“What does it end up being tomorrow, huh, Howie? We have to go out to collect food for these pricks to offer up in tribute so we can join their secret fucking faggot society? There’re only…fucking…two of them.”
“I said to lower that fucking rifle!” a man barked, sounding as though he was on the edge of panic.
My heart was slamming against my chest. I had held out hope that the situation would either stay calm or get back under control, but things didn’t look like getting calm any time soon. The fatal flaw in this whole group appeared to be a weak leader…a weak leader that was going to be relieved of command within the next few seconds if someone didn’t do something fast.
Intuiting this fact for himself, Billy lowered his shotgun and said, “Okay, look, let’s all calm down, guys…”
“Oh, fuck all of this,” said Doug. He shot Howard in the back of the head.
Gunfire erupted instantly from all directions. Doug was the first man in the group that I killed; I had kept my dot on his chest as soon as I understood how the balance of power was distributed among them. I put several rounds in his chest, but I can’t remember the exact number anymore; at least three. I killed another man standing next to him as well before the group realized that they were dealing with more than two men and started to scatter.
At some point during my shooting, I heard and felt two grunting explosions from Billy’s shotgun, one of which caved in a man’s chest; the other blew his neighbor’s leg off at the knee. The shotgun ceased firing abruptly after that and I saw Billy slump, falling backward into the front door, which rattled it on its hinges. Gunfire of varying intensities continued, belching clouds of smoke out into the air and obscuring the view in the light of the lantern. Out on the edges of the smoke, I saw the shadowed form of two men running off in opposite directions around either side of the house. The sound of Jake’s AK-47 followed after them and then ceased.
Presently, I heard his footsteps rush across the porch and low, urgent talking, all of which sounded like it was coming to me through packed cotton. I realized my ears were ringing. Slapping sounded at the front door, and I could hear Jake call, “Let us in, Amanda! Hurry!”
I rushed to the door, unlocked the bolt, and wrenched it open. I was met with the sight of Jake’s back, so slender in those early days, bent over Billy’s huge burden of a body and straining as he struggled to haul him back into the house. As he pulled him back over the threshold, I saw Billy’s hands were clutching at his abdomen and covered in dark black blood. They were shaking, and I thought he might be going into shock. I noticed he also had wounds in his right thigh and shoulder.
Jake dropped him onto the entry rug and ripped off his own over shirt while I slammed and locked the door behind him. He pulled out his Ka-Bar from behind his back, cut the shirt in half down the middle, and wadded one half up to jam into Billy’s gut. Billy half groaned/half growled at this and snarled, “God damned rednecks…”
Jake looked up at me with wide eyes. “I have to keep this packed on him; he’s not strong enough to hold it. There are two left. They ran around the back of the house.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. I shouldered my rifle and had a moment’s hesitation. The right hallway leading to the bedrooms all had windows that could be accessed from outside, but so did the rear living area of the house; the dining area even had a sliding glass door that opened out to the rear of the property. There was no way to get to the rear common area through the bedroom hallway; the hallway went to a dead end at Billy’s library. I could choose one direction or the other but not both easily.
I heard a noise from the rear of the house, which made my decision for me. “Keep an eye on that hallway,” I said. He nodded to me as I made my way toward the kitchen. When I reached the entryway, I looked all around but saw no obvious movement anywhere. The curtains were drawn across all but the sliding door, and there was no light out back; any available moon or starlight being obscured by the tree cover at the rear of the home. There was no way to see any silhouetted shadow moving behind those curtains.
I debated opening the slider and stepping outside but soon discarded the idea. It sounded like an excellent way to broadcast my position and provide a target to whoever was out there. I finally settled on taking up a position crouched behind the kitchen island and waiting.
The sound of breaking glass came from one of the bedrooms on the side of the house. A few seconds later, a large rock flew through the sliding glass door, sending shards of glass all throughout the combined rooms of kitchen, dining room, and TV common area. The island behind which I hid protected me from the worst of it.
A shadow appeared in the wreckage of the door frame even while glass was still falling to the floor. It was hunched over and moving fast. I followed the shape with my rifle and fired off several shots, all of which missed (I hadn’t yet learned at this point how hard it was to shoot something moving laterally across my field of view) but the sound of shots fired coming from his right startled the intruder, who drew up suddenly and swung in my direction. This was all I needed to line a bead up on him, and I put rounds into him until he fell.
I recalled hearing the window of the bedroom shatter, but I stayed where I was with the barrel pointed back out the frame of the obliterated glass door, wondering if the window had just been a diversion. My answer came when a single gunshot sounded from the direction of the front door, followed by grunting and snarling. I heard the sound of furniture being displaced and the thin, high pitched tinkle of small glass breaking. I rushed around the useless refrigerator and back into the main hall leading to the entryway, only to see Jake in his original position over Billy where I had left him. I could just make out a pair of boots extending from the bedroom hall behind him. They were on their heels with the toes pointed up. I grabbed one of the many flashlights that we kept throughout the house and thumbed it on as I ran over.
The last man to have broken into the house lay on his back with Jake’s Ka-Bar sticking out of his throat. It was buried to the hilt.
Jake looked up at me with an expression of complete hopelessness hanging on his face. “He’s going, Amanda. I can’t stop him—he’s fucking going!”
I ran over and kneeled by Billy. His eyes were shut tight, and he was breathing shallow as if it hurt him to take in any air at all. He reached up with a shaking left hand and wrapped it up in the collar of Jake’s T-shirt. He growled and said, “I need you to read the Iliad.”
“What‽” Jake barked. He laughed, sounding hysterical. “What the hell are you talking about, you crazy old…”
Billy’s hand twisted in Jake’s collar and pulled hard. Half of the front of Jake’s shirt tore away from his chest. “Don’t argue with me, God damn you. You promise.”
“I promise!” Jake blurted, not wanting to deny him anything. “You have my word. Immediately.”
Billy sighed and let his hand go loose. It stayed tangled up in Jake’s shirt, limply hanging off the ground. “Good. That’s good, Whitey.” He rolled his head over to the right, looking up at me. “You…you take ca…”
The last of his breath escaped in a sigh as he died.
The next few days were spent recovering from the fight. On the night that Billy died Jake drug all those we had killed from Howard’s group around the back of the house out of sight and hauled Billy out on the porch, covering him with a sheet. He did this while I opened the garage to find Elizabeth, who had been crying and near panic. I did my best to calm her fears before trying to find a way to explain the unexplainable to her. She became even worse at that point, running out of the garage and toward the house to her room. When she got there, she screamed in horror; it was her window which had been broken by the intruder. I caught up to her, collected her, and took her up to Jake’s room. I finished the night by helping Jake drag an old sheet of plywood out of the garage and to the back of the house, which we used to board up the broken glass door. It wasn’t a very good job (we knew we’d have to clean it up later) but it would do to keep animals out of the house overnight.