Broken Shield

by Ryan Garner

  “Let’s get into the living room.” Ken said as he began to hurry his family back towards the living room and away from the bay window.

  “Did you see that?” Lori said frantically as she began to hyperventilate. “Ken did you see what they did to them?!?! What are we supposed to do?!” she asked desperately and now in a full blown panic. “What are we supposed to do?! Why is nobody helping us?!”

  “I don’t know!” Ken said more distressed than ever as he turned the lights in the dining room area off and moved his family further into the house. Once they were inside the living room Lori fell to the floor and began to weep.

  “What are we supposed to do?! Where are the police?! Why are they doing this?!” she cried. Both Lauren and Wendy were now in tears as well. The sounds of the angry mass of people were almost upon their house. Ken immediately took out his phone and dialed 911 again…another busy signal.

  “Fuck!” he shouted as he slammed the phone down onto the coffee table. It was the first time his daughters had heard their father use such coarse language.

  “They’re going to come in here…They’re going to come in here and they’re going to kill us. They’re going to rape the girls and they’re going to kill us!” Lori stuttered over and over again in a distraught voice as she grew more hysterical.

  “Shut up! Calm down!” Ken shouted angrily. “I’m trying to think.”

  “Where are the police?!” Lori asked, “They have to come and help us!” Once more she frantically dialed 911 on her phone. Upon receiving another busy signal she screamed in frustration and angrily threw the phone across the room. When it struck the wall the glass screen shattered into dozens of tiny pieces. Both Wendy and Lauren were becoming increasingly upset as their mother’s emotional state came apart in front of them.

  “I’m…I’m going to try to barricade the front door.” Ken finally said as he walked over to one of the recliners in his living room. He grabbed it by the backrest and struggled to move it towards the hallway that led to the front entrance of the house. Wendy immediately moved over to him to try and help while Lauren stayed beside her mother.

  As they slowly moved the oversized chair down the hallway they again heard glass shattering. The sound didn’t come from their house, but it was close; probably their neighbor’s home. The shouting and roar of the crowd outside was inescapable and overpowering. It was almost the only thing they could hear. Wendy struggled to fight off her own tears and fear as she and her father placed the heavy chair on its side and against the front door.

  Almost the moment after they had finished this task there was suddenly a loud banging on the front door.

  “You better fuck'n let us in!!!” came an angry voice from the other side and then the pounding resumed.

  “Oh my Lord, they’re here!!!” Lori cried out. “They’re here for all of us!!” she said with terror in her voice.

  The banging was quickly followed by the piercing sound of shattering glass as a large soft ball sized rock was thrown through the large plate glass bay window where they had all been standing a few minutes earlier. It struck the wooden floor with a thud and slid a few feet across the ground before it came to a stop. Ken was now close to panic as well. He had no idea what he could do to help his family.

  “Let’s get something else to barricade the…” Before Ken could finish his sentence a loud electrical crackling noise was heard from somewhere close to the house, followed immediately by the sound of an exploding transformer. The entire home was plunged into darkness.

  CHAPTER 22

  David Jennings pulled the charging handle to his AR-15 back and then let it fly home. He immediately heard the, “cu-clank” sound of a round being chambered. Facing the front door he knelt just inside the entranceway that led into his living room using the rectangular passageway to provide him some cover. The pounding on their front door was incessant and it mixed with the noise of the marauding crowd which flowed at a steady pace down their neighborhood street. The combinations of all the sounds were almost overpowering. David and his son, Tom had partially barricaded their front entrance using a love seat from the living room, but this would not keep the violent rioters outside for long, nor would it stop them from storming the house through the numerous other entryways. The “aggressive vegetation” consisting of holly bushes and other thorny plants that David had strategically positioned in front of the windows years ago appeared to be keeping people away from those spots for the time being, but he knew this would not last long.

  The hammering on the front door was getting louder and more powerful. From the sound of it David assumed that more than one person was pounding against the wood. He glanced over his shoulder behind him and saw Debora and Taylor huddled together on the far side of the living room with Radar his Labrador who was emitting a low growl at the sound of whoever was attempting to break into his home; Tom was out of sight guarding the rear portion of the house. If worst came to worst, for Tom’s sake David hoped that the rioters would only attempt to get past him and therefore spare his son the decision of whether or not to take a life. Sadly, on this day that might no longer be an option for anyone in his family.

  Suddenly, there was a loud crash and the front door was jolted violently. Had it not been barricaded it surely would have given way. David immediately knew that the people were no longer pummeling the door with just their hands and feet. They were now hitting it with something harder, a sledge hammer or some other make-shift battering ram.

  A few seconds later there was another crash and David saw the wood at the center of the front door crack. Almost immediately another impact followed and the split in the door grew larger. It would not be long now. David raised his weapon to a firing position and rested his support hand’s elbow on his knee so as to better steady the rifle. There was another blow to the door just as he flicked the selector lever of the AR-15 from “safe” to the “fire” position.

