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A long line of families destroyed that ought not to be goddamned destroyed.

And in that instant, Gibs made another of his snap decisions, based entirely on instinct, which likely meant it was the best decision available. He knew what had to happen when all of this was over. He knew what had to be done; knew where he must go.

He felt a clarity of mind at this new understanding; a sudden kicking into overdrive, like the gears of his brain turned under an additional two hundred horsepower, and as his cognitive ability ramped into overdrive, associations began latching into position like lock tumblers, and he felt the surge of adrenaline within his chest as clearly as the pounding of his heart.

He began to apply pressure to the knob by minuscule degrees and, as he knew it must, the knob began to turn.

Light bloomed and danced wildly behind them, hurting their eyes despite its relative dimness and shocking them nearly senseless. The shadows of the tents lengthened and contracted against the container walls as if they were ocean water under a passing swell and Gibs spun in their direction.

Out in the black distance, well beyond the tents, two white lights danced and juttered over the uneven trail leading into the commune, and Gibs didn’t need a hyper-alert mind to realize he watched a set of advancing headlights.

“Mother fuck,” he hissed. “They got past the cleft!”

“What do you want to do?” Davidson whispered.

The occasional crack of rifle fire was instantaneously deafened by the percussive hammer fall of an M60. It belched regular bursts, seemingly right overhead, and its power was such that they could feel the weapon’s force in their sinuses.

Through the chaotic thunder of the belt-fed discharge, Gibs shouted, “Clear these cocksuckers and meet me in the middle!”

He yanked the fragmentation grenade from his duffel bag, popped the spoon, counted out the seconds with head nods, then opened the door and lobbed it inside. Then he jerked the door shut, and without another word, ran out toward the field, weaving nimbly through the tents, and disappeared.

The unsettling thrashing of the M60 was interrupted by the deeper crump of the grenade’s detonation. The home’s windows blew outward, showering Tom, Greg, and Rebecca in splintered shards. They swatted at the debris distractedly, even as the fragments began to dot the skin around their necks in micro-lacerations, and pushed through the door of the silenced residence to begin their cleaning.

They found two bodies in the small front room, one of which moaned incessantly from under the rubble. Greg saw to him, and when another passed through the bedroom’s doorway coughing and fanning a hand in front of his face, Rebecca dropped him with several rounds to the chest. She and Tom swarmed the bedroom beyond and killed three more as they struggled to recover; their bodies lying in a manner suggesting a kind of sadness at being so unceremoniously dispatched. The one with the M60 lay folded up at the window and Tom crouched low to approach him. The others at Amanda’s place had long ceased firing, but he had no desire to push his luck. They’d neglected to work out any kind of signal indicating the container home had been secured and he feared that if his motion was detected, his friends might put a round through his brainpan.

Tom rolled the body over. Straining in the darkness, he thought he recognized the shape of Houdini’s obscured features. He placed the palm of his hand on the man’s chest and found it static.

He nodded.

“What now, guys?” Greg asked from the bedroom doorway.

“We got six, here. We’d better get out and cover Gibs, and then I guess we need to get clearing, home to home,” Tom said.

“Well, what about Clay?” Rebecca asked. “And Amanda? She should be back pretty soon. It’s so fucking dark out there, she might end up shooting us on accident.”

“I doubt that,” Tom muttered. He thought the problem over a moment. “Amanda said she was coming back to her cabin. She’ll pick up Monica and Samantha there. We need to assume they can handle their shit, guys. We need to trust in that; they’ll be able to clean the stragglers. Gibs is running out into some shit right now. Those super-cannons or whatever didn’t wor—”

From somewhere outside the home, the world roared. It stopped up the sound of all else, and the walls around them rattled under the force. They all felt it beneath their feet; a jagged heaving that shocked their skeletons as it shocked their hearts. In the following silence, the three looked at each other, scarcely able to breathe.

When Clay saw the huddled shadows scurrying across the commons, he began considering options. Things appeared horrible, of course, but he’d seen horrible before. He figured they weren’t done until they fucked the fat lady, and so he began making certain adjustments to his way of thinking about these people. He decided that maybe playing softball hadn’t been such a great idea. Maybe the competency they brought wasn’t the fucking be-all-end-all. This time around, maybe the risk wasn’t worth the reward.

The gunplay was coming from Amanda’s cabin, he knew that for sure. He heard the shots coming from around the porch, for one thing, and for another, the muzzle flash coming from the vacant house across the way seemed to line right the hell up on her vector. Clay hoped they’d blow the duplicitous bitch away. She’d been the source of more aggravation than any sane man would have signed up for.

Stepping back through the cabin’s front door, he retrieved his rifle from the hallway, wondering idly as he did what self-hating lunatic might have bedded the bitch with enough fervor to have spawned that murdering, little demon seed.

“Did your head spin around in fucking mockery of the possessed mid-thrust to devour the poor bastard’s fucking head as he assayed to satisfy the need of your leathered twat, you crazed hag? Did you even let him climax before taking the first fucking bite?”

Standing by the front door, he shook out his right hand and held it level at his hip. It hovered steady, thank Christ, and whatever symptoms he’d suffered earlier, the headache was gone.

He stepped outside, gently closed the door, knelt before the railing, and laid the gun over the top. He resisted the urge to smile, not liking what such a desire might indicate of his own mental state, and waited for the skittering, shadowed sons of bitches to show themselves.

His fifty-three-year-old knees started to annoy him the moment they came into contact with the decking, casualties of a life spent moving from office chair to office chair. He fought to ignore the shattered stab of withered joints, failed, and shifted around in an attempt to find some position that kept him low yet didn’t ache like a bastard.

“Come on, goddamn it,” he whispered. “Come the fuck out of hiding, and we’ll have the whole thing done.”

The door behind him opened and shut. Clay’s heart froze, and there was an interval of self-deluded vanity where he thought he might have a chance of whirling around to fire. His muscles tensed, his knees screamed in alarm, and then there were the footsteps right behind him. He sighed, set the rifle down, and stood as slowly as his legs demanded.

“Yeah…” Clay said. He didn’t turn around.

“Clay.”

Clay lowered his head and looked at his hands again. They were still steady. “Uh,” he said.

“We’ll be wrapping this up, now.”

The interior of the container home flashed in a sun-bright explosion. Immediately after, more shooting from the inside, then silence.