Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [930]

All I had was the knife in my pack and Edwin Dunn’s old . automatic. And all the ammunition I had for it was in it. If it wasn’t empty. I knew the gun. It held seven rounds. I’d fired it twice. How many times had Edwin Dunn fired it before someone shot him? I didn’t expect to find out until morning. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 930

Note

Survival reduced to an unresolved arithmetic problem: seven rounds, two fired, unknown prior discharges. The dead man’s gun is a loaded-dice scenario, and the sentence ‘I didn’t expect to find out until morning’ is a flat, chilling statement of the stakes rather than a complaint about them.