STORM FRONT

Chronicles of Vic & Pandora

Family

By R.L. Carmine

Dunant, Arcadia

September 23, 2001

Once the capital of the defunct United States of America, Dunant had flourished after the fall, two years prior. There were battles, mostly in restructuring after the US Military’s advanced branch known as Highpoint overthrew the Pentagon’s post-Virus rule of the country. Fragments of a nation, more accurately. Highpoint’s director, Carla Barrett had seen the future. She as well as any thinking individual knew that the government could not forever keep its grip, like a person hanging onto the edge of a roof, knowing there was no way they would be saved, but refusing to give in and let go.

Carla saw her vision become reality, thanks to the actions of a few gangs in the nearby city of Richmond, Virginia, allied, and refusing to give in to military rule. Creating the perfect diversion, and drawing enough troops away from the capital to make it vulnerable to attack from within. And then she was standing in the burned-out husk of the Oval Office, and the city was hers. For about fifteen minutes she was ruler of a nation, before her lover and second in command, Harley Rooke, put a bullet in her head.

No one had ever taken the gangs in Richmond seriously. They had fought to keep what remained of a corporation, and its owner with his dreams of grandeur in the post-Virus world, from taking their city. They had kept a crippled military out for four years. Their leader had even given himself to save one of his own, in trade with Rooke, whom they themselves had taken, only for him to then escape from Highpoint’s own facility in Mallory. But nothing so fully expressed the reach the organization known as Storm Front possessed as that moment when Carla lay on the floor of the White House, bleeding out, and thinking of that scarlet-haired, one-eyed bastard.

With Barrett dead and Rooke gone, Highpoint reorganized and followed Carla’s dream of the nation known as Arcadia. A glistening nation, finally rebuilding after the worst disaster humanity had ever faced. Lines of communications had been reestablished, media was flourishing, and before curfew, people were walking the streets safely, feeling comfort with the presence of the armed Highpoint troops on almost every street corner. Truth and safety, as the governing council saw fit to define it.

On occasion they had visitors from outside the borders, some legal, most not. But seeing as how border jumping was punishable by death, there were few willing takers. Those that did tended to stay in the sections of the city still untouched by reconstruction. The worst of the worst blocks laid low by fire and vandalism during the Pentagon era.

Down one such particular street the trees had started to come back, and weeds overgrew the sidewalks. Charred black pieces of timber stuck from their foundations, pointing towards the Heavens in an accusatory manner. On one such property, the cellar had been turned into a makeshift bar, frequented by the criminal element. One of many scattered about the city, the best in the more upscale, reformed parts.

Bootleg alcohol, classically popular drugs, and guns were the trades, though prostitution wandered in the door every now and then. The faces were regulars, it was safer that way, and the two large men watching the door were made quite aware of that on hiring day. The reputation of the Downstairs Club had even crept into the offices of government officials, but as long as they didn’t allow in any really unsavory folk, and they didn’t push their way into public awareness, they were no threat.

"She beautiful, man. Look like her momma." The dark-skinned man on the other side of the bar smiled across the counter at the bartender, gazing lovingly at the pictures of his wife and daughter, drawn from his wallet. "Tell you that every time, man. Fuck, ain’t never seen a man so in love with his family."

"You’ll understand when you have one of your own. They just…light everything up inside of you." He smiled, his brown hair falling in locks over his forehead, only to be quickly brushed back behind his right ear. "Even when you’re upset with them, you still love them. And when you can’t be with them, there’s like this part of you missing." His pictures held tightly in his hand, he thumped his chest closed-fist. "Right here. A pain you really can’t describe."

"Damn man, you gots it bad." The dark-skinned man shook his head and shrugged. "Ain’t never had it myself, way you tell it, not sure I wanna. Sounds like an awful sorta hurt for a man to be puttin’ hisself through."

