Rebel Yell

Chapter 63

Night had come and with it came the darkness that I was waiting for. Parking in the alley behind my house was my only option to avoid Detective Wallis driving by or sending a police officer to check if I'm home or not. Needless to say I needed to avoid my house and make it seem like I still wasn't home. My neighbours who lived two houses down from me had a garage/driveway that faced the back alley and since they clearly weren't using it, that's where I parked Julia's car and then just carried the hockey bag full of guns to my backyard.

Slowly, just in case there was an officer checking the place out front, I made my way over to my dad's shop that Julia has been using to store some of her furniture from when she first moved in. I did a quick glance around to make sure no one was watching me before I punched in the password to unlock the shop doors. The pain medication was beginning to wear off and my shoulder was starting to throb again. Wincing, I picked up the hockey bag from the ground with my good arm and carried it inside the shop where I immediately flicked on the lights and shut and locked the shop doors behind me. Luckily for me there was no windows in the shop so no light would be seen from the outside.

Groaning, I slammed the heavy hockey bag down on top of an empty shop bench table and swallowed the hard lump in my throat as I dug into my pocket for the small pill bottle of pain medication. As I unscrewed the cap, I made my way over to the spare fridge where Julia and I kept extra cases of water and beer. I threw back a few pain meds, not caring that the recommended dose was only two tablets every four to six hours. I was in way too much pain to care. I chugged back the cool water, flushing the pills down my throat, gasping as I pulled the bottle away from my lips. In about fifteen minutes, these pills are going to kick in and I'm not going to feel a God damn thing.

I sighed loudly as I unzipped the hockey bag and removed the shotgun and the pistols, carefully placing them down on the table beside the bag full of ammunition. Given that I knew how to fire and load a shotgun, I merely tossed the "handbook" Bones had given me on how to load the shotgun and what shells to put in it, aside. I groaned in agony, still waiting for the pain killers to kick in as I dug into the pocket of my jeans and pulled out the pack of cigarettes and a lighter I had found in Julia's car. I narrowed my eyes as I began to read the assembly handbook on one of the pistols, placing a cigarette between my lips and lighting the end of it as I read the book carefully.

As I smoked away on my cigarette, I slowly began to understand what the assembly handbooks were saying for the pistols. Slowly but surely I figured out what ammunition to load them with and how to turn the safety on and off - which was pretty much common sense. I practised loading and reloading the pistols for a good twenty minutes before I decided I was good to go.

"Bring this fucker to the holy lands and start your own crusade..." Bones's voice trailed off in my head as I stared down at the shiny gold pistol, placing a small box of extra bullets in the inside pocket of my hoodie.

"Fuck..." I groaned as I carefully unzipped the hoodie and sat it down on the table on top of the guns.

Then I slowly pulled off my wife beater and winced as I walked over to the small mirror on the wall, beside it, a first aid kit and fire extinguisher hung on the wall. My dad is a super paranoid guy, given that he basically raised my sisters and I all by ourselves, I wasn't surprised to find the first aid kit or the fire extinguisher in here.

A dull, empty feeling took over me deep down inside as I stood there staring at myself in the little mirror. Looking over my bruised face, my busted lip and the strip of shaved hair on the side of my head revealing the stitched up gash on my head. Reluctantly, I stared down at my shoulder and slowly and carefully removed the bandage. I instantly snapped my head away to avoid puking as I stared at the sewn up bullet wound. I didn't want to do it but I also knew I had to clean it and change the bandage or else I was going to get a bad infection.