by Eric M Hill
Eddie and the legal system differed mightily on what kind of person he was. The legal system saw him as a sick, child-molesting pervert. Eddie preferred to see himself as a connoisseur of females. And in his expert judgment, a little girl was a woman, only a lot younger and smaller. That’s why his smile was so large.
On the floor sitting against the wall was a little girl. The little girl was crying and sniffling, and best of all, she was wearing only panties and a bra. Her legs were drawn up to her chest and her arms were wrapped around them. She was trembling something awful. Eddie had seen this many times before. Girls, and even grown women, curled up like this when they were trapped. It was like they were trying to protect their goodies by balling up into a makeshift vault.
Eddie looked down at the little girl’s goodies—at least what he could see of them. He followed the line of thigh downward until her butt pressed against the floor. He didn’t know why women felt they were safer by showing their butt like this.
There was a lot about women that Eddie didn’t understand. And even less about little girls. Some little girls were very, very smart. Some little girls had mommies and daddies who had been forced by a savage society to grow their babies up fast so they’d be safe from monsters like him. Some little girls had mommies and daddies that had served in the Marine Corps together. Some little girls had been trained by their father to think and fight like Marines. Some little girls had been trained by their former Marine scout sniper mother to use everything as a weapon. Everything.
Predators had their weaknesses, too. You just had to know what it was and how to exploit it, she’d taught them. Human male predators had a weakness for power and sex. They loved to enjoy the weakness of their female prey. They loved to display their power over them. Often during the display, there’d be an opening to take them down.
“And if you ever find yourself in a compromised position with a sexual predator,” she had told the girls, “you’re not going to talk him out of assaulting you. Don’t waste your time begging him to leave you alone. That’ll only excite him.” Tears had rolled down Ana’s cheeks as she had gone over this lesson with the girls. For she knew that the odds of this happening in their crime-filled society was disgustingly high. “Instead, look for time. Anything to get you more time. You’re smart girls. Your father and I have trained you. You’re our little Marines. Use your time to formulate and execute a deadly response.”
Eddie looked at the terrified little girl with her legs drawn up and didn’t know that he was lusting after a ten-year-old U.S. Marine who was part of a fire team. The little Marine shifted her fighting position. Her predator’s eyes widened at the new unencumbered sight. He took a huge step forward into the large room.
“What are you going to do to me?” she whimpered.
Eddie felt like he was at a buffet table. It was almost impossible for him to control himself. “Why are you only wearing panties and a bra?” He smiled. “Did you know Uncle Eddie was coming?” he asked.
“I took a shower. I was getting dressed.”
He started taking slow steps toward her.
She noted the slow pace. Predators enjoy weakness. They want to show their power, she recalled her mother’s words. “I know you’re going to make me take my panties and training bra off. I’m only a little girl, and you’re a man. It’s going to hurt.”
Eddie didn’t know that he had been hit by fire. All he knew is he was growing and he was going to have this little girl. His pace quickened.
“I’m scared,” said the little Marine.
“You don’t have to be scared,” said Eddie.
“Yes, I do,” said the Marine. “My sister’s a terrible shot.”
Eddie looked dumbfoundedly at the little Marine roll over onto her side and into a fetal position. It happened too quickly for his brain to catch up with what was happening.
Behind him stood the second person of the U.S. Marine Corps fire team that had drawn him into the kill zone. Eight-year-old Autumn’s legs were shoulder-width apart, with her left leg out a little farther since she was right-handed, just like Daddy and Mommy had shown her.
In her hands, she confidently gripped one of the guns that was birthed in response to the Great Crime Spike and its subsequent epidemic of child abductions. A Beretta 7CD. It was built specifically for children at least seven-years-old. Thus, the CD, Child Defense. It would stop any man dead in his tracks, or make him wish he were dead. It required minimal trigger pressure, and its advanced technology recoil wasn’t physically overwhelming for tiny forearms and wrists.