"Oh, but it’s worth it. It really is. Every time they smile, it makes everything right." Reaching beneath the counter, the bartender brought into view a lovingly-wrapped box, a bow tied in such absolute perfection that it alone must have taken hours to get tight and proper. "My little girl loves porcelain dolls. The one in this box is the only one like it. It’s from a collection lost in the Virus. She’d seen pictures of it in collector magazines my mother had that I managed to salvage." His smile grew more thoughtful. "Memories, you know?" Delicately taking it in hand, he placed it carefully back beneath the counter, far beyond so as to assure he didn’t accidentally brush against it during the course of the night and send it tumbling to the unforgiving concrete floor.

"It cost me almost everything I’ve made these last six months to find it, but for her…." The thump on the trap door sounded like a knock, only heavier, by about two hundred and fifty pounds, and the bartender cut his eyes towards the top of the stairs that otherwise seemed to stop at the ceiling. It was the scraping sound that sent shivers down his spine, like metal on metal, only so very, very wrong. Then a frantic scrambling that ceased when, abruptly, the metal door, the steel door, bent inward, pulling it away from the hinges, blood sloshing out around the edges before it crashed onto the stairs and slid down. The hunk of meat that had been one of the bouncers flopped off the door when it struck the concrete, and the thirty-four patrons and seven floor-based employees of the Downstairs Club bolted to the far wall, at least three-quarters of the populace drawing weapons.

He left behind the snapping sound of bones, and the discolored tones of muscle being separated from them, and made his way downward, and were it Hell, he would be a god there.

"What the fuck?!" The bartender managed to choke, reaching for his shotgun, training it on the visitor as he descended into view.

Boots, tall and black, laced to his knees, jeans tattered, tight white cloth wrapped about his legs beneath them, hands gloved, jacket leather and a blue so deep it might as well have been black. His frame over six-foot-tall, his build not grotesquely muscular, yet not thin, either. And then his face; early twenties at best, free of growth yet not smooth, for his skin bore scars that tarnished his natural beauty; on his right cheek a tattoo, black and heart shaped, beneath a patch, covering his eye. His hair, jaw-length, seemed an unnatural shade of red, but was in fact what he was born with.

"I need answers," he announced, with a wave of his hand, his voice deep and forceful. "You traffic in new lives. You have since before Arcadia."

"You’re gonna need one!" And the bartender fired off a round, lifting the boy’s feet from the floor and throwing him backward against the staircase. Ejecting the shell he chambered another.

And then silence, quickly followed by one questioning voice, and then another and still another. The customers and staff alike, trying to figure out just what had happened.

"Now-now." The voice was just as strong as before, and as eyes were drawn back towards the entrance, all beheld the intruder rising into view from beyond the bar. With a sharp intake of air, he cut his blue eye towards his shooter. "Your people upstairs I took issue with because they tried to keep me out. And I understand your reaction at seeing that, so I’ll give you that one. But you do it again, and I’m gonna break your spine."

The next shot spun him around, and the one directly afterwards sent him crashing through the wooden banister, splinters exploding outward and coasting across the floor.

And then…

…He stood…

…Again.

"Are you looking to spend the rest of your life shitting into a bag?" He sighed, brushing his hair back from his face.

"He really is trying to be sporting," her voice came directly into the bartender’s ear. Melodic, almost as if song from angels, yet hauntingly unsettling. Shaken enough, he turned to see her where she had not been before. Sitting atop a cooler behind the bar, beneath the obligatory mirror. Her hair was as white as snow, her skin ashen, and her eyes a luminescent green that within themselves spoke volumes on insanity. And yet she was the quintessence of beauty, with a visage that appeared no more than sixteen years at best; giving no hint to her true age. "Do you have family?"

"Yuh-yes." He stammered; shaking so much the shotgun rattled in his hands. "A wife, a daughter."

"Would you like to see them again?" The boy’s voice was hard and stirring, sharp contrast to hers, as he leaned against the bar. Watching the bartender nod, he lit a cigarette.

