About this user
" They hated that old man so much they shot him through my family. The world went crazy on a summer's day in Central Park, in the time before nine millimeter popguns ruled the streets. It was a Thompson, like the ones our fathers carried, and I recognized its rattle even as its big, man-stopping forty-fives punched blood and breath from my lungs. I hit the ground beside my daughter, she'd been gunshot, badly, and when she saw the things that boiled and wriggled from her belly the expression on her face was not a little girl's. My wife bled out on the operating table, her heart a gaping hole her life drained through, whenever I get carless, that yearning in her eyes creeps up and brings me to my knees. Right then the old man's soldiers started shooting back, my son dropped wordlessly, without a mark on him. I took a breath that cut like glass, spat blood, rose to my knees, picked up the boy and searched in vain for entry wounds. The bullet had entered through his mouth. That was our picnic at the park, and now, every night, I go out and make the world sane. "
" You get the other guy on the ropes. You keep him there. You mangle his ears, fill his eyes up with blood, pulp his kidneys, grind up his ribs. Dont let up, and if he still won't hit the canvas-- You go and bleed him to death."
" I caught a glimpse of heaven once, the angels showed me. The idea was i'd kill for them, clean up there mistakes on earth, eventually redeem myself. Tried it. Didn't like it, told them where to stick it. So they brought me up to heaven, to see what i'd be missing. A wife, a son, a daughter. All finally at piece, I hadn't seen them since they bled out in my arms. Then I was cast down. Back to a world of killers, rapists, psychos, perverts. A brand new evil every minute, spewed out as fast as men can think them up. A world where pitching a criminal dwarf off a skyscraper to tell his fellow scum you're back is a sane and rational act, the angels thought it would be hell for me. But they were wrong. Welcome back, Frank. Says New York City."
" Harry Heck Thornton. 100% Arkansas redneck, big time pistol fighter. Quick as lightning. Old story about heck: out draws four state troopers, Kills three. Last one gets off a shot. Heck ducks it and shoots him dead. Dodged a bullet. But not thirty."
" When you're on your own--
Behind enemy lines-- No artillery, no airstrikes, no hope of an evac--
You don't fight dirty, you do things that make dirty look good."
" I have a Forty-five, he has a submachine gun. My night goes downhill from there."
" Links disintegrate-- Bolt clanks back and fourth behind the thudding roar-- Brass rains on the sidewalk-- The 'sixty rattles out its song. A song I first heard years ago-- Of fireteams dug in on the breaks between the paddyfields, of tracer lasering the jungle night, of hueys screaming through the void-- Of Lieutenant Castle getting short and hating it, wanting 'Nam to last forever--A lullaby come all way to New York City-- Come to sing you to sleep."
