by H. D. Gordon
The doors slammed shut. All the doors in the big room. They made a sound that was so final my breath caught in my throat and I struggled for air. I didn’t know how Madison had gotten here, but that didn’t matter, because she was here now, and the doors were closed and the reverend’s two sons were standing in front of them, blocking any chance of escape. I noticed with a drop of my heart that there were semi-automatic weapons in their hands. The kinds of weapons that spray.
An odd thought broke through my chaotic mind then. Something Troy had been about to tell me about their weapons and—
Then Madison screamed. I knew it was her even before I confirmed it with my eyes, because she was the only small child in the room, and only a small child could make a sound so shattering and heart-wrenching.
It didn’t take long to see what had made her scream so. I followed her horrified green eyes and saw that her mother, Christine, was being led up to the stage by Dorie. Christine looked like she’d been to hell and back.
Not yet, she hasn’t. Not yet
I tried to keep calm as all the others in the room, men and women alike, shied away from the crying little girl, thinking I should have just taken Madison out of this place myself and let all these awful people die. They’d all chosen to be here. They’d all—
“Let my mommy go!” Madison screamed, charging up to the stage, tears streaming down her flushed little cheeks. She poked a tiny finger at the reverend, who was watching her with calloused amusement in his dark eyes, as if this was just what he’d wanted. And of course, it was.
“You let her go!” Maddie screamed again. “You’re a bad man! You’re a bad man! Let my mommy go!”
For the tiniest of moments, I was frozen along with everyone else in the room, too shocked to do much else but inhale. Christine was the one who broke the silence. “Nooooo!” she yelled, and it was more like a groan, a gut-wrenching moan, as if the sound had been ripped right from her soul. “Please…oh, please…leave her alone…please…don’t hurt my little girl.”
The reverend smiled down at Christine, who was on her knees by his chair, struggling to keep her head up as Dorie held fast to her shoulders. He turned his dark, crazed gaze on Maddie now, and the hair on the back of my neck stiffened. She was such a little thing, standing tall before him, braver than every adult in the room combined.
“I won’t hurt her, child,” he crooned, beckoning Madison forward. His lips flattened into a hard line when she didn’t obey. “I won’t hurt her as long as you tell me who told you that. Who told you I was a bad man? Who is the traitor among us that conspired to turn you and your mother against me with such blasphemous lies?”
My racing heart stopped dead in my chest as I watched on. And it broke a little as Madison didn’t answer, as she only held his stare in defiance and balled her little fists against her sides.
“Tell me, child,” he said. “And you have my word, all will be forgiven.”
The room, though holding nearly two hundred people, was dead silent. Nobody said a word. Including Madison.
I felt an incredible rush of pride and love for the child, but knew what I had to do. I opened my mouth to tell the sick bastard that I was the one he wanted.
But then, a familiar voice spoke up, and beat me to the punch.
Kayla.
In the end, even though I’d been about to betray myself, it was Kayla who betrayed me. Her voice rang out from the crowd. “I know who the traitor is, Father!” she said. “It’s Joe! Joe Knowe! She’s the spy that came in here trying to destroy us!” I watched as her eyes scanned the crowd, and met them square as they settled on me. “Just tell him,” she said. “Just tell him why you came, and you’ll be forgiven.”
I just stared at her, said nothing. There was nothing to say to that.
“Please,” Kayla said. “I’m sorry, Joe, but he needs to know the truth so he can protect us from whatever demons you’ve seen coming. Trouble follows you, and you know it. Everything was fine before you came here.” Tears were welling in my old friend’s eyes now, but I couldn’t find an ounce of sympathy in me for her.
And if I was being honest, her words stung. They bit deep.
When I looked up at the reverend now, and saw that fox’s grin on his face, I gritted my teeth and reminded myself that Troy was already out of here with the other children and hopefully calling the authorities, so as long as I could keep the situation from escalating, everything could still turn out okay.
“What do you have to say to these accusations?” the reverend asked, and I noticed that the crowd had cleared away from me, leaving me standing in the center alone. I could feel the hundreds of eyes on me, as if each one were its own laser.
I opened my mouth, and the words that came out surprised even me. “Fuck you,” I said, the words rolling off my tongue smoothly. There was a gasp from the crowd and then a deep silence as they held their breath.
I could see the worst kind of anger pass behind the reverend’s dark eyes, but that fox’s smile remained on his lips. “Come here, my child,” he said. “I forgive you, but since you are the one who has brought the devil to our doorstep, you will be the first, but you aren’t going to heaven, you devil-worshiping little bitch, not like the rest of us. No, you’re going straight to hell for this.” His fist slammed down on the armrest of his chair. “Isn’t that right, my children?”
