 | AFTERNOON

  ?

  Uncle Anthony wanted a service fee to ‘rent the space’ for the day.

  Leroy coughed up a couple wads of cash, and before long, they stood between piles of stacked cars, clusters of spare parts, and metal scrap that was only haphazardly organized into piles of sharp and jagged safety hazards that could’ve turned a trip or a fall into a death sentence. Lieberman Stack and Scrap was a dump by the standards of Garland Heights, but Cameron felt strangely at home here. In the South End, a few steps outside would grant you a similar view.

  It took them longer than they both would’ve liked to set up a row of targets, but they settled on: a car hood, a metal barrel, a car door that they lazily propped up, and some discarded beer bottles placed on various things around the junkyard. On the ground by both of their feet were two of the four cardboard ammunition boxes they’d received from Silvio, filled to the brim with more than enough rounds to account for Cameron’s marksmanship training.

  Cameron held his Reign 18 in his hand and pointed it.

  “Safety,” Leroy said, arms crossed.

  Cameron turned, gun in-hand. “What?”

  Leroy stepped to him and pushed the barrel of the gun down towards the ground. “Check the safety. And don’t point that thing at me.”

  Cameron squinted. “Esme’s Rings of Mutualism. Even if I fired at you, I’m sure that bullet would hit an invisible fucking forcefield or something.”

  “What if I was Tania? Or Janice?”

  “I’m not going to shoot Tania, or Janice,” Cameron retorted.

  “You might. Safety’s off,” Leroy said, snatching the gun from his grasp. “Generally, that’s a no-go. But in our line of work... well. It's probably better that it’s off.”

  Cameron snatched the Reign 18 back. “I’ve shot a gun before, Leroy. Plenty of times.”

  “And you miss most of the shots you take, yeah? I’ve seen you fire, Kessler. You’re a shit marksman. If it weren’t for your abilities, you’d be dead.”

  “I cleared an entire room of Argent Group goons, asshole,” Cameron sneered.

  “With Guts watching your back the whole time. Yeah?”

  Cameron opened and closed his mouth.

  Leroy went on to explain the importance of cleaning a gun, too. The whole fiasco was like pulling teeth. Cameron had seen the state of his P89. That thing was holding onto dear life, and it didn’t take a damn gun expert to know that. They argued back and forth for what could’ve been ten minutes, but to Cameron, felt more like twenty. Leroy’s so-called sage wisdom always seemed to run counter to what he himself actually did. Hard to take advice from a man who doesn't follow his own advice. Cameron told him he’d start cleaning his Reign 18 if and when Leroy decided to start cleaning his LAR Grizzly.

  “Now, fix your grip. Two hands, Kessler, not one,” Leroy said.

  ?

  Power surged through Cameron’s hands. He missed his mark. Again. He’d emptied the entire clip trying to hit the hardest, smallest target first, only for the bullets to ricochet off the surrounding scrap. A groan escaped him like the brewing tantrum of a toddler, of which Cameron was painfully aware of, but couldn’t deny himself.

  “Fuck!” Cameron yelled, kicking a nearby piece of scrap into the surrounding piles.

  “Again,” Leroy said, rubbing his face. “Relax your shoulders, slightly bend your elbows. And for Christ's sake, stop leaning back so much.”

  ?

  Cameron stood with his arms crossed.

  Leroy held Cameron's pistol in both hands. “Pay attention. When I am at this distance, Kessler, I’m not aiming directly at what I want to shoot. Up close, it doesn’t matter. You point and you fire, simple as that. But if I’m going for distance, I want my target just above the front sight.”

  A thunderous echo filled the air, followed by another, and another, and another.

  At this rate, Cameron wouldn’t be surprised if the Civic and Occult Authority showed up—not that they were in a particularly well-off part of Garland Heights. Leroy had already run through a circuit where he’d shown Cameron he was fully capable of hitting every larger target. Now, he was demonstrating that even the smaller, further targets weren't impossible to hit.

  “Are you going to keep hogging my damn gun, or let me learn?” Cameron asked, trying to snatch it out of his hands.

  Leroy shoved him with his free hand, twisted the gun so that the barrel was facing down, and offered it to him with the handle facing towards him. “Don’t be so heavy on the trigger, either. Treat it like you’d treat a woman. Firmly and with passion, but not too rough to point where—”

  Cameron pulled it from his hands. “Alright, I get it. For all things fucking sacred and holy, don’t finish that sentence.”

  ?

