Some say a stranger came, dealing death before the end...Pt.3

"We're all goin' to die, darlin'." The stranger Lido swung his gunbelt over his shoulder with an almost deranged nonchalance, considering the situation. "Can you pass me that spare gunbelt over there by the bed?"

Her eyes flinching from the flying splinters of wood that spat through the air as shots cracked in from all sides, she eyed the gunbelt where it lay draped over the tip of one of the bed's four posts, whose intended-to-be-floral head carvings instead resembled the tips of diagonally-fluted penises. Like all the stranger's gunbelts, it was designed like a bandolier - every spare inch bulging with bullets. The holster had been jammed down over the molded tip of the bed-post.

The room had been stifling all day, windows hanging open to let in air that declined the invitation. The bullets were the day's first and only breeze.

Rose Althea leaned back against the planks of the sturdy oak wall, which were vibrating from a lead drizzle of impacts. With one mean squint in the stranger's direction, she half-tumbled, half-leapt the twelve feat of empty, lead-filled distance between her and the bed. She was lying on the floor out of view of the windows (she hoped), tugging at the loose strap of the gunbelt, but the top was jammed on pretty hard. The bullets kept coming. The posts of the bed were beginning to look like a nervous third-grader's pencil. She tugged some more. It was jammed on there, pretty tight. She looked over at the stranger Lido in exasperation. The stranger shrugged.

Rose Althea rearranged her limbs for one daring lunge and took in a breath. The bullets came like a pounding surf in a rainstorm: there were thunderous crescendos, crashing waves, when all the men on the surrounding buildings and sniping from windows were unloading at the same time. And in between each wave's crash, there was a never-ending pat, spat, crack of raindrops. The last wave was just breaking. She waited it out and lunged.

She actually left her feet from the leap, her arms already around and wrestling with the gunbelt before her naked soles returned to the floorboards. She pulled and twisted as bullets whistled. No one seemed to have zeroed in on her yet specifically, but a man in the window directly across the street was looking right into her eyes, furious at being in the middle of reloading. He jammed rounds into his rifle, fumbling, scattering them everywhere. Rose Althea's breath caught and caught, she lifted and pulled and finally, with a pop like a sound effect, the holster came free as pain tore the left side of her head and she collapsed, gunbelt in her arms. She dropped it on the floor and grasped at the side of her head. It was on fire from a million pin points. "I been shot!" she accused.

"It's just your hairdo," the stranger Lido replied, unconcern evident in his voice. "Pass me that belt."

"Why the hell'd you jam it in there so hard!" Rose Althea glared, sliding the belt across floor to the stranger, scattering yellow splinters across the dark-stained planks.

"You weren't complaining last night," the stranger observed, scooping up the belt as it slid and, in a motion Rose Althea's eyes could scarcely understand, he had one pistol halfway loaded already before the gunbelt had fully stopped sliding. Two seconds later, he was already spinning the cylinder of his second pistol and that's when the door thundered on its hinges. His eyes looked up to catch hers, his fingers still working, now on their third gun. "Don't worry about it."

She grinned wide and laughed, as the stranger Lido slid gun #2 across the floor towards her, already working on gun #4, and the hinges of the door gave way.