Still wary of the possibility that her mind is playing tricks on her, she rises slowly and crosses to her phone, a little black island on the white sea of Remy’s countertop. Her heart does little flutters, alternating with fierce beats.
Just then, she hears a noise—a muffled bump. At first, she thinks maybe she knocked something over in her excitement, but she sits still for a moment and yet another bump sounds, this time accompanied by a clang and a crash.
The combined events of these thirty seconds—the text message and the subsequent events both—called forth the Esther who’s been absent for almost a year. The one with focus and purpose; the one in control.
That Esther is the one she’s been waiting for, whose return she has been praying for.
She pulls a drawer all the way out of its tracks and reaches deep into its space, grasping at a heavy handgun she duct-taped there the night Remy disappeared. She checks the magazine—full—and racks the firearm, holding it steadily as she makes her way to the back room.
Once there, she opens the window leading out into the desert (slowly, careful now, don’t make a sound) and pushes the screen outward, resulting in a mercifully quiet thunk on the dirt outside. A warm breeze rolls in and caresses her face, and in spite of the imminent mortal danger she’s likely to be in, she allows herself to enjoy it. She considers it to be an act of defiance, to enjoy herself in the face of such danger.
A loud bang sounds from the front of the house. Esther considers vaulting out the open window and escaping into the night, but she suspects that they—whoever “they” are this time—would have sent enough minions to keep one or two pairs of eyes outside, too; she considers it an act of providence that no one saw her open the window, but perhaps they were still focused on the front entrance at that time.
A flood of rushed footsteps works its way through the house. Esther hears one set in the living room and at least one more in the kitchen.
A deep voice speaks from the former, but the words are too muffled for her to comprehend. The tone, however, is audibly urgent—angry, even. Esther’s heart threatens to beat faster, but she suppresses it, willing her body and mind into the calm state necessary to navigate the situation.
She listens, calculates; three (or more) of them together wouldn’t take long to clear and secure the kitchen, living room, and hallway.
In her mind, she tracks them, listening for their footsteps, their voices, the sighing of the floor or creaking of doorframes. Cupboards open and close in the kitchen. One of them makes his way down the hallway, checks the bathroom, the storage closet. One, two, three steps down the hall, toward her. She breathes steadily, gripping the handgun with her signature calmness. She acknowledges that the first shot she fires will be akin to that of the starting gun at a track meet, setting the ball rolling but with the purpose of survival rather than achievement.
Of course, her reputation for steady consistency isn’t unwarranted. She’s aware of this; the stories speak for themselves.
Maybe it’s innate, but Esther is sure that her faux stability grew out of necessity as a result of holding herself together during Don’s particularly bad rages. Putting on a face for the kids was a feat requiring more strength than any situation she’s gotten herself into since. No number of guns or knives or threats has managed to instill in her the same intensity and volume of fear that she had when Don stormed around the house with a wrench, a belt, a spoon, whatever was arm’s length away when his ever-tricky wire was tripped.
This has always raised obvious questions in her mind: would she have been able to contribute as much as she has to the well-being of other abuse victims had it not been for this on-call hard exterior to employ in the scenarios that drip with intensity? Would she have been able to navigate the tricky, delicate mazes in which she’s found herself throughout her subsequent years?
She hates to admit it, but maybe some good did come from Don’s life, if only by empowering her (and Remy, as she recently found out) to fight him and the filthy business in which he operated. Even if he had been the festering pile of shit he was, maybe his life had the silver lining of catalyzing the rise of those willing and able to fight it. To have inflicted such a wound upon the morality of humanity that the antibodies swarm to action, lending the whole their strength and immunity.
Esther waits in the closet, breathing.
In-two-three-four-five, out-two-three-four-five.
The bedroom door opens. They sneak as well as they can, but their weight on the floor causes that soft fmm-fmm on the carpet. She feels their presence as much as hears it. One just outside the closet. If he slides the door open, she’ll aim, fire. The other waits by the door. She wishes she knew how tall he is; then she could be just that much more prepared for the draw.
She becomes more aware of the gun in her hands, its weight, its power—both familiar.
The closet door slides open. He’s about an inch taller than she.
Bang.
In the darkness, the man’s blood and brains come out as an inky black mess, painting a ghastly splatter on the wall above Todd and Remy’s headboard.
The second guy’s voice comes from the door way: “Oh shi—”
Bang.
This one’s blood and being end up on the hallway wall; he didn’t have time to make it fully into the room before Esther put a round into his face. Now the intense part: the life-or-death version of hide and seek. She knows that there are more, but she doesn’t know where, or how many. Beyond that, she doesn’t know whether or not they know where she is. Her best option is to capitalize on her biggest asset: that she knows the lay of the land, both inside and out.
She briefly considers escaping through the window she opened in Remy and Todd’s room, but she doesn’t like the prospect of clambering through the open frame while holding a loaded gun. The hall closet tempts her for the briefest moment, but it would only be safe if they only had one more person. If there are multiple more, as she suspects, she could end up checkmating herself, pinning herself into a tight place with too many surrounding adversaries.
