The Golden Age

The town of Walker, Nebraska hadn't seen much change in the eighteen years Sally Jennings had been alive, and she would be one to know – she'd lived there for her whole life. The town of two thousand people hadn't seen a new business since the early 1990s, when an elderly couple from Lincoln had moved there to settle down and open a coffee shop. Despite the initial doubts of locals, the shop had thrived, mostly because the residents of Walker had been quick to bring the folks into their lives once they realized that they were good people.

It was in that coffee shop now that Sally found herself, a coffee table between her and the hardest thing she had ever had to do in her life. Across from her sat her boyfriend of four years, Frank Josephson, a boy who she had always thought she would marry one day before fate had twisted her life in a wonderful way.

All Sally had ever planned on in life was to stay in Walker and settle down with Frank, live on a farm and raise a family, ever since she first met him in first grade (though she'd never told him as much). But her parents had wanted much greater things for her; they'd pushed her to work hard in school, eventually prodding her to send in an application to Harvard University fifteen hundred miles away. She'd never expected anything to come of it; that is, until the thick packet from the admissions department showed up in her mailbox in early April. Her parents watching, she'd torn the paper open to see the letter within, and the contents lifted her into the sky and broke her heart at the same time. A full scholarship, for four years. They'd even pay for her to fly home at Christmas time.

But if she took it, it meant she'd have to leave that old dream behind.

It had taken her weeks of deliberation, but she'd finally come to a choice. She had to seize this chance, even if it meant that she had to put her old dream on hold for a few years. But doing so might mean breaking the heart of the young man who was all she'd ever wanted.

"Frank, there's something I have to tell you," she began, eyes cast downwards onto the table.

He stared at her lovingly as she brushed a strand of strawberry-blonde hair out of her face. "Sure, Sally. What is it?"

The door jingled as old Tom Welling walked in behind them. "Old" was a relative term with Tom; though his hair had long since faded to silver, he was still built like an ox. He'd been in town twenty years; in fact, he was Sally's neighbor, running the next farm down the road – a good two miles away, but nevertheless. She'd known him her whole life, and had confided more than one secret to his kind ears. Always good for a helping hand, Tom was a throwback to days of old, "when men were gentlemen and women were ladies," as he would say with a chuckle. Their eyes met as he strolled into the shop, and when her green eyes met his baby blues, it was like he understood exactly what she was going through. He gave her a smile and a wink, and for some reason, it made her feel better.

"Anyway," she continued as Tom sat down in a booth and struck up a conversation with Jerry, the owner, "I've decided what I'm going to do about Harvard."

Frank didn't breathe. Sally could barely bring herself to meet his eyes when she finally found the strength to speak.

"I'm going."

Sally almost swore she could see his heart break straight through his ribs. Frank deflated almost instantly, but he tried to cover it just as fast; he pulled himself back up, trying to pass off his sudden grief as something – anything – else.

"That's great! You'll love it there, Sal. You're gonna do so much, I'm jealous!" The words sounded so disingenuous to her ears.

"Frank, this doesn't mean the end of us. We can carry on over the phone; we can e-mail each other, and I'll be home at Christmas and during the summer-"

He snorted, his anger beginning to bubble up. "We could, but it won't work. We can't do something like this over two thousand miles – it just won't work."

"It will when you love someone enough," she said, barely above a whisper as a tear trickled down her cheek.

But it was too late; he was already standing up to go. Sally knew it wasn't the end; he would cool down, and besides, they had the whole summer to spend together. She made no move to stop him as he brushed by her-

-but he stopped anyway, pausing in midstride as a pair of men, each uglier than the other, rushed into the coffee shop. Each one of them clutched a pistol in their hands, and they waved them across the coffee house as diners sat up and took notice.

"All right, everybody, sit down and shut the hell up!" screamed the taller of the two men, his eyes scanning the room. "We're gonna take what we want, and anybody who gets in our way eats lead, y'all understand?" Sally felt her heart beat twice as fast as it ever had before, praying that the men wouldn't notice her. She tried as hard as she could to be small as possible, biting her lip to keep from screaming at the sheer sensation of being next to these horrible men.

The second man waved his gun at Frank, five feet away and the most obvious threat, though he looked more like a deer in the headlights at this point. "Sit down, asshole, or you'll be lying down." His lecherous eyes tracked sideways to Sally; she averted her gaze, but to no avail. The man snickered. "And then maybe I'll have some fun with your girlfriend here."

