Deborah still struggled to breathe, but the terrorist loosen his grip. It was still tight against her throat, but she could at least gasp for breath. As she did, she inhaled the scent of her accident.

“Really?” asked the terrorist. “It just takes being held at gun point to lose bowel control. You are not the same person who struggled with me to steer that truck out of the way of a building full of kids. Too bad you only steered it into another school. I had a point to make because your precious school was built on a haven for a rare species of insect. Those insects are endangered.”

“But you didn’t care about the human lives you destroyed, did you?” Deborah asked through her soar throat.

But you really don’t understand, do you? Thirty-five species go extinct every day. Every day! Do you know how many babies are born? People have too many children and are pushing out other animals. A new mall, and new housing development, a new Walmart, even a new school: they all push out native species which will go extinct.”

“You are a monster if you value animals over people,” said Bridget. “I shouldn’t have hesitated to kill you.”

“But you killed other people. How many people have breathing trouble because you drove around in a tanker truck and delivered oil? Oil is a great evil and you perpetuated it. Even the death of children didn’t make you repentant. Even in your new body, if I am too believe you are Deborah Addison, you drive around in that big gas guzzler and flaunt your gas wasting ways. I should kill you now.”

“I didn’t kill those children; you did,” she said. “Even if my actions only changed which children you killed, you are still responsible for their deaths. I couldn’t even kill a murderer like you, let alone innocent children.”

Derek moved forward again. “Let my girlfriend go!” he said. “If you kill her, you will die,” he said.

Deborah twisted out of his arms and grabbed his gun hand and hung her weight on it, so the gun pointed toward the dirt floor.

“Bang!” The gun went off, but the bullet thudded harmlessly into the floor.

Deborah rolled away and scrambled underneath the table. She screamed as the terrorist raised the gun at Derek and pulled the trigger twice. “Bang! Bang!” He then turned the gun toward Bridget and started advancing at her, but Derek rushed the terrorist from behind and pushed him to throw off his aim before falling flat on his face.

Deborah pulled her hand over her face as Owl fell toward her. He reached out to the table to steady his grip and then started to twitch. The lights flickered on and off, on and off and there was the horrible smell of burned flesh. All she could hear was Owl’s screaming and an electrical buzzing sound. After what seemed like forever, but was less than a minute, the screaming, then the buzzing stopped.

“Angela, are you all right?” asked Derek.

She took her hands away from her eyes and saw Derek squatting and looking beneath the table at her. “I’m okay,” she said. She started to move to get out, but Derek shouted, “Wait, don’t move.” She froze.

She saw Derek unplug the power strip and unplug his iPhone. He then pushed Owl from the front of the table and reached down to lift Deborah up.

“What happened?” she asked. “I thought you got shot.”

“Well about that…,” he started. “Your terrorist friend fell into the electrocution device that they use to kill minks. I accidently turned it on when I plugged in the power strip to charge my iPhone. After the gun went off, I had to free you before he hurt you.”

“But you could have been killed,” she said.

“Well, only the first round was live.” He picked up the gun and opened the cylinder. Two of the four differently colored rounds were still not spent. The others were obviously fired. “I put four blanks in your gun.”

She punched him in the arm. “Why?” she asked angrily.

“I didn’t want you to go to jail. I thought you would shoot him when he already fell to the ground. That is not self defense and you would go to jail. We are on iffy grounds already.”

She looked around. The terrorist lay dead in front of the table. She felt smelly and gross in the poopy diaper she wore. The only thing she was really afraid of was going back to jail.

“Well no one got shot,” he said. “I am hiding the gun away and we also have to hide the sighns for the farm.”