BRUCIE

THREE

Brucie had found himself sitting on the bathroom rug with a trembling right hand and the gun aimed square at the door. He had lost track of the time but the gruesome images were still pillaging through his mind. There had been so mant of them on the street; corpses lied on top of corpses as the local militia had opened fire upon them. Everywhere he had looked; people were eating each other and the fear washed over him until he knew his bedroom was no longer safe. All the while he thought his father had been crazy to give him a gun and send him away, but he knew the old man had been overprotective since the accident. Brucie was the only family he had left; the only thing in the world he had left to care about, and he was not going to lose him. As he sat there listening to the muffled sounds of gunshots with his back against the bathtub, he thought back to Wyatt's message of what had happened to Mr. Finch and even though it sounded incredible, the whole event began to make sense in his head. He thought back to a couple of months ago when there had been an enormous outbreak of rabies in the neighbouring Cedar City, which had inexplicably died down, and although the industrial city had quarantined its victims, the idea remained in his head.

When the bathroom door began to attle and pound against the doorhinge as someone on the otherside was eager to get in, he tried to rack the large handgun as he had seen so many times in action movies and did so with success. His lips quivered under his small nose as the stranger on the otherside began to groan. Brucie thought of his sister and his mother and the unfairness of how they had been taken away from he and his father. He thought of him, if he were still alive downstairs; the man who had bore with him since the accidnet and the funeral and the days after the funeral, the man who had kept him out of trouble and steered him into the right company of friends, the man who would die for him if given the chance. Brucie thought of all these things and slowly pulled bak the trigger.

The gun had fallen from his trembling hands and there was a hole at the door's midpoint. The groaning from the otherside had muted and he felt an unusual sense of confidence as he snatched up the gun and rose to his feet. He cautiosly approached the door and kept the gun pointed at it just in case someone else were to stop by. He barely turned the silver knob when the door flew open and the pale body of a man in a ragged plaid shirt  fell flat on the tiled bathroom floor. Brucie cringed at the bloody sight of the hole in the back of his head and silently stepped into the hall. His bedroom door was still open and the orange sunlight blazed into the hall through the blinds he had opened earlier. The sound of gunshots from outside had died down and he kept the gun aimed as he headed down the rickety steps into the sunlit livingroom. The old man was nowhere to be found and the door to the livingroom was wide open. He checked the kitchen which was empty and headed for his father's bedroom which was also empty. He was about to try Marcie's room but paused at the golden knob as he and the old man had promised to never set foot in there, except on holidays. So Brucie returned to the livingroom and froze.

The glasses were no longer on his face and he drooled excessively at the corners of his mouth. His eyes were stern, blood red and unrecogniseable as he blocked the path to the outside world. Blood dripped from his fingers and his white shirt had blood stains at its neck. He appeared rebid; upset one reason or the other and did not resemble anything of the man he had grown to know and love. Brucie stood by the couch with the gun held high and tears trickling down his cheeks. The words barely escaped his mouth "Daddy."