An old billboard sign stood at the Business Plaza entrance, yellowed and faded with age. I could tell that at one time the sign had proudly displayed the name of every business it represented. I’m betting that back then it was called a Strip Mall, and retailers still thought those were going to make for prime locations.
Now it just had one banner zip tied to both sides that read “Felix’s Fine Firearms,” in a comic strip red and yellow that made me roll my eyes instantly.
“This place is a dump!” Mogwai said with way too much enthusiasm in his voice.
I’d insisted on driving since little Miss Speed Demon almost killed us. Sure, I let her drive when we were after the bounty, Camden “The Teenaged Squatch,” but since I didn’t need passenger space, I opted for my truck.
“Mogwai keep your seatbelt on until we are completely parked!” I growled as she reached for the buckle. In mid-grab, she shot me an annoyed look and sat back hard in her seat, arms crossed like a five-year-old diva.
“You don’t have any alarms or lights that come on if you don’t stay strapped in. Why bother?” Mogwai pouted.
“Because Brenda here,” I patted the black leather dashboard, “is a fully modified F-350 Ford Super Duty with raised dually with a Bradford Built work bed. I have an 8-inch lift from BDS Suspension featuring FOX Shox with a set of Ride Rite helper bags in the rear to accommodate the added weight from the Bradford Built bed. Power upgrades came by way of a Gibson exhaust system topped off with an RBP exhaust tip and a torque-increasing custom tune from PPEI.
I have a massive Road Armor front bumper that was outfitted with a WARN winch and RBP LED light pods. Finishing the front end is a sleek RBP Midnight grille with a set of LED lights flushed in.”
Mogwai shot me another incredulous look, “What does that matter? What does it have to do with my seat belt?”
“Because the 6.7L PowerStroke Engine, Gibson Exhaust System w/RBP Tip, and PPEI Tune will blow you away if you don’t hold on!” I laughed and revved the engines.
Mogwai arched a brow and flared one nostril, “I thought you said you weren’t a lesbian.”
"The laughter that bubbled up in my throat died and turned sour as a pink Hydro flask bounced off my windshield.
“What the holy hell was that?” I barked and slid into a parking spot.
“Protesters! Felix has protester,” Mogwai said like she was reporting the approach of Yankee cutters as they approached Charleston.
The rally was small, only six or seven middle aged white women dressed in South Face jackets, in skin tight yoga pants. Apparently, they were hyped up on more pumpkin spiced latte’s than a single Starbucks could make in a day. Because screaming at full volume and waving signs, and a few fists at me.
“What the hell did I do?” I asked dumbfounded.
“We have happened on the upper middle-income Karen in her natural environment,” Mogwai reported with an unconvincing David Attenborough impression.
“I don’t care if their name is Suzanne Sugarbaker! No one throws over-priced athletic sports drink cups at my truck!” I tried to snarl, but the string of adjectives made me focus on understanding Mogwai, so some of the fire slipped away.
Mog shrugged as she peered around the plaza, her eyes locking in on a new threat that appeared to have come right from the GAP, “Oh, I think the queen Karen heard you, she is coming this way.”
A monster Karen at a Strip-mall, with a reverse-bob haircut. [https://images.nightcafe.studio/jobs/0hNgsNI9evW9oteOkIns/0hNgsNI9evW9oteOkIns--1--8JYOY.jpg?tr=w-1600,c-at_max]
Swinging down from my door, I nearly had both feet on the ground before she was on me in the brassy hues of her inverted bob haircut. “That truck is has a carbon footprint that is seven times as much as my Prius! There is no need to make it worse by revving your engine and disrupting our protest!”
“Isn’t the point of a protest about disrupting things?” I asked, and I admit I was taken a little off guard. I mean, Brenda was a beautiful trunk, she was meant to roar once in a while. What was this crazy cougar’s problem?
“Oh, so you’re a smart ass, too? Well, I will have you know my husband is the Sherriff’s deputy sergeant on duty, and if I call him, he will be down here in a heartbeat to tow that abomination!” she said and for emphasis she kicked Brenda’s tire, and added, “You would do well to keep a civil tongue in your head.”
“Bitch, I will beat your ass-“ I started for her, but Mogwai was faster and got between us.
By this time her gang of so-called protestors had filled In the spaces behind her and angry voices were raising. I didn’t care. This old biddy needed to learn some manners, and I was about to give her the lesson.
“Sweetheart, your blood sugar is too low, you know how you get,” Mogwai said and her words silenced the crowd.
