just a friendly conversation

The road gave new meaning to the word dusty. The horizon was largely bare, and withered trees were few and far between, stretched thin across the landscape. Wildlife was non-existent, and the only movement Rex had seen in the last half-hour was an unfamiliar variety of tumbleweed. No settlement, no buildings, not even a lone shack by the side of the road “Two klicks, my ass. There’s nothing out here.”
“Oh, I dunno about that,” said a voice behind him. The statement was punctuated by the distinct click of a hammer being pulled back.
Rex stopped walking, but left his hands at his sides. “A revolver? Seriously? What kind of backwater planet is this?”
“Never mind that; just hand over the key! I’m pretty surprised to see you back this way. Everybody else lit out looking for you.” It sounded like the man was chewing on gravel.
Rex started to glance over his right shoulder, but he stopped when he felt the cold steel of a gun barrel nudge at his cheek. He settled for a peripheral view of the area around him. He couldn’t see directly behind him, but at least he had some idea of where things weren’t. “You know me? Because you don’t sound familiar.” Rex paused for a brief moment as a thought occurred to him. “And where the hell did you come from anyway?”
“I said give me the key, you dumb son of a…”
“Yeah,” Rex interrupted, “I heard you the first time, but I don’t have any key. Look, if we’ve already met, why can’t I turn around? And I still don’t get where you came from.”
“The Hole, Logan. Don’t try to tell me you’ve already forgotten it; you were just there last night.”
Rex chuckled to himself. “You kidding me? I don’t even know what planet I’m on, never mind what I did last night.” Rex started to turn again, to the left this time, only to run into the revolver again. Once more, he settled for getting some idea of the vast nothingness that lay to that side of him, before turning his gaze forward again. “You want a key, right? I woke up with one in my pocket this morning; traded it for this hat here.” Rex Logan dipped the brim slightly as he tapped it with a couple of fingers.
The gravel’s pitch raised an octave or two. “You traded it? For a hat!? Are you out of your mind?”
“I don’t know about that. It looked like a pretty old key, and this is a pretty sweet hat.” Smiling quietly to himself, Rex continued, “I didn’t even know what it was for, so it wasn’t doing me any good.”
“Who has it now?”
“Same guy that gave me directions to the Hole, although they clearly didn’t help me find the place. It’s literally a hole, isn’t it, and I walked right by it?”
“Sure did; we’re not ten feet from it right now, dumbass!”
“Yeah,” Rex Logan sighed sarcastically, “*I’m* the dumbass here.” Spinning quickly to his right, Rex Logan used his arm to sweep the gun off target, wrapping his hand around the barrel as he drew his leg up towards his core. Driving his foot quickly up and out, he felt his foot connect with the man’s chest in the same instant that the gun bucked in his hand, firing harmlessly into the air near his head. Rex’s assailant was lifted off the ground, losing his grip on the large handgun as Rex maintained his own. Rex Logan watched the man sail through the air and slam into a raised trap door like a sackitball off a backboard, before dropping into a now evident hole in the ground. About two feet square, it coughed a fresh cloud of dust into the air as the man landed below with a loud crash. Rex approached the hole, pulling the hammer back before descending via a series of metal rungs mounted into the side of the shaft.