by Justin Bell
“Look. My wife’s parents invited us here. All we wanted was a long weekend away, we don’t want any trouble, okay? Just leave our property and we’ll all get along just fine.”
“S’cuse me?” the man asked, tilting his head. “Did you say your property?”
“Our family’s property. Yes. Please leave or I’ll be forced to call the police.”
The young man looked at him with stern derision, letting his eyes scope Phil’s face, then chest, and finally his stomach. Phil felt as if he were in an observation room with some twisted, vengeful physician choosing which limb to amputate first.
“I think the police have bigger things to worry about right now, city boy,” the man replied. He crossed his arms and leaned back slightly, resting the curve of his spine on the Honda minivan. It was a not-so-subtle indication that he wasn’t planning on going anywhere.
“Look,” Rhonda said, pushing past Phillip and extending her hand. “Maybe we got off on the wrong foot. My name is Rhonda Fraser. Krueller is my maiden name, and this is my parent’s cabin. They gave us permission to come visit any time, so that’s why we’re here.”
The young man stepped closer, wrapping his rough-skinned fingers around hers and shaking briefly.
“Lance. Lance Cavendish.”
“Nice to meet you. My dad always had nice things to say about your family.”
Lance nodded but didn’t reply.
“Do you want to come in for a cold drink? We’re going to be heading to town soon, but there’s always time for a drink,” said Phil, still trying to do his part to defuse the situation.
“I don’t want a drink,” Lance insisted. “I want you all to leave. If you ain’t gonna leave, I’m gonna have to remove you.”
“Like hell you will,” Phil replied, stepping back in front of his wife, making sure he was between her and Lance. “I don’t care what happened this morning, you can’t just walk up here and push us out of our family’s home just because some nuclear weapons are giving you a false sense of superiority!”
Lance pushed himself from the van and stepped towards Phil, his face flushing a deep red.
“You think you can come at me with your big words and scare me off?” His fists were raised now, coming up on bent elbows, and his muscles tensed.
“Hey, hey, let’s all take it easy,” Rhonda said, moving in to intercept, but she wasn’t quite fast enough.
Lance moved forward, shoving Rhonda away and sending her stumbling backwards. Phil glanced towards her as she caught herself against the side of the van, preventing a fall, but then he turned back towards Lance and lunged. The entire concept of a fistfight was a foreign one to Phil and his first swing was loose and wild, coming nowhere near its intended target. Lance, on the other hand, was apparently well practiced, and he moved under the wild swing and planted a firm fist directly in Phil’s ample midsection. Breath blasted from his lungs and he coughed, tasting a bitter, copper tinge. Phil stumbled forward, pushing away with his hands, and actually caught the left side of Lance’s chest, knocking him back into the minivan. That didn’t slow Lance down much and he pushed off from the van, swinging his other fist low and tight, smashing it into the confused face of Phillip, whipping his head sharply backwards and sending him back, arms pinwheeling.
Before Phil could fall, Lance stepped towards him again, tangled his fingers in his shirt, pulled him close, and slammed a third punch into his stomach, then a fourth into his jaw. Phillip’s head lolled back, his eyes rolling in their sockets, and Lance caught him with both hands, then threw him backwards into the van, his spine slamming against plastic and metal before slumping to the ground.
“We don’t take kindly to city folks around here. Especially city folks who throw around insults.” He stepped towards Phil and bent over him, reaching back into his belt. “You’ve got something in that house that belongs to me, and I’m gonna go take it.”
Bringing himself upright, he withdrew his hand and produced a .380 caliber pistol, looking almost toy-like in his clenched fist.
Phil tried to push himself up, his face already swollen and numb from the impact. He shook his head frantically holding his hand up palm-first.
“Please,” he muttered in a muffled, swollen voice. “Don’t. We can figure this out.”
“Oh, I will figure it out. I’ll figure it out after I put a bullet in you.”
