The soles of his Sunday loafers flapped on concrete and he stumbled through the Dawley’s front door, huffing and puffing as if he’d run an uphill mile instead of a flat 50 yards. He slammed the door and twisted the deadbolt, taking little comfort in the reinforced oak. Two men with rifles and an urgent sense of purpose would make quick work of the lock, and from the sporadic sound of gunfire out back, running along the banks of the creek, they were a long way from safety.
A pot of tomato soup was still simmering on the stove, Bud noticed, crossing to the sliding glass pane looking out on the back patio. He stood to the side, his back against the wall, rifle at the ready, and surveyed the back yard before plunging into the fray.
The front line seemed to have fallen back toward the bridge, with Mike and Keith at a middle distance, their guns poised to take shots around a black walnut and a line of cedars in Keith’s back yard.
Bud slid the door quietly open and a man in green camouflage appeared, a gun at the ready, close enough to touch. Bud realized that he knew the man: that he worked at the garage where he had his snow tires put on and taken off every year. The gun cracked abruptly between them and suddenly Bud was back inside the Dawley’s dining room, sprawled across the table with a bullethole in his guts.
The man from the garage followed him inside, mud squeaking on his boots, mixing with Bud’s blood and leaving smeared prints on the caramel colored vinyl. He raised his pistol so the barrel was pointed at Bud’s chest.
“Sorry about this, old timer,” he said gruffly, “but you’re better off this way.”
He pulled the trigger and Bud winked out like a blown candle.
9
Rudy heard the shot that killed Bud, but his ears didn’t differentiate it from the rest of the gunshots leading him to the west side of the street.
Larry had taken a long time to answer his door, and it had taken longer still to convince him to get his gun and leave the safety of his house; so long, in fact, that Rudy was a hair’s-breadth from seizing him by the shirtfront and hauling him screaming into the cul-de-sac, rifle or no rifle. Larry didn’t want to leave his family, he didn’t want to leave his bomb shelter, though Rudy argued that if the invaders got a toe-hold in the neighborhood, it would only be a matter of time before they took it all, Larry’s house and family included.
Jan Hanna, who was crouched on the basement stairs with her two young sons, agreed with this assessment and Larry reluctantly picked up his rifle, following Rudy down the front steps just as Bud was taking his first bullet. They crossed Quail Street with their heads down, moving at a fast crouch toward the narrow wedge of lawn that separated Rudy’s house from the Dawley’s.
They crept cautiously down the slope to the creek, ducking behind a fat blue spruce.
Quail Creek was not a daunting waterway; for most of the year, it was a pleasant stream of run-off from Hudson Pond; a murky green reservoir that waxed and waned with the seasons of the year. At present, however, the creek was running in its banks as if it actually had somewhere to go. They peered around the spruce, discovering they had an excellent vantage of two men crouched beneath the Quail Creek bridge. A third man, dressed in sodden camouflage, lay face-down in the water a dozen or so steps away.
The men under the bridge didn’t seem to see them; they were shooting toward the houses and Mike and Keith were returning their fire, keeping them pinned down in the shadows.
Rudy laid a hand on Larry’s arm, motioning him down, out of sight.
“Can you hit one of them from here?” he asked, nodding at the target rifle. “The shotgun isn’t going to do much good at this distance.”
Larry looked downstream. Roughly 100 feet separated them, an easy distance for the heavy-barreled rifle, but Larry had never shot at a living target before. Lines of doubt tugged at his face.
“I don’t know,” he admitted, lifting the stock to his shoulder and squinting through the scope. This only made matters worse, for now he could clearly see the faces of the men he was supposed to kill. He could count their gold fillings and the rings around their eyes. He let the barrel dip and glanced at Rudy, his mouth trembling. “I’ve never shot anyone before.”
Rudy nodded in sympathy. “Neither have I, but I’ll do it if you don’t think you can.”
Larry gave him the rifle. “There’s a bullet in the chamber. It only holds one, so you’ll have to eject the shell and load another before you can fire again,” Larry reminded him, then reached into his pocket for a handful of brass. “I brought some spare ammunition.”
“Get ready to load it for me,” Rudy said, setting his shotgun aside and lifting the gun to his shoulder. “When I pull back the bolt, put in another round.”
“All right,” Larry said, nodding nervously. He picked a bullet out of his palm.
Rudy gazed down the barrel, saw one of the men raise a hunting rifle toward Keith’s rooftop, then saw a thin lick of flame a fraction of a second before the sound of the shot came rolling past. He sighted on the man’s chest, just below the left shoulder, and squeezed the trigger.
He lifted his head from the scope and pulled back the bolt, ejecting the spent casing. Larry was staring down the creek. “You hit him,” he said, amazed.
“Load the rifle,” Rudy told him flatly, glancing at the bullet floating between Larry’s thumb and forefinger.
“Whoops.” Larry plugged the round into the breach and Rudy slammed it home. “Sorry.”
By the time Rudy got his eye back to the scope, the second man had swung his rifle around and was sighting in on them. “Get down,” he warned Larry and his finger twitched on the trigger, discharging the bullet against the side of the bridge, digging out a chipped splinter of concrete.
Larry took that as a call to retreat and took off running, making a beeline back to his house and the safety of his bomb shelter, leaving the rifle with Rudy but taking the handful of ammunition with him.
Rudy swore and tossed the useless rifle aside, reaching for his shotgun and suppressing a wild urge to send a load of buckshot after his neighbor. He scurried up the slope of the Dawley’s side yard, ducking behind the thickest part of the spruce to get clear of the gunman’s line of sight.
An angry shot whizzed past and ricocheted up the hillside. It was answered by a shot from the Sturling’s roof. Rudy circled around the spruce and saw Mike and Keith break cover, firing a fresh volley into the murmuring shadows beneath the bridge.
10
Standing in the kitchen of the Dawley house, his rifle pointed out the sliding glass door, Tad Kemper was sighting in on a tall man behind a walnut tree when a furtive creak in the flooring behind him warned that he wasn’t alone.
He let the tall man go for the moment and turned toward the dining room, the rifle at his hip, ready to gutshoot anyone who stepped out of the murky brown shadows.
“Mike?”
A woman’s voice: muffled, coming from somewhere to the right and slightly down. Basement, he thought, smiling.
“Mike, what’s happening up there?”
No nearer now than she was at first, yet the slow creak continued on as she shifted her weight on the squeaky riser, trying to make up her mind whether to come upstairs or stay put.
Tad moved cautiously from the back door, treading as softly as his boots would carry him. The riser stopped creaking and he froze, listening to the low whisper of voices that took its place; coming from somewhere behind a closed door between the dining room and the back hall.
At least two of them, Tad thought, his smile spreading. It was a dark and cadaverous smile, all the warmth and humanity eaten away. The trip up the hill had been his idea. It had occurred to him the previous evening while gazing out the back window of his tiny house on Lyle Street, seeing the lights in the homes above him twinkling like stars — distant and detached from the rest of the world, as if what was happening down in the streets of town couldn’t touch them.