by Serra, D. A.
This thought process all happens in a flash for her and it is liberating. She is convinced to a moral certainty that she can do this. This was what she was supposed to do all along. Now, finally, squatting down, burned and hurting on the floor of her garage she understands it all. Her time has come, but she knows, with savage certainty so…has.. his.
Outside the garage, Ben grins realizing she has made a fatal error by dodging into the garage. It is a closed space. There is no way out of there. She is cowering like a scared rodent in there waiting for him to finish her. He struts up to the garage door triumphantly. Before he steps inside, he glances around the yard for his escape. He knows the chaos that he hears forming in the front of the house will be useful. The fire trucks, the neighbors, the distraction, will all supply a cover for him to sneak away unnoticed. She has been an annoying little gnat. Time to squash her.
The siren ends as the massive red fire engine grinds to a stop at the curb in front of the burning Kraft house. Five firefighters jump out. Two police units arrive simultaneously. The flames light up the night sky as they chew up this pretty little home. In their coordinated and well-rehearsed routine, the firefighters unroll the main hose and attach it to the fire hydrant. Two firefighters pull their hot suits out of the truck and begin to step into them preparing to enter the burning home. No one is aware that twenty yards away, in the unattached garage, Alison has made up her mind, Ben stands ready to enter, and the end is in sight.
The neighborhood is wide-awake and every light is on. People spill frantically out of their warm homes and into their frigid yards in their robes and overcoats with boots slipped quickly over their bare feet and with children in their arms. The police herd them across to the other side of the street where they gather side-by-side. The neighbors exchange sad deliberate looks with one another. Families nod to friends, but no one has the heart to speak. They are heavy with grief. They understand they are the audience for this: the last act of a family tragedy and they are silently respectful as it plays out on a stage of fire and sirens. It feels as though it has been inevitable, this final destruction. Everyone knows what has been going on inside the Kraft house. They have been gossiping and worrying ever since Alison returned, and while they feel distraught, not a single person is surprised to see this house go up in flames. Even though in the last few days there have been some concerns voiced for their own individual safety as Alison got noticeably “crazier,” still every single neighbor gathered here now on this block feels personally injured watching this scene. A shared sorrow binds them together because this family was so much like their own. It could so easily have been any of them. Alison was a genuine person who cooked noodle soup when a neighbor was sick, who collected toys for foster children, who wrote letters to the military overseas, who put out the big candy bars on Halloween, who carried out hot chocolate in the frigid early morning winter for the snow plough drivers. They have all watched with profound anguish the agonizing ruin of this ordinary family. They have spoken of little else between them this last month. And now shivering in their pajamas in solemn unity every single one of them is thinking about Alison in the past tense and hoping that Hank and Jimmy are not in that house.
Driving only blocks away, Hank sees the night sky lit up by flames. He smells the smoke and although there is no way to know which home it is, he is nevertheless certain it is his. He jams the gas pedal to the floor. He is possessed with anxiety and a sudden blinding remorse. His head throbs and his heart pounds like never before. “No.” He breaks out in a sweat. He pushes the car to eighty miles an hour on the residential street, taking the curve on two wheels sliding into a parked car. The blow smashes in the passenger side of the car but he does not care and he does not slow down. “Oh, this is not happening.” He cranks the wheel right and careens onto his street. Up ahead smoke climbs in dense gray clouds illuminated by the dazzling yellow arms of fire that gesture out of the windows of his home. “Oh god; oh god!” People are everywhere. He slows and searches the faces as he pulls down the street. Alison? Where is she? He looks anxiously from face to face. Where? A police officer leaps out in front of his car forcefully waving his arms. He points a flashlight directly into the driver’s area trying to stop Hank from proceeding down the road. Hank yanks the steering wheel left, swings around the police officer, jumps the curb, and crosses the sidewalk. He tears up the grass yards of three of his neighbors before skidding to a stop in the middle of his own front lawn. One of the firefighters comes running toward him. “Hey!” Hank throws open the car door, jettisons himself out and charges toward the front door ignoring the shouts at him to stop. One of the firefighters grabs him from behind before he reaches the stoop.