Autumn heard her fellow Marine say she was a terrible shot. That may have been true before, but in her mind, Not today! She didn’t have to worry about gravity pulling the bullet downward away from the target. Or air resistance or turbulence interfering with accuracy. The predator was in her big sister’s bedroom. Ten feet away. Gravity and air resistance wouldn’t help this predator.
The Marine squeeze off three quick rounds into his back. The bullets traveled faster than fifteen hundred feet per second. Twice the speed of sound. So he never heard the shots. There would have been more shots had his hand not immediately let the gun drop to the floor.
Lauren jumped up. “Great job, Autumn.” She quickly put her pants and shirt on and slipped on some sneakers. She took the predator’s gun and slid it under the bed. You can only trust your own weapon, Daddy had taught her. And she didn’t have time to check this weapon.
Lauren put on a small backpack and grabbed her own Baretta and stuck extra magazines in her pocket. She gripped Autumn’s wrist and pulled her across the hall into another bedroom. “Look at me, Autumn.”
Autumn had a dazed look on her face. “I killed somebody, Lauren.”
Lauren whispered urgently. “Autumn, predators have invaded our home. You killed the predator who was going to rape and kill your sister. Now we are going to kill the predators who want to kill our parents.” She emphasized each time she said predator.
The little girl answered with the resolve of the little Marine who had just killed a predator in her sister’s bedroom. “Let’s go kill the rest of the predators, Lauren.”
Chapter 21
There was a well thought out and perfectly executed reason Eddie and DJ had found no sign of the little girl who’d run into the backyard. Dr. Anderson’s philanthropic generosity to local law enforcement extended to home defense grants, HDGs, for key personnel. Chiefs of police were considered key personnel. These sizeable grants went toward such things as helping little girls disappear in plain sight.
DJ had checked the large treehouse, while Eddie had checked under the flap of the trampoline and had quickly scanned the large dog house. In his haste, DJ didn’t notice the extreme sturdiness of the treehouse. Nor would he have known without x-ray vision that the middle of the wooden frame were floors, walls, and ceilings of one-inch thick solid steel. And he wouldn’t have known that every square inch of the treehouse was filled with masked storage units. Storage units that carried such things as rifles, shotguns, ammunition, night vision goggles, food, and water.
The girls’ treehouse was the family’s short-term, fall-back bunker.
Satisfied that the girl had run into the house, both men had raced inside the back door of the house.
***
Tracy was only six-years-old, but her little legs could move. They moved even faster when Daddy yelled, “Tracy, run!” and she saw that man spray stuff into Daddy’s face. It had to be pepper spray, she knew. They all carried it when they went hunting.
She ran straight for the trampoline and slid under the flap just as she and her sisters had practiced so many times. Three minutes later, a large square of grass in the doghouse popped up and slid to the right. Being in the fake doghouse made her think of their little house dog, Misty, dying a week ago. She couldn’t wait to get another one. But right now Tracy had work to do. She had to do what Mommy had taught her.
Tracy had always wanted to fire the big guns and rifles without
a child defense stabilizer, but they wouldn’t let her because she was too little. She had shown them that she wasn’t scared. Mommy and Daddy even said she wasn’t scared of anything. Still, they had said she had to grow up more before she could shoot bigger guns. In the meantime, she had to use a stabilizer. “Okaaay,” she reluctantly said, as though Mommy was scolding her.
DJ crept out the door. His eyes looked at the ground at his feet as his ears strained to hear what was going on inside the house. Eddie apparently hadn’t caught the girls yet, and he couldn’t tell what Shank was doing. But no gunshots meant he hadn’t shot them yet. So he had a little time to get away.
He had less time than he knew.
An angry and well-disciplined six-year-old Marine who liked the loud sounds of bullets leaving gun barrels squinched her face and tightened her lips at the man who was with the man who had sprayed Daddy. The child defense stabilizer had two immediate purposes: stabilize the weapon, and drastically reduce recoil. Some stabilizers could be broken down, but generally they weren’t practical to carry around. They were perfect, however, if the child was shooting at a stationary target, or if the child had time to set the device up for a moving target.
