Eighty-Sixed: Chapter 42 - Newton's Third Law

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As a bullet leaves the chamber of a gun, it burns ignited gunpowder that, acting as a propellent, generates a prodigious amount of pressure against the back of the barrel.  Following Newton’s third law of motion, the second object must exert an equal and opposite force upon the first when an object exerts force on another object.  Therefore, as pressure is rocketed back against the back of the barrel, the barrel, too, must react back against the bullet, sending it in a corkscrew spin blasting outward as the gasses from the propellent are expelled.

When a woman’s husband dies in a horrible accident and then witnesses the world set on end just days later, forcing her to face the possibility that her children have now not only been snuffed from existence but may have never technically existed in this new reality in the first place, despite the years of memories of nighttime feedings and birthday parties, it stands to reason that at some point, an equal and opposite emotional reaction of pushing back would be inevitable.  

On Interstate 80 just outside Chicago, Olivia slunk down across the long bench seat of her father’s old pickup truck.  Her right hand wrapped around the grip of the Smith & Wesson her father gave her as she prepared to leave their farm.  With an index finger taut upon the trigger, her left hand cupped the bottom of the grip, just as Mickey had instructed many years and a lifetime before.  Olivia honed her vision on the scraggly man’s left ear.  The scraggly man continued to point his pistol at the driver directly behind the truck, who’d stepped out to intervene.

“I’ll tell you one more time,” the other driver yelled to the scraggly man.  “Step away from that young lady’s truck, or I will not hesitate to put you down.”

The man’s words were pointed, but his voice shook.  Olivia questioned his resolve.  The other driver no doubt wanted to believe the words coming out of his mouth, but they lacked confidence and were tinged in doubt.  

At that moment, she was awash in her own lack of confidence.  Logistical questions lined up in her brain queued up and demanding answers:

Are you prepared to kill a man? 

Yes. 

Are you prepared to be questioned and held further on this gridlocked highway until highway patrol arrives? 

Yes, if highway patrol still exists anymore.

Are you prepared to live with the consequences of your actions forever?

Potential outcomes tumbled into her brain in an avalanche of images.  She saw herself pulling the trigger.  The blast and kickback.  Shattered glass.  A clear image of the bullet as it pierced the man’s head, the recoil followed by his body collapsing limply.  Then, too, she imagined the reactions from all around her and the corpse on the ground.  Would someone come to collect it, or in this new world, would the body just be left behind?  Would she have to drag it off to the side of the road herself?  Would she be arrested or at least held for questioning? Or was this world in a complete state of anarchy?  Did rules even exist anymore?

All these thoughts passed in a mere second, but it was long enough to allow the scraggly man’s peripheral eyesight to see the gun in Olivia’s hands. 

“Whoa! Whoa!” he yelled, realizing he was now outgunned and outnumbered.  

He dropped, ducking low as he skittered sideways and quickly moved behind the next car, putting even more drivers into the crossfire.  While keeping one arm outstretched with the gun in his hand, he threw the other arm over his head like a feeble shield.  Now out of range of the other driver with the weapon, the top of his head was just visible behind the hood of the blue Pontiac, where he now hunkered down.  

“You stupid girl!” he yelled.

The driver from behind Olivia stepped forward, moving fast, his gun thrust ahead of him. 

“Get down!” he yelled as he stepped between Olivia and the scraggly man, who now scrambled on his hands and knees around the edge of the Pontiac.  The Pontiac’s driver was a frantic older woman with dyed red hair who wore a sleeveless summer shirt exposing rolls of flesh that jiggled down her thick arms like gelatin as she screamed and flailed her hands from behind rolled-up windows.  The Pontiac’s driver hunkered down towards her passenger seat, but her heaping mass could still be seen curving like a hill behind the bottom edge of her windows.

Olivia noticed screaming and panic from other nearby cars. Her face felt drained, and pin-prick tingles ran across it.

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Reaching over, she quickly rolled her window back up and then jumped at the sound of a loud crack, a gunshot, followed by a second and a third.  More screams rose from the cars around her.  She looked at the blue Pontiac, and the overweight driver was sitting up again, straining to swerve around and see behind her.  They all tried to watch the scraggly man and his pursuer, who suddenly stood from behind the Pontiac, gripping his left arm while still trying to hold a gun with his right.  The scraggly man was nowhere to be seen, but the other driver’s face was white and grimaced.  He stumbled backward, back around the front of the Pontiac whose driver mouthed words only she could hear.  

The man’s left sleeve was washed in red.  Still holding the gun in his right, he fell forward before bracing himself against the hood of Olivia’s vehicle.  His gun rattled loudly, metal against metal.  Olivia rolled down her window.

“You’re shot!” she called out to him.  “Get in the truck. I’ll get you to a hospital.”

“You alright, miss?” the man asked through clenched teeth.

“I’m fine,” she said. “But you’re shot.  Where’s the other man?”

“Dead on the ground,” the man said.  He was unable to keep his grip on the gun, and it slipped from his hands and onto the ground.  Olivia popped out of the truck, scooped up the weapon, and threw it into the truck, where it landed on the seat next to her father’s gun.  

Olivia reached down, unhooked the belt buckle from her jeans, and whipped the belt from her waist.  The other driver leaned unsteadily against the hood of her truck, his face pasty and pale.  He cradled his wounded arm, and his fingers were sticky with blood. 

“I think the bullet went straight through,” the man said.  His eyes were clenched so tightly that tears rolled down his cheeks.  “Hurts like hell.”

“Hold still,” Olivia said.  “This’ll hurt more.”

She cinched her belt around the man’s arm and pulled it tight over the dark red hole in his shirt sleeve. 

He sucked air in between his teeth and then yelled an indecipherable litany of incomplete words.

“Sonofa—Ratam—gah gah ahh argh!”  

“Sorry!” 

He bent over, gasping.

“Just breathe,” Olivia said.

“Sonofa—” he tried again.

After a moment, he stood upright and opened his eyes wide.

“A hospital, yeah?”

“Absolutely,” Olivia said.  

“Yes, a hospital.”

“What about your car?”

“Oh, who gives a damn?” the man said.  “What does it matter anymore?”

“I’m Olivia,” she said as she helped the man around the truck and into the passenger side.  “I still can’t believe all this is happening.  And now this.”

“Frankie,” the man said through gritted teeth.  “And I can completely believe this is happening.  I’m married to the blasted woman who caused it all.”

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