The girl smiled, and instead of being comforted, the smile struck the gunman cold to his core, while all other eyes looked on, their bodies apparently frozen in their own right. "A daughter, how nice. I’ve always wanted a little girl. How old is she?"

"Suh-six." And before he realized it, he felt the weight of his wallet gone from his buttoned back pocket.

"How cute." Thumbing through the leather pouch, the scarlet-haired boy removed the bound pages of photos and flipped through them, snapping his fingers on to the next one with exacting precision, and enough force to accent the act. "Look hon," he said, tossing the pictures to the ashen girl, who quickly found a happy image of the entire family.

"I bet you’d like to live to see her again." In saying so, she never raised her eyes from the photo. "And if you help us, my loving husband here won’t feel the need to do horrible things to you beyond what he’s already promised." She scanned the photo pages until she found the bartender’s identity card and name. "Ah, Norman. What a good, classic name." She laid her hand on his shoulder and pulled him close. "Norman, my name’s Pandora, and this is my dearest Victor.

"Hey Norm." Vic waved, drawing from his waistband a nickel-plated forty-five, and pointing it back towards the crowd; more specifically, some damn fool with a machine pistol trying to slyly move for a good line of sight. With no small amount of forethought or malice, he put a round in the head of the man with bad judgment, and then shot the two people on either side of him. "If the twit beside you pulls a gun on me, I’m gonna shoot you too."

Patting Norman’s shoulder, she nodded approvingly to herself. "You have no idea how much I went through to find my beloved, here. How many bridges I burned. How many millions I slaughtered over millennia past. All for he who held my heart, and what a dark place I was in without him." She closed her eyes, almost as if drifting off, and whispered, "so dark. Darker than if one were to do this in a room with no windows or doors, buried in the deepest earth in winter, during night. Darker than the time between, when the stars went dim and all was frigid and hopeless.

"Your love for your wife and child do not even register in comparison to the love I have for he who is my blood and breath. And tonight you will be carried out of here. You see, Norman, Victor is very honest in what he says, and so if he tells you he’s going to break your spine, he feels absolutely obligated to follow through."

"Let’s cut to the chase, I’m getting really fucking bored with this shit." Turning around, Vic pressed the barrel of the pistol to the bartender’s chest. "You know what I’m gonna do to you anyway, Norm. You went and shot me again, after I did my damnedest to warn you, so I’m still going to do that. Now, I want to know where Harley Rooke is. If you don’t tell me, I’m gonna drag your broken ass home and sit you up in your favorite chair. Then I’m going to haul your beautiful blond wife and your cherubic little girl into the living room, and I’m going to spend the next week doing all sorts of nasty things to them in front of you while you shit yourself.

"I’m gonna do it until you go numb from it, Norman," he smiled. "And then I’m gonna keep going until you begin to feel again. Feel all those horrible things you’ve seen turn on you. Go from horror to desensitization to pleasure. Run the cycle; until you want to do the things I do to them so badly you can taste it. But will never have the chance, because you can’t fucking move."

"You sick fuck," he wept, half-spitting as the words came from his mouth.

"You say that as if it were a bad thing, Norman," she added. "And if you don’t think him capable of such atrocities, reconsider. I’ve seen him. I’ve watched him. And Norman? It made me so wet that you should have seen the things I did, as well."

"Ruh-Rooke? Oh God…uh…it’s, uh…all that’s in the back. The computers and records are in the back." Hesitantly moving past Pandora, as if looking to her for guidance, checking just to make sure it was okay that he move, Norman all but fell over his feet to make his way to the office, laying the shotgun on the counter as he went.

Raising an eyebrow, Vic glanced sideways at Pandora. "Love?"

"I shall baby-sit our friends here," she announced, nodding in the direction of the huddled mass in the corner.