There were shouts of wary agreement from the crowd, but I refused to show my fear as I climbed the steps to where the reverend was seated. He reached into the cardboard flaps of one of the three boxes that were stacked by his chair…and pulled out a chocolate-covered pretzel.
I took it willingly, feeling the tiniest bit of smugness that I knew something he didn’t know. But I knew I had to play the game, buy a little more time.
“I’m nuh-not going to eat this,” I said, raising my chin.
That was when Dorie released her hold on Christine and pulled a pistol out of the back waistband of her pants. She cocked the gun and placed its cold barrel to my temple. Suddenly, I didn’t feel so smug.
“You’ll eat it, you lying little bitch,” Dorie spat. “Or I’ll fucking make you eat it.”
I swallowed hard and tried to give Madison, who was now standing on trembling knees and still crying, a look that I hoped was reassuring.
And then I raised the pretzel to my mouth to take…
Chapter 66
Michael
…a bite of the pretzel, and Michael knew then what the source of the poison would be. His heart thumped and his hands shook as he lined up his shot the way the old man had taught him. He squeezed his eyes shut for the smallest of moments, knowing he couldn’t let Joe eat that poison but unsure if he had what it took to do what had to be done.
A memory flashed through his mind then, a memory of Daniel Deaton’s face as he’d been about to shoot him, a memory of Joe’s face as she’d pulled the trigger of her own gun and saved Michael’s life.
It was time to repay the favor.
Michael opened his eyes in time to see Joe open her mouth to take a bite of the poison pretzel, and then his finger squeezed the trigger of the sniper and he could do nothing but watch in horror as the report of the rifle rang in his ears and the woman with the gun to Joe’s head…
Chapter 67
Joe
…fell to the floor at my feet, a spray of her warm blood splattering across my face, and for a single moment following that first loud gunshot that seemed to come from nowhere, no one in the room moved or even breathed.
Then, all hell broke loose as…
Chapter 68
Bobby
…Bobby Reynolds watched Dorie Dunham get her top blown off and slump to the ground. His heart jumped, and for a small but seemingly long moment, all he could do was stare at the gore splattered over the stage and listen to the ringing in his ears that had nothing to do with the gunshot that just sounded.
Then, a smile so like that of his father’s spread over his face, and he adjusted his gri
p on the mp5 in his hands and watched in wonder as people began screaming and rushing toward the exit he was blocking. Bobby licked his lips and lifted the weapon.
Now it was a fucking party, he thought, and squeezed the trigger of the mp5, spraying…
Chapter 69
Michael
…the crowd of panicking people as though they were no more than flowers and the gun in his hands were just a hose. Screams and rapid-fired gunshots filled Michael’s ears, the sounds of nightmares and shattering souls that he would surely carry with him for however much longer he lived.
He scooted over to the balcony’s edge once more and lowered his eye back down to the sniper’s circular sight. Everything beholden in that scope seemed to move now in slow motion. He scanned the chaotic crowd, trying to get a lock on his target, the one spraying all those people and cutting them down at his feet. This wasn’t easy since everyone below him was running around like chickens with their heads cut off.
(Or like that woman who’s head I just blew off)
He shoved that thought away before it could marinate. He would think about that later. Right now, he needed to focus. Finally, he sighted the gunman and allowed himself one inhale of breath before squeezing the trigger for a second time and blowing…
Chapter 70
Sharon
…the top of her youngest son’s head off right before her eyes. Sharon Reynolds stood rooted to her spot on the far side of the stage, unable to move, to blink, to breathe. The world around her was not reality. It couldn’t be. She was in the middle of a nightmare, that was the only explanation. Why else would it all suddenly go quiet, silent as a library at midnight, as she stared across the room at the carnage her youngest son had just delivered over there, at the carnage that was her youngest son over there?
Oh dear Lord, how could this have happened? How could this be happening? Where, when, how had it all gone so terribly, awfully wrong? It was all his fault, the sick bastard. He was the one who had made her little Bobby, always such a sweet child, into the psychopathic man he’d become. She should have left him years ago, back when the boys were younger, less trained, still savable…
And now, Oh dear Lord, and now it was too late for her Bobby. Why was it she could look around and see people running, screaming, shoving, and yet the only sound she could hear was a small ringing in her ears and all she could smell was the sharp tang of…
Chapter 71
Ron Jr.
…blood as some of it landed right on his tongue in his open mouth. Ron Jr. stared over at his brother, only ten feet away, slumped on the ground, the better half of his head missing; a horrific hole that had not been there only moments ago. Ron Jr. snapped out of his stupor now as he saw the terrified people trample over Bobby’s body trying to make their escape, tugging at the doors that were locked tight enough to keep in a lion…or a bunch of lambs.