“What?” I asked, but Mogwai was giving me a sweet patient look that had me baffled.
Karen promptly looked between Mogwai, and me, then at the Brenda, as if she had just come to some profound conclusion.
Mogwai pulled a couple of sugar packets from her purse and handed them to me insistently, “You left your glucose at home again my dear. You eat these sugar packets until we can get some good carbs, or fruit."
Mog shot the crowd an apologetic smile and shrugged like a helpless house wise dealing with a bear of a husband.
"These nice ladies don’t know you. You shouldn’t freak out on them. Besides, you don’t need another flashback from Kabul. Remember the last time? The judge warned you about the violence.”
Holding the sugar packets, I looked between Mogwai and Karen, totally confused, but Karen seemed to pick up what Mog was putting down.
“Oh, I didn’t realize your,” glancing at my left hand she searched for a ring, but not finding one she just stood there with her mouth open confused.
“We aren’t married. We’ve only been together for a few weeks, but she is a real teddy bear I promise,” she rubbed her belly suddenly and added, “She just gets protective now that,” Mog lifted her eyes brows, a cherubic little smile on her lips as she looked all sweet and innocent.
Karen stuttered as she tried to get out her next words, “You two are, -“
“I know, I know,” Mogwai said sweetly, “they said we could never make it work, we are just too different. But I believe that if two people really try, they can make anything work.”
“Wait, you said you just got together, ” Karen, looked over her shoulder to find her friends, all had sad soft eyes, but gasping, “But how?” as she pointed to Mogwai’s Belly.
“That’s how I met Dana here, “she pointed at me, “she, she-“
One girl in the background made that freaking, “awwww” sound of sympathy, and I could see Karen knew she lost her audience.
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Mogwai teared up, her lower lip quivering as she hiccupped a little sob.
“What happened, dear? Was it a man?” Karen asked a sudden maternal tone to her voice.
“Isn’t it always? Men are so…” the group dissolved into muttering complaints about ex-husbands and current boyfriends, but I was no fool and I took the space Mogwai gave me.
“I should get something to eat,” I said and headed for Felix’s.
Mogwai held their attention like a carnival barker on a Friday night, and in seconds I was inside
“Invest in precious metal: Buy Lead!” a bumper sticker read as we walked into the cinderblock building. Outside might have been all pealing paint and busted up asphalt, but inside was military inspection level clean!
Racks of signage, informing would be trespassers and thieves that a property would be defended by people with backhoes, and a lot of anger was intermixed with zombie targets, and other colorful things to shoot or about shooting. None of this was anything but window dressing for the wall-to-wall racks of guns.
Everything from deer rifles to Ak’s, cowboy guns and pneumatic sniper weapons were everywhere. Of course, sitting behind the glass counter filled with this year’s models of Sig P365’s and Kimber Micro 9’s, Felix sat reading the latest issue of Gun’s and Self Defense magazine.
“No Trespassing! I will straight up Pepper Mace the lot of you, I’m not,” Felix came around the counter in a flash, with a woman in gypsy skirts following behind him, making soothing sounds.
She was an attractive little thing. Attractive in the way that farmers’ wives from the fifties were attractive. Homey, slightly plump, with rosy cheeks and a matronly bust that still had the spring of youth to potentially keep an old badger like Felix happy.
“Felix, sorry to drop in without a call, er nothin,” I said and for the first time I had his eyes slid over to me as recognition settled in.
“Rhett! Thank God it’s you and not one of those, cu—” Felix paused and glanced at the woman, before changing his previous choice of words.
Still red faced he turned back to me and said, “I’m sorry there you old Troop Master, those protestors get like this after any criminal gets shot or shoots up some place. Not one of those weapons were bought here, hell I don’t even sell to the public generally.”
“I think Mogwai has them under control. She convinced them she is a sexually assaulted mother to be who is being taken care of her lesbian lover slash war shell shocked war veteran,” I said as causally as I could, but it still made Felix stop and stare for several seconds.
“I didn’t know you two were, -“ he said, as his dark beady eyes stared down his hawk-like nose at me.
“I’m not freaking gay! Felix, you’ve known me for years, you know I like the D!” I complained.
The gypsy farm wife beside him must not have expected such language because her eyes went wide and a shocked look came over her face.
“How would I know that? I worked with you, we didn’t date,” Felix said as a glanced nervously at his guest. “Besides, I figured you were just compensating for something. Sort of like you do with that obnoxious truck of yours,” she said innocently.
