Will went back toward the front windows then parted the shades again. He saw the guards talking to Holly. He saw her point again in the same direction. The guards stalked off, their weapons raised as they went out of sight between the houses. Will looked down at the knob of the front door and the dead bolt. He reached and flicked the bolt over and made sure it was locked.
He crossed back toward the kitchen, then he turned the flame off and looked it over. He looked back toward the bathroom door and Drew, Drew tracking Will’s every movement. Will turned the knob again on the range. He heard the gas then the click as it caught fire. He tried to blow it out, but it only made the flames dance and move. After a couple seconds of experimenting one way or another with the gas he had still not been able to turn off the flame.
He looked back toward the rear door, and he now saw the shape of one of the guards pass across the curtained window. Will turned and saw out front the other guard approaching, his shape seen across the diffuse curtains Will had parted earlier. Likely they were going house to house and now they had come to this one.
Will turned and looked on the flame again. It was pale and small no matter what he did to it. Turned it up or turned it all the way down, he still did not have what he was looking for. Knowing this, and knowing he was likely dead one way or another, he turned the range all the way down and put a hand on either side of the oven and pulled it out. The sound was loud and each inch he gained seemed to him like a shot fired or a flare launched high into the air that said, here I am.
When he got the oven far enough away from the wall he mounted the counter as quickly as he could and, getting his back to the wall above and his feet braced against the rear paneling of the oven, he pushed. The sound now was unavoidable. Loud as could be. He pushed as hard as he could possibly push and the oven went over and crashed across the floor. He could smell gas. And looking down he saw where the hose had come loose from the wall, and he could hear the hiss of it there in the room with him.
He came down off the counter and crossed to the back door. He saw the shape of the guard in the window and without pausing opened up the door and saw the guard swinging the barrel of his AR-15 machine gun up. Will grabbed it just as the man pulled the trigger, a series of bullets going into the wall just to the right of Will’s hip and leg. Will felt the warm barrel in his hand, and he pulled the man forward into the house where he now fell across Drew’s outstretched legs. Before the guard could turn or get the machine gun around, Will had already taken the .38 from his belt and he struck the man hard across the back of his head and watched his body flatten and go limp.
At the front door, the other guard was now trying the knob. Will could see the mechanism turning then the door rattling as he tried to get the door to open. Will fired one shot into the door at about head level. He heard the guard swear and dive into the gravel beyond, but Will did not think he’d hit him.
Will looked the first guard over, but decided there was no time to try and wrestle the strap of the AR-15 off his shoulder and from underneath his now-unconscious body. Instead, Will lifted Drew up and went out through the rear door of the house and into the open beyond. He had only begun to smell the gas, and now as he came into the open land outside the house he felt almost as if he wore it like a cape around his neck, dragging it forth upon the world.
He had replaced the .38 in the waist of his pants, and he ran with his two hands holding tight to Drew’s legs, just behind the knees, while Drew bounced and moaned, riding on his belly across Will’s shoulder. On his other shoulder Will still carried his rifle, and he ran with a labored gait from the back of one house to the next much the same way he had threaded his way among them earlier.
He could hear the siren now louder than it had sounded in the house. He made it nearly halfway to the church, when a spray of automatic gunfire tore up the earth beside his feet then thudded in a line across the wood of the nearest house. He did not even turn to look for who had fired on him before he cut and went through the passageway between two houses then came to a stop at the far edge.
Drew was heavier than Will had thought and he could not move as he had wanted to. He paused and looked around the gravel roadway at the members of Eden’s Gate that had converged farther down, and he knew he could not run fast enough to get away. He was waiting on that house to blow and it felt like an eternity had passed. He wondered if somehow they had managed to stop the gas, or if they had found the Sterno behind the closed bathroom door. Behind him, he saw now the shadows of three gunmen approaching the place where he’d cut and disappeared between the houses. The sun was behind them. He could see their shapes and he could see the long barrels they carried that were either machine guns or those of shotguns.
He watched their figures only long enough to understand that he could not be there when they arrived, and now, taking a quick look out on the gravel drive again, he sprinted as fast as possible out and up the road toward the church ahead. It was high ground and he knew if he could reach it and get his rifle from his shoulder he might have some advantage over those below who had been summoned by the siren and the sound of gunfire.
He reached the church just as he saw the three gunmen come around the corner and move after him up the road. Without even thinking about it he threw Drew to the ground as soon as they had cover. He came back around to the corner of the church and flicked the safety forward then leveled the rifle and took his shot. He shot the first man just above his chest. Will watched the bullet hit him in the right collarbone, and then he watched the blood mist and carry on the breeze as the bullet moved through him and exited somewhere past his shoulder blade. He was down in the gravel as soon as Will shucked the casing then pushed the bolt forward again, his eye looking down the scope.
He could hear the man’s cry and he could hear the other men calling to him, but no one dared move to get him from where they’d dove themselves as soon as Will had fired. Down the gravel road Will could see many had hidden in among the houses. He watched the shadows of their movements and, as he ran the scope across the road, he watched a group of five break cover from one house, dashing for another. He shot at them, but he put the bullet low and watched it dig in among the dirt. The church members diving to the ground then scrambling up on hands and knees as they either went back the way they’d come or reached the protection of the next nearest house.
He shucked the bullet casing and loaded the chamber anew. Down in the road the man was crying for someone to come get him. He managed now to roll and get one arm beneath him, dragging himself across the road. The dirt and gravel beneath appeared slick and dark from the blood pouring from his back and front. Will shot at him again and watched him startle. The bullet had gone wide, but Will had placed it a foot in front of him, in the direction he had been going. The man was now too scared to move as he resigned himself to simply lying there, moaning and calling for his friends.
Will shucked the shell casing then, and as he loaded in another bullet, he saw first the shadow of the big man coming around the corner of the church, then the man himself. Will swung the Remington, but it was too late and the big man caught it in his hands and forced it back down upon Will. The rifle held crossways in his hands and the big man pressing the forestock now across Will’s windpipe as both big man and Will went to the ground in a tumble.