Free The Glooming (Wrath of the Old Gods Book 1) by John Triptych

on the remote control. He sat slumped in the torn-up couch of his friend’s living room while trying to pass the time. Although he heard on the news that the electrical grid was shutting down, the power was still going here, so he kept all the lights on in the house as he waited till his friends got back. The little bit of money that they gave him upon his release was already spent on booze, cigarettes, and a little bit of blow. Empty beer cans were lying around his dirty bare feet, along with crushed plastic wrappers on the dingy carpet. His friend really didn’t seem to care much about cleaning. He had his scalp shaved every morning, just like the skinhead gang he was a part of in prison. Buck didn’t have a whole lot of clothes when he was let go, so he was wearing the sleeveless plaid shirt that once belonged to his friend’s ex-girlfriend. He kept the old, torn up denim jeans he took in with him when he got arrested all those years ago.
    It was now early afternoon and just as he was thinking of throwing the remote control at the television set to see if it would shatter the monitor, he heard his friend’s pickup truck going into the front driveway. Quickly turning off the TV, Buck looked around and found a pair of old tennis shoes which he started putting on his feet.
    “Buck, what have you been doin’ there, you ol’ possum!” his friend Mark Gooch said as he opened the screen door and strode in, carrying several semi-automatic rifles slung on his back that he then placed on top of the grimy coffee table beside the couch. Mark was about a shade taller than Buck and more heavyset, his hair was deep black and curly but he had a neatly trimmed beard. They had met while in jail and became friends ever since.
    “Holy sheeiit,” Buck said as he picked up one of the rifles and started examining it. The weapon was an AR-15, one of the most common types of semi-automatic rifles being sold to civilians in the country and it looked brand new. He noticed that there was a custom made forward grip on it as he checked whether the red dot sight that was attached to the upper rail of the carrying handle was fully operational or not. It was.
    Mark put his hands into a black plastic trash bag that he was carrying and took out two handguns, one was a Glock and the other was a chromed .357 Magnum revolver and threw them on top of the couch as he started laughing. “I tell you, boy, we hit the mother lode!”
    “Where’d you git all of this?” Buck said as he locked back the AR-15’s collapsible stock and began sighting it.
    Mark racked the slide of a 1911 Les Baer .45 pistol before thumbing the safety and holstering it on his hip. “Remember that gun store over at Midland? Well, we waited till the owner had boarded it up and left, then we just came in with bolt cutters and opened her up like a cardboard box. I tell ya, it was easy as pie!”
    Mark’s hulking cousin Lance Gooch came through the door pushing a dolly that was stacked with several boxes. “Where in the hell do I put all of this, Mark?”
    “Right behind the kitchen counter, if ya please,” Mark said as he picked up another AR-15 from the table and started to examine it. He was wearing desert camouflaged cargo pants and a grey-colored tactical vest that he took from the accessories section of the gun store, they were so new the price tags were still on them.
    “Yessiree,” Lance said as he wheeled in the boxes and began to stack them on the kitchen floor. At six foot two, he was the tallest and most heavily built of the three, with dark brown hair in a crew cut and similarly-colored short beard. A former cop, Lance had been fired two years ago after he had beaten up and shot a couple of black men he had seen loitering in a Dallas alleyway. One of the men had died and the family sued. Although Lance’s partner and the police union had stood behind him, the media firestorm that erupted over the whole affair forced the police chief to terminate him although