Fire and Water: a Red Dead story

21

The bank teller had been having a wonderful day. It was a Thursday, so not as busy as a Saturday which was it seemed all the working men flocked in to cash their little paychecks, nor was it a Monday, when all said working men withdrew said money to gamble it away. No, it was a Thursday, and that meant no long lines, no impatient idiots, just him and the ledger, carefully marking up the balances and taking down the numbers. 

Thursday was not supposed to have four masked men standing in his lobby, more guns than he cared to see pulled and pointed in his general direction, and a commanding voice to shut the hell up as the offending person got beat twice in the head with a gun. 

Good god, he was being robbed. 

One of the masked men, a man his frantic mind sputtered to him, with strikingly blue eyes approached and pushed a gun in his face. 

"You'n'me?" He talked low and deep, and the teller felt his heart drop. "We're gonna take a little walk back 'round here."

.......................

It started off perfectly. Davey led the charge, sauntering into the bank, and cheerfully pulling his revolvers out, his brother taking the other side, forcing the customers inside down flat on the ground and blissfully promising death to anyone who moved. Arthur had yelled at them to all stay down, and shut up if they wanted to fucking stay alive and had stormed over to the teller, forcing the man back around the front desk. 

John lingered near the front, eyes darting back and forth as he watched the street outside. Pretty quiet so far, Mac and Davey were a threatening presence and had no qualms about beating some poor delusional soul a few times till they shut up. John's heart pounded in his chest, and he glanced down at his watch. 

"Hurry it up!" He yelled, his voice breaking in the middle. 

Arthur rolled his eyes, pressing his gun to the quivering man in front of him. "Hurry it up, I don't have all goddamnned day." He muttered. The man's hands hesitated at the safe's lock and Arthur brought down his gun hard on the man's head. "I ain't playin' wit' you, now open the damn door."

He heard Mac shout something, and then a gunshot went off in the lobby. He grit his teeth, whatever time they thought they had, they definitely didn't have now. He hit the man again. "This door ain't open in the next few minutes, I'm puttin' some lead in ya, friend."

The man shivered, and the safe clicked open. Arthur spun the man back, knocking him down with a solid hit to the temple before hurriedly looking around. Trelawney hadn't lied, there was a lot in here. He heard another gunshot, this time accompanied by John yelling for him to hurry the fuck up, and, suddenly, he couldn't wait until he got back to Dutch, if not just to tell him fuckin' told you so because they were going to end up dead, he thought, fuckin' dead. He stuffed bills and jewelry into the saddle bags they had brought and hurried back. 

By the time he got back to the lobby, he had heard more gunshots, and he was growing increasingly more alarmed. They hadn't really planned for a shootout, and he had really banked on just walking out and riding the hell out of there. He glanced around, Mac clutched his bicep, blood welling through his fingers, gun dangling from his fingers. Bastard must've gotten shot when he was back in the vault getting the money. John crouched under a shattered window, glass all around him, blood matted in his hair, shooting back wildly. Davey materialized next to him.

"Man had a gun." He said as a way of explanation. "Shot Mac, I shot him." Arthur glanced over where Davey pointed, a man lay in a puddle of blood, half his head blown off. "Must have alerted fuckin' somebody."

John cursed, and glanced over at Arthur. "What the hell are we doin' here?" He was mad, real mad, and Arthur knew he was only a few seconds from doing something stupid.