It was all happening so fast, and it wasn’t until he saw the shoe of one of the people stomp right into that new hole in his little brother’s head that he remembered the mp5 in his hands. Ron Jr. raised the weapon, but he wasn’t the only one. One of the men who’d been trying to escape over Bobby’s body had picked up his brother’s dropped weapon and was raising it as well, raising it in Ron Jr.’s direction.
Ron Jr. saw red, red a deeper color than even the spilled blood of his little brother, which was spreading out in a pool and seeping all the way over to the tips of Ron Jr.’s tennis shoes. He gripped the mp5 and pulled the trigger at almost exactly the same time as…
Chapter 72
Sharon
…Gary, the middle-aged former druggie fired the weapon he’d taken off of Bobby’s body, and Sharon Reynolds stared on in horror as she realized Gary had the barrel pointed directly at Ron Jr. Ron Jr., her eldest son.
Her only son, her frantic mind corrected, the thought going nowhere because in the next instant, following right on the heels of more rapid-fired gunshots, she saw several deep red spots appear across Ron Jr.’s chest and grow wider and wider, like roses going quickly from bud to bloom.
And that same red bloomed behind her vision, filling the world, painting it in that terrible crimson, the color that could sum up Sharon Reynolds’ life.
And it was all his fault his fault his fucking fault
Sharon’s head whipped around now, and the first thing her red-filled eyes settled on was Dorie Dunham’s dead body…and the handgun still in Dorie’s dead hand. And then she was moving, moving toward that piece of steel, that piece of steel that would allow her to steal the life of the piece of shit that was…
Chapter 73
Middle Man
…responsible for all of this, that little bitch who had come in here, into the heaven he’d created through sweat and blood, and led the devils right to his doorstep. She wouldn’t get away with it. He would see to it himself that the little bitch would not get away with it. This, all of this, was her fault.
Ron Reynolds reached into his white robe and pulled out the 9mm he always kept stashed there, standing from his chair that overlooked the chaos, his crazed eyes rolling around wildly in his head as he looked for the raven-haired girl and spotted her over by that other little cunt traitor, Christine. Joe was slinging Christine’s arm over her shoulder and trying to lead her out of here. And the little girl who’d had the nerve to challenge him was with them.
But they weren’t going to get away that easily. The Lord as his witness, they were not going to get away that easily.
He moved to stand behind them, silently. He bet Joe thought she was some fucking hero. Some fucking hero, indeed, trying to get her two traitorous companions to safety, to set the fire and then leave the building to burn down behind them. No fucking way. Just no fucking way.
He would lighten the little hero’s load. He raised the pistol to the back of Christine’s head…
Chapter 74
Joe
…exploded right beside my ear, and Christine’s body, whose weight I’d been mostly supporting, slipped out of my grasp and slumped to the ground at my feet. My ear rang from the load bang that had just sounded right beside it, and the world spun as I stared down at the dead young mother at my feet.
At Madison’s dead mother, her face now unfit for an open casket, dead at my feet. Blackness started to creep in around the edges of my vision as a sound more terrible than any I’d ever heard scraped across my ears. I stood stupefied, horrified and worthlessly by as Madison’s scream, a sound that would surely be the starring soundtrack of my dreams shook me all the way down to my soul.
I could only stare as the little girl crashed to her knees, her mouth open wide and gasping for air, her striking green eyes so full of things a girl of her age—or any age, really—should never have to see.
Only one thought broke through to me then, and it was one that could not be denied, not while Madison sat mourning her mother at my feet.
I failed. I failed her.
And then I was staring down the barrel of a 9mm, staring into the black hole of that barrel…
Chapter 75
Middle Man
…that would be the last thing on this earth the little raven-haired bitch would ever get to see. He smiled as he cocked the gun and trained it on her head, her silver-blue eyes as wide as disks as they stared up at him.
This was some poetic fucking justice, he thought, as his finger began to pull back the trigger. Because it was all her fault, all her fucking…
Chapter 76
Sharon
…fault and if it was the last thing she ever got to do on this earth, she would see to it that the sick bastard did not get away with it. Sharon crept up behind her husband as he crept up behind the dark-haired girl with the strange eyes, the one who had been prepared to stab the bastard with his own silver letter opener rather than let his greasy, disgusting hands…
Ron Jr. Bobby. Dead. Gone.
And it was all his fault.
Sharon Reynolds raised dead Dorie’s gun, pressed it to
the back of her husband’s sick head, and pulled the trigger.
She made sure to watch as his skull exploded instantly, the point-blank range spraying her with gray brain matter and crimson. She refused to turn away as she watched him fall to the ground like the sack of shit he was.