He followed Norm’s impatient footsteps, hastened by discomfort and fear, the nickel-plated pistol dangling by his side, though tightly held in hand. With artfully fluid and efficient action the dark-skinned man moved from the crowd, pulling his pistol from its shoulder holster and tight in across his body, wasting no time or energy on open, wide action, and having Vic bang to rights within but a few feet of the office door.

"Body armor maybe. Ain’t gonna do a thing for your head." He pressed the barrel, warmed by body heat, into Vic’s cold-cold flesh. "I killed muthafuckas slicker’n you, bitch."

Closing his eye, the boy cocked his head. Listening to the chattering whispers creeping about the edges, in the shadows. "So very scared," he whispered.

"Yeah, you better be, fucka."

The thin wide smile spread across his face as his eyelid drew upwards, and he locked gaze with his new assailant. "No," his voice still hushed, but directed and definite, "you."

"Fuck you!" He stepped forward, pressing the pistol tighter against Vic’s skull.

"Your posturing belies your fear, and for this act, I’ve decided that now all must die." Looking sideways, he set eye on the bartender. "Except Norm here, of course. Him I’m simply going to cripple."

"Yeah?" He raised his voice. "Yeah?! Who has the gun to his head? I’m a stone-evil sonuvabitch, likes of which you never seen. Smoked more fuckin people than God."

Vic sighed. "I always find humor in those who feel the need to proclaim just how big and bad they are. Or how evil they are, for they are certainly the most pathetic. ‘Fear me for evil is a word of wrongs and cold black things, and if I proclaim myself Evil, embracing so easily this despicable word, then I myself must be a truly fearful creation.’" He could not help but laugh. "Fine then. Let’s wager. If you kill me before I kill you, my wife will leave and everyone goes free. But…" Muzzle-flash, and his head was shoved sideways, throwing his hair about his face and sending him toppling over like a felled tree.

"Easy money, muthafucka." The dark-skinned man pulled away, tossing his jacket forward on his body with a flick of his shoulders and smiling as he stepped back to admire his handy work.

Pushing herself from the cooler, Pandora hit the floor and laid hands on the edge of the bar, tears welling up in her eyes. "Victor!" Leaping over the chest-high surface with feline-like dexterity, she hit the floor running, dropping to her knees and sliding to his side in movements that sent shivers through her body. Flashbacks of an earlier time. So far distant that she had forgotten almost everything else of that place, that life. Everything but that one horrifying moment, when she lay bleeding beside the body of her fatally poisoned beloved, dying herself. Betrayed. "No, please!" Her cries so woeful that even those whom she had held at bay within the room felt twinges of pity along with the breaths of relaxation and safety.

Giving the fallen a swift kick in the ribs, just to make sure, the gunman came to stand over him, unloading the rest of his clip into the body for the sake of self-satisfaction, completely disregarding whether or not Pandora, though she did not, got in the way.

"Ow." And again, all were placed on edge. For there before them, laid low by a point-blank shot to his head, the man known as Victor Storms slipped his hands beneath his body and pushed himself back onto his knees. Hair falling around his face, he cut his eye up at the dark-skinned man, looking through his locks of scarlet. "Boy, all who call themselves Evil are hollow pretenders, playing at frightening those who already reject them. You do so in an attempt to regain what you believe to be control when in truth you are only further drowning in a lack of self-esteem."

"Evil need not speak its name, child," Pandora added, face obscured by the hair hanging around her head. "It simply is."

"That’s not fair man. Christ. You ain’t right." The would-be murder weapon dropped to the concrete, clattering as it did, its wielder stepping backwards. "That’s not fair!"

Raising her head, her face streaked with tears, Pandora smiled. "They love you so much when you’re frightened," she said, her voice that of an excited child, gifted with new wonders.

And then the shadows began to move, and all the bartender could see between the occasional breaks within the living darkness that seemed to envelop his staff and patrons was panic; panic and blood, accented only by a metalscratch chattering, and the warm, sloppywet sounds of meat.

