I see your Chevy, and raise you one .50 sniper round.

The sun sank a little lower in a purpling sky and Johnny marveled: it was beautiful.

A loud crack jolted him out of his day dream, and steam spewed from the bonnet.  Johnny slowed the car and pulled over. 

He lifted the bonnet and waved the steam away.  Liquid pooled under the front of the car, but he could not see anything protruding.  He looked to the right, down an embankment where three cars sat.  It wasn’t like they had been parked there so much as it looked like that was where they had just… stopped.  Johnny raised a hand against the setting sun, and saw them.  On the ground, in front of each of the cars was a body.   To say that their heads were missing wouldn’t be entirely correct.  The heads had undoubtedly been removed, but then appeared to have been pulped then spread over the car’s windshields like some demented child’s finger-painting.

Johnny turned from his car and nodded.  ‘Bravo,’ he complemented to the hills.  The reply came as a small flash in the distance and the world shifted.  Angry stars and oily, copper-scented flowers spun and whirled around him, darkening with each revolution.  Johnny’s time, he thought, and felt like he was floating again.

*

Max lifted his head from the scope of his fifty caliber sniper-rifle, rolled over, and stretched out on his picnic blanket.  He was careful not to knock his plate of bread, olives and cheese as he poured himself another glass of wine.  He sipped and allowed the wine to linger on his lips for a moment, and then he frowned.  He could have sworn that guy was looking at him when he pulled the trigger.  Served him right for just standing there like a sacrificial goat; people were getting too complacent with their lives.

When the sound of another car drifted up from the highway, his spirits lifted and he began to whistle a tune.  He couldn’t remember the name of the tune…

He couldn’t remember the name of the tune, but he liked it all the same.  Low, slow and soothing, then up to a spine-tingling crescendo with the moist crackle of bones as the car came to rest upon the hitchhiker’s body.  Johnny could no longer whistle through his grin.  He loved that sound.

He put the car back into drive, and drove on.

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