Julie Goes on the Lam


It was a beautiful late summer night in West Texas, the air cool and moist in the aftermath of the earlier thunderstorm. It was one of those storms that dumped buckets for twenty or thirty minutes before vanishing as quickly as it had appeared, and now the stars were out. Julie garbed herself in some light cotton pajama bottoms, colored with blue and white plaid, and a snug plain white tank that stopped just short of covering her midriff, and stepped into the backyard.

Her feet were bare, and the wet grass felt pleasant between her toes as the fresh night air lapped coolly at the exposed skin around her navel. It was hot inside, as her parents had decided there was no need to use the a/c after dark anymore, never mind that it was the middle of August and temperatures still regularly soared into the high nineties, so she enjoyed the chill. She plopped herself down in her comfy outdoor recliner and stretched out, relishing the dampness at her back. Staring up at the starry night, she let her mind wander.

Her thoughts were mostly positive, as one might expect from a bright and beautiful seventeen-year-old girl. Her senior year of high school was less than two weeks away, and she had already been accepted into UTEP, UT, Texas A&M, and Texas Tech, and all but UT had offered her a basketball scholarship. Still, she was holding out hope that Georgetown, her dream school, would reply later this year. Her major was undecided, although she was leaning towards business. There was also her final year of high school basketball to look forward to. The culmination of all her hard work on the hardwood and three years of building team chemistry was bound to pay off, and she just knew they'd win state. Not to mention the NFL's preseason was underway, and she was eagerly anticipating tomorrow's game between Oakland and Denver. Would her Raiders finally give her something to cheer about this year? Anything was possible, she supposed.

Then, without any discernible segue, Julie began to contemplate the vastness of the universe. There was no end to what she saw up there, but yet it was less than a grain of sand on the world's largest beach. It was too much to wrap her head around. Was there a God, she wondered, who had created all this, and if so, why? She believed there was a God, or perhaps she only wanted to believe, but she often had doubts, and this night was no exception. What if there was no God? What would death be like? Would she just be gone, forever? That thought scared her more than she cared to admit. Luckily she was young, and she needn't worry herself too much over the answers to those questions for quite some time.

After nearly thirty minutes of allowing her thoughts to meander aimlessly, drowsiness began to set in, and Julie went back inside and threw herself on her bed. It was a quarter after eleven.




At 3:43 AM on the twelfth of August, Julie woke to the sounds of the Spice Girls. It was Jessi's ringtone, one of Julie's best friends and her teammate on both the girls' basketball and softball teams, and even though Julie was extremely perturbed at having her sleep disturbed at this ungodly hour, she answered the call. She'd later have time to contemplate how things might've turned out if she had just ignored it and gone back to sleep, but at the time she was thankful that she did answer. Jessi clearly needed help.

"I can't do it," Jessi said, her voice cracking with tears.

"Whu... Jess, what are you talking about? It's fucking three in the morning."

"I'm sorry. I can't..."

"What do you mean? Jess, what are you sorry for? What can't you do?"

"I just... I can't keep doing this. I don't know what else to do."

Julie furrowed her brow in befuddlement, then smirked, thinking she had it figured out. "Are you drunk?" There was no response. Only sniffles. "Jess?"

"No," came the tiny voice from the other line, more pained than before.

"Jessi, baby, you're scaring me. What's going on? Talk to me."

"I'm sorry, Julie... I shouldn't have called." Then the line went dead.

Well fuck. There's no way I'm going back to sleep now, Julie thought, and she climbed out of bed and slipped on her white flip flops. She had an old Honda she had bought just six weeks earlier, after pinching pennies from her part time job at Whataburger for the better part of a year, and she snatched up her keys and headed out.

Jessi lived just five blocks away, walking distance, and Julie had walked that distance on many occasions, but this morning she drove, because if there was ever a phone call that screamed urgency, it was the one she had just answered. Ninety-seven seconds after losing the connection, Julie pulled into the driveway where Jessi lived with her father.

The front door was out of the question, because Jessi's father was a grade A asshole, and Julie didn't feel like explaining to him why she was visiting his daughter at a quarter 'til four in the morning, so she went round the side of the house to the backyard. The laundry room window had a faulty lock, and if you jiggled it just right it would fall open. Julie had done it more than a dozen times through the years, and on this fateful morning it took her less than twenty seconds. She removed the screen and climbed inside.