The child had time.
Within the clamps of the stabilizer was a big gun—at least big for Tracy. The semi-automatic Baretta 900 CD7 was the largest gun she could use with the stabilizer size she had. She had hit moving paper before, but not a moving predator. But he was only thirty-two yards away—Mommy and Daddy had measured. All she had to do was to hit him anywhere in the upper body and she will have fulfilled her mission. Unless another predator came out of the back door. Then she’d fulfill that mission, too.
Tracy leaned her upper body forward against the wall and placed both elbows on the grass. She grasped the gun’s grip with her right hand and gently wrapped her left hand around her right hand. She swiveled the stabilizer supported gun until its barrel pointed in the predator’s direction. She squinted her left eye and took a breath and held it as she looked over the gun’s sight. She squeezed the trigger.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Three bullets found their mark.
Lightning tore through DJ’s right buttocks, sending the bottom right side of his body forward like it had been slung out of a slingshot. The rest of his body followed a fraction of a second later. A bullet went through the back of the man’s left hand, and one took a little flesh off the back of his upper neck, but nearly all his ear lobe.
Tracy watched the man fall. She had used a big gun. Mission accomplished. Mommy and Lauren and Autumn would get the other man. She relaxed. Suddenly, adrenaline kicked in and DJ was magically on his feet. She lost three seconds watching in shock as the man held his butt and dragged his leg and the rest of his body out of her sight.
Tracy removed her earmuffs in dejection. “I didn’t get him,” she said, and started crying.
Chapter 22
Shank looked at Chief King’s reddened face and puffy, running eyes and smiled. Big bad, Chief King, he thought. Killed my little brother. He looked at Ana. She was messed up, too. Eyes just as destroyed as her glorious chief of police husband’s. He chuckled. “You got yourself in a mess, hero,” he said to Chief King.
Survival, Escape, Resistance and Evasion (SERE).
As a former U.S. Marine Corps scout sniper, it was only one of a number of grueling military schools Ana had attended. Presently, she was in Resistance phase of SERE. There would be no Escape. Not for her, because this was her home and her family; not for the predators, because they had violated her home and her family.
Ana had excelled in all phases of the Scout Sniper Course, and especially so in the second part of the Unknown Distance and Stalking portion. The portion that disqualified most Marines from becoming scout snipers.
Stalking.
Ana had told her little Marines that although stalking was difficult to the point of being almost impossible, it was nonetheless simple to understand. Scout snipers had two main missions. First, get close enough to the enemy to gather critical information without being seen, caught, or killed. Second, get close enough to the enemy to deliver a high-probability kill shot to a target without being seen, caught, or killed.
“Mommy, how do you get close enough to shoot the enemy without being seen?”
“The Marine Corps sent Mommy to school,” said Ana. “They teach us how to sneak up on people. They put Mommy somewhere and tell her to sneak up on other Marines who are trained to see people like me who are trying to get close to them. When I get close enough I have to set up a final firing position, take a shot, and not be seen.”
“You take a shot after you’re close?”
“Yes.”
“And the other Marines are trained to see you?”
“Yes.”
“Did they ever see you?”
“No, girls, they didn’t.”
“Why didn’t they see you?”
“Because Mommy’s a ghost. That’s what the Marine Corps calls your mommy. Ghost. No one can see Mommy if Mommy doesn’t want them to see her.”
Ana surmised. The predator’s mouth was confidently running as he waited for his men to return with their two daughters. Advantage King family. There were three daughters, all of whom were in constant Survival, Escape, Resistance, and Evasion training. They were also in constant weapons and self-defense training.
Ana knew that all of her and her husband’s training of the girls had prepared them for this moment. She knew the girls were in attack mode. It would be a miracle if those two predators made it downstairs alive.
