He could feel the warm blood leaking into his lungs as he inhaled slowly. His excessive fat acted as a sort of airbag, keeping the SUV from crushing him completely. This ain't nothing like the movies, he thought to himself as he tried to move his legs to no avail. As he exhaled painfully, he choked on the blood that was now mixing with oxygen and the vehicle lurched with his cough. He felt another disc pop in his spine under the pressure, closer to his neck this time, and his arms went limp. At this rate, he thought, I'll be down for the count in minutes. They called him Wally Dumbfounder, but that was more due to his silence than his intellect (or lack thereof). He had even graduated high school, which was more than could be said of most of the Boss' other muscle. But what did education get him in this predicament that the other guys missed? Well, he could tell time and he remembered a thing or two from dissecting those little frogs.
Just then, a herd of blue lights came screeching around the corner, accompanied by sirens. Megaphones squawked and told Wally to not do what he already couldn't with his paralysis. He could hardly speak, let alone pull the gun from his belt and fire away, but he knew better anyway. The rest of his posse were dead. Two of the cars had blown up on impact and no one was moving in the others. He was the only one left, and he only had a minute or two himself. Might as well make the best of it.
I want a priest, he thought as the men in blue spread out to check the perimeter. One approached him slowly, six-shooter drawn. He repeated himself, though he couldn't discern whether it was aloud or to himself again.
I want a priest.
The cop either didn't hear or just didn't care, but mumbled something into a radio and turned to walk away. Then he stopped and turned back to Wally, who had begun coughing violently again. He drew close and knelt beside the dying man. They stared at one another for a moment, then the cop saw what he was looking for. Wally had a pack of cigarettes in the breast pocket of his shirt and the officer helped himself with a straight face. Propping one between his lips, he pocketed the rest of the pack and walked over to a nearby colleague.
“You got a light?” he asked, and accepted his friend's matchbook without regard. Before handing it back, he paused and looked again toward the SUV and the trapped man.
Dumbfounder's sight was going gray and blurry, and what little of his body he could still feel was quickly growing cold. He wished he didn't understand the fuzz mentality, but it made perfect sense. He was the brute force of their arch-enemy and he didn't deserve their respect, let alone sympathy. In fact, he would've spit in their faces by now if he had found them stuck in his current condition; maybe had some popcorn and watched 'em die like it was a movie or something. So they swiped his cigarettes, who cares! He wasn't gonna be smokin' 'em anytime soon anyway.
His eyes were growing heavy, but he could make out a dark figure returning to him and kneeling by his side. It was the cop who took his cigarettes, of course. Wally wanted to curse the man, but couldn't muster the energy to even moan at him. He noticed the man was puffing away at a cigarette – one of his cigarettes. But he was curious when the man retrieved another from the pack and then set the pack on the concrete ground and sat down Indian-style himself.
The officer held up the second cigarette and gazed at it for a moment, clearly trying to make some decision. Then, with one swift gesture, he slipped it into his mouth beside the first and lit it with a match he struck on the floor in the same instant. After a moment, it was burning steadily, so he took it from his own lips and placed it gently into the pitiful slit that was his enemy's cold mouth.
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