  With one eye closed, the other remained focused on the front sight as he aimed at the newest set of beer bottles. The recoil zipped through Cameron’s hand. Some fifteen-odd feet away, glass shattered and trickled down an assortment of scrap metal.

  “Not bad,” Leroy said.

  It was the third not bad he’d received in the last three hours. After going through the fundamentals, Cameron tried again, and managed to land some solid shots on the larger target. It wasn’t after he’d felt comfortable enough with the basic principles of well, aiming, really, did he consider tackling the beer bottles with his amateur marksmanship.

  With a pivot, Cameron turned.

  He aimed, closed one eye, and widened his stance ever so slightly, gripping the Reign 18 with both hands, but not too harshly. White-knuckling it didn’t do him any good, and if he’d learned anything prior to Leroy’s formal instruction, it was that a recoil always bit back harder than you could squeeze the damn gun. Especially if you were holding it wrong.

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  “Alright,” Cameron said, exhaling with a newfound assuredness. “I can aim—better than before at least. What next?”

  “Easy, cowboy,” Leroy said, raising a half-dismissive hand. “You’ve been at it for half a day. You aren’t going to leave here some hotshot gunslinger. Doesn’t work like that. Shooting a gun is a skill, same as throwing a punch. A good one at least.”

  Cameron emptied the spent magazine of the Reign 18, finger pressing the magazine release button as it fell into his opposite hand. He crossed over to what remained of their ammunition boxes and, in a painstaking process, thumbed a new cartridge in one by one until it reached its full capacity. Leroy had shown him a trick to do it much faster, but some things took longer to learn than others.

  Guts whirred in the sprite-cage next to his other equipment, which, for right now, consisted of three vials of pasteurized demon blood. Its singular green-white eye regarded him expectantly, and a sappy brand of guilt prompted him to reach for the cage.

  “Kessler.”

  “There’s no one here, it’s fine,” Cameron said, unraveling the cage.

  Guts zipped out from the sprite-cage and whirred around the surrounding area, slithering through the air gleefully. It circled around Cameron’s head half a dozen times before settling just above his right side, levitating just above his shoulder.

  “Also, you can still throw a punch without knowing how to throw a punch, or, I guess I should say a real punch, like boxers do,” Cameron remarked. “Hurts just the same. Like bullets. You might always be a better shot than me, but if I whip out a gun point-blank, it doesn’t matter if you’ve got a better aim.”

  Leroy smiled that wry, stupid smile of his. "A sucker punch and having a heavy trigger finger certainly get you far in some places. You’ve survived this long on both of those to know that, but sometimes, you don’t get that option.”

  “Yeah, alright, fine, I get it,” Cameron said, finally inserting the magazine into the pistol.

  “Like anything else, repetition is your friend. You know, seat time. The longer you’re behind the wheel of a car, the more comfortable and confident you become,” Leroy said. “And being good with a gun isn’t just about aiming. You want to get good at whipping out a gun for those point-blank scenarios, then you practice your quickdraw. So on and so forth.”

  “So on and so forth? What, you’re going to stand here talking my ear off for hours about why I need to learn how to shoot better? Or, better yet, how about the time you stopped me from shooting, pulled me aside, and had me memorize the fucking anatomy of a gun? 'No, Kessler, you need to pull the slide back every time you reload', only to end your oh-so-great-lesson on so on and so forth?”

  Leroy pinched the bridge of his nose. “For your goddamn information, yes, pulling the slide back every time is a important, alright? You jump to conclusions real quickly. You know that, Kessler? Christ, kid, I could’ve had a boat load more to say, but you just get all pissy out of nowhere. At the drop of a damn hat.”

  “Well, is there more?”

  Leroy snatched the gun out of Cameron’s hand. “Yeah. The Mozambique drill. You’ll learn to love the Mozambique drill. And for the next day, all you do is work on your aim and work on the M-o-z-a-m-b-i-q-u-e.”

  Before Cameron could think to answer, Leroy quickly pivoted. He rose the Reign 18 with a tangible seamlessness—like he’d done it a thousand times. He fired two shots, followed by a third, and before Cameron could see where the bullets had pierced through, Leroy repeated the process. Pivot. Two shots. A third shot. It was like watching something fluid snap into something solid; water freezing into a final proud form, making a statement.

  “Two to the body, one to the head,” Leroy said, casually handing over the pistol. “Practice that.”

  Cameron looked at his gun and exhaled.

  ?

  Hours passed by like butter melting on a pan.