“Sir!”
“My wife. My wife!”
It takes a great deal of physical strength to hold Hank back. The firefighter tries to connect with Hank. “We’re going in. Please stand back. We’re equipped. Look!” He points to two firefighters ready to enter the house. They are fully covered in protective wear and attached to oxygen tanks. “How many in the house? Sir! How many?”
“Just her. Just my Allie.”
The firefighter speaks into his radio, “One woman inside.”
“I have to go, too!” He tries to wrench free.
“Please, Sir, you will only get in the way.”
“I left.” Hank wails wretchedly. ”Don’t you understand? I left her!”
Hank’s anguish is palpable and the firefighter feels for him. He drops his voice and looks intently at Hank’s pained face. “Please, sir, I understand. Let us do our job. If she’s in there we will find her.”
“But I can help! I know where she is!” Hank can’t take his eyes off the flames reaching his bedroom window. “I know the house.” And for a second he thinks he sees her there in the window, looking out as she has night after night, but then the apparition is gone. Was that her? Was that the ghost of her? Is she gone? He howls.
The firefighter shakes him and Hank looks. The firefighter connects. “You can only help by staying out of the way so we can focus completely on your wife and not have to think about you.” Even in this distraught state, the logic of this reaches him.
The two outfitted firefighters go in through the front door.
“Upstairs!” Hank screams after them. “Go upstairs!”
The fire hoses burst on full force and begin to flush the house creating huge white plumes of dense smoke.
“Oh, god,” Hank says, “My fault. This is my fault.”
“Sir, did you set this fire?”
“No.”
“Then, it is not your fault.”
“She needed me and I left.” He collapses to his knees in agony, sinking into the wet cold ground. “I should never have left. I will never forgive myself.”
The neighbors see Hank sink to his knees and several of them turn their faces away in wounded sympathy. Tears come to their eyes. The children ask no questions, they only stare, even the littlest of them can sense the gravity of it all and instinctively they are silent.
When the initial report of a gunshot came over the police scanner Officer Thomas recognized the address. He jumped into his car and drove over with his siren blaring. He pulls up along the curb, sees Hank, and charges onto the lawn.
“Mr. Kraft?” Thomas says.
Hank jumps up. “Thomas!”
The firefighter is grateful to have Officer Thomas’ help. “Good. He’s yours.” And the firefighter runs back to the truck and to the business of the fire.
“She’s inside!” Hank tells Thomas.
Thomas says, “A neighbor reported a gunshot. We were on our way already when fire got the call.”
“Oh, no. I left her there. I left her there distraught with a gun.” What must have happened dawns on them both.
“Mr. Kraft, I am so sorry. But the fire guys will find her. She may be all right.”
“She shot herself.” Hank can barely form the words; the thought alone has knocked the wind out of him.
“She could be dying on the floor right now!”
“They’re already in. They’re good guys.”
Hanks pleads, “Help me get in there. Thomas, help me get in.”
“You could never find her without a hot suit in that smoke. You’d be dead before you hit the stairs. Think about your son.”
Hank looks at his home. The whole upstairs is engulfed. “What’s taking them so long so find her?”
“They’re being careful.”
The neighbors are being pushed even farther back away from the heartbreaking scene. One man won’t move. He stands and argues and pushes back. He yells and points. It is Hank’s next-door neighbor, Jessie Collins. He screams over the noise to get Hank’s attention.
“Hey, Hank!” Jessie persists. He tries to break through the barricade but is stopped by the police so he yells again, “Hank!”
Hank hears him and turns, “Jessie?”
“I called!” He yells, “I’m the one who called. I called the cops!”
Thomas and Hank walk toward him. “Yes?” Thomas indicates for the policeman to let Jessie through.
“I heard them say they think Alison may have set the house on fire and then shot herself but I don’t think so. It couldn’t have happened that way. Not possible.”
“Why not?” Thomas asks.
“There were a bunch of gunshots.”
Thomas demands, “A bunch? More than one? You’re sure?”
“Yeah, like four maybe five, with space in between so unless she’s shooting herself over and over - you see, it doesn’t make sense.”
