Samuel was happy to finally be gone of the two. It was true that he appreciated Torsten, but never before had the man gone so out of his way to [i]disregard[/i] the laws of the Amish. He wanted them gone, lest he begin to think that the towering Scandinavian had done a [i]good[/i] thing by killing those men. He exchanged a handshake with Torsten, watching him lead the two horses towards the barn after Allison. The old man frowned, narrowing eyebrows and raising a hand, “You and the woman watch out for them English.”

It was the best compliment he could have given. The [i]only[/i] one he could have given. Torsten paused for a moment, before turning back around to meet Allison next to the barn. She was talking to him, but he wasn’t necessarily hearing the words that were coming out of her mouth. He stared at the pistol, accepting it and holding it in its hand. His brain tried to think of arbitrary technical data. The pistol was a .40 S&W Glock 17. Fourth Generation. He examined the weapon, drawing back on the slide to extract the chambered round that had failed to fire.

The primer was dimpled by the firing pin, but it had not fired. Without even thinking, he let the slide hammer back home, chambering a new round. He held it up, pointing it towards the woods and pulled the trigger. Another failure to fire. He tried it repeatedly, before emptying the magazine and charging a new one. Each round failed to fire – the firing pins dimpling, but refusing to ignite. 

He was in another world, even with this new found information. Movies liked to tell of supermen knocking down waves of enemy combatants. Men who could kill without a blink of the eye. To tell the truth, only psychopaths were capable of this. Torsten was not a psychopath. Even though the men he had just killed had done terrible evil, his conscience was still waging a war against reason. He had always thought killing had been [i]over[/i] after he had left Afghanistan. Sure, he retained a reserve commission, but that was only to keep his half-pay. His country never would have [i]honestly[/i] called him back into service from the United States.

He tried to draw his mind away from the corpses. He picked up the failed cartridges from the ground, examining the rear of each primer. “Remington… Winchester… UMC. A failure to fire from one batch wouldn’t be abnormal, but the deputy was firing three different manufacturers from three different magazines. That..” He paused, “Is impossible.” He slipped the barrel of the pistol into the back of his belt. It was useless, but he would keep it. Maybe he could find some working ammunition?

“We need to go,” he told Allison rather flatly. He reached a hand out for her, motioning towards the horse. “I’ll help you get on it. Just let it do its own thing. It’ll follow mine on its own.”