Lone Wolf

Presumably, his biological father lived. The man Evan had never laid eyes on. The man he had reason to believe was currently inside those four dilapidated walls. He had the taste of dirt in his mouth, sun-baked Texas mountain laurel, a taste of land foreign to him, the taste of another kind of life. The taste of poverty was familiar, despite the fact that his own childhood indigence had been of the urban variety. He recognized something here in the cracking cement boards that spoke to drafts, the dimpled roof that let in rain, the pink paint faded to pale nothingness that no one would ever bother to patch. It was the kind of brook that looked right back into you, into your worst parts, and told you that what you saw around you was a precise reflection of just how worthless you were and would always be. The mailbox spoke to drunkenness and disregard, its wooden posts snapped by a wayward bumper. Parked just beyond, at an arbitrary slant where in an alternate universe a front lawn might live, was a Ford F-150 not unlike Evan's. Except this one was dark blue, with rusting wheel wells and a dent in the right rear fender. The front door was shut against the sandpaper wind. A black trash bag that had replaced a window pane thrashed back and forth, and then fell still in the heavy heat. Blooming in his stomach was a kind of dread he'd nearly forgotten, a dread of private stakes and private consequences, of opening a door that could never again be shut. He stepped up onto the porch, the sagging boards rasping against the soles of his boots. Once he knocked on that door, he could never undo it. He searched for his breath, lost it, found it again. He knocked. A few seconds delay spoke to surprise that an unannounced visitor would trek to this edge of civilization. And then footsteps approaching. Two, same old, same old. The surprising thing about compiling weapons was how fucking expensive it was. You'd think from the lamestream media that any inbred mouth-breathing reprobate desirous of a good rampage could just go assemble a personal armory. But you gotta save up. 500 and change for a pump shotgun purchased in Texas to avoid registration. 75 bucks for a box of rifled slug cartridges, times 10 for a case of 250 if you're lucky enough to find it. 700 for a semi-auto shotgun bought at an Arizona gun show. 650 for a pistol, 30 bucks for each mag, and 100 a pop per box of 50 hollow point cartridges. Another 50 for a cleaning kit, and 125 for a supply of high quality springs. 1,750 bucks for a box magazine fed 5.56 millimeter NATO carbine, which he'd just picked up in Reno to circumvent California's restrictive gun laws, $50 for each magazine, and a grand for 1,000 practice ball rounds. Another 2K for a case of 1,000 hollow points, which were harder to find by the day, so by the time you're done gearing up to protect yourself, you could have bought a timeshare in Palm Springs. Hard to plan for, when the only gig you can find is working minimum wage in a fucking warehouse 29 hours a week. One shy of what you need to get health and benefits. The working conditions were for shit, too. Last week, a foreman literally suggested they wear adult diapers on shift, so they wouldn't waste time taking bathroom breaks. American born, raised in the prosperous 90s, now 43 years old. And this was what Martin Quinn had, 29 hours of work a week, and depends, with no prospect to ever get anything more. The world had stopped making sense to him. It used to be that if you busted your hump and kept your head down, you could make enough to cover rent and the cable bill, and maybe take a girl out for dinner and a movie on the weekend. Used to be that a high school graduate with some credits at community college could land a job that'd keep him above.