I stare up at the sky, blood gushing out of my chest.

The average weight for nine-millimeter ammunition is 115 grams per lead bullet. They travel in excess of three hundred thirty-five feet per second, with each cartridge bearing fifteen shots. I lay flat on my back, watching the clouds pass, all this math swimming in my head. Five of them, fifteen bullets each, and since they’re not firing anymore, I’m left to deduce that they fired 75 shots. No. It was more than that. They must have had two each. 150. One-hundred fifty bullets, and I only got caught by five. One-thirtieth! I’m lucky, really.

Somewhere, far away, I hear the rope-bride creaking and swinging in the wind. I hear a voice echoing from some other galaxy, deep and booming and godly but unmistakably Raoul’s:

“Oh, holy fuck, Ivan!”

Hands clamp around my shoulders, two, then four, then maybe more, and wrench me to my feet. I can’t stay balanced. I am leaning on Cliff. Raoul and Grungy try to help him right me, try to get me to my feet. I fight to keep my eyes open.

My assailants are crossing the rope bridge now, herded into a nice little single-file line, swinging back and forth. I am upright and mostly conscious. I still have my gun, a .357 I must have taken from my father.

Fuck it.

I raise the cannon with both hands and fire wild shot after wild shot, my body launching backward into Cliff and Grungy with each recoil. The bridge swings and screams. The gun roars. Blood flies. 9mm, they’ll penetrate and stop in the body. That was the reason it was getting so difficult to breathe. Five bullets now occupied my lungs, and had opened the floodgates for my blood to do the same. I was drowning in myself. Each breath I took, I got less and less air, no matter how deep I gasped. But a .357 will tear your limbs off. It will blow a hole through your torso with an exit wound the size of a softball.

I fired off all six shots. Those who weren’t outright killed by the apocalypse I’d just shot definitely weren’t getting up for a while.

“Ivan…” another voice. Raspy and rattling. Grungy.

“Whas… up?” I gasped.

“You’re… you’re hit bad, man. Real bad.”

“Yeah. I know. It’s… not so bad now. It’s just… real hard to breathe.”

“We’re gonna get you to a hospi-”

“Save it… keep going. I dig the sky, right now…”

My last words faded beyond the point of whispers into silent mouthings. They nodded and hesitantly left me. I couldn’t breathe at all anymore. My chest screamed, my lungs burned, blood burbled out of my mouth. I lay, squinting hard, waiting for it to be over.

And then it was.