by Nick Oetken
I let out the rest of my breath, took a deep one in, and started releasing it slowly while I picked up the other man. He’d made the critical mistake of stopping and gawking when his companion was hit. That was all the time I needed to get a solid sight picture and gently squeeze the trigger for a second shot.
CHAPTER 19 (Matthew)
Steve must have done the math and realized there was no easy escape back the way he came. He made a desperate attempt to rally Spence and Brantley to charge through the flames but judging by the sound of just a single gun firing, they ditched him and went off to meet their own fate.
Once I understood that Steve was going to come at us, I threw myself at Wendy and shielded her with my body. Bullets came flying through the door, tearing up even more of the shelved supplies in the cellar until. Finally, with a deafening roar, Steve crashed through the door.
Norm dropped him with three rapid shots from his pistol. He then delivered a coup de grace to make sure the man stayed down.
Through all of this Travis, in his underwear, stayed curled up in the far corner of the room, cowering in the corner. Wendy had exhausted herself and just lay numb under me. Nobody moved for several seconds, until Norm shook it off.
“Fire extinguishers!“ he said, pointing to a low shelf. He, Travis, and I went to work putting out the flaming piles in the tunnel. The extinguishers combined with the oxygen the fire had already sucked out of the room left us all a little light headed.
“Roll him over. First aid, over there,” Norm said, pointing first at Gordon then at another shelf. He went into a flurry of action, ripping open packets of some sort of powder and bandages, instructing Travis and me to hold this or brace that. Finally, we heard four sharp taps on the floor above.
“All clear. Get down here!” Norm shouted. Holly suddenly appeared, almost as if by magic, across Gordon from Norm and fell right into pace with him.
After several minutes of work, they both looked up and nodded at each other. “Real gentle. Holly and I up top, you two at his feet. Let’s get him upstairs into a bed.”
The four of us got Gordon up the steep stairs and set him in the master bedroom. Wendy pulled a chair in from the kitchen and parked it beside him.
Norm looked at Holly. “Give him his clothes back. I’m going to take him down to his jeep.”
“You’re letting him go?” I asked.
“I’m going to put him in his vehicle and he’s going to drive north until he runs out of gas. I don’t think he’s smart enough to find his way back here again. Are you?”
Those last two words were very pointed and heavy with a clearly implied threat.
“No, sir,” Travis said, taking his clothes back from Holly.
Norm went to a kitchen cabinet and pulled out three MREs. He thrust them into Travis’s arms. He looked at Holly and me. “If I come back with these, you’ll know he gave me a reason to change my mind about being compassionate.”
A few minutes after Norm left, Holly went to the kitchen. She produced a tall bottle of whiskey that looked pretty full. “Need a little bit of medicinal?” she asked, shaking it.
“I need a nap,” I said.
“We need to stay awake until Norm gets back. After that, what say you and I curl up in my bed together?” She set the bottle down and came up to me with a little sway in her step.
“I would love that,” I said, putting my arms around her.
The End