The kitchen has the opposite problem: too many entrances and exits. There are no hiding places out of sight from the windows and doorways, unless she hides in a cupboard—no better than the hall closet.
She then remembers the attic, with its two entrances. One entrance is in the kitchen—definitely not ideal—and the other is above the powder room just off the living room, at the end of the hall. If she can get up into it in time, without being noticed, she can creep around up there and make decisive moves without occupying herself with whether she’s vulnerable to nearby doors and windows. If memory serves, the attic doesn’t have any windows, so she won’t have to worry about her flashlight being seen from outside, either.
This is enough for Esther. She slips into the powder room without being noticed and locks the door behind her. She climbs onto the counter and pulls the square door open before hoisting herself up and into it. As she replaces the door behind her, she hears more people, more footsteps, more voices. She’s glad she didn’t choose the closet.
The men file into the house, filling it like water flowing into an empty vessel. There are a lot more than Esther anticipated. Their footsteps sound less like their previous pitter patter and more like a thundering stampede.
Where did they all come from? Are there really that many of…whoever they are? How on earth are they still organizing and mobilizing so effectively with both Keroth and Perkins out of the picture? Is their hierarchy really so deep and well structured that they can reform and regroup so quickly? And how in the hell is she supposed to handle this many of them? And if she does, will they just keep coming, in greater and greater numbers?
“Where the fuck did she go?” a voice yells. Again begins the process of cupboard and cabinet doors opening and closing, doors slamming, and the inevitable flurry of profanities.
Esther hears the door handle rattle in the powder room below her and hopes that she didn’t accidentally
leave any evidence of her escape into the attic; any fallen drywall dust could betray her.
As she expected, they immediately start slamming into the bathroom door; if it’s locked, she must be in there, right? The first crash is loud and accompanied by the crackle of a splintering door frame. The second brings the door down, tumbling into the tiny washroom.
Good, she thinks, if I left a mess behind, their own will disguise it.
“She’s not in here,” says a voice. It’s loud, powerful, like a lion roaring through a human’s body. Esther knows right away that that’s the guy in charge of this onslaught. She is drawn to the idea of hiding out in the attic until they leave, but she’s too aware of the wake of destruction these people are prone to leaving. They won’t just get bored and take off; they’ll get bored, blow the place up, then take off. This leaves her with two options: take them all on or escape. Fight or flight. Their numbers are so great, though, that she has little confidence in either option. But she’ll have to make a choice eventually. Before they make it for her. She listens to them flitting and swarming about, turning the house inside out in their fervent hunt.
Even if she turns into some action hero, dodging bullets while simultaneously landing her own rounds in people’s heads, how many does she have left? Fourteen. Even if every shot lands and kills its target, she may well run out of ammunition before she manages to down them all. She could use their own weapons against them, but that’s hard enough in theory and even more so in execution. By no means can she rely on that as an out.
But the more she thinks about it, the more she realizes that it’s her only real option. She circles back through her options a couple more times (she considers calling the police, but more than likely they will have blazed through the house in its completeness before any help arrives anyway—not to mention that the sheer number of people here dwarfs the readily available police force in this tiny town), but her options allow for no wiggle room. Plus, she needs to commit to some sort of plan quickly; the seconds tick by with the insistent urgency of a flatlining cardiograph.
With that in mind, she listens closely, willing her mind’s map to populate itself with these men’s locations once again. The harder she concentrates, the more acutely she’s able to pick out where the noises come from. In a moment, the sounds go from a frustrating onslaught of thumps and grunts to an intricate series of more identifiable noises—the cupboard next to the fridge slamming closed, the closet door squeaking open and closed, then again as someone else searches the same place.
By isolating these sounds in her mind, she’s more readily able to pick out the pairs of shuffling feet. Three in the living room, four in the kitchen. Two wandering in the hallway. She only hears muffled sounds from the bedroom.
And none in the powder room.
Of course, she can only sense the ones who are moving or otherwise making noise, so she makes a mental note to allow for the possibility of more bodies than she counts now.
Esther uses a small pocket flashlight to illuminate the cramped attic. Webs hang like morbid streamers above and dust has piled up in a thick film, but the crossbeams are sturdy, and she manages to crawl across them without making the snapping and creaking noises she feared.
She stops to listen, still aware of time looming over her like a colossal tidal wave threatening to crash down and wash her away at any moment.
If she can shift the trapdoor—just an inch or so—without drawing their attention, she can start picking them off from above.
Esther once read that the human ears have great difficulty locating a noise that comes from above them. She hasn’t yet had opportunity to test this out for herself, but she hopes it’s true.
As soon as her gunfire draws return fire, she’ll have to retreat to the deeper corner of the attic, and she can drop down into the restroom, around the corner from them; hopefully they won’t have the deductive skills to infer that that’s where the other entrance is. With timing, skill, a calm mind, and a shitload of luck, Esther Thorn may yet see another tomorrow.