Phil tried to push away, but his back was pressed tight to the van behind him and he had nowhere to go, tucking his head down and low, desperately waving his hand in front of him as if by some miracle he might stop the bullet.
The gunshot was louder than he anticipated. A swift and sudden bark, echoing into the surrounding trees and pale blue sky.
All at once Phil thought of his house…the play structure in his backyard…his grill and patio. Their three cars and crazy mortgage. His job at the hospital, those meetings on Tuesday morning that he was expected to attend. Countless unread emails.
Missed birthdays. Holidays. Weddings. Births. Things that he rarely thought about during the best of times in his life, and things he realized he would desperately miss. But amid the echoing sound of the gunshot above, he heard the low chirp of birds, the soft whistling of wind through threes, and felt a low, warm breeze brushing his skin.
Phil decided that maybe this wasn’t a bad place to die.
Chapter 3
A funny thing happened as Phil stared wide-eyed up into the trees, waiting for the pain to come. Waiting for the bullet to strike, waiting for the darkness.
It never came.
He laid there in the grass for a few moments, tears blurring his vision, streaking the clouds and sky into a swirling pattern of blue and white. The gunshot was little more than a fading echo, but he felt no pain. Pressing his palm to the ground, he sat upright and looked into the angry eyes of Lance Cavendish. The man stood there, his weapon drooping and his fingers slack, his eyes roaming for some landmark to hook his line to, but he couldn’t find it.
His flannel shirt clung to him and as Phil stared, a spot of dark, rusty wetness slowly spread over his chest, creeping up the fabric like a fungus.
Mouth twisting to a snarl, Lance took an uncertain step towards Phil, and his fingers worked, twitching as if trying to pull the trigger, but they couldn’t quite follow the mental directions. Clinging to his trigger finger for a brief moment, the .380 dangled and swung, then dropped, smacking in the grass with a quiet thunk. Lance tumbled over towards his left side and landed on his shoulder, his mouth barking out one last wet, spittle-soaked breath. As Phil watched him lying there he heard a quiet rattle, the sound of trapped oxygen, then there was only silence.
“Phil?” the voice was quiet and on the edge of frantic, as if it were trying to break free and was only contained by the narrowest of restraints. “Phil, are you okay?”
He sat up, then reached his hand up towards the door handle of the minivan and helped himself into a clumsy standing position, his head reeling with confusion, the world swirling around him as if he was going around a drain.
“What happened?” he asked dully. Rhonda still stood a short distance away, afraid to venture closer. Finally Phil looked over and saw what had happened.
In two clenched fists, Rhonda clutched a pistol, a Smith & Wesson revolver, six round .357 magnum. One lone trail of spent smoke crawled from the barrel and reached slowly up towards the clouds, climbing the sky hand over hand, dissipating into nothing along the way.
“Rhonda?” Phil asked, his voice thick with swelling lips.
“Mom? Dad?” frantic voices barked from the front porch and Phil whipped his head around, lifting his hand.
“Winnie! Max! Get back inside!”
Winnie stood at the railing a hand to her mouth, her eyes wide and gaping, staring at the scene in front of her. Max stood just at her left arm with Bradley just behind him. Phil could see two hands clasped to his face over Max’s shoulder.
“Mom, did you kill him?” Max asked, his eyes locked on th
e fallen form of Lance Cavendish, just staring, unmoving.
“Get back inside right now!” Rhonda shouted, whirling towards her children and extending a long index finger back towards the house. “Right. Now.”
Winnie nodded quietly, not speaking, and walked backwards as if in some strange trance. Max and Bradley broke away and disappeared into the door ahead of her. Soon enough the porch was empty and only Phil and Rhonda stood outside, both looking over the crumpled form of the man in front of them. His fingers were splayed open, the .380 laying a foot away from his outstretched hand.
“Self-defense,” Phil stammered. “It was self-defense.”
