Recap of Part 1:
The Bounty Hunter went to Chicago to fullfill the Bounty on the head of a thirteen year old boy. Taking his soul was not his first choice, but a debt must be paid. The Hunter also took  the souls of the boy's brother and a friend. Wounded from the gun battle the hunter headed north out of the city and away from the police.
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The Bounty Hunter was starving.  Not literally but close enough. The powers granted him by his master, Azazel, had completely repaired his bullet wounds, but like all things evil, those repairs came with a price. The re-growth of skin, bone and muscle tissue required protein and calcium; what the body could not find in his stomach, it would take from other sources.

“I have to stop for a minute.” Samuel had a habit of talking to the Colt like it was a person. To be honest, he wasn’t completely sure that once it wasn’t.

Just north of Chicago, in the small town of Waukegan, Samuel spotted a CITGO gas station. He looked down at his gauge, and decided that if he was going to feed himself, he would feed his mustang too.

He pulled up to one of the pumps and slid out.  His legs instantly buckled and his hands began to shake. I have to get something to eat.  Samuel forced himself to ignore his hunger pains and grabbed the pump. A man must feed his horse before himself.  He pressed the clutch but nothing happened.  Looking at the pump, his eyes caught a shiny sticker: Please pay first.

“When did the world get so untrusting?” As he walked to the station he passed an average looking young woman. Their eyes met and held.  For a moment Samuel thought he felt a shiver from the Colt, but with the shaking in his body he couldn’t be sure.

Moving quickly he picked up a few items to take the edge off until he could secure a suitable meal, and made his way to the counter.  A little boy was in line with his mother. Samuel liked the way the boy’s shoes lighted up.  He thought back to the kid he had to gun down. “This is how kids should look.”

“Look, Mommy, a black cowboy,” the kid shouted, while pointing at Samuel.

“Tommy, No!” The mother quickly pulled the boy’s arm down.  “I’m sorry, Sir. He’s into Westerns. He didn’t mean any offense.”

“It’s okay.” Samuel gave the kid a wink. “I was a cowboy, a hundred years ago.”

The mother stared at Samuel for a second, grabbed her son by the arm and then hurried out. “Guess I should’ve kept that small fact to myself,” he figured, as he watched the lady go back to her car. There was something about the sway of her hips that sparked a long sleeping part of him. As he admired the fullness of her backside, he noticed the young woman from before standing by her car, and looking in his direction.  Again he felt a slight tremor from the Colt.

“Excuse me, Sir.” The old clerk was motioning him forward. “Did you find everything you needed?”

“Yes… no. You have any non-sugary food?” If the Colt was giving him some kind of weird warning, then he needed food quickly. Candy bars and potato chips were no good. They would have his accelerated metabolism crashing in minutes.

“All we have is Beef Jerky, but no one seems…”

“I’ll take all you’ve got.” Samuel reached into his pocket, and then threw a hundred-dollar bill on the counter. “And I’ll take a box of those Flintstone’s vitamins too.”

As Samuel talked with the clerk, the young woman outside was having an entirely different conversation on her cell phone.

“Yes, he’s still in there. You better hurry; he looks like he’s going to shoot the clerk, not just rob him.”

“Can you describe him?”

“He’s a big black guy. With tattoos on his face and neck. He’s acting all wild, like he’s on drugs. He has an automatic weapon. It looks like one of them AR-15’s. Oh my God! He shot him! He shot him!”

“Police are on the way! Police are on…”

The young woman closed her phone and smiled. She really didn’t like to lie, but years of experience had taught her that sometimes even His agents had to sin a little to destroy soldiers of evil.
 
“Okay, Sir. That’s twenty packets of beef jerky, two pints of whole milk and one box of Flintstone’s multivitamins.”

The clerk started bagging the items.  The Hunter looked out the windows for the young lady, but she was no longer there.  For some reason seeing the woman gone only made the Hunter more nervous.

“Are those vitamins chewable?”

“Yes, Sir, and they come in five different fruit flavors.”

The Hunter ripped the top off the container, and with one hand began dumping dozens of pills into his mouth.  He motioned the clerk to skip the bag, and popped the top of the milk. As he guzzled the cold liquid down, he looked again outside. All he saw were the boy and his mother, still pumping gas. The Colt was silent, but his instincts were screaming.

He dropped the empty milk carton, grabbed his bag of jerky and headed for the door. Behind him the Clerk was yelling about his change. The Hunter waved him off.  The milk and the vitamins felt good on his stomach, but he knew it would take time for them to work into his system. At the moment he felt sluggish and vulnerable.

He stopped at the door and scanned the area. The street was empty. The mother with the great ass was on her phone, oblivious to the world around her, but the boy. The Hunter stared at the boy and knew something was wrong. The boy, who must have been at least seven, was completely still. Little boys are never still. The boy wasn’t facing him or his mother. The Hunter followed the boy’s line of sight. What is he looking at?

The Hunter’s angle was off. He pushed through the door and then caught the flicker of movement behind a parked truck.

“Shit!” The Colt began burning like a hot iron on his thigh. He flung the bag aside and opened his coat.

Later the boy would swear to his friends and his therapist that he saw the cowboy’s gun jump out of its holster and into the gunfighter’s open hand.

“Drop it!” The command seemed to come from all sides. If the voice thought the Hunter would simply surrender he was very wrong.

The Hunter quickly went down to one knee, just as a bullet whizzed into the spot his head used to be. The window behind him exploded, showering him with glass.  The Hunter fired into the truck sending sparks into the air. Like roaches fleeing the light, Police officers swarmed before him.

The mother screamed and hit the ground. The Hunter paid her no mind. He needed cover, but there were none. He rolled right and then left. He kept moving and kept firing. Two cops fell in tandem and then another, and another. His aim was supernatural, the cops’ weren’t, but there were more of them.

In ten seconds four cops were down, but more seemed to appear like magic. The air was hazy with smoke and stench of brimstone. A bullet drilled its way into the Hunter’s left shoulder. He paid it no mind. He knew before the battle was over many more pieces of led would join it. Rolling behind a trash can, the Hunter found a modicum of cover.  As officers died the Colt hummed. A second bullet slammed into the Hunter’s stomach, sending rivers of blood and milk streaming down his shirt.  
 
The Hunter stifled a scream; there was enough of that coming from the mother.

“No, Tommy! No!” she screamed.

The Hunter stole a glance, just as a third bullet took his right ear off.  To his trained eyes, the world seemed to move in slow motion. Tommy was running through the hail of bullets trying to reach whatever in his panicked mind passed for safety.  At that moment he spotted the young woman standing behind a wall of police officers. He felt the Colt strain to move his hand in her direction, but he knew the boy would never make it.

Ignoring the Colt, Samuel ran to the boy, tripped him off his feet, and covered him with his body. On top of the boy he felt multiple bullets slam into his back and spine.

The last thing he heard was the boy’s mother screaming for the police to stop. The last thing Samuel saw was the flashing lights of the boy’s shoes, and his final thoughts were, “My Jacob would’ve loved shoes like those.”

As day changed into night, those officers who survived could not comprehend what they witnessed. In the end reports were altered, and statements were edited to fit more with accepted reality, not with what actually happened. All mention of a foiled robbery was scrubbed from the official records. On June 28, 2013 six Waukegan police officers died in the line of duty against one crazed murder suspect from Chicago.  A mother and her son, along with half a dozen police officers would go into badly needed therapy.

 The body, labeled as John Doe, was taken to the Lake County Coroner’s office, and in the evidence locker at the Waukegan Police Department, a silver Colt revolver began to vibrate.




TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 3