I looked around at the junk piled on the docks.
I'm going to need a long pole, some kind of hooks, and both our trench coats. I hope we can find something better than them, though. Because these things are gonna get wrecked.
"What are we gonna do?" Asked Shmee. I pointed to the sun.
"He's going to see two figures inching along the lip. They will be silouetted against the bright morning sun, so he won't see much. But he's at an abandoned warehouse that's also coincidentally a drop point. So it'll be enough to shoot a few bullets at, right?"
"Right." They said.
"So when I've distracted him, he shoots 'us' with six bullets, then Nny, you get in the door and do… your thing."
Nny expertly twirled a butterfly knife around his fingers. I could hear my mother in my head saying he was going to poke his eye out. And I giggled. Insanely.
"Come on, let's figure out this plan. We have about fifteen minutes, and then Squee's dead." We set out to look for anything of use.
Ten minutes later
A twenty foot metal pole was attached to two makeshift coat hangars. On these were our trench coats. They looked like people, sorta. It was my job to make these into a suitable parody of two people on a half-foot ledge. And of course, make as much noise as possible doing it. He can't shoot what he doesn't see.
The two coats were at the far end. I lifted the pole over my head, and ran the end along the side of the warehouse. Nny crouched by the man door to the warehouse, ready to impale anything that came out too fast. I could imagine Gregory inside, turning his head and seeing, oh, dearie me, two people outside the warehouse.
Twin gunshots echoed. The sleeves of my coat flapped. I could see the torn fabric. I shrieked accordingly. Two more gunshots these hit my coat in the chest. The coat was ripped off the hangar, falling into the ocean. Again, I shrieked, this time petering out, and stopping when my coat hit the water with a splash.
Shoot. If the fifth bullet knocked Nny's jacket off, we were screwed again. The fifth shot came… But it wasn't high in the chest.
Oh, no. Greg really DID hate Nny. I grimaced, and hoped Nny never found this coat. The sixth shot hit the cloth bags we had stuffed up as heads. It flew off. This must have looked strange. A body, minus the head, still balancing on a six-inch platform.
I heard the barest hint of the words "What the hell…" And then Nny was through that door like greased lightning. That's fast, case you didn't know.
I dropped the pole, not even watching as it fell to the ocean. I darted inside after Nny. Shmee tottered in behind me. Squee was in one of the boxes, hiding from whatever he was most scared of at the moment. When he saw me, and I swear, I have never seen such a look of pure joy on a kid's face before or after that.
"I thought he got you!" He shrieked, launching himself up at me. "He said he'd get you and come for me!"
"No, shh, it's okay," I said. He was latched around my neck, it was getting slightly difficult to breathe. "Nny's taking care of him right now, don't you worry."
Speak of the devil, Nny called to us. He was in the front, we were behind some crates. We walked around the wooden boxes, to find Nny had Greg pinned to the wall. If he moved, he would get his throat slit.
"Our friend Greg has something to say to you, Squee." Said Nny.
"I'm sorry, Kid." Greg rasped. He was trying not to move his Adam's apple. I didn't blame him. "I was wrong to interrupt your playing with your little friend."
"And?" Nny prompted.
"And I shouldn't have made you come here and stay here when you didn't want to."
"And?"
"And I promise I won't ever do it again."
"Damn straight." I muttered. I walked toward the exit, carrying Squee. Who was carrying Shmee.
"Lady, come on!" Greg pleaded from behind me. "This guy's gonna kill me! Like he killed my brother! Like he'll kill you! You just wait. He'll-"
The door slammed shut behind me. I waited in the car with Squee for about five minutes. Then Nny came out, splattered with red.
"He won't be getting a record much longer." Nny said., getting into the driver's seat. He held something out to me.
"I got this off him. Think it'll replace our coats?" I opened the calfskin wallet. There must have been ten or eleven hundreds in there.
"Why would he carry this around with him?"
"My guess: Drug money. He's just taking it somewhere to launder it or something."
"He's dead, right?"
"As the Dodo."
"You ask him about Devi?"
Nny took a deep breath.
"Mmy dated her. To find out about me. He was obsessed with me. Greg found her. She told him where he could find me…" He looked at his shoes. "After she told him, he killed her. No links between him and me." He looked up at me. His eyes were big.
"I killed her. As sure as if I had actually stabbed her."
I leaned over, wrapping my arms around him.
"No, you didn't. You didn't."
We stayed like that for a long time. Squee was in the backseat, out like a light. I thought about what Greg had said to me. And I found I no longer cared.
The End.
Wasn't that good? I don't know. Tell me if it was or not. Thumbs up to anyone who thought THAT plan up before me. .