“Is that the one with the little, tiny mud flaps you were talking about?” The lady smiled devilishly as she cut in, and Felix turned and hushed her, but I was sure I heard a giggle.
“At least it doesn’t have those ridiculous plastic balls hanging from the hitch,” she paused and looked at me with a nearly pleading look on her face as she said, “Dear, please tell me you didn’t make your truck look like male inadequacy. I don’t know who hurt you, but not all men are bad.”
I gaped. Yup, my big old mouth just hung right open as I looked between them.
“I…” With no idea what to say, I stared at them as they looked on like Red and Kitty Forman.
Breaking the awkward silence, Mogwai causally walked into the room with a new pink South face jacket, and some over large sunglasses that had enough sparkles inlaid to blind an owl.
“Karen is pretty sweet once you get to know her. I just called her an Ally and somehow that made everything cool,” Mogwai beamed oblivious to my burning red cheeks and how I fidgeted with my hands.
“Yeah, so what’s up with these protestors, anyway?” I asked, trying to keep the subject off me.
Felix slid his finger up the side of his nose and absently rubbed at it a second, “Well, the Wally World stopped selling firearms, and The Outdoorsman Warehouse has great security and lawyers.”
“Felix’s Fine Firearms has the word, ‘Firearms’ in it so it’s the obvious choice for this corner of the city,” The woman cut in as she slid her arm through Felix’s as casually as if he was crossing his own, and I caught myself making a face.
“I know!” she went on as if my sour look was about the protestors. “We even explained we that Felix doesn’t sell to the public, but that alpha Karen just said that point was more important than the actual disposition of the store, can you believe that?”
“What can you do? We don’t even do much in the way of direct sales, people just want to be able to come to the shop and talk to a real person. I guess it’s just these modern times,” Felix shrugged.
“Open up and gamer’s shop and sell guns out the back alley!” Mog chimed in.
“Oh, we don’t really know much about computers, my dear,” the woman was saying, and I was slowly getting annoyed at being so completely derailed. The hard thing was this lady was pretty outstanding, really. I mean she was sharp as a tack, clearly, and her sense of humor was just what it would take to be around people like us, but then she was it Felix, so that figured. So I had no idea how to be tactful and yet break up the chitchat and get back on point.
“This squawking isn’t making me any money!” Flex interrupted, with no regard for tact.
The lady paused, a little smile on her lips and for a second, I thought I saw Felix pale, “True enough you old bear, but you haven’t introduced me yet.”
Felix seemed to deflate for a moment, then a little gleam hit his eye and he stood back up straight, “Rhett, Mogwai, this is the old crone who calls herself my girl, Catherine.”
Catherine didn’t miss a beat as she elbowed Felix in the ribs, “Oh you turd!” she admonished him, then turned back to me and still laughing said, “Ignore that old sourpuss, just call me Kathy,” she smiled and offered a pale and I couldn’t help but to notice the dirt under her fingernails.
“I’m sorry for the dirt, I specialize in pharmacognosy, so I spend a lot of time with my hands in the dirt,” she explained without a hint of embarrassment. Actually, truth be told she seemed proud of the dirt under her nails and for that pegged her as just my sort of woman.
“What’s pharmacognosy? I don’t think I have heard of that before.” I asked, smiling despite myself.
Kathy slid in beside me and took my forearm and hand and started walking me toward the service counter.
“Oh, that?” she laughed. “it’s just a fancy-smancy way of saying I study healing plants. I used to run a Nursery over off Broadway, but cities do what they do, and when it grew, I was priced out.”
“Felix and Mogwai trailed just behind us, and that was when Felix cut in, “That’s how we met. She was looking or a space here in the plaza, and we got to talking,” Felix smiled a mischievous smile and added, “I’m pretty sure she drugged me with one of those plants because I’ve been smitten ever since.”
“Drugged you, or put a spell on you?” I asked and winked at Kathy like we were old conspirators.
“I said she was a crone, didn’t I?” Dodging another elbow, Felix hurried behind the service counter.
“Not like Chloe from the Convention Center, Kathy is just a witch,” Mogwai added, and we all turned to look at her a bit shocked at her matter-of-fact way of saying it.
For a moment no one said anything, and slowly a low rumble rolled up from Felix, and soon we were all chuckling.
“Well, I prefer plant-mom, but I make a mean chamomile and dragon fruit tea, so if that makes me a witch, I’ll take it,” Kathy smiled and motion toward the back.
“Speaking of tea, does anyone want some over ice? It’s organically sweetened with honey,” she offered and turned hurrying away without waiting for answers.
