I jammed the gun into my belt. Red didn't give me a holster, so my pants sagged a little bit. We left his house, scanning everywhere. It was insanity. A few hours ago, I was just another wageslave at a restaurant. Now, I was seeing monsters and walking around with a loaded gun in my pants. We both scanned the street as we got into the old pickup. Red heaved a few bags into the bed, and started the engine.

"Do you know know to use that thing?" Red asked me belatedly as we drove towards my house.

"Left here. Yeah, I guess. I won't blow my nuts off."

"Good stuff."

I reached down, pulled it out, and hit the cylinder release. '.38+P' glinted on the brass in the amber glow of a streetlight. Six rounds, double action. I thumbed the cylinder back in, twisted it until I felt a click. I had shot with my dad when I was younger, but nothing really serious. A few weekends at the range, that's it.

Red parked right in front of my house, leaving the car on as I jogged across the lawn. I was still wearing my work clothes, so I hoped everything would be where I left it. Reaching into my left pocket, I pulled out my keys and quietly slipped into the house. I left the front door open, and tried to keep quiet. Hell, I didn't even know why I had the pistol.

My first stop was my room, where I stuffed clothes into a backpack and a gym bag, until they both almost burst. I grabbed some hiking boots,my laptop and threw them into the bed of the truck. I went back, thinking. Dad had some guns, but they were mostly rifles. Rifles aren't exactly something you can hide, and in a big city like Atlanta they would definitely raise a few eyebrows. I was thinking, but in a panic. I hated doing it, but I emptied the cash from Mom's purse, and headed for the garage. Dad slept with a pump shotgun close by, but it wasn't worth the risk.

I undid the lock on the gun safe, looked around. There was a bunch of rifles, another pump shotgun, a target pistol, and few handguns. I just grabbed the non-target pistols, all the ammo and the shotgun and a woodaxe. We had to go, we had to leave the city, never look back...

That's when things got sloppy. Both my arms were full- I had a shotgun slung over my back, an axe in one hand, a brace of pistols in their little boxes, and a pile of precariously stacked ammunition on top. It was a juggling act, and I never was much good with my hands. I dropped the axe going to a falling box of nine millimeter. I heard voices in the other room, and started running. Red just sat there, watching as I scooped up the axe, heaved everything into the back and dived across the hood. He peeled out, and as he did I saw the lights go on in my parents' bedroom.

I started feeling guilty, afraid and tired, but Red just looked supernaturally calm. Let me explain about Red- the entire time I'd known him up to this point, he'd been a scraggly, old, balding, greasy motherfucker. He was always angry, dirty, and cheap. He had been my boss at that dive, and I hadn't seen him as anything else. He seemed like everything I never wanted to be: old, bitter, stuck in a dead-end job doing nothing more than flipping burgers and yelling all day. But in the dark, that night, as I leapt into the truck, I saw he had his gun drawn. He had been ready to shoot another going after me. That surprised me, I guess. Gave me a newfound respect for him.

The road was long. We crossed the state line into Alabama at around four in the morning, by my watch. About ten minutes later, I saw a motel. It was a dirty-ass, ramshackle thing, but hey...we needed to sleep. Red was practically asleep at the wheel. We rented one room, hauled all our gear in. There was quite a bit of it, mostly weapons. Of course, this was backwoods Alabama, so no one looked twice, if there was anyone around. We spread it all out on the floor, took inventory. I had enough clothes for a few days, as did Red. There were about nine pistols total- a Glock 9mm, a Ruger .40, three 1911's, a Browning HP, and three revolvers. Two were .357's, like the one I carried (though mine was full of .38 wadcutters), and the last one was a .44 magnum. Three shotguns -my pump and two over-unders- and a dizzying array of sharp things also littered the floor.

Next to the weapons I had my laptop. I connected it, perched it on a large rucksack and started to surf the web. Red sat there on the threadbare carpet and cleaned each gun in turn with practiced hands. We had thousands of rounds of ammunition- mostly 9mm and .45, but a fair spread that could raise some eyebrows. He finished wiping down the Glock, loaded a magazine and chambered a round. He put it down beside me without a word, turned off the lights, and crawled into bed. So, I sat there in the darkness, basking in the pale light of my monitor until daybreak. It was clear what I was expected to do.