Easy Duty – Bob Kalkreuter – 3600 words (Action / General)
Sometimes the most random and unexpected events create echoes that last a lifetime, as in this story of two soldiers thrown together in a way that neither could have foretold.
Easy Duty
When he saw the evening news, Rick Hines felt a rush of emotion he’d been trying to bury for forty years.
“This afternoon, a sixty-year-old man opened fire in the food court of an Atlanta shopping center,” said the announcer, as the tv screen flashed to a tape showing several ambulances parked in haphazard urgency, just inside the yellow police tape. “Seven people are dead, ten wounded. After a fifteen minute search, the police cornered the shooter in the back of a toy store, where the man turned the gun on himself. He was pronounced dead on the scene. The shooter has been identified as Gene Reynolds, a recipient of the Purple Heart in the Vietnam War.”
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The Fight – Bob Kalkreuter – 2900 words (General)
A former boxer learns more about himself than he does about his opponent when he returns home, injured and broke, and takes a fight with a local tough who was much younger and bigger.
The Fight
During the past year, Tuck went from the lowest point in his life to the highest. And now he felt as if he were teetering on the brink again, ready to pitch back into the abyss.
He sat on the sandy ground, leaning against the crusty bark of a Live Oak, his left leg stretched out, his right leg cocked up.
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