Read DeadEarth: Mr. 44 Magnum for Free Online

feature, however,
was his left hand. It was arthritic and gnarled so completely that
it would have been less of a hindrance if it was amputated. Shy of
the wedding band looped around his finger, there was no reason to
keep the hand.
    Shade couldn’t help but stare at it as she
kneeled in front of him, completely stripped of weapons. Rikka was
beside her. Two men and two women wielding guns surrounded them.
They had been circling the perimeter of the house when the shooting
started.
    “The million dollar question is why you tried
to save a man you just shot?” Mr. .44 Magnum asked in a deep,
country drawl that didn’t seem to match up with his persona. He
stopped pacing and kneeled down in front of Shade, his thick
eyebrows raised in curiosity.
    Shade opened her mouth to speak, but the
words caught in her throat. She glanced at her sister for any
amount of reassurance, but she found none. Rikka didn’t even cut
her eye in her direction.
    “The answer’s not over there, darlin’.”
    Shade snapped her head forward, meeting the
man’s eye. “I… I didn’t have a reason to shoot him. If he died
because of me, it would have been murder. I don’t want to be a
murderer.”
    “That… is a good answer.” He nodded slowly as
he stood and started pacing again. “I have a rule. I can kill for
one of three reasons, and only three reasons. One—” he held up a
finger—“family. Like the lovely people you see around you. Two,
mercy. Like you saw a little while ago. Or three, revenge.”
    He looked pointedly at Shade, his eyes
turning icy. Her breath caught in her lungs as she imagined her
head exploding under the power of the magnum he wore on his
hip.
    “Now, you broke in and start shooting up my
house. You knock out one of my guys and killed two others. And
though it was admirable that you tried to save one—a gunshot wound
to the chest is not something we’re equipped to handle. That being
said, you should consider yourselves lucky you didn’t kill anyone
else. Derek and Jeremy—the corpses in the living room—were lazy
cunts who ate twice as much as they were worth. I was thinking
about shooting them myself, but…” he shrugged, “they’re family.
Well, they were, anyway.” He took a deep breath and poked his lips
out as he looked around at his comrades. “I know most of you barely
knew them, but any hard feelings?”
    Before they had a chance to answer, Rikka
interjected. “You’re wrong about one thing,” she said in a calm but
chilled voice. “This isn’t your house.” She glanced over at the
bookshelf to her right and nodded towards one of their only family
photos in existence. “Take a look.”
    Mr. .44 Magnum followed her gaze over to the
bookshelf and plucked the picture off, knocking down some of the
trinkets beside it. “Huh. Well, I’ll be…” he said, holding the
picture so he could glance from it to the sisters with ease. “Where
are the other three? Your mom, dad, and little sister?”
    “You tell us,” Rikka seethed. “You’re the
ones living in our house.”
    “Hey, this house was empty when we found it,”
one of the guys said. “There was food in the fridge, meat in the
barn, and not a soul to claim it. The world may be going to shit,
but we still have our morals, unlike some.”
    “Morals?” Shade questioned, following her
sister’s lead. She craned her neck to look at the man who spoke. He
was younger than she expected—twenty or twenty-one—tall, and had a
runner’s body. His eyes were a soft brown, and his chin and cheeks
were littered with wisps of hair that only just started coming in.
The tattoo on his forearm was a hideous prison tattoo that read
MING, as if to pay homage to the Chinese basketball player he only
resembled in ethnicity. “I just saw him put a bullet through a
man’s eye. You call that moral?”
    “I told you, doll,” the man with the magnum
said, “we don’t have the resources to deal with a gunshot wound.
Better his death be quick and