The Omnicron Imperative (Part II)

Continued from Part I

His grandfather, a successful oilman and landowner whose ranch encompassed most of Western Texas and portions of Southern Oklahoma, first taught him to fire a handgun on his seventh birthday. He was a natural. After a couple of wide shots he was flawlessly plunking tin cans off of rocks at 75 yards with the Webley Mark VI service revolver.

Later, after the ammunition had run out and the cans had been reduced to a fine metallic fuzz they began the long horse ride back to the jewel-encrusted racing helicopter. The old man, swelling with pride and deafened by the near-constant gunfire over the last several hours, failed to notice the pack of rabid mountain lions rapidly flanking them on their left. The younger Awesome yanked the revolver out of his grandfather's holster quick as a coked-up rattlesnake and dispatched all five of the creatures in under three seconds.

The excitement was too much for his grandfather's aging heart and he collapsed off of the stallion and half into the shallow mountain stream they were crossing. With his final breathes he bequeathed the antique firearm to his grandson, notarized and signed over the deeds to his vast business and land holdings to him, and gave him a brief but thorough tutorial on how to load the horses into the helicopter and fly it back to their closest mansion.

His grandfather was gone but he kept practicing as a way to honor his memory. By the time he was eight he had won several county-wide speed and accuracy competitions. By the time he was ten he was blacklisted from all shooting contests nationwide because he was simply too good.

The Webley remained his constant companion over the next three decades. He had long ago lost track of how many hundreds of thousands of rounds he must have fired from his trusty sidearm over the years, but the eidetic memory of his reflexes and muscles recalled every single shot.

He lept behind a display as he yanked the weapon from the top of his left Italian snakeskin riding boot and shot five of the would-be thieves between the eyes, just as he did those mountain lions all those years ago. The remaining man raked the aisle uselessly with his AK-47 while Captain Awesome crouched safely behind the racks of beef jerky and discount bullet proof jackets.

As bullets and shrapnel shredded bags of corn chips and shattered jars of pickled eggs around him he scanned the nearby shelves for something he could improvise as a weapon. He found what he needed and quickly gathered the supplies for his counter-attack.

The Afghani's third magazine went dry and he searched his garments for another. Finding none, he unsheathed his razor sharp scimitar and slowly crept his way around the bodies of his fallen comrades and the still prone hostages. He raised the curved sword over his head and jumped around the corner into his prey's aisle where he found himself staring into the barrel of the old Webley. Captain Awesome smiled and calmly pulled the trigger.

Click.

(To be continued...)