DESIGN

image:google images

image:google images

“You said you had this worked out,” Wilson threw the bolt tight against the door and lurched around on his one good leg, dragging the other mangled stump behind him.

Billy was making trails through the dirt as he pulled a heavy wooden workbench across the concrete floor.

“I did.  It was.  I mean, you saw the plan,”

With a final shove the workbench was up against the door.

A few feet away, Wilson had eased himself down behind a metal rimmed, wooden barrel.

“Ok, genius, what’s your new plan?”

“My six shooter’s gone,” Billy said as he squatted down behind a half wall of an old stall.  “Just gotta find something we can use to defend ourselves.”

The sound, Wilson thought, was sort of like buzzing bees or the far-off low murmur of a gaggle of geese and it was coming closer; headed their way.  He pressed his hands up and down his mangled leg, taking stock of the damage.

“They don’t sound too reasonable.”  Why couldn’t he feel anything?

“Who don’t sound reasonable?”

Still squatting, Billy ran his hand along the wall to get his bearings.

Wilson could see the light begin to seep through the cracks in the walls of the old barn.  It gave shape to the unused farm tools stacked in the large, open area and made strange shadows as it bounced off wooden boxes and barrels.

The sounds, like a rustling of movement and a low chanting, were closer now.  They pressed up against the door then spread out sideways until the barn was surrounded.

As he left the corner and made his way slowly along the wall, Billy squinted, then opened his eyes wide, then tried squinting again.  He couldn’t see much and bumped into barrels and boxes, his hands moving jerkily, searching for some sort of weapon.

“That was my favorite six shooter.  It was the fall that made me lose it.”

“You ever heared a choir, Billy?”  Wilson slid down flat on the floor.  Perhaps that would stop the dizziness, and the light, and the sound.

“Maybe.  Back before I started riding rough.”

Wilson’s eyes almost hurt, the light was now so bright.  It glowed.  Or they glowed, Wilson wasn’t sure, but the light had faces, and hands that reached out to him.  Was he floating?

Billy stumbled as his foot hit against Wilson.  He hunkered down and patted what he thought was Wilson’s arm.

“Wilson, you hang on.  I’ll design a new plan to get us out of this.”

“There’s somebody else designing this, Billy.”

“Wilson.  Wilson, don’t you go leaving me.  Wilson?”

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