With a good shove, Vic sent the sole survivor moving back in the direction of the office. "It’s not polite to stare when people are being eaten."

The room was dark, but with a flick of the switch just inside the door the overhead light came on, sending the shadowy things back into the further corners of the office, beneath tables and behind file cabinets. And in the center of the room on old and grimy, green and black checkered tile, sat the old oak desk, and a deceptively simple computer station.

"Rooke, Harley." She reminded Norman as Vic shoved him into the chair. "Thirty-five, brown eyes."

"I remember," he said meekly, the screen growing brighter and his fingers already playing over the keyboard knowingly. He was a programmer, and had skillfully created an entire system specifically for the smuggling in and out of people. Some who just wanted a better life but couldn’t afford to apply for citizenship through normal channels, and others who desperately wanted to escape what they knew to be the ever-tightening walls around Arcadian-defined freedom. Programs started, windows opened and closed. Data scrolled across screens and transferred from file to file in a confusing manner that made sense only to the operator and perhaps a few others not on the premises. "Why?" He assembled the information he needed through keystrokes the result of which did not appear on-screen for security purposes, but that he’d known by heart for enough years that even with the added stress of the night’s surreal events he could make his way through.

"What?" Stubbing his cigarette out on the side of a filing cabinet, Vic drew another from his pocket, along with his silver Zippo, whose metal "ting" accented his counter-inquiry.

"Why…do you need her so badly?" Norman did his best not to make eye contact. Not to turn away from the screen for an instant, like a dog convinced that if he did not look directly into the eyes of his prey, or his master, he could not be seen. "What did she do to you?"

Sighing, the boy shook his head. "No, you misunderstand, Norman. I don’t want to hurt Harley; I want to bring her in from the cold."

"But why?"

"Because I made her." Vic leaned against the wall, his expression soft and almost caring. "I turned her into a tool and set her against her love and her beliefs. I took her and I twisted her."

"My beloved, for all his beauty, has a single solitary flaw." Reaching out, Pandora laid fingertips to Vic’s cheek. "He feels responsible for some of you. Those like you, like your wife, like your daughter, those he does not know; he feels no pity towards. You are but cardboard cutouts, devoid of attachment or dimension. Man, woman, child, it makes no difference."

Staring at the floor, doing his best to absorb it all, he ran a print of the information; fifteen pages, eleven of text, four of images used in creating her documentation, and the finished product. Pulling it out of the tray, he left his chair behind and handed it to her ashen hands, hoping that by being cooperative he could be spared any personal pain, but fearing that with every word she spoke, he was but further damned.

"But the others, the friends he calls his family…are another matter entirely. He invests himself wholly in their being. Their feelings, their suffering, their rejection, damages him deeper emotionally than anything he himself could feel alone." Folding the papers, she handed them back to Vic, and then leaning in closely, her lips almost touched the bartender’s ear. "Harley was a threshold moment for him. I made him step beyond his boundaries and do such exquisitely brutal things to her mind," her tongue wet her lips, "and body." Shivering at the thought, like bliss run rampant through her, she straightened and backed to stand beside her husband. "And so he feels responsible for her, and while since that time we’ve had other concerns to attend to, she has always been a nagging voice in the lighter regions of his soul."

With Vic pulling her away, they left the office behind and made their way for the stairs, and for a moment, Norman stood by the desk, shaking. "But…but you didn’t have to say all that. Those things about my little girl, about my wife, about me." He whispered, his voice trembling as he thoughtlessly forced his legs to move and walked back into the bar. "You didn’t have to make me think about all that. God almighty, I would have given you Rooke’s information without you putting me through that. Without you killing those people."

The boy shrugged, his hand brushing against his wife’s back as he directed her up the stairs ahead of him. "Of course you would have, Norman, but where would pleasure have been for me in that?"

"Jesus Christ."

