Nitro Express Rifle
NITRO EXPRESS RIFLE. (See also, RIFLE) A break-action, double-barreled rifle ideal for hunting large game, the Nitro Express was often used by British colonials on elephant hunting expeditions. It is similarly effective in bringing down buffalo, bear, and other large game found in the Americas. Though the Nitro Express has a short range, its shot is incredibly powerful, with an equally powerful recoil.
The Nitro Express Rifle is actually named for its cartridge, called as such because of the bullet velocity, which is fast as an express train, according to James Purdey, who coined the term, and because the propellant used is cordite, which is made of nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin.
Unpublished manuscript, "Bad As They Seem"
Author: Hayden Collins
Undated
Bleached paper, typewritten, 8.5x11 in
-12-
The visions continued. Fin did not sleep, but tossed and turned as one caught in nightmare. She fell into a restless sleep, lying unconscious for hours, then days. Her vision writhed with snakes, echoed with hissing. Inside of the vision, the world shook and shimmered around the edges.
Mud, blood, fog and shadow and movement and explosions. Gun shots, and screams. Run through the darkness, hope you don't trip, hope their bullets don't pierce your skin, hope you make it out alive in spite of your waning strength. The odds are not in your favor. The odds have never been in your favor. It's why you play the game.
You press your back against the thin boards of a shed, not knowing if it harbors your own angel of death. Not knowing if some hidden gunman prepares to write your finale, and send it express. You hasten to reload your rifle, wary of the sound of metal on metal as you slide a cartridge into the chamber. Then you take a small syringe out of your coat pocket, raising a sleeve, and sending the point into your arm with a sharp thrust. The solution takes effect quickly, and you feel invincible, euphoric, giddy, prepared. You raise your gun and you run. And you run. And you run.
The noise of gunshots surrounds you as you are seen and targeted, but you are quick, zigzagging like a jackrabbit, laughing. You feel like you could run forever, could shoot a nickel from a weathervane in a storm. You kill five men and one woman on your way to the building that will afford you cover, reloading as you run. Your head will haze over into an intensely painful fog when the injection wears off, but for now, you are fueled by its fire.
When Fin came to it was dark, and Jos had gone. Jos' absence was disorienting; her sister was her anchor, an assurance of her own existence. She knew but one way to focus her mind. With a sledgehammer and a rifle, she left the cabin, extinguishing the lantern Jos had left burning as she shut the door. There would be monsters in the swamps tonight, and she would find them.
Unpublished manuscript, "Bad As They Seem"
Author: Hayden Collins
Undated
Bleached paper, typewritten, 8.5x11 in
-13-
The snake's venom had affected each twin differently; it could not be doubled. Their battle magic - as they thought of it - had weakened. The mirror had cracked
That evening, Jos' mind was on death: her own, her mother's, her father's, her victims . She found no meaning in the loss of life, was unburdened by its gravity. Death was inevitable, and its inevitability rendered it meaningless The word fate rang hollow in her ears.
The priests offered no solace - though they had begun to hear rumors of a Christian association of hunters - and they did not trust those who offered sanctioned redemption. Some called the creatures a plague; some called them the devil. Both were wrong.
Pulling on a long jacket against the cool air foreshadowing fall, armed only with a small pistol, Jos left her sister behind to meet another.
Allison - the woman she would now meet - had sought Jos out, and they had progressed from cautious silence to confessional outpourings, from wary strangers to friends, and then further. Camaraderie existed among hunters, but connection was taboo. Like children left unnamed until they survived their second birthday, hunters preferred not to name - which is to say, preferred not to know - that which they were likely to lose. To hunt, you must be able to survive both combat and constant loss.
To remove the calloused skin that protects the delicate shell of the heart was to choose life. A hunter always chooses death. Does not think of the future. In the cracks of the mirror, their images bent and multiplied: reflections, no two the same.