Rhonda just stood there, staring at the unmoving body, then turned her hand and looked at the pistol she held, a slab of metal capable of such permanent damage.
“Rhonda, it was self-defense!” Phil shouted. His lips were fully swollen now, a lump of mottled purple flesh building on his left cheek.
“I know it was self-defense!” Rhonda shouted back. “I had no choice!”
She stood there, tears streaming down her face, her fist clamped tight around the pistol, shaking it back and forth and punctuating each word. As she waved the pistol around, it seemed to catch her eye and she stepped back in revulsion and let the weapon fall to the grass as if it were scalding.
“What do we do?” Rhonda asked, looking at the weapon resting in the grass. “What did I do?”
“You did what you had to. He was going to kill me.” The words brought a sharp chill to him, causing goose flesh to roll down his arms.
“I know. But why?”
“We may never know.”
Rhonda looked up at Phil, her lips trembling. He stepped towards her and embraced her, holding her steady and squeezing her tight, the most show of emotion either of them had given each other in a long time. Not because they didn’t love each other or didn’t care, but because it always seemed secondary to whatever else was going on. The body on the ground provided a stark reminder that time wasn’t infinite, and everything could change in an instant.
“Rhonda?” Phil asked. A question had dug in deep in the back of his head and hadn’t yet let go. He finally felt the need to speak that question.
She pushed back from the embrace and looked at him.
“Where did you get the gun?”
Her eyes drifted down to the weapon, then shifted back up to him. Her initial reaction to throw it away had faded as she slowly adjusted to what had just happened and she realized that it would more than likely be needed again. Peeling away from his arms, she dropped into a crouch and picked it up, then slipped it into her belt at the small of her back.
“We’ll talk about it later,” she said quietly. “For now, you need to help me get rid of this.”
Her body seemed to visibly harden as she spoke those words, an outer protective shell layering over her soft, vulnerable inner person that she had just allowed herself to reveal.
Phil looked at her curiously, unsure of what she was talking about. “Get rid of what?”
Rhonda bent down and grasped the exposed wrists of Lance Cavendish, pulling his top half away from the grass. His head drooped left and thumped against his shoulder.
“This. We need to get rid of this. Cavendish is a big family up in these parts.”
“Jeez, Rhonda. Shouldn’t we call the police? You did nothing wrong.”
“And are we going to sit here while they investigate? Stay in town for months while they decide whether the shooting was justified? Under any other circumstances, sure. Not right now, though. Not with what’s going on out there. I don’t intend to stay here any longer than we have to, Phil. Now grab his legs and help me take care of him.”
Phil looked at her with wide, vacant eyes but followed her lead, grasping the ankles through his thick, brown boots and helping heft him up into the air. Together they maneuvered the limp corpse past the minivan and over towards the tree line. Lance was a heavy, dead weight who was skinny but muscular, and within seconds, Phil was slicked and drenched with sweat.
It was a struggle, both Rhonda and Phillip taking a few steps, then setting the body down and taking a few long breaths. Then they would resume the lumbering, clumsy process, sometimes carrying the corpse, sometimes dragging it, leaving a flattened path across the grass.
It felt like it took hours, but they finally reached the edge of the grass, trees reaching up past them, stretching tall up into the sky. Rhonda took a step into the thick foliage and glanced down the steep grade just beyond. There was a ravine nestled along the backyard, a deep and wide gorge of carved rock and dirt, leading down to a stream rolling below. Rhonda nodded down there and Phil returned the nod. They picked up Lance one more time, swung him back, then released, sending the lifeless body tumbling limb over limb over the edge, spilling down the loose dirt. Phil turned away, his stomach clenching, but Rhonda kept watching as the body loped and rolled, cartwheeled over a thick tree, then landed with a thick, wet splash down in the stream so far below. She didn’t want to think how many bones had been broken in that particular fall, but maybe, just maybe, if the body was ever recovered they wouldn’t even notice the sucking chest wound.