Nineteen
As slowly as she can, she works her nails into the groove, digging deeper to get a good grip, pausing every couple of seconds to listen for changes in their movement or speech patterns, but senses none.
After a minute that seems like several, she has the cover pried loose enough that she can pull it away. She gives it a small tug, but quickly realizes that it’ll take more than a small tug. A bead of sweat forms on her brow and slides down her nose, tickling her on its way down. She crouches and braces herself so as to maximize her leverage and control, a tricky act in itself while retaining her grip on the door and trying to make as little noise as possible.
She tightens her core and heaves the door. It moves this time, and faster than she anticipates. Panic grips her for a brief moment, but she regains control—of herself and of the door—quickly. No changes in their movements.
She takes a deep breath and kneels over the cover, awkwardly positioning herself to keep her weight on the crossbeams. The crack in the door allows her to hear them more clearly, assigning individual words to the various tones she’s been hearing. As she further poises herself, she can see the men in the kitchen.
Two guys that look like they don’t see much of the sun—or the shower—stand side by side, anxiously looking about in every direction but up. A burly man with short hair and a short beard leans against the table. He doesn’t move his head, but his eyes are hardly as stationary; they make laps around the room quickly, but as with the others, they don’t look up.
The pale ones would probably be safe to leave for after the burly guy; they seem the types to panic and freeze. The thick one seems like he would be most prepared to react. He’ll be her first target.
A voice rises form the living room: “If we find her, do we get to have some fun with her before we kill her?”
The burly guy answers, “Oh, you know I’ll make her my bit—”
Bang.
The cave-dwellers still have stupid smiles on their faces when the body hits the floor. As Esther expected, they both begin looking around with the intense paranoia of wounded cat, baffled that the windows are still intact, apparently certain that the shot must have come from outside, despite the volume of it.
One of them is moving, but the other seems too shocked.
Bang.
Thing One drops almost immediately; the shot hits him in the chest, and he has just enough time to spot Esther and widen his eyes in shock before the life fades from them. Luckily, he’s out before he’s able to call out or point to Esther’s position.
This time, Thing Two freezes, and the others are beginning to gather in the kitchen, confusion spreading among them. Briefly, Esther wonders whether she herself would have the presence of mind to look up if she were in their shoes.
She assesses that she can still get a few more shots off before they notice her. Fortunately for her, the ones that are calmest, and thus the biggest threats to her hiding, are also the most still, making them the easiest targets.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
The three of them drop and the panic deepens. Esther’s target practice surfaces in full force. The rapid fire, technical series of shots allowed by her semi-automatic feels like home.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.
If the men in the kitchen are all who remain in the house, as Esther suspects, there are eight more. But Esther only has five more rounds in her weapon, so even though she may have the positioning to take them out, she doesn’t have the ammunition. But maybe she could sneak out the back window in the midst of the chaos. In that case, should she use any more ammo here, or should she instead preserve it in case she encounters any of them on her way out?
She looks down through her thin crack. There are eight more men in the kitchen, all of them contributing to a cacophony of excited yelling that lands in Esther’s ears as a muffled sort of roar.
In such loud circumstances, she’s much less likely to be heard clambering over the
crossbeams, so she hastens back toward the door through which she entered. That door is much lighter, and she lifts it out of its frame with ease.
Esther’s arms strain as she lowers herself to the counter, a moment of uncomfortable vulnerability while she tries to make as little noise as possible. There’s plenty of chaos to help disguise her, but with the door blasted off its hinges and lying among the bits of splintered wood on the bathroom floor, she still has to be careful about the amount of noise she makes; their own frenzied confusion will only mask so many decibels. The door leans against the counter at an awkward angle, forcing Esther to first drop onto the counter instead of aiming for the floor, then to make a little hop through the doorway.
She allows herself only the shortest second to look toward the kitchen area as she turns left to go toward the bedroom. Just as they were ten, fifteen seconds ago, they’re looking out the window, their faces pressed up against it to block out the reflected glare of the kitchen light.
The words ‘impressively stupid’ streak through Esther’s mind as she rushes through the hallway toward the back bedroom. Once inside, she waits for a few seconds to see whether anyone saw and followed her; she’d rather be aware and be able to stop and fight them than have her back turned to them as she tried to climb out of the window. But no one comes.
Do they have the numbers and presence of mind to maintain a perimeter around the house, or is the entirety of the onslaught contained in the kitchen, wondering where Esther disappeared to?
In either case, she doesn’t have much of an option other than to flee. Sirens pierce the dry desert air; maybe the neighbors heard the gunshots and called it in. Esther is sure that she made the police’s job quite a lot easier. At least, in terms of not getting mown down by fully automatics upon arriving on scene. The bloodbath will probably warrant quite a lot of paperwork, though. But better paperwork than the alternative. Esther has no doubts that these guys would have massacred the tiny Wometzia police force. She’s seen it before.
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