  The banging was becoming more ferocious and then, suddenly there was another loud crash as the metal head of a sledgehammer burst its way through the wooden door. David heard Taylor shriek in fear when this happened. The wielder of the tool furiously hammered away at the entranceway, quickly increasing the size of the hole as he eagerly tore the door apart. David heard Radar barking angrily behind him as his wife attempted to hold the dog back.

  “Mother fucker, you better let us in!!!” An angry voice from the other side of the door shouted.

  The hole in the door was now increasing in size as it was hammered away at. Even though the entire neighborhood had been plunged into darkness when the power was cut, David could easily see the silhouettes of the individuals on the other side of the door; beyond them were hundreds more people moving through the streets. At the pace the man with the hammer was working they would be through the door in just a matter of seconds. He had no other choice. He placed the red dot of the reflex sight on the man who was madly swinging away with his improvised breaching tool and squeezed the trigger.

  ….

  The pounding on the door was nonstop. Ken and his daughter Wendy had blocked and secured both the front and rear entranceways to the darkened house as best they could, but there wasn’t much they could do beyond that. Worse yet, Ken knew the windows to the house would provide easy entry points. It would be impossible to barricade every passageway into the house.

  Every so often they heard a much louder crash as something harder than a person’s hand or foot struck the front door. Lori was becoming a virtual basket case, on her knees, rocking back and forth, clutching a flashlight in the middle of the living room. She was weeping incessantly after seeing what had happened to the Johnson family. Unbeknownst to Lori the horrors against her neighbors had not stopped there; after finishing with the Johnsons the vicious crowd had turned its attention to the Soungs; a family who had managed to escape the violence of a unified communist Korea only to be butchered by the savage mob.

  Ken and his two daughters were still attempting to call 911 on their
phones to no avail. Had the situation not been so horrifying, Ken thought it might have been ridiculously humorous. Thousands of people breaking the law and the police were nowhere to be found.

  “911 is still busy Dad…” Lauren said in a terrified voice as she again hung up her phone.

  Ken didn’t know what else to do. He had hoped that someone in their neighborhood would manage to get through to the police, but after seeing the carnage going on for so long unchecked just outside their door he now had severe doubts about that theory. What if the entire 911 system had been shut down or completely overwhelmed? That wasn’t supposed to be able to happen…was it?

  Suddenly, an unmistakable sound echoed through the neighborhood coming from his neighbor’s house just across the street. Ken immediately knew what the noise was even though he had never actually heard it in person before; gunfire. First there was a solitary shot and then a few moments later there was a quick succession of rapid fire.

  Ken extinguished his flashlight and moved over to one of the unbroken front windows of the house. He carefully pulled back a very small portion of the curtain, just big enough for one eye to see out. He peered outside and could see the people that had initially been gathered near the front door of the Jennings’ home. They were scattering in all different directions; some leapt into the thorny bushes while others dove onto the grassy front lawn. Ken could also see at least two bodies lying motionless on the front porch and assumed both people were dead.

  “What’s that fool doing!!!?” Ken shouted. Although he had purposely chosen not to get to know his neighbors that well because of their crazy, right wing political leanings, he knew that David Jennings had spent time in the military…special ops, Navy Deltas or whatever they called those trained killing groups. The man had been a vocal proponent of gun rights and Ken had always suspected that David had never turned in all of his weapons even after the presidential orders to do so were given.

  “He’s only going to make the crowd angrier and the situation worse!” Ken yelled before thinking to himself, I knew I should have informed the NGP about him. Surely shooting at these people was not the solution; it would only further infuriate them. The police were needed to deal with this situation, not vigilantes.

  Well…with any luck maybe the crowd will go after him instead of us. Ken then thought to himself.

  Lauren remained highly confused about what was going on, but suddenly she found herself wishing that her family had a better way to defend themselves beyond merely barricading the door and hoping no one would make entry. There was a momentary and eerie pause of silence that overcame the area after the initial salvo of gunfire. The Hammond’s home grew frighteningly quiet for several seconds. It was almost as if David Jennings had managed to stop the riot dead in its tracks, albeit ever so briefly. Then suddenly, the pounding on the front door resumed with increased ferocity.

  ….

  A deafening boom tore through the house the moment David’s AR-15 discharged. Deborah and Taylor who were only about seventeen feet away instinctively ducked and covered their ears.

  “Mommy!” Taylor cried out in fear as she winced in pain from the ear splitting sound. Deborah grabbed her daughter and pulled her into a tight hug.

  “It’s okay honey…I’ve got you.” she said.

  The savage man standing at the front entranceway who had been viciously working away at the door had just sunk his sledgehammer deep into the wood when the Lake City M855 62 grain steel core round streaked through the gaping hole he had created and impacted with his skull at over 2,800 feet per second. The man’s head snapped back like a whip as blood, bone, and bits of brain exploded onto the individuals standing around him. His body instantly went limp and collapsed to the ground in a bloody heap, limbs still twitching with involuntary muscle movements. Even though his body was still moving the man had been dead long before his corpse hit the ground.

