No Exit by Taylor Adams 2

“He has the newest Gears of War.”
“Okay.” Lars’s smile solidified, and Ashley felt a pang of
sympathy for his dear baby brother. He wasn’t cut out for this,
but that wasn’t his fault. How could it be? He’d had no control
over whether his mother chugged two vineyards a day while
she’d carried him. Poor Lars had been genetically kneecapped
before he even drew his first breath. The shittiest of shitty
deals.
Quickly, he double-checked the light on his Paslode —
still green. Cold weather was notoriously hard on their
batteries, and he only had two. The last thing he’d need would
be for his nailer to go powerless when he had it pressed to
Darby’s temple. How embarrassing would that be.
In terms of raw firepower, Lars’s .45-caliber Beretta
Cougar was the obvious winner — you don’t enter a gunfight
with a cordless nailer and expect to win. And it would take
quite a few three-and-a-half-inchers to reliably put a human
down. Worse, the projectiles themselves rarely penetrate
anything beyond ten feet. But Ashley Garver loved the nailer,
he supposed, for all the things that made it a deeply
impractical man-killing weapon. He loved it because it was
heavy, cumbersome, inaccurate, scary, and gruesome.
All artists express themselves through their instruments,
right?
This was Ashley’s.
“Come on, baby brother.” He pointed with his nailer. “Get
your war face on.”
The Paslode’s cylinder magazine held thirty-five 16-penny
nails, fed in little five-nail racks. He’d fired four. He still had
more than enough to turn a human into a screaming porcupine.
Walking beside him, Lars racked the slide on the Beretta the
way he’d been taught, dutifully checking to ensure there was a
chambered round.
“Gears of War 4, right?” he asked as they walked. “Not
last year’s?”