rwx

Back in reno at the silver cloud. I've picked the hotel in the middle of town, because being in the middle of a lot of lights and people seems to be a good thing tonight.

we were about 10 miles south of Luning when we came upon it. There's a relatively bright moon tonight, and the snow on the ground made everything stand out in stark contrast. Lucky, because otherwise we would have rammed it.

jeff slammed on the brakes. It was tall, taller than me by about 10 feet. Things that big aren't just taller, they're proportionally huge. They're wider, and thicker. Think of an elephant -- it can't have legs like a giraffe because it's volume makes it heavy. This was ponderous, like a tank on two legs.

I was still trying to get untangled from the seatbelt as jeff pulled a u-turn. because the road was narrow, we couldn't get around it, and we couldn't even do a normal u-turn. While he stopped to back up, I put my gun out the window and fired at its legs. When I was taking medical training, they always impressed on us how important it was to stop bleeding to the legs. You get an artery cut, and you bleed to death inside yourself. Funny, the random things you think about. I also thought about that whole 'tori amos makes me want to be a piano bench' joke, but i shot all the bullets i had.

my brain. i've been puking since i got back and thinking about a woman i used to date who liked tori amos a lot. maybe too much. maybe we all want to be piano seats. hard to say.

but i shot it in the leg, and it went down for a second and then got back up, lumbering towards us. we should have headed north. the turnoff for Siobhn's house was south of town. It must have followed us, or cops we called. In the light of the moon you can't tell color, so it was grey like everything else in the landscape and featureless.

jeff started yelling something, i was trying to shove another magazine into my gun while we lurched back and forth in our turn. It was running at us when we finally got going.

we drove fast. when we stopped to refuel someplace south of reno we jumped out of the truck. We smelled like piss, vomit, and gunpowder.

jeff said he knew a man that began all this. while he fueled the car i grabbed new shirts out of the back. we left the gas station without paying, leaving our vomitty shirts behind on the tarmac. as we drove to this guy greg who jeff knew's house, i got more and more nervous. there are some things a man isn't meant to see, and one of my best friends spattered with vomit with piss-dark pants is a couple of them for me.

we went to gregs and knocked on the door, as he came up to check the door, i shot him through the window. i shot him a couple more times. i tossed one of those crappy terracotta potted plants that people in reno think are classy decor through the window. jeff and i went through, went running through the house in a couple of minutes. nothing was there, but more decorations like at jeff and siobhn's houses so we lit some candles and turned on the gas stove full blast and got out of there. shooting a man and watching him die sucking air isn't easy, but i had a reason.

but we're here, it's almost midnight, and we should be safe to see the dawn of another day. i hope.

i'll be back sometime. see you all around.