The laundry room connected to a hallway, and at the far end was Jessi's bedroom. The door was closed, but Julie didn't bother knocking. Jessi barely even seemed to notice when Julie entered the room, completely unannounced and uninvited. Jessica Connors was sitting on her bed wiping away her tears, her cheeks were red, her brown eyes were bloodshot, and her chestnut hair was tussled and tangled. On the bed beside her was a Glock nine millimeter; her father's.

"Jess," Julie began, careful to keep her voice low and steady. "I'm here for you. Let's just talk, okay?"

Jessica looked up at her and rubbed a finger under her nose. "He raped me, Julie." Her voice was small and trembling, and the words broke Julie's heart.

"Who raped you?" she felt compelled to ask, although she was certain it was that rotten bastard she called a boyfriend, Ronnie.

Instead of answering the question, Jessi just said, "He shouldn't have raped me."

"Of course he shouldn't have, sweetie." She felt cold inside. How was she supposed to comfort her friend after something like this? No wonder the poor thing was suicidal.

"Why did he do it?"

Julie didn't have an answer for that. At least not one she felt comfortable saying out loud. Because Ronnie's a self-centered, egotistical asshole who only thinks of himself, she thought. "I don't know, Jess, but you need to report it to the police. I'll go with you. Shit, I'll fucking drive you there right now."

"I can't."

"Yes you can, Jessi. You have to. I know it's hard but you can do this."

Jessi was shaking her head and the tears had begun to flow again. Her hand went to the pistol resting by her thigh, and Julie took a step towards her.

"Jess, don't."

"You don't understand," Jessica said, and she raised the gun, giving Julie pause.

"I do understand. I mean I don't. I mean I haven't been raped, but... Jess, come on. You're gonna get through this."

With the barrel of the gun now resting against her temple, Jess continued, "No, I mean you don't understand. He's my dad."

Mortified, Julie hoped it was that last sentence she didn't understand, but she could not find a response.

"He's supposed to protect me. He's supposed to be the one person I know I can trust. How could he do this to me?"

Breathless, Julie managed, "Jesus, Jessi, I'm so sorry."

"How am I ever going to trust anyone? How am I going to feel safe?"

"You will, Jess, you gotta believe me. There are billions of fathers in the world, and some of them are great, some are not so great, and some are real pieces of shit. So you didn't win the father lottery, Jess, but you're smart and you're young and you're healthy and you got your whole life ahead of you. You're gonna get through this, I promise you. And I'll be beside you the whole way." Julie carefully and methodically advanced as she spoke, until she was standing within arm's length of her friend.

"I won't though. I can't. I have to do this." Julie saw that Jessi meant to finish this conversation with a bang, and she reacted.

Her reflexes had always been sharp, her coordination top notch, and her hands moved with a blinding quickness. It was one of the reasons she averaged 4.6 steals per game her Junior year. Before Jess could squeeze the trigger Julie grabbed the barrel of the gun and snatched it away. It wasn't a clean swipe, however, as Jessi lunged forward and tried to reclaim her father's piece. Both pairs of hands ended up on the barrel, until Julie shifted her right hand to the grip to improve her hold on the weapon. That was when disaster struck.

Their reckless tug-of-war with a loaded sidearm resulted in the gun going off, and the discharged bullet struck Jessica just below the hairline over her right eye. The mortally wounded girl flopped back onto her bed while Julie let out a startled shriek. She hadn't noticed touching the trigger, but had she? Maybe her finger had slipped during the struggle? Whatever the reason, in a cruel twist of fate her efforts to save her friend's life had backfired.

Amazingly, Jessi was not dead, but Julie could see the rapidly expanding pool of blood under her friend's head and knew the outlook was grim. "Jessi!" she screamed, and looking into Jessi's wide brown eyes, it was evident that the girl no longer wanted to die. Apparently a bullet in her brain had caused her to reconsider. But what could Julie do but watch the life fade away before her?

