THE CELLULOID TRAP

The alleyway behind the diner was a narrow, dirt corridor bordered by rusted corrugated iron fences and giant dumpsters overflowing with rotting cardboard. The dust storm had reached its peak, reducing visibility to less than ten feet. The air was a wall of howling orange grit that stung bare skin like needles.

Martha burst through the back door, half-dragging, half-carrying Lily into the storm. The little girl coughed hysterically into the wet napkin, her yellow jacket billowing around her frail frame in the gale-force wind.

"This way!" Martha shouted, her voice swallowed instantly by the roaring gale.

They stumbled down the gravel incline toward the Apache Gulch—a deep, jagged dry creek bed that ran perpendicular to Highway 84, carving a dark scar through the desert floor.

Behind them, the sound of gunfire from inside the diner abruptly ceased, replaced by the heavy, ominous dull thuds of hand-to-hand combat—screams of pain, the splintering of heavy wood, and the shattering of glass.

Lily stopped at the edge of the gulch, pulling back on Martha's arm, her small face pale with terror as she looked back at the smoke pouring from the diner's roof. "Mr. Frank! We can't leave Mr. Frank!"

"Frank can take care of himself, child!" Martha cried out, though her own heart was breaking with dread. "If we go back, his fighting means nothing! Move!"

They scrambled down the steep, shale-covered bank of the gulch, sliding on their hands and knees into the dark shadows beneath the desert surface.

The bottom of the gulch was cool, sheltered from the howling wind above, filled with deep drifts of fine sand and tumbled boulders. Two hundred yards down the creek bed lay the dark, gaping maw of the Apache Mine's lower drainage portal—a crumbling archway of rotted timber and reinforced concrete, half-choked by iron tumbleweeds and rusted barbed wire.

As they reached the portal, a figure materialized out of the swirling dust storm at the top of the gulch bank.

It was Julian.

He stood against the orange sky like a specter of death, his crisp denim jacket torn at the shoulder, his golden hair plastered to his forehead with sweat and dust. In his right hand, he held a sleek, black silenced pistol, its barrel pointed directly down into the dry creek bed.

His handsome face was completely devoid of emotion. He looked down at Martha and Lily with the cold, detached interest of an exterminator finding a nest of rats.

"End of the line, ladies," Julian’s voice drifted down through the wind, clear and chillingly calm. "Drop the bag, Martha. Step away from the girl."

Martha stepped directly in front of Lily, spreading her arms wide, her fragile frame trembling violently against the wind, her iron skillet held high. "You'll have to shoot through me, you sick bastard!"