"Now you go home and hug your wife. Go home and tuck your little girl into bed. And try not to think about all the things that could have happened to your females. Try not to think about your loving wife, stripped and broken on the floor. All the things that she never lets you do that I could make you want to do to her anyway, knowing that you have the technology in the next room to disappear her if she resists too much. That inside, we are all capable of being the animals we know we are beneath the façade of civility. Go home and try not to drive yourself mad thinking about it tonight, and tomorrow, and the next day, every single time you look at them." Shoving his pistol back into his waistband, Vic gave a little wave, and then headed back up the stairs. "Good night, Norman. Have an eventful life."

Finally Norman’s muscles relaxed, having tensed almost to the point of locking him up, which would have made him immobile, and completely useless. The warm wetness ran down his leg as his bladder released as well, and he dropped down into a sobbing yet breathing heap on the floor. He couldn’t even move enough to look back at the remnants of the others slicked across the floor and walls, chunks laying among the pooling and spattered redness like a meaty soup spilled across an unclean diner surface.

Stepping out into the night air, Vic met Pandora’s eyes, and then scanned those of the others waiting for him, watching; defending two not really in need.

"Get what you came for?" Sy Martoné, Vic’s oldest friend, one of only a few that survived the Virus, stepped to the man he called brother. And from behind him came the scarlet-haired boy’s dog, his precious Rottweiler, dubbed Boots.

"Yeah." Raising the cigarette to his lips, Vic made to take a puff, only to have it slapped from his hand.

Sy waggled a finger at him. "Stop that."

Pulling another from his pocket, he gave his lighter a good flick and ignited the end. "I don’t think cancer’s a major concern for me."

"Sure, you. But some of us don’t want to die from your second-hand smoke."

"Fuckin’ straightedges." He took a heavy drag, the rolled stick of tobacco dangling from his lips as he brushed his hand in Sy’s direction. "Get an addiction, be normal, you’ll like it."

"Normal?" Sy couldn’t help but laugh. "Since you’re such an authority."

"Love?" Pandora’s voice drew his attention away from the ever-playful banter he had with his best friend. "Forgetting something?"

Arching an eyebrow, he gave thought to that which had transpired, and then once again found his place. "Damn. I was being all introspective and shit, lost total track of things." Turning, he laid foot on the top step. "Get the cars ready, I’ll be back directly."

"Vic?" Sy’s voice was sullen, and insistant. "Can’t you just…."

"No," he answered, descending back into the club.

Norman had been completely oblivious to the footfalls, stirring only when he heard the voice again, uttering his name. He looked up at the boy standing above him, the nickel-plated pistol trained between his eyes. He knew he had been right back in the office, and he smiled a little, lost in the silverwhite-shimmer of the overhead light on the forty-five’s pristine housing.

The shot echoed, amplified by the confined space and reaching even the ears of the darkest souls outside.

---------------------------

Safe in suburbia she sat, in the living room of her ranch-style brick home, wearing only her robe and reading a magazine when there came a knock at the door. Brushing her long blond hair back over her ear, Sarah set the magazine down and pushed herself from her seat to answer.

"Hello," she called out questioningly. Her husband had a key, and was almost never home this early unless something bad had happened at the club. "Norman?"

And the knock came again.

Peering through the peephole, she set eyes on the beautiful ashen face of a young woman; so far past curfew; so young. Was she lost? For a moment Sarah considered the revolver in the cabinet back in the living room, but only in passing before turning the dead bolt and cracking the door, chain still securely latched.

"Yes?"

Vic stepped into view beside his wife, "it’s about your husband." He shook his head. "It’s not good."

Her fingers struggled with the chain, but Sarah freed the door from its confinement and flung it wide. "Oh God. Is he all right? Did something happen at the club?"

Pandora did her best to hide her glee, stuffing down the smile that fought to surface. "Something very-very terrible."

"You should get your daughter," urged Vic.

"Not…I…tell me what happened, please. Is he okay? Is he alive?!"

