Nobody Move by Denis Johnson

with a barbell on one door and on the other a figure with monstrous tits.
He ran the light around the molding at the base of the wall, as far as its beam would reach—no other door.
As he headed for the counter and the kitchen area, he heard a voice from exactly there, muffled by a wall, and another voice, also muffled. He unholstered the gun, set his cane on a chair, and walked as quickly as he could toward the sound. The lights behind the counter came on. A man in jeans stood some fifteen feet away with his right hand raised to the wall switch. Gambol fired two rounds, and before he could get off a third the man collapsed like a sack out of sight behind the counter.
Gambol continued to the counter and leaned over it as far as he could. The man lay motionless in the narrow space between the counter and the stove, shirtless and barefoot, facedown. Gambol took aim, holding the weapon with both hands, took note of his breathing, and in the space between his out breath and in breath squeezed the trigger carefully. The head broke open. He turned away.
Someone was shouting, but he couldn’t hear the words. He turned again with his weapon and saw no one and turned away and found his cane and walked to the door and out into the night.
He had thirty yards of open space to make across the parking lot and then an equal distance along the roadside to the car, but when he reached the roadside he’d be hidden by trees. In his left hand he held the gun. With his right he gripped the cane’s handle. He stiffened his right arm and right leg and marched as swiftly as he could. As he passed the pickup truck, sounds followed him, his hearing still blurred by the shock of gunfire. Footsteps, possibly, down the far side of the building, and footsteps on gravel, and then a sharp, clear sound—klick- ack !—that meant he hadn’t moved fast enough.

    Luntz assumed Anita was back. He heard a loud backfire. The Caddy shouldn’t be doing that. And another—identical.
One is a backfire. Two is a gun.
He fell to the floor and reached under the bed for the duffel bag that held the shotgun. Rather than pulling it to him, he found himself floundering toward it under the bed. Lying on his side, he clutched the duffel to his chest and ran his hand along its length and touched the zipper. He felt capable of nothing else.
Another shot downstairs.
He put his knee to his chest and a foot against the wall and shoved himself and the duffel out from under the low bed, and his bones turned to rubber bands as he tried to stand. He rose only as far as his knees and was barely able to hoist the bag onto the bed. He jerked the zipper one way and another until it gave in the right direction. Stood up in a room tilted sideways, gripping the barrel and dangling the shotgun, aware mainly of an unbelievable trembling weakness in his legs.
He opened the door and stood outside at the top of the stairs, turning the shotgun in his hands until he held the pistol grip. He pushed the safety button and cocked the gun—klick- ack !—and took a step, and his feet slipped out from under him, and he viewed, overhead, a crescent moon and several stars in a black sky as he bumped down the stairs on his spine, feeling no physical sensation at all. His feet found a purchase, and he stood and wobbled down the remaining steps and onto the earth and clambered toward the building’s corner, going down several times onto one or the other knee. As he rounded the building, he pulled the trigger. His ears and his hands seemed to explode with the force, but he had hold of the weapon still, and cocked it again. He saw who he was shooting at—someone moving past the pickup at the building’s other end.
Luntz chased his target as far as the road’s shoulder. Now the man was hopping toward a car. Luntz raised the gun level with his shoulders and pointed and fired again—numb up his right arm and deaf in his right ear. The man jumped and turned and fell, then he pushed himself up on one