Gus Goes It Alone

by

T. N. Shaw

Clock ticking. Alarm bell ringing. Forty seconds to reach the sidewalk. Getaway car waiting. Engine idling. Carla at the wheel.

Everything was going to plan. Gus snatched the bag of money from the counter and strode unhurriedly through the trembling bodies lying face down on the bank’s parquet floor.

He’d done it.

Smiling, he headed towards the door. Partner? Never needed one. That pointless relationship had been severed this morning: two bullets in dumb Charlie’s chest. Boom, boom.

He emerged into bright sunlight and skipped down the steps to the car. A quick look back. No-one following. He opened the door and slid into the passenger seat.

“Why, Gus?”

A voice. But it wasn’t Carla’s.

A hand, dripping with sticky blood, holding a revolver.Gus looked into Charlie’s clouded blue eyes and recognised confusion, exhaustion, pain, and betrayal.

Through his peripheral vision Gus saw Carla sprawled across the back seat. Dead. Blood everywhere. It wasn’t meant to be like this.

The last thought that went through Gus’s mind was how Charlie, with two .38 slugs in him, had managed to drive a car. A dying Charlie wheezed, concentrated, and pulled the trigger.

Gus heard the gunshot but never felt it.

oOo

Bio:

T. N. Shaw was born in Yorkshire and lives in the Broad Acres with his wife and two daughters. A short story writer with a horror focus, he has been published by Wicked Shadow Press (Apocalyptales, Soulmate Syndrome, Masks of Sanity), Mortbury Press (The Eleventh Black Book of Horror), Phantasmagoria magazine, and has contributed to the on-going BHF Book of Horror Stories series. He is an eight-time Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards nominee for his non-fiction books, magazine interviews, and DVD commentaries.

Twitter @TonyEarnshaw
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Website: www.antonyearnshaw.wordpress.com

Image from the kick ass movie Dragged Across Concrete