Time To Die: The Collection

By Kenneth Guthrie

Seconds, minutes, hours. Little pieces of time that count down the years of our lives. Bob has less than most. Caught up in a fight he doesn't understand and thrown from mission to crazy mission by his masked harasser, Bob must survive second to second if he wants to walk away a whole and free man. Grippingly action packed down to the last second. This is Time To Die.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lunatic Ink Publishing
• Release date: Dec 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301161638

Kenneth Guthrie

Kenneth Guthrie is a writer of sci-fi, fantasy and crime novels.Profile image credit: Vincent Gerbouin at Pexels.com

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Time To Die: The Collection

Kenneth Guthrie

Copyright 2012 Lunatic Ink Publishing

Find more at Kenneth Guthrie’s Book List

Table Of Contents

Brutal Limit

Iron Time Island

Rampage Time

Penalty Time

Brutal Limit

Cold As Hell Killer?

The room is full of white patchy smoke when I walk in.

What the fuck? I grumble, stepping back out and pushing my back to the wall. It stinks like burning horse shit.

I cover my mouth and step in. That Chinese Fuck said this is where it all starts.

Dirty fucker, I mutter when I see the burning box of shit on the table with a candle jammed into it. There's a dead guy next to it. Bullet to the head. Point black. Rear entry. Nice size hole. Wreaks of professionals.

I step over him without giving him any more of my 'valuable' time. The door into the apartment complex is on the other side.

'YOU cannOT FAil [static]... if you dO, you DIE!"

The last word comes out loud and over the top. He's got a mean Chinese accent with a lisp like someone has cut open his face and inserted some kinky shit into it to make him sound even more like a tosser. I figure that's alright because he is. Someone did the world a favor.

I kick the door in and slip my shotgun out into the hallway, finger firmly on the trigger, itching to pull.

Howdy, howdy, bad guys. How about you come out? I shout. No one answers. I didn't expect them to.

I step in to the hallway and stop.

Argh! Fucker...

My stomach clenches and I moan. Somehow That Chinese Fucker got a bomb up my butt without me knowing. I'm still wondering why he bothered. I'm Bob the Small Time Punk, not Super Assassination Robot X7000 or some shit. I just twist people's arms to make 'em pay up. Nothin' special, yeah.

I push my back to the wall. The three working lights in the hallway blink now and then as if the building has a heartbeat and it is beating slow, on the brink of death, perhaps?

The wall is greasy against the singlet I am wearing and I slide along it just fine. I come to a door and lead with the weapon in through it and out again. Scanned: targets = 0, wishes granted = 1. Damn, I should buy a lotto ticket.

The next door is also open and no one is home. The rooms didn't look used, so I can guess that no one honest lives here, probably because of the punk I am here to visits fucks up those closest first. He's that kind of guy.

Knock, knock, I say at the next door, which is closed, Housekeeping.

No one answers. I step back. My boot comes up and forward. The door flies off the hinges. I step in. An old man looks up and goes for his gun.

Oldster. Just visiting... I say, sighting down the barrel of my shotgun at his forehead, just in between the creases.

Fuck you. I'm not a fucking oldster.

He draws. The deathly sweet sound of a round being chambered as the mental old fuck, cocks back the slide, showing some deep deadly bronze with a little star on it that indicates higher quality than some oldster should be carrying. The slide slips forward, locks, readied and he rolls back the trigger on the biggest goddamn handgun I've seen in a long time. The barrel itself must be at least 30cms long and has intricate dragons weaved in gold along it. The handle is ivory. The hand holding it is steady. Those eyes are clear.

Don't, I whisper, already knowing that it is too late to get choosy. I don't want to kill this oldster, but he's not backing down.

He yanks his trigger, but I'm faster. I'm so much faster and he knows it, or at least he did when he was alive.

The old man's head explodes. My sweetie does her job just fine. Brains and shit everywhere. That's her job and she does it with gusto.

I breathe for the first time in the 20 seconds that the whole encounter took. I note a big stinking bowl of shit on the floor. It's not animal. I think back to the room. Dirty old fuck.

I take his weapon and wipe it on his bloody shirt, which doesn't really make it any cleaner.

Got to get a better life, I say, just like I say every time I end up popping someone's brains.

The hallway is lonely and there's one more door left.

WAtcH Ouut FOR an Old MAN. He'S AN ASS Sin.

Ass sin?

Ass sin...[Crazed Jabbering]

I knock the side of my head. Other people can't hear the voice that has been jabbering in my head. I asked an old lady on the way here and she ran away screaming that I was mad. At the time I almost thought that I was. Now I'm certain that I'm 'probably' not. That's good news when you have That Chinese Fucker blowing your head full of bullshit.

I already killed him, I whisper.

OK!!!

It's so loud that I cover my ears.

Fuck. Could you please just shut up for awhile?

That Chinese Fuck continues his babbling. Looks like someone had one too many bottles of Coke with his Stir Fry.

I slide along the wall, cleaning it some, I imagine, and push it open with the butt of the old man's death dealer. There's no one inside.

3 out of 4 ain't bad, I rejoice as I walk over to the stairs and glance upwards. No one there. Better take the elevator. Less places for punks to jump out of.

I stroll over to it and push the dirty red button. The doors are a badly repainted blue and made of metal of some kind. Someone has taken the opportunity to draw a big penis on the left door and a huge cunt on the other. The words 'You combine me' are scrawled in the worst handwriting I've ever seen (like some dyslexic freak got retarded on Ridlin then used a whore's used