Free The Unlucky Man by H T G Hedges

mist rising from the road a cloying, shape bending menace and his shots all went wide of their mark.
    For a moment the street was filled with the receding roar of the engine and the burning coals of its lights and then these things faded to nothing and it stood empty once more.
     
    ***
     
    To begin with we drove with an urgency and speed that was almost the same as purpose, choosing our route at random, twisting and turning through a maze of side streets and alleys until we were truly lost and hoped that any pursuit must surely be likewise entangled in our spider web of indecision.
     Warehouses had quickly given way to dilapidated brown bricks, tenement housing rich with graffiti and broken down, discarded hopes as we tried to lose ourselves in the shapeless domestic warren of forlorn city streets.
    The sky was lightening with a rosy tint when at last Corg killed the engine and we steamed, cooling and ticking, unwanted in the lee of a battered and boarded over school-house. A big, sprayed on Q stood out resplendent in neon green and white paint over its sealed and boarded over front doors.
    It was still raining.
    I’d caught Corg glancing at me as he drove, concern or apprehension or something like it reflected in his eyes.
    "You know," I said at last, breaking a heavy silence that had grown up between us as the circuitous miles wound past, "I’ve never seen inside your warehouse before." Corg raised an acid eyebrow.
    "Really?" he said, "That’s funny, I’ve never seen you put three bullets through someone’s face before."
    The engine pinged as it cooled.
    "A day of firsts then I guess," I said glibly.
    He gave me a sharp look. "Where did you learn to shoot like that?"
    I understood his concern. At first a mixture of the alien nature of events and pure adrenaline had kept us running as normal. That and a copious amount of vodka in Corg’s case, but I supposed it was unavoidable that uncertainties would arise, floating out of a sea of confusion and fear like the crashing waves after a narcotic high. Immediate danger passed, reality was seeping assiduously back in with blanket inevitability.
    "I don’t know," I confessed. "At the time, it didn’t even occur to me I might miss." It was the truth and yet saying it aloud cast a shadow of worry against the back of my mind. There was no way I would have been able to do the things I had done tonight two days ago. I had come in from the dark apparently emancipated from doubt, from hesitation, but at what cost?
    That was what was bothering Corg, I think. Doubt was normal, fear was human and at present I felt neither. I was aware that my emotional responses were in no way in line with what they ought to be. In truth I felt detached from events, an island of stillness as chaos seas churned about me.
    But then I thought of the patch of clean, fresh skin on my chest where a bullet should have blown apart my heart and rattled across ribs and the dark, hungry well that had grown from it. If the world had stopped making sense, why shouldn’t my responses follow suit? It was a train of thought I wasn’t going to pursue much further.
    To change the subject, as much for my own benefit as Corg’s, I brought up another that had been nagging away at me as I’d watched the rain slough down the window and the buildings loom up large and barren before fading away once more.
    "This is our old hearse right? The one we used before Danvers auctioned it off?"
    "Yeah, that’s right," he said frostily.
    "And Danvers sold it to you?"
    I could see Corg relax slightly, despite himself, as he thought about his prized and familiar chariot. He’d always treated it like he owned it anyway and created merry hell at the prospect of its sale, something I now realised, with a certain respect, was probably an act of commendable play acting from Corg.
    "No," he said, the ghost of a smile hovering at the corner’s of his mouth, "He sold it to Harry Katch."
    "Who’s Harry Katch?" I asked, before catching