A point-thirty eight caliber round leaves the barrel with a sound like a thunderbolt being torn in half, and stings the air with a monetary curl of chemical flame. An inch of lead whistles through the open sky and through the open door of an old barn, clearing a thousand feet in half an instant. Inside, there is a wet, crunching sound, something heavy hitting wooden boards - and the bullet continues, now at a completely different angle but with no loss of momentum, flying out of a side entrance. It curls unnaturally between two hay bales, twists of dead straw sent spiraling in its wake like maple seeds, singing a single, humming note into the night air before it flits over a dirt road and slams into the chassis of an old truck, rumbling in the opposite direction. In less than a millisecond it has burrowed into the gas tank, trailing sparks along the way.
The explosion will be heard for nearly four miles, and pieces of both truck and driver will be found for nearly half that. On a hilltop overlooking the destruction, a stringy-haired figure smiles tersely beneath her white mask, slings a smoking rifle over her back, and trudges into the undergrowth, the bushes parting ahead of her before she even reaches them, pushed aside by invisible hands.