Turning from the crest of the hill, she saw Phil hunkered over by the corner of the house, holding himself up with one hand while the other hand clutched at his stomach. He heaved as she watched, though nothing came out, and she wondered when any of them had eaten their last meal.
“Come on, Phil,” she said softly, touching his back as she walked towards the house. “Let’s go talk to the kids. We need to head to town and figure out what we’re doing next. If one Cavendish came out here then there might be more soon. And food. We need some food.”
Phil lifted his head and watched her walk away, wondering just how she could possibly even think about eating right now. But once again, as he had for two decades, he followed her lead, angling left into the house and entering the kitchen. All three kids were in the living room, Winnie and Max on the couch while Bradley stood, just looking out the window at nothing in particular.
Winnie looked over at them as they entered, her face pale white and gaunt. She looked completely helpless and hopeless, a lost waif orphaned by the pure shock of a world distinctly different than it had been only a few hours ago.
The atmosphere inside the house was a bizarre mixture of shock, confusion, and concern—a persistent, thick gel filling in all empty space within the room, trapping the people inside, slowing their walks and shrouding their eyes. Rhonda wasn’t sure what had affected them more, the attacks from the morning or the single gunshot from a few moments ago, but she knew one thing for sure; the accumulation of violence wouldn’t soon wash away. Rhonda went to the couch and sat down next to Winnie, engulfing her in a powerful hug. Winnie’s arms stayed clenched by her side and her eyes continued staring out into nothing, allowing her mother’s embrace, but not returning it.
“Hey, kids,” Rhonda said, stepping back from Winnie and keeping her voice even keeled and gentle. “I’m sure that was scary.”
Phil came up beside her. “We did what we had to do.”
“He pulled his gun first and was going to shoot your father,” Rhonda continued. “It’s not okay to do what I did, but sometimes you have to make hard choices.”
“There are going to be a lot of hard choices that have to be made,” Phil continued. “Some hard things have happened today, and those things may shape what we do next. But the most important thing is that we still try to do the right thing, and we protect this family at all costs.”
“Are we all okay with this?” Rhonda asked.
Winnie nodded softly, still not looking her in the eyes. The boys copied the motion in spirit, and Rhonda once again swallowed Winnie in an embrace.
“It’ll be okay, sweetie,” Rhonda whispered. “We’ll make it all okay.”
Winnie stood from the couch, breaking from her mother’s arms, and wandered towards Phil. He stepped forward and accepted her into his arms, and she did r
eturn his affection, becoming a tangle of arms and emotion.
Max moved across the couch and slid into Rhonda’s arms, and she returned his embrace, everyone being still and silent. Bradley remained framed in the large window, staring out at the trees.
“So what’s the plan?” Phil asked. “What are we looking for?”
“We need food and water from the store,” Rhonda replied, letting Max go. “Non-perishables preferably, and plenty to drink. I don’t know how long it might take for contaminates to get into the water supply.”
“Or if they’re already there?” Phil asked. The mere thought sent a chill crawling up his arm.
“Right.”
“So what are you doing?” Phil asked.
“We need to figure out if help is coming. Or basically what’s going on and what we should be doing. If I remember right, the local police are in the town hall, so we need to check there and see what our next step is after getting food and water.”
Phil nodded. The plan made sense and it jived with what he’d been considering as well. Plus, in his mind, anything that kept them busy was a good thing at this point. Occupying their minds might be the best thing they could do right now.
Rhonda patted Max on the back and stood, and then walked towards the kitchen. “Okay, Frasers—and Brad, of course—we’re heading into town. We’re going to get some chow, we’re going to get some answers, and we’re going to find out what we’re doing next. Enough wallowing.”
Phil nodded to Winnie and patted her shoulder. “We’re going to figure this out, Win, okay?”
She nodded softly.
Bradley walked over to the television and turned it on as the Frasers dispersed to get ready to load into the van. A talking head was on the screen again and he stood captivated.