Ana knew the girls would not attack conventionally. There would be shooting, but no shootout. They would use their size and weakness to marginalize and exploit the strength of the predators. Or in other words, the predators had gone upstairs to catch two frightened and helpless little girls. They had no idea they would encounter three trained, disciplined, and armed Marines who were thinking nothing but offense. There would probably be more than two bullets shot. But the girls would think and execute like scout snipers. One shot, one kill.
Ana needed to move to her final firing position. She needed to be ready when she heard the first shot.
***
Chief King knew the girls would move any moment on the predators upstairs. They had to be ready when it happened. One second too late and they would lose the advantage. Their attack downstairs would have to go through Ana. She was the female. The weak one. The one the predator would see as less of a threat. He smirked inside at that one.
But Ana couldn’t initiate the move. The enemy would see it and control it. No, he’d need to provide her cover so her move would appear instinctive and natural. He popped to his feet, interrupting the talkative criminal. “Look, your brother killed somebody. That’s why he was killed. Take what you want and get out of here.”
“That’s why you killed my brother? ‘Cause he killed somebody?” the predator yelled. “Well guess what, hero? You killed my brother, and that’s why I’m going to kill you?” He moved toward the chief with an expression that said he was about to exact his vengeance that very moment.
“Wait,” shouted the woman, jumping up. She knew every square inch of her home. She knew this living room. She walked haltingly toward the man, appearing unsure of her surroundings, reaching out imploringly to him.
The predator stopped and looked at the blinded, begging woman. She was terrified and trembling, her hands and arms shaking at her face so badly she seemed to be in an earthquake of fear. She stopped a few feet from him and looked slightly to his right as she spoke to his sound.
“There’s another way,” pled Ana. “A better way. You don’t have to kill him. Take me.”
“Ana!” yelled Chief King.
“Shut up!” Shank ordered.
Ana hurried, moving closer, placing her trembling hand on the predator’s shoulder. She was five-foot-eight inches. He had to be five-foot-ten inches. Good. She spoke in a whisper. “I know Barry’s killed your bro
ther, but killing my husband won’t bring your brother back. Take me. I won’t fight you. My husband loves me. Taking me would be worse than death for him.”
The predator spoke in his own whisper. “Lady, so far you haven’t offered me nothing I don’t already have.”
Ghost moved in closer to the target. “Yes, you have the guns. You have my family. You can take what you want.” She let her arm go slowly down the length of his arm to his hand. Tears rolled down her face as her chest bounced with emotion. She clasped his hand and used it to make her offer more concrete. “But you don’t have to take anything. I will do anything to save my family. And I will do it over and over and over again. Here or anywhere else for as long as you want.”
Shank was conflicted. He’d already decided what he was going to do. Big bad Chief King was going to be shot. Her little girls were going to Eddie. She was going to him and DJ. Then she and the girls were dead. But this woman had just made it a bit more fun and entertaining.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Shank’s head went up to the ceiling, toward the origin of the gunshots.
POP! POP! POP! Gunshots in the backyard.
Shank’s head whipped toward the kitchen. They shot the girls, he thought.
The trembling hands of the terrified, weak woman who had offered herself to save her family were unnaturally strong because she was not negligent to work out her forearms, wrists, and fingers as part of her exercise regimen. In a flash, two strong hands with polished and manicured nails grabbed both sides of the predator’s head and face. The steel beneath the skin that covered her arms tightened as she yanked his head down toward the top of her head. The headbutt crushed the predator’s nose.
The exploding pain in his face fried the command from his brain to hold onto the gun in his hand. It dropped to the floor. Ana stooped to pick it up, but saw a hunched over two-hundred and thirty-pound human projectile hurtling at them both. She jumped out of the way. Her husband buried his shoulder just under the predator’s solar plexus, lifted him up, and ran with him twelve feet and smashed him into the stone fireplace, breaking several of the predator’s ribs and knocking him out cold.