While Julie watched her friend die, Jessi's father decided to grace the girls with his presence. Julie's back was to him, but stealth was not within the man's skillset, and she knew he was coming well before he got there. Turning to face him, she could see the binge this man had been trying to sleep off as plainly as the nose on his face. He swayed slightly, his eyes were blood red, and there was too much color in his cheeks, but not even his drunken stupor could keep him entombed after the gunshot and Julie's scream.

Cradled in his arms was a twelve-gauge shotgun, and Julie knew instinctively what came next. She threw herself to the floor as the large gun bucked, and she felt a sting in her left shoulder, but she landed on her side and returned fire. Two well-placed shots struck Mr. Connors in the chest, and he dropped his shotgun and staggered backwards out of the room.

The threat neutralized, Julie turned back to her friend and saw her big glossy brown eyes staring wide at the ceiling, completely sightless. There was no life left in them. "Jessi! Oh my God, Jessi!" she cried, tears streaming down her smooth soft cheeks. "I'm so sorry!" Then she remembered Mr. Connors, and her grief turned to rage. Why should she be sorry? This was his fault. He was the asshole.

Julie turned back toward the doorway and saw the shotgun lying unattended. She glanced at her shoulder, and her tank top gave her a clear view of the three small holes left by the shotgun's buckshot. A fourth had left a groove in the left side of her neck, but none of her wounds appeared serious. Her bleeding was minimal, considering she had just been shot with a shotgun. Most of the shot had missed her, and she had her lightning quick reflexes and Mr. Connor's lingering inebriation to thank for that.

She stepped lightly to the door, found the hallway empty, and scooped up the twelve gauge. There was a doorway to Jessi's bathroom just a couple yards down the hall on the right, and across the hallway to the left was the guest bedroom. Julie swept the bathroom with the shotgun, emulating every cop she had ever seen on TV, and saw nothing awry. Turning her attention to the much larger bedroom, she hadn't even crossed the hall when she heard the boom of Mr. Connors' .357, and she felt a magnum slug punch into her lower back, barrel through her intestines, and leave an exit wound the size of a quarter to the right of her navel.

In spite of her grave injury, Julie's reaction was swift and deadly. She took a knee, pivoted one hundred and eighty degrees, and immediately found Mr. Connors behind the shower curtain. The barrel of the shotgun bore down on him and the kick nearly knocked Julie flat as she pulled the trigger. The bastard's head shrunk by half as brains and bone spattered the shower wall, and Julie felt her shredded innards lurch uncomfortably with the recoil.

Julie rocked back onto her buttocks, set down the shotgun, and peered at her tummy. As with her shoulder wounds, her skimpy tank top afforded her a clear view of the hole in her gut, but unlike her shoulder, her belly was bleeding much more profusely. She pressed a hand to the wound, hoping to stem the blood loss, and grimaced as her life poured out through her fingers. I'll be okay, she told herself, but she had bigger problems than being gut shot.

She had snuck into the Connors' home uninvited and killed both of its inhabitants. It was not a story she wanted to tell the police. Texas still executed people, and she was old enough to be tried as an adult. Am I going to die? "No," she said aloud, answering that dubious voice in her head. "I'm not gonna die." Badly frightened and not thinking clearly, Julie made the most critical decision of her young life. She decided to flee.

Figuring she would need firepower if she was going to be a fugitive, and seeing as how the recoil from the shotgun had nearly torn her apart, Julie got to her feet and went to where Mr. Connors lay in the bathtub. Gingerly bending over, one hand still clutching her belly, Julie plucked the revolver from the dead man's fingers. Checking the cylinder, she confirmed the other five chambers were live, then gave Mr. Connors' remains a kick in the groin before heading back to where she had left the Glock, and she tucked that pistol into the waistband of her pj's, the grip resting against the small of her back.

She cast one last lingering glance back towards Jessi's room, whispered, "I'm sorry," and walked out the front door.

There were no lights on at any of the neighboring houses, but Julie didn't trust that as a firm indication that she was slipping away unseen. There could easily be a concerned citizen hiding behind the blinds of any number of windows, peering out at her. She kept her head down and held Mr. Connors' magnum low as she slid behind the wheel of her old Honda. Once she was driving she began to breathe a little easier, and the question became where she should go.