Hank whirls on Thomas with a fury, “You said he was dead!” Hank lashes out at Thomas explosively angry with the police and with himself, “You said he was dead!”
“You saw the pictures.” Thomas responds as he works this new information through his head.
“DNA?”
“Not finished yet.”
“All this time I didn’t believe her.”
“Jesus.” Thomas yells into his radio. “Get everyone out of there! We may have a sniper inside.”
“No! Help her!” Hank spins again toward the burning front door and runs. Thomas rushes after him, jumps out, grabs him around the legs and brings him down hard on the doorstep. Hank rolls over and swings closed fisted at Thomas landing a hard punch on his right cheek. Thomas takes the hit hard and then tries to hold Hank without hitting back. Another Officer sees the scuffle and runs toward them when two gunshots ring out from the garage and they freeze!
Inside of the garage, it is just the two of them. Inside their world, it is just the two of them. Ben has his prey cornered and he is feeling relaxed. He sees nothing else, hears nothing else, because he is hunting. He will avenge the deaths of his brothers and then he will disappear into the night as he always does. He slides along the wall near the doorway utilizing a little cover from an old door and window screens that are leaning there. Alison is crouched on the far side of the broken-down car near the front passenger tire. She peeks underneath the car and sees Ben’s feet at the other end of the garage. She decides to shoot his ankle. She has a clear shot. It will slow him down. It may give her some time to get into the perfect position. She knows she has no experience with this rifle, with any rifle, and so she must do what she can to be sure she sets herself up for a clear shot. She must have a perfect shot. It will be her last. She cannot leave him wounded. That would not be good enough. She lies down on her stomach onto the cement garage floor and aims the rifle under the car at his feet. Yes, two good bullets into his ankle will serve her purpose. She needs the ground to steady her aim. Her body perks up with a burst of energy and her finger evenly squeezes the trigger. This is it. Ben peers around the door and analyzes where she might be. She shoots twice in rapid succession! Bang! Bang! She misses. The bullets lodge a few inches from his ankle into the door he is using for cover. Now, he knows exactly where she is. Ben springs up onto the trunk of the car like an agile cat and then strides up to the roof and down onto the hood.. He jumps to the garage floor landing only ten feet from her. She barely has time to stand. And then…there they are. Finally. Feet from each other, facing each other, again. Ben with his gun aimed at her forehead. She with the rifle aimed at his chest. Both fingers feeling the triggers. Their eyes fall hard onto each other’s face and looking at each other again, they are both certain of only one thing: they will both fire.
“So, here we are again, Alison.”
And she is ready. She longs for the end. Her resolve solidifies.
“I’ll make a deal with you.” Ben says. She is ready to fire. She knows she will fire. This is not a man who makes deals. “If you drop your rifle I’ll go ahead and take you, of course, which is fair, but I’ll leave your son alive. So, what do you say, my dear?”
“You had better hope there is no god.”
His chest pumps with a little laugh, “God taught me everything I know.”
“Put down the gun, Burne.” Thomas interrupts with his tone strong and steady surprising them both. He has entered the garage and stands just off to the left inside the garage doorway. Alison and Ben were completely wrapped up in each other and they are momentarily confused to find someone else inside their world. Thomas’ gun is aimed point blank at Ben’s head. It is an easy shot and Thomas will not miss. Ben does not lower his gun. He calculates what his best move is. “Put it down, Burne,” Thomas continues forcefully, “or I shoot you in the head. If you pull the trigger, I shoot you in the head. So you only have one option unless you’re looking to get shot in the head.”
A slow knowing grin crawls across Ben’s face. He tilts his gun up and bending down he places his handgun on the cement garage floor. He raises his hands in surrender and says, “Gee, Alison, interrupted again. It’s time for me to go along with this nice officer and be rehabilitated.”
With Ben’s gun down but without taking the aim from Ben’s head, Thomas speaks to Alison kindly and carefully. He can see the tense determination in her eyes. “Mrs. Kraft, you can lower your weapon.” She does not move. “Alison, it’s okay. You can put down your weapon.”