I hit the tarmac with my shoulder and something cracked by my collarbone. And I rolled. And flipped. And rolled some more. I held tight to the gun in my right hand, and it discharged twice as the sky spun and the bridge twirled and dipped.

I skidded to a stop on a bloody, howling hip. My left shoulder felt numb and flabby simultaneously, and my flesh was slick with blood.

But I could flex my right hand around the gun, and even though the hip I’d landed on felt as if it were filled with sharp stones, both legs felt solid. I looked back at the Lexus as the passenger door opened. It was about ten yards back, its trunk attached now to the crumpled hood of the Celica. A stream of hissing water shot from the Celica as I stood unsteadily, a tomato paste combination of rain and blood streaming down my face.

On my right, on the other side of the bridge, a black Jeep had skidded to a stop and the driver was shouting words at me that were lost in the wind and rain.

I ignored him and concentrated on the Lexus.

The Weeble fell to one knee as he climbed out of the Lexus, his white shirt saturated red, a meaty hole gouged across where his right eyebrow used to be. I limped toward him as he used the muzzle of his pistol to push himself off his knee. He gripped the open car door and watched me come, and I could tell by his bobbing Adam’s apple that he was swallowing hard against nausea. He looked down at the gun in his hand uncertainly, then at me.

“Don’t,” I said.

He looked down at his chest, at the blood pumping from somewhere in there, and his fingers tightened around his pistol.

“Don’t,” I said again.

Please don’t, I thought.

But he raised the gun anyway, blinking at me in the downpour, his small body wavering like a drunk’s.

I shot him twice in the center of the chest before his gun hand cleared his hip, and he flopped back against the car, his mouth forming a confused oval, as if he were about to ask me a question. He grabbed for the open door, but his arm slid down between the doorframe and the windshield pillar. His body began a cascade to his right, but his elbow got pinned between the door and the car, and he died there—half-pointed to the ground, vise-gripped to the car, the beginnings of a question lying stillborn in his eyes.

I heard a ratcheting sound, and I looked up over the roof of the car to see Mr. Cushing leveling a shiny shotgun at me. He sighted down the bore, one eye squinting shut, a bony white finger curled around the trigger. He smiled.