The gas tank was nearly full, the only stroke of luck afforded to her on this ill-fated morning, so she had plenty of options. Mexico's border was tauntingly close, but there were checkpoints there, and she was a bloody mess. There was no way she would pass through without raising suspicions, and who knew how long it would be before the cops had an APB on her. She decided to head north, into New Mexico, and take the farm roads through the desert, since the main highways were also blocked by checkpoints. Once she made it far enough to avoid law enforcement's net, she would seek medical assistance.

When her wounds were stitched, she decided, she'd make a call to Joaquin, who ran a local street gang and knew people who could set her up with a new state ID, social security card, and even a birth certificate. One of the perks of being the hottest chick in school was all the guys kissed your ass, even if they did only want one thing from you. After a little over half an hour Julie was out of the city and off the pavement, traversing through dunes and mesquite bushes, and the bleeding in her belly had noticeably slowed. Her optimism began to return, and she saw a new future ahead of her. Perhaps college was not in the cards, or a state championship, but she would live, she would grow old, and that's what mattered.





It was around 5:30 in the morning when the light of dawn began to break, and Julie was beginning to worry once more. Her bleeding had slowed, but it hadn't stopped, and she had spilled an unhealthy amount of blood already. The entire right pant leg of her pj's was soaked through, and her car seat was starting to feel squishy from the wetness. She was also lost, and her cell phone was back home on her night stand. She wasn't sure she'd want it anyway, since the cops could use it to track her, but she was sorely in need of google maps at the moment. That nagging voice of doubt in the back of her head began to wonder if this might be the last sunrise she would ever see. No, she thought stubbornly, I am not going to die!

She needed medical attention soon, however, and she had no money, and that full tank of gas had dwindled to just around the one quarter mark. If she didn't happen upon a town in the next hour or two, she might be stuck out here in the middle of nowhere, slowly bleeding to death. That was not an encouraging prospect. A fork presented itself before her, and she bore right, keeping the light of dawn to her right. If she kept moving north, sooner or later she was bound to hit pavement.

Twenty more minutes passed and the sun began to peek over the horizon, but still Julie saw only empty desert. Her worry grew, and that nagging voice in the back of her head spoke more and more frequently, asking if she was going to die. "I can't die," she murmured to herself. "I won't die." Eventually the road ended in a T, but still no pavement and no sign of civilization, and Julie was presented with another choice.

East or West? Right or left? Julie went West, heading deeper into New Mexico, and praying for a change of luck, asking God to help her elude the law and preserve her life, and in return she promised... what, exactly? She wondered. Living a lie, dodging justice, even if her sentence might not be just, could not be considered godly. Why would God, if He did exist, help her? But she asked nonetheless, because she was frightened and desperate, and maybe God did offer a bit of help after all, or maybe she was just due for a turn in luck, but at 6:42 AM, with less than an eighth of a tank of gas, Julie reached pavement. A sign told her the town of Pinon was thirty-three miles ahead, and she felt a knot in her chest loosen. She could make it. Just barely, but she had enough gas to travel another thirty-three miles.

Sure enough, as the needle dipped below the e, she started to see buildings. Rundown and downtrodden homes dotted the land, with rusting farm equipment and junked cars decorating lots overrun with weeds, and on the far side of the town, which amounted to little more than a few homes and a post office, was a small mom and pop operation with four pumps and a liquor store. The lot was cracked and cheatgrass poked its fingers through where it could, the store a shamble of a building, with siding crumbling and paint peeling. It made for foreboding scenery, but a happier sight Julie could not recall.

Rolling into the parking lot, she had to decide, once and for all, what she believed. If there was a God, as she had been told all her life, then she should turn herself in, and no matter the verdict, she could face her maker with a clear conscious and nothing to fear. Although there was that pesky thou shalt not kill commandment - there were varying interpretations about whether or not self defense got you off the hook for that one. And what about accidental kills, like when you were trying to save your friend's life but you ended up blowing her brains out? Julie just didn't know, but she did know that if she went ahead with what she had planned, it would fly in the face of everything she had been told God wanted from His children.

