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He wanted to hear voices, even if they came from stupid desert rats.
The town wasn’t much—he’d call it a hovel—but it had stores, including a barely decent market, a few tired excuses for restaurants, two bars with a liquor store attached to one of them. The western rube version of a sheriff’s department—that didn’t worry him—and a huddle of houses on the outskirts someone with a sense of humor might call the ’burbs.
It lay a few miles from the western edge of Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, which held no interest for him—and sported views of the mountains.
Close enough for bored day-trippers or crazed hikers and campers to pay a call, so some of those shops ran to souvenirs, camping and hiking gear. And plenty of guns for sale.
He might not be a fan of the gun, but he’d caught sight of snakes more than once. He’d tried shooting the hell out of them with thehandgun he’d taken off Dead Jane, tried her shotgun, and the rifle he’d found in the cabin.
And tested out the AR-15, which obliterated the snake and scared the crap out of him.
He put that one back on the wall, stuck with the handgun.
She’d had a shitload of ammo, but he’d wasted some of it on the damn snakes, then shooting the shit out of a cactus just to hear the noise.
He’d written down the kind of ammunition for the handgun.
Wouldn’t hurt to pick some up.
Since he’d woken hungry, he’d eaten half a dozen eggs and the last of the bacon he’d found in the freezer. Jane had marked it—helpful—but he’d had to slice it himself, so the slices were mostly too thin, too thick.
He’d just buy some damn bacon. And sausage. And whatever else caught his eye and appetite.
He bought towels first. No Egyptian cotton in Two Stupid Springs, he’d discovered before. But he settled. He bought a new frying pan, since he’d burned the one at the cabin, then tossed it as far as he could toss.
He hit the liquor store. Beer, wine, whiskey, vodka, mixers, tonic, and, hell, why not tequila?
“Having a party?” the checkout clerk asked with a little ho-ho-ho like fricking Santa.
Rozwell stared at him, lip curled. “Yeah. I’m the life of the party.”
“Bet.” Avoiding those eyes now, the clerk bagged the booze, handed over the change.
After loading the supplies in the truck, he went for the ammo. He bought three boxes of hollow points for his inherited Colt 45.
And thought: Yeehaw, I’m a gunslinging son of a bitch.
From there, he hit the market.
Chips, cookies, candy, frozen fries—why hadn’t he thought of that before? Bacon, sausage, frozen pizza. The pizza made him think of Morgan.
“Bitch’ll get what’s coming,” he muttered, and the woman standing two feet away headed in the other direction.
Frozen dinners—heat and eat! Cheese! Milk! Cereal, bread, butter. Lemons—for a nice tequila shot. Bananas. Potatoes, because anyone could figure out how to bake a damn potato.
He filled two baskets before he was done.
At checkout, the clerk started ringing him up. She had a face as round as a pie with glasses that kept sliding down her nose.
It irritated him so much he imagined punching her right in those stupid glasses, just driving them into her eyes so they bled.
“Looks like stocking up,” she said cheerfully.
He spread his lips in what he believed made a friendly smile. “That’s right. Stocking up. Man’s gotta eat, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, sir.” She kept her eyes trained on the items. “He sure does.”
He carted the bags out, loading the frozen stuff in the cab where the AC, such as it was, could keep it from melting on the trip back.