“It’s all good, I didn’t exactly spend your phone call to let us know you we were coming.” I said with a shrug, but my eyes were coveting ever curve on the Tavor TAR-21 assault rifle proudly displayed behind him. It was a futuristic looking rifle with the pistol group and had rest in front of the magazine and stock. Like a Bullpup design but sleeker and more Terminator instead of James Bond.
Felix’s sales agent mode kicked in as he saw my gaze and he dropped the annoyed grumpy old man bit and turned to look over his shoulder as if he didn’t know that beauty was there. “That my dear is The Tavor TAR-21 assault rifle was developed by Israel Military Industries (IMI) back in the early 1990s. This weapon is simple, tough and versatile. It was adopted by Israel in 2006 and became a standard issue infantry rifle. Normally, it’s chambered in a standard 5.56 NATO round, but I have a kit that brought it up to the 6.5 Creedmoor round.”
“6.5 Creedmoor is a nice round, but it’s expensive and not as common on the battlefield as a 5.56,” I rebutted, and watched Felix reach up and expertly pull the rifle down.
“Sure. Sure, but this isn’t the battlefield and let’s face it everyone is buying 9mm, 5.56 and .22 rounds. You might get them a little cheaper, but you can’t get them in bulk. Right now I can sell you this-“Felix’s sales pitch came to a hard stop as he looked at me, then Mogwai and shook his head.
“What the hell am I doing? You have that stupid Gimmick gun, and you’re broke as always,” Felix shook his head and put the gun back up.
Whipping out my cash card, I gave Felix an evil grin, “I have you know I am a paying customer. Besides, I have a bounty, and I have no idea how to prep for it.”
Felix laughed lightly and shook his head as he dug out his can of chewing tobacco and stuffed a pinch in his lip.
“The Chort might look like big game, but they will go down just as easily with a 9mm as they would a big game rifle,” he said then gave me the side eye and lifted a brown in the most hawkish look I’d ever seen on a man. “Just don’t shoot them in the head. Their heads are like concrete.”
“Mr. Felix, we aren’t going after Chort. We have a new bounty. What do you have for bear?” Mogwai tossed out there, and Felix grinned at her like a proud grandfather.
“My dear Bear is out of season, unless you mean a teddy bear, in which case I think your smile is the only big gun you need,” he quipped affectionally.
“Skunk Ape,” I said, and the room fell silent.
“The Yowie aren’t something we speak lightly of around here, girl,” Flex said coldly.
Throwing my hands in the air, I turned to address every fishing pole and recurve bow in the place like they were an audience and hollered, “Holy hell! Does everyone have their own name for them? This is ridiculous.”
“No, Troop Master. This is deadly serious. Whatever you call them they are the most fierce and honorable of warriors. Just one of them can take down a special forces team in seconds. I ran into one in the mountains of Afghanistan in 07,” Felix’s eyes took on a far-off look and I knew he was about to launch into story time.
“Twisted body parties and half chewed limbs,” Mogwai cut in and shot at Felix with a Nurf gun, the small dart sticking squarely to his forehead.
“Come on old hoss, you’re wearing us out!” she said in her best attempt at a southern drawl.
Felix chuckled and pulled the dart off his head, “I suppose you’re right. I guess I should get out more. Anyway, what do you need?”
He asked, the hard tone gone, and a soft look filling his eyes. Now, I don’t know what that girl does to him, but he has a real soft spot for Mogwai, and she played it up as she read from the printed list she’d organized.
“No. No, I’m not selling you two C4, Semtex, or Flex-X. I have enough eyes on me without dealing in illegal explosives,” he scoffed when Mogwai lowered his list and looked at him with a wide grin and gleeful expression that reminded me of a kid at Christmas.
“But, I can’t fight hand to hand, and some jobs need to be handled from a distance,” Mogwai whined, but Felix just shook his head.
“Night vision goggles, Laser sights, new rifles, smoke grenades, body armor, armor-piercing rounds,” Felix looked at his both from over the rims of his glasses and waited until we were both locked in on him. “You didn’t get those here. You aren’t licensed for those, and I don’t need the heat. So take this receipt from “Mike’s Guns and Ammo” down the street and tell the cops you got them from Mike if anyone asks.”
“Felix!” I said in disapproval.
“On, don’t give me shit! Mike’s a son of a bitch. Besides, he was Airforce, those guys had it easy for their whole careers, fuck them,” he growled.
Mogwai jumped up onto the ATV in the corner and raised a compound bow she got from somewhere and yelled, “yeah! Fuck them!”