So, should she stop running and risk the rest of her life on the chance that God was real, and her reward in the afterlife was far greater than anything she'd encounter in this world, or should she fight for her life and her freedom, using any means necessary? It surprised her how little faith she actually had, and how easy this decision ended up being.

She pulled up alongside pump number one and clamored out of her car. There was a moment of vertigo when she almost took a nasty spill, the blood loss and hours of cramped muscles colluding against her, but she held tightly to the driver side door until she found her balance. She left the bulky revolver on the seat, checked to make sure the Glock was still tucked into the waist band behind her, and then lurched across the parking lot.

The store was mostly deserted, excepting an elderly woman behind the register, and a similarly aged man taking stock of the liquor bottles. When Julie entered they both turned their attention to her, and their concern was immediately apparent. She supposed it wasn't every day that a teenage girl covered in blood limped into their store.

"Mercy, honey, let me help you," the woman said, stepping out from behind the register. The man appeared to have an entirely different concern, eyeballing Julie with cautious suspicion. Julie immediately proved his instincts correct, as she pulled the pistol from behind her back and waved it at them both.

"You, on the ground, now!" she shouted at the old man, and then to the woman, who had already begun retreating, "Turn on pump number one, and empty the register." The woman looked ready enough to comply, and the old man got grudgingly to his knees. His scowl could melt the ice caps, but he moved too slowly to be a threat. Julie's real concern was what was happening outside. The last thing she needed was some do-good customer cruising in, sticking their nose in her mess. As the woman punched some buttons and began stuffing bills in a plastic bag, Julie's stunning blue eyes flicked back and forth, sparing nervous glances at the parking lot, constantly expecting a car to roll up, or even worse, a sheriff or state trooper deciding to check in on his favorite haunt, maybe to pick up some coffee and a bear claw.

She never saw the old man pull a .32 out of his boot, and when she did catch motion in her peripheral vision, by the time she had turned in his direction he already had a bead on her. She opened her mouth to give voice to some sort of objection, but the pistol shot cracked loudly in the confines of the store, and Julie just managed to grunt as she caught the bullet in her gut. Much like her reaction to being shot the previous two times that day, Julie retaliated with swift and deadly force. The Glock was leveled and spit lead with pinpoint accuracy, striking the old man's dome and knocking him dead.

With the old kook out of the fight, Julie looked down to see a fresh hole in the upper left side of her stomach, spilling rivulets of blood down her belly. "Motherfucker, are you fucking serious?" She looked at the old woman and complained, "This is just not my fucking day."

The woman looked at Julie like she was the devil herself, then threw the shopping bag full of dollars and turned to run. The old woman was slow, she was scared, and she was not a threat, but Julie felt herself go cold as she shot the woman in the back. Who knew what would happen if the woman ran screaming into the street, so Julie did what she must in the interest of self-preservation. When the old woman went down, Julie staggered over to her and put another shot in the back of her head, just to be sure.

With that done, she took a moment to gather her thoughts. She had begun the day an honest girl, trying to save the life of a friend, and now she was a cold-blooded murderer. It was almost funny, if it wasn't so desperately tragic. Again she wondered if there was a God, and decided she was surely damned if there was. There was no time to dwell on that now, however. There were now two holes in her midriff instead of one, and she had a crime scene to conceal.

She drug the woman's carcass across the floor, leaving her hidden between the snack and candy aisles, then pulled the remains of the man deeper into the store, so that neither of them could be seen from the front door or windows. She found a mop in a storage room behind the counter and mopped up the streaks of blood marring the tiles, then took a roll of toilet paper and pressed it to the fresh wound in her abdomen. The keys to the store she found in the old man's jeans, and she pilfered a liter of coke before flipping the sign on the door around to say closed and locking up. The soda she used to splash away the blood she had left on the pavement outside, and when she was back at her Honda she removed the gas cap and hoped - she no longer saw any point in praying - that the old woman had done as she asked.

When she squeezed the handle the pump sprang to life, and Julie let out a deep breath. Still, as the gas flowed she couldn't stop herself from looking up and down the road, constantly expecting someone to come running to see what all the commotion was, and they would find her, bleeding like a stuck pig while casually filling up her tank. How long would it be before they discovered the carnage in the liquor store?

