Julie slid the clip back into the pistol and chambered another round. She didn't want to shoot Mr. Garza too, but she would if she had to, so she leveled the gun at the doorway and waited. When Mr. Garza appeared, he had a shotgun raised.
The man saw his dead daughter straight away, and Julie watched the conflicting emotions of pain and rage and grief battling it out behind his eyes. In the end rage won out, and she knew he was going to shoot even before he did. She threw herself to the side, like Bruce Willis in a Die Hard movie, and a blast of buckshot filled the air she had occupied a split second earlier. It wasn't a completely successful dodge, however, as a few pellets bit into her left shoulder and another stung her in the base of her neck, but landing on her side, mostly out of harm's way, Julie returned fire. Two carefully calculated shots punched into Mr. Garza's chest, and he dropped his shotgun and disappeared into the hallway.
Picking herself up off the floor, Julie took time to assess the damage. She wore a denim vest that left her shoulders and belly bare, so she had a good view of the wounds, which appeared small and not terribly serious. She couldn't get a look at the hole in her neck, but she touched her fingers to it to gauge the flow of blood, and it didn't seem much worse than the others. "I'll be okay," she whispered to herself, then looked back at Debbie. She wished Debbie would be okay too. "I'm sorry, friend, you didn't deserve this." On the heels of that, "I didn't deserve this."
Julie cautiously made her way to the hallway, her gun still up and out in front of her, expecting to see Mr. Garza sprawled out dead, but preparing herself for anything. What she discovered was Mr. Garza wasn't there at all. A few spatters of blood left a trail down the hall and to the master bedroom on the left. Farther down and to the right was the kitchen, and straight ahead was the living room. The living room connected to the foyer, and beyond that was the driveway and her yellow VW buggy, but it wouldn't do to get ambushed en route, so she crept along the hallway exhibiting the same level of caution.
When she reached the bedroom doorway she swung into view, her pistol sweeping the area in front her, emulating the motions of every cop she had ever seen on TV. Mr. Garza was still nowhere in sight. Julie stepped through the door and swept left, then right, clearing the room and seeing nothing of note. It wasn't until she retreated a step and turned to leave that Mr. Garza made his presence known. She didn't see him pop up from behind the bed, as her back was to him, but she heard his .357 magnum explode like thunder, and she felt the slug catch her in the lower back and barrel through her intestines until it erupted from her abdomen. Julie squealed with surprise, but her reaction was swift and measured. She spun around fast as a top and put a bullet through Mr. Garza's right eye.
With the threat eliminated, Julie had time to examine the exit wound in her belly. As before, her revealing choice of attire gave her a clear view, and the gaping hole was a gruesome and messy thing, about the size of a fifty-cent piece, a little off to the right of her navel, and in between spurts of blood Julie thought she could see her entrails trying to squirm through the opening. She pressed her palm against it in hopes of stemming her blood loss and keeping her guts where they belonged, and she stowed her Beretta in the front pocket of her jeans.
She was down to three rounds, and since she was going on the lam she figured she'd need more firepower, so she walked over and plucked Mr. Garza' Smith and Wesson magnum from his cold dead fingers and stuffed it through the waist band of her jeans. "Fuck, why'd you hafta do that, Mr. Garza?"
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