Frank snarled, "Don't you touch her!" as he leapt towards the man; idiot, was the only though that came to Sally's mind –

-as the gun roared, and Frank fell.

Now Sally screamed, and suddenly everything seemed to happen faster than she could imagine; she couldn't make sense of it, but it didn't matter anymore, he was dying, his blood spreading over the linoleum, she could hear the air gurgle in his lungs as he tried to breathe, she fell over him, crying –

-she barely heard the other robber cry at Jerry, but saw out of the corner of her eye as Jerry tried to talk them down; the other gun spat fire, and Jerry fell to the ground too, dead fast as the bullet had gone through his brain –

-she was looking that way now, sobbing incoherently as she tried to put her hands over the bullet wound in her lover's chest to stop the bleeding but not knowing what it would do, and she saw Tom, who had been frozen in fear, spring to his feet over Jerry's body, eyes glazed with rage as he snarled at the murderers-

-she saw both men swing their guns in Tom's direction as he stepped towards them, fists balled at his side, uncaring-

-he saw both pistols bark; at that range, they couldn't miss-

-but she didn't see Tom fall.

Neither did the robbers. All that happened was a pair of tears appeared on Tom's shirt, as if the bullets had gone through it but bounced off his skin.

But that was impossible.

But any concept of sanity quickly flew out the window as both robbers opened up as fast as they could squeeze their triggers, only to watch as each slug bounced off Tom's chest, his face, his arms, ricocheting into the floor, walls and ceiling as he closed on them.

First one pistol, then the other ran dry, and the two men could only stare as Tom stepped within arm's length of them. He seemed to stare at them for a long moment –

-and their guns were gone.

It was half a second later that the tow men each let out a scream as they realized that their trigger fingers were shattered; Sally shifted her gaze down, and saw one gun gripped in each of Tom's hands. They clenched, and the guns crumpled with a shriek of metal before he dropped them to the ground.

One of the robbers turned and dashed out the door, shrieking in fear. The other was rooted in place, unmoving, unspeaking, just shaking as Tom glared down at him in fury. His fist shook at his side as he tensed it as tight as he could; he pulled it back slowly, deliberately, readying for a final blow – his fist whipped out with lightening speed, faster than the eye could see on a course for the man's face –

-but it stopped an inch away from the man's nose.

The robber almost seemed relieved for a moment – until Tom flicked his second and third fingers out, catching the man upside the head and knocking him backwards through the plate glass window with startling force.

Tom turned, and saw Sally staring up at him, not believing her senses. Their eyes met again, and this time, his seemed to beg forgiveness; until the sound of an engine roaring split the moment, and Tom whipped his head upwards to watch the other murderer race away down the street a pickup truck. Tom set his jaw.

Then he was gone.

The air cracked like thunder as Tom suddenly appeared in front of the truck; the man slammed on the brakes, but there wasn't time to avoid an impact. The truck hit Tom with a shriek of tortured metal as the front end bent around him, the engine forcing itself back into the cab. He punched through the broken windshield easily, tearing the seatbelt off the man and hauling him out of the car as if he weighed nothing before dropping him to the pavement violently. The man looked up at Tom from his knees, his hands clasped in front of his face as the blood poured down his nose from where it had broken hitting the steering column. He couldn't bring himself to speak; he just laid on his knees and begged, tears and blood mixing. It was the most pitiful sight Tom had seen in over sixty years, and for a second, he remembered yet another reason why he had stopped doing…this. The fear he created, just doing what he could do.

Tom shoved the man to the ground, holding him down with his foot. "Stay down," he growled, his voice an angry baritone an octave lower than normal. He could hear the distant sound of a siren as the sheriff headed in towards town at high speed, hoping to do whatever he could. Tom knew that he couldn't be seen at the scene, and he prayed that nobody would ask too many questions. But this was probably the last day he could spend in Walker.

He stepped away from the criminal and cast his eyes to the heavens for a long moment, eyeing it carefully. He dropped his head back down and started to bend his knees – only to see Sally, covered in Frank's blood, staring at him from outside the coffee shop, eyes begging for answers but unable to speak. For a second, he straightened up, but he didn't know what to say. What on earth could he say, to this little girl who reminded him so much of his first love that it terrified him sometimes? People didn't believe in heroes anymore. Not his kind, anyway. They were a type someone like her had never known, and couldn't understand.

So he dropped back into a crouch, cast his eyes up towards the heavens, and shot skyward like a rocket, leaving a dull boom to settle over the town and the even more confused girl in his wake.