But no one came. Apparently the town was too spread out and too sparsely populated for the gunshots to be heard. With a full tank of gas, Julie plopped back into the driver's seat and closed the door.

She looked at the roll of toilet paper, which was now completely soaked through and beginning to drip, and tossed it aside. God, there was so much blood. She felt around on her back and right side, trying to find an exit wound, and realized the old man's bullet was still buried deep within her bowels. That not only meant it had expended all its kinetic energy ripping through her guts, but it also meant she'd need someone to dig that hunk of lead out of her, and she'd have to endure it, conscious and alert. She couldn't trust anyone putting her under, or she'd no doubt wake up in police custody.

"Lovely," she whispered. This was a grim prospect, but there was no use worrying about it now. First she needed to get the fuck out of town, and then she could find a secluded ranch or farm house, where she would persuade whomever dwelled there to help her out of this predicament. She left the gas station, wiping away a few tears that she shed for the elderly couple left dead in her wake, and continued west, deeper into New Mexico.

For a couple of hours she did nothing but drive, not stopping to use the restroom, not stopping to rest, not even slowing when she passed a state trooper thirty miles outside of Hatch. She was fiercely thirsty, but hesitant to take a drink on account of the hole in her stomach. Time passed and the road peeled away beneath her, and she bled. Jesus, there was so much blood. How much of it could she afford to lose, she wondered? With nothing to do but drive and think, her mind kept returning to her own mortality, and the very real possibility that she might be dying.

"I'm not gonna die. I'm going to live," she muttered at least three dozen times during the course of those few hours, until at last she felt she could drive no farther. She had become so light headed she feared she might lose consciousness and end up in a ditch, so she turned down a long dirt driveway that led to a farm house hidden amongst several orchards. It had the look of a family home, which would suit her needs just fine; a two story house with a patio, a tire swing, white trim and a fine upkeep. She only hoped its inhabitants weren't armed, but given this was rural America, she knew that was a long shot.

Parking just out of sight and sneaking stealthily up to a bedroom window would have been ideal, but she lacked the strength, so instead she simply drove right up to the front porch steps and pulled herself from the blood-soaked car. The bulky revolver she left on the floorboards, not trusting her strength to wield it, and kept the Glock tucked up against the small of her back. Climbing the steps to the patio was like scaling Mount Everest, but she persevered. Her conspicuous approach had evidently not gone unnoticed, as the front door flew open before she could cross the porch.

It was a woman in her late thirties, wearing a worried frown and a yellow summer dress, and much like the woman in the liquor store, her concern for Julie's well-being was immediately apparent. Julie felt a pang of guilt as she drew her pistol and stopped the woman in her tracks. "Who else is home?" she demanded, exerting all her effort just to hold the Glock steady.

"Just me and my husband," the woman told her, and Julie felt the knots in her stomach tighten. The way this day was going, the husband was probably already armed and about to plug her, hiding behind some window somewhere.

"Where is he?" Julie growled, shocked at how desperate she sounded.

"Sweetie, you don't have to do this. We'll help you. I know you're in trouble, but..."

"You don't know shit," Julie interrupted. "I've been shot three times and killed four people today, so don't fuck with me right now. Where's your husband?"

The woman was taken aback, her mouth just hanging open for a moment, and then she answered hoarsely, "He's in the kitchen, eating lunch."

"Take me to him."

They went inside and found a middle-aged man with a mop of graying black hair and leathery skin eating a sandwich and reading a book in the kitchen. He scarcely seemed to notice when his wife entered the room. "Honey," she told him, and he looked up, his expression that of a man who hasn't seen excitement in nearly twenty years, and then he saw Julie and went white as a ghost.

"What's this?" he asked, his eyes on the gun Julie wielded.

"Come into the living room," Julie told them. "Bring two of these chairs." She motioned at the wooden chairs surrounding the kitchen table. They did as she bid, and once in the living room she asked the husband if he had any rope. He said he had some in his truck, and she told him to retrieve it. Standing in the doorway watching him, she held his wife in front of her, a gun at the woman's head, and yet she still expected him to come out of the truck with a rifle in hand, blasting away. It was just one of those days. But instead of a rifle, he came out of the truck with a neatly coiled length of rope and a survival knife to cut it, and they all went back into the living room without incident.

