Acts of Nature

red bloomed on his upper chest as he went down. The shotgun clattered forward across the wooden planks and came to a sudden stop under the foot of the man with the jacket. The other one was still in a military firing position, both hands steadying his handgun and then, as if he’d seen him all along, the big man shifted the sights of the weapon onto Buck, who was thirty feet away in the swamp, his feet still, his eyes trying to decipher what had just happened.
    “Don’t move, asshole!” the SWAT guy said, and then started moving down the deck, stepping then sliding, shuffling his feet, keeping a stance and a balance as if he’d been trained and did this kind of thing every day: drop out of the sky, shoot a kid in the chest.
    Buck had his hands up in response to the man’s pointed gun. He still held the .45, now high and over his head, pointing at the still-lightening sky. The man was nearly even with him when, back behind all of them, Buck saw Marcus come out from around the east corner. The kid was bent half over, his right arm extended out in front of him, the end looking like a bloody stump. The boy’s face, though, was up, and in his eyes were an odd look of shock and a plea for help.
    “Jesus,” the jacket man said and the tone of his voice and maybe the look on Buck’s face caused the SWAT guy to turn his head. And that’s when Buck shot the big man in the back, the .45 roaring.
    The second shot hit SWAT man as he spun, entering his face just below the cheekbone and at an upward angle exiting at his sideburn, the big caliber round removing his ear at the same time. The third shot dropped him to his knees, where he melted in a heap.
    Buck did not like guns, never had. But that did not mean he was inept at their use.
    After the third recoil he swung the sights back down the deck to where jacket man was. This one had been unarmed when he arrived but now he had the over-and-under twelve- gauge shotgun in one hand and bloody Marcus in the other. He had the kid’s neck in a hold and had positioned him as a shield. He seemed fixed that way, his knee down on one of the bags they’d dropped, holding the kid, figuring he was protection of some kind. Buck held the .45 on them both as he climbed out of the swamp and onto the deck. He seemed incredibly calm as he stepped over Wayne’s crumpled body. The kid was whimpering and seemed to be shrinking by the minute, gone fetal, folding up on himself, like a balloon leaking air. Buck stopped short of the SWAT man’s body and did not look down at it. Somewhere in the background he thought he heard music. But his eyes were on jacket man’s eyes.
    “Well, sir,” Buck said, reverting back to what he thought of as southern charm even if it was now heavily bloodstained. Still, sometimes just the feel of the words in his own mouth made him calm, calculating. “I ain’t sure who you are, mister. But it appears we are in what they call a Mexican standoff.”
    Jacket man said nothing, his finger poised on the trigger of the shotgun. Buck slid his eyes away from the gun and looked at the boy. The kid was still alive but from this distance Buck could now see that most of Marcus’s fingers on his right hand were gone, sheared off at the joints, the stubs all bleeding heavily and dripping onto his shirt. He did not feel any sympathy. Yes, they had an almost familial connection, most of the real Gladesmen from the Ten Thousand Islands did. But it wasn’t enough in these modern times. The world had gone small. People bumpin’ up into people now that they would never have known even existed before. People grabbin’ for what they considered their share. Buck had seen men turn on their own before over greed. He’d seen white supremacists shiv one another in prison. He’d seen black gang members rape other blacks. If he had to put a .45 round through the kid to take out the man behind him, he would.
    “But what you don’t realize, sir,” Buck continued, “is that there is a still a cop and his partner inside that there storage bin of yours. Now I’m sure you don’t want him or her surviving to let on about your stash of cocaine or pot or meth or whatever the hell it is you got in there. And considering we’re two armed against them unarmed, maybe we could come to some kind of a share and share alike understanding?”
    The man in the jacket still said nothing. Maybe he was pondering the offer. Maybe there was some hope to the situation. Then the man nodded his head