Swinging his pistol up, he aimed it between her eyes, just as he had done to her husband, staring down the length into her unanswered torment with cool detachment. "Call to your daughter, or I’ll make her an orphan. Tell her to run and she won't make it off the property."

"Oh God," Sarah gasped hoarsely. "Kirsten." Her voice failed her, cracking and barely audible. "Kirsten!" The second attempt, flung back over her shoulder, was louder, though she laid her hand on the frame of the door to steady herself. She turned back to face them, her eyes flooded with tears. "What are you going to do?"

"Mommy?" Small and quizzical, the girl-child’s voice was tinged with the cobwebs of sleep as she shuffled into view from the hallway. Kirsten possessed a youthful blond that neared white more than gold, and she came dressed in her pink pajamas, decorated with unicorns and complete with footies. "Is daddy home?"

Before she caught sight of it, Vic drew his weapon back and knelt on the porch, setting it within reach but safely out of view around the edge of the door. "Come here Kirsten," he smiled, gesturing her closer, cutting his eye up towards her mother every now and then.

Looking up at her, he seemed absolutely wicked. His eye half-hidden by the top of the socket, that fiendish look one gets that way. Sarah held her hand behind her, waving her daughter to her, as if bidding for her attention over her visitors. "C’mere, honey."

Being the good child that she was, Kirsten obeyed her parent, taking her mother’s hand and yet being otherwise oblivious to the intentions the couple at the door could hold for them both.

But as soon as she had done that, Vic stopped his beckoning. The child’s choice had been made, and to him, that was as good as any other she may have decided upon. "Kirsten, I am…an uncle of yours, just here for a visit. Now your mother may talk to you later, but right now," reaching back around the corner, as if towards his pistol, he instead produced a beautifully wrapped box, with a perfectly tied ribbon, "I have something from your father."

"Daddy?" She looked up at her mother, suddenly uncertain, though her eyes were as bright as a spotlight.

"He said it was very special, and no matter what, you needed to get it." Holding it out, he looked towards her mother as the child took it in hand. Once he felt assured that she had it safely in her possession, he started to stand. But then, whether through sleepiness or the inherent clumsiness of a child, the box slipped from Kirsten’s grasp, and it tumbled downward. Yet with lightening reflexes, the boy caught hold of it, this time making sure that Sarah too had a hand on it before letting go. "Because it’s special, you have to be really careful with it, Kirsten.

"What’s inside there, is all your daddy’s love for you and your mommy." Slyly retrieving the pistol while the little girl remained transfixed on the item, he slipped the weapon into the back of his waistband, with its rarely used blued mate. Getting back to his feet, he raked his fingers through his hair, and cleared his throat.

Though Pandora moved forward, Vic’s hand on her shoulder stopped her, and a quick gaze into his eye spoke his intentions. "But…." Pandora looked to her husband, confused.

"Not these, my love."

"But why not?" Her insistence on an answer pressed him, in her voice, disappointment.

"Because I’d prefer not to." Vic smiled, and softly stroked his fingers through his wife’s white hair. "I just don’t have the urge with them, and tonight I’m feeling generous."

That was enough of an answer for her, for she knew that while he may not have been able to put a specific name and form to it, his feelings on the matter were enough, and of his truth she was always accepting. "Okay, my love." Cocking her head, she glanced back at Sarah one final time. "Get sleep when you can," she advised sincerely. "It’s never easy again after you lose your beloved."

"Night." Vic reached out to touch Sarah’s shoulder, but she pulled away. Ignoring the snub, he turned to join his wife in heading back in the direction of the car.

Stepping onto the porch, Sarah’s hand kept her daughter inside the house. "Who are you people?"

"No one in particular," his voice came.

"I don’t understand."

But they were already in the car. She watched them, though it wasn’t long before the three-paneled taillights disappeared around the corner at the end of her block, where the streetlights gave way to night, and she knew that though they themselves had not said it, not understanding was sometimes best.