Julie instructed the woman to tie her husband to one of the chairs, and she complied while Julie watched closely, testing the knots for tightness and providing further instruction when needed. She then had the woman, whose name she learned was Carol, sit in the other chair and went to work securing her. She started by tying Carol's ankles to the cross bar that connected the legs of the chair, then went to work fastening the woman's hands to the backrest. The work was nearly complete when Julie was shot for the fourth time that day.

She was bent over at the waist, her back to most of the living room as she worked on the knots, when she heard what sounded more like a firecracker than a gunshot, and felt something sting her in the back of her right thigh. Julie stood up, reaching for her hamstring, and she was shot again. This time the bullet entered the far right side of her back as her torso was partially twisted around, and it traveled diagonally through her body, narrowly missing her spine. Her pistol was resting on the sofa to her right, and she quickly scooped it up and turned to face her shooter, just in time to catch another round in her stomach, beneath the left side of her rib cage.

She saw her target for only a split second before she fired, a small boy no older than eleven, and for the first time that day she missed. It might have been the boy's age that affected her aim, or maybe her diminished health, but the bullet smashed through the dry wall behind his head. He was wielding a .22 air rifle, which he promptly dropped at his feet.

"Oh my God, you're beautiful," the boy said.

Julie gave him a tired smile, and quipped, "Thanks, kid. I guess you might say I'm disarmingly beautiful."

"Are you dying?" the kid asked.

Julie wasn't sure how to answer that. There were now three bullets lodged in her torso that someone would have to dig out. Was there any hope it could be done without a visit to the emergency room? She thought it extremely unlikely. "I might be," she managed after a moment. Then that stubborn voice somewhere in the back of her head whispered to her, I can't die. I won't.

What Julie didn't know was that this kid had already effectively killed her. His second bullet had torn a hole in her liver, and his third had ruptured the lining of her stomach. Even with a trip to the emergency room, without an organ donor and an exceptionally skilled surgeon, she would die, and her earlier exploits would ensure she'd never make it onto an organ donor recipient list.

Of course even if she had known this, Julie would have likely proceeded in much the same way. It just wasn't in her to give up and die. "Sit down, kid," Julie commanded weakly. She had used up all the rope tying the kid's parents, so she'd just have to hold him at gunpoint. Then she remembered why she had undertook this home invasion in the first place. "Who has a cell phone on them?"

"There's a land line in the kitchen," Carol told her.

"Even better, is it a cordless?"

Carol nodded.

To the boy, Julie said, "Go get the handset and bring it to your father." The boy jumped up and did as she asked. Then, to his father, she gave instructions. "Call your family physician. Tell him your boy accidentally shot Carol. Tell him you need him to make a house call, and you don't want the police involved. Tell him it's urgent."

"Her," Carol said.

"Excuse me?"

"Our physician is a female. Dr. Theresa Cordero."

"Her. Tell her it's urgent," Julie conceded.

She watched as the boy dialed and held the phone for his pa, and after a brief pause the old man spoke into the receiver, "Yes, this is Darrell, I need to speak with Dr. Cordero please... Sure, no problem, thanks." There was a considerable pause here, the silence in the room drawing out way past the point of being uncomfortable. Julie was about to remind them all she was dying here when the man spoke again, "Yes, Doctor, hi. It's Darrell. I have an emergency, but I really need to know I have your discretion... My boy, Billy, shot Carol with his rifle. I think it was an accident, but I really don't want the police involved. Do you think you can make a house call?" After another brief pause he said, "Yes ma'am," shortly followed by, "No ma'am," and then, "Thank you so much, and please hurry, it's urgent."

Julie breathed a sigh of relief as the boy punched a button and set the phone on a night stand. It was done. She could now relax a bit and wait for her much needed medical attention, and she began to actually believe the voice in her head that kept assuring her she would live. As the minutes passed, however, she began to feel the effects of her damaged stomach and liver. Her abdomen had been a steady source of throbbing pain ever since the .357 slug had ripped through the middle of her, but now the pain became unbearable, and the taste of warm saltiness filled the back of her throat. Sometime after she turned her head and spat out a mouthful of blood and bile, she lost consciousness.