  Cameron’s hands were sore. All the firing practice was working up a sweat; far more than he’d anticipated. The city skyline of Brinehaven pulsed in the distance, polluting what might have otherwise been a beautiful evening. But even those were blurry on a good day. Cameron didn’t know the difference between the Big Dipper or the Little Dipper, but he wouldn’t be able to see them even if he did know.

  Every so often, Silvio's Uncle Tony, who insisted that he be called only Anthony, nagged Cameron and Leroy about the noise. Leroy shut him up by offering him more wads of cash at each interval, which left Cameron wondering just how much he carried on his person. It was strange to see. Uncle Tony looked and sounded just like Silvio, albeit he was older, slightly taller, and more set in his ways—as evidenced by his insistence on Cameron removing his boots every single time he had to run inside to use the bathroom.

  It had been a while since he’d last seen Leroy, who apparently, bought Cameron enough time to continue well into the evening. He never did say how long Cameron was expected to be practicing, or, when he’d be back, only that he was leaving for a while.

  Guts wasn’t bothered by the bullet fire, and was surprisingly well-behaved while Cameron went through the motions. Pivot, aim, fire three times. Two to the body, one to the head. It took him a while to get used to the immediacy of it. Rinse and repeat. Drill, drill, drill. Drill the Mozambique drill. Learn it like the back of the hand, and then learn it again. Moments of silence were sparing, and the phantom echo of gunshots seemed to linger in his ears even when he wasn’t shooting a damn thing.

  It was in those moments that he had to steel his nerves, and remind himself why he was even doing any of this. This was a tool. And he needed tools to do what he’d promised himself to do, however long that might take.

  Marcus Velvet, Bluestein Philterworks. All of it was simply on the road to a final destination that could take years to reach, and at the end of that tunnel was a man who’d arm Cameron with the skills and knowledge to do him in. Leroy Waters was sealing his own fate whether he realized it or not, and that made him a fool. A stupid, arrogant fool. More self-assured and proud and patronizing and self-righteous than anyone Cameron had ever met, or that he ever would meet.

  Gunsmoke sizzled out of the barrel of his Reign 18.

  Cameron had finished a final pivot and neared one of the dislodged car doors he’d set up for target practice, staring into the holes he’d created, and while looking, he saw his face. Really saw his face. Looking in the mirror in the shower was one thing, and the passing glance in the rear-view of Leroy’s Cadillac. But it was only under the dim light of the scrapyard that Cameron saw what he’d done to himself in pursuit of an end goal with no clear timeline.

  He ran a hand over his cheekbones, where the lacerations from Hughes’ knives had scarred in spite of the pasteurized demon blood he’d taken not long after. Slowly, it travelled towards his right ear—still covered in gauze, still damp with dried blood. Two days ago he’d lost half of it to a man he’d never know the name of.

  The more he stared into his own reflection, and the longer the silence lingered, the more things came out of the noiselessness. Voices born from recent memory. Tania’s voice, and then Janice’s voice, and then his own. He thought of what he’d said when Leroy left. And he thought not of the specific words, but of the way they came out of his mouth. How it wasn’t panic, but expressions and undertones of concern. Worry. Cameron gritted his teeth.

  Worry, but for what? Worry that he might get hurt. Worry that he might leave. Worry that Cameron could continue to tell himself was conditional: worry not for Leroy himself, but worry born from the idea that someone or something might rob Cameron of what he is owed—Leroy’s life.

  So why was he feeling that same feeling again?

  Images flashed before his mind. Leroy tipping his hat the day of the trial. Leroy freezing the boat that was meant to send him to Blackpool Penitentiary. Leroy stopping Aria Remeau’s spell from hitting him in Spectre. Leroy grabbing hold of his wrist before he could fall to his death along the walls of the Commonwealth Industrial Park.

  The Reign 18 dropped from his grasp without him realizing it, gently tussling along the dirt.

  He lowered himself to a squat and raised both of his hands to the sides of his head, where he held his temples and dug his fingers between the buzzed tufts of short black hair growing along his scalp.

  Cameron looked at the ground, only to look back up at his reflection. He wanted to see anger in his eyes. But what looked back at him wasn’t that.

  Some Guy with a Potato once again!

  Also, I am SUUUUUUPER happy to announce that I've started a Discord server for Brinehaven! Eventually, I'll be adding it to the fiction blurb, but you'll get oh-so-powerful bragging rights by being among the first batch of Brinehavenites ??... here is the

  LEROY WATERS

  CAMERON KESSLER

  GUTS

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