  “Shit!” one of the people in the group on the front porch yelled. Before any of them had the chance to react there were three more consecutive shots that followed the first. A young man who had been eagerly waiting for his chance to storm the house and had been standing directly behind the man with the hammer caught the three trailing rounds directly in his chest. He let out a brief yelp of pain, stumbled rearwards, and tumbled down the brick front steps landing in a crumpled pile on the front sidewalk.

  “They’ve got a gun!!” A female shouted as people leapt off the front balcony and into the bushes while others fled down the steps and dove for cover on the front yard. While the assault on David’s house had been temporarily thwarted the pause was only momentary; the attackers would quickly return and with increased determination.

  ….

  There was a loud cracking sound and both Wendy and Lauren immediately knew the front door had been compromised the second they heard it. Whoever was working on the front entranceway wasn’t inside yet, but they would be soon enough.

  “Get your sister upstairs!” Ken said to Wendy as he quickly flashed his light over towards the stairwell located in the rear portion of the house just past the kitchen area.

  “What about you and mom?” Lauren asked fearfully.

  “Don’t worry about us, get upstairs and hide, now!” The second Ken finished his sentence there was a loud crash as one of the front windows in the living room was shattered by a brick that had been hurled through it. A few seconds later Lauren saw the drapes begin to move as someone cleared the remaining shards of glass out of the way to make his entrance into her home easier.

  “Oh God help us! They’re coming in the house!” Lori shrieked from her kneeling position on the floor, still in a full blown panic. “Ken, what do we do?! Why won’t anyone stop them?! Why is no one helping us?!” she cried.

  The banging sound on the front door was growing more intense and everyone could hear the wood being broken and pulled apart as the door was quickly destroyed. The sound of shattering glass again ripped through the house and Lauren knew another window had been smashed, however she could not tell which one. By this point people might already be in her house. Her uncertainty on that point was horrifying for her.

  “Get upstairs!!” Ken shouted and Lauren felt herself being pulled away from her parents by Wendy and hurried towards the rear stairwell. Both girls were in tears as they fled to the second floor of the house.

  ….

  The temporary stillness inside the Jennings’ home lasted longer than David expected. After dispatching the initial two would-be looters the crowd had momentarily pulled away from his home. This was probably due to shock more than anything else. The last thing most predators expected was that their prey would be able to fight back effectively against them.

  The momentary lapse in violence was short lived. Suddenly, there was a burst of gunfire from outside the house and the sound of wood, sheetrock, and glass being shattered, destroyed, and broken apart was heard an instant later.

  “Get down!!!” he shouted to his family as he dove into a prone position on the wood floor. He looked behind him and saw Debora pulling the heavy level IV bullet resistant vest that he had given to her over Taylor and herself as they huddled in the far end of the living room with Radar who was barking incessantly. He still could not see Tom and David was beginning to regret placing him alone near the rear of the home.

  From his experience in the military he could tell that the gunshots were coming from small arms weapons; probably handguns, maybe some .22 caliber rifles; nothing as powerful as his AR, but deadly none the less. The gun fire was random and sporadic. No one outside the house could tell where anyone inside was. The rioters were simply shooting back at the home that had been firing at them. Blind luck would be the only way they would actually hit anyone, but with more and more people firing their odds of striking an intended target grew. David momentarily mused that he was “sure” everyone in the riotous crowd had gone through the proper channels to legally obtain and keep their firearms.

  His thoughts were interrupte
d by Taylor’s fearful and shrill squeal as she curled further into a ball beneath her mother as they huddled together. She wasn’t hit, just terrified. Pinned down by the gun fire David began to low crawl his way closer to the front den located to his left and adjacent to the front door’s hallway. If he tried to shoot back from his current position he would be firing completely blind. As he moved closer to the bay window of the den he could hear the bullets whiz by over his head and imbed themselves in the walls around him.

  Finally, he reached a location where he believed he would be able to mount another effective counterattack. The window in the den was already half destroyed by gunfire and whatever else the mob had managed to lob through it. At this point he wasn’t too terribly concerned about shooting through the glass; half of it was gone now anyway and the rest of it would be quickly destroyed once he started firing. He moved into a crouched position and prepared to raise himself above the window line.

  ….

  “Get out of my house!” Ken shouted in an angry, yet fearful voice as he tried to blind the young man who had just climbed in through his broken living room window with his flashlight. Almost immediately the first intruder was joined by two more men who followed behind him through the window. Ken then heard the scraping sound of wood on wood as the chair he and Wendy had placed in the path of the front door was forced out of the way. More people were entering his home.

  “I…I have a gun! Get out!!” he shouted now in an insecure and terrified voice as he searched the area around him for some sort of weapon. There was a fireplace set located several feet away from him. A poker stick might make an effective club he thought to himself.