She had no idea how long she was out, but when she came to the boy was straddling her, her shirt raised above her breasts, and he had the survival knife in hand. "Like what you see, kid?" she asked him.

"I thought your tits would be bigger," he said matter-of-factly.

"So did I," Julie answered sardonically.

"Why did you tie up my parents?"

"I needed help. I needed their help."

"They would have helped you. You didn't have to tie them up."

"Baby," Carol whispered, "come here."

Julie saw the kid was readying the knife in a stabbing position, and raised her eyebrows. "What're you gonna do with that, kiddo? You gonna stab me?" She didn't really think he'd do it, but she had apparently forgotten this was the same kid who shot her three times with a .22 air rifle. Instead of answering her question verbally, the boy slipped the knife into her belly just above her navel in one fluid motion. He pushed the blade all the way in, until the hilt was flush against her soft creamy skin. It happened so smoothly that Julie took a couple seconds to realize there was now twelve inches of steel buried in her gut.

"Oh. Wow," she muttered, "this is really not my day," and then she remembered she was still holding the Glock. Staring the boy dead in the eyes, she pressed the muzzle underneath his chin and squeezed the trigger. She saw the top of his skull fly off and his young, curious eyes go blank, and felt his little body go stiff In her lap. When she pushed him off her she heard the woman's blood-curdling scream, and saw that the boy's father had gone a sickly shade of gray. He seemed to have aged twenty years since his wife tied him to that chair. The knife handle jutting from her tummy held her attention, however, and she clutched it in both her hands and slowly pulled it from its fleshy sheath. A jettison of blood followed the blade out of her belly, as if she had buckets to spare.

Julie tossed the knife aside and clutched her belly tightly, and only then did she become consciously aware of the poor woman's screaming. I just murdered her only child, of course she's screaming. It amazed her that she had begun the day trying to save a life, and now she had murdered a fleeing old woman and a child defending his family, but that wasn't important right now. What was important was what the woman was screaming.

"PAUL! PAUL! PAUL!"

Just that one name, over and over. Who the fuck is Paul?[/i} Julie wondered. The woman's husband was named Darrell, and their son was named Billy. She had heard the phone conversation clearly. Then it hit her. Their son was named Paul, and the man had given his doctor a fake name to tip her off, which meant the doctor surely knew something was awry, and there was no medical assistance coming to save her. Which meant...

Julie pulled herself up off the couch and staggered over to the front window. She peeled back the curtain to peer outside, and barely had time to register the cop cars with their overhead lights flashing before a .762 millimeter bullet punched neatly through the pane of glass in front of her and zipped through her chest. She took a step back and looked at herself. She hadn't bothered to pull her tank top down, so her breasts were still bare and she could plainly see the hole where her right nipple had been.

"Oh shit," Julie remarked, the woman's screams tapering off at the sight of Julie's latest bullet wound. "They shot me in the nipple. My nipple's gone." She gave a stunned look to her captives and then laughed, although she couldn't have said why. The parents of the child she had just murdered did not share in her humor, and only glared at her unsympathetically, although the woman, Carol, seemed almost pleased that Julie had lost her nipple to a high caliber rifle round. When Julie's laughter transformed into a cough and blood sprayed from her lips, she could have sworn she caught the faintest of smiles on the woman's face.

"I guess I am gonna die, huh?" she finally admitted, although that stubborn voice in the back of her head still insisted, NO! YOU CAN'T DIE!. "I really don't want to die," she said calmly, and staggered forward through the living room. "Do you have a back door?" As she shuffled along she unwittingly passed back into the sniper's line of sight and she was shot for the eighth and final time that day. "Uh," she grunted, and looking down with wide blue eyes, she saw the exit wound on the inner curve of her left breast. "I think that took a piece of my heart with it," Julie remarked solemnly, and she fell to her knees. She looked back at the couple whose home she had invaded and offered an apology. "I'm sorry. I just wanted to help her."

She then collapsed face first on the floor, and after a brief struggle as she tried to crawl forward to some unknown destination, Julie finally died.