by Terry DeHart
No, these strangers aren’t going anywhere. I’ll wait for the runners to get back before I make my next move, then I’ll think of something that doesn’t get anyone but the right people killed. I glass them with the binoculars. The girl peeks out from behind an aisle of soda pop, and she’s looking fine, fine, fine, with that wild red hair. She’s wearing a ski coat and some nasty-looking blue jeans, but her clothes can’t hide the fact that she’s one hundred percent female. I hand Luscious the binocs and ask him what he thinks of her.
“So that’s what you’re after,” he says.
“That there is a righteous-looking wench,” I say.
Jerry
The shooting stops. The kids are quiet, and I crawl to them and check them for holes. I check their arms and legs until they push me away. Susan hasn’t been hit, thank God. I remember to check myself. There aren’t any holes in me either, thank You, Lord, again and forevermore. Thank You for not letting us die because of my stupidity and greed.
But how did we miss these guys? I don’t buy the story that they just walked up on us. No. They could’ve been hiding in the motel or the wrecking yard, watching us pass. But if that was the case, they could’ve taken us on the road. Maybe they have hidey-holes. Spider holes, like the terrorists had in Beirut. It doesn’t take long to prepare positions like that. And nestled down in the earth, beneath good camo cover, you’re very hard to spot. Unless someone steps directly on the position, a spider hole is practically invisible.
But I’m only being paranoid again. They probably just didn’t see us right away, and that’s a good sign, because it means they’re fallible, too. I low crawl to Susan and whisper that we’ll wait until dark. We’ll melt away into the night, God willing. She squeezes her eyes shut. Her lips move, but she’s not talking to me.
I brush shards of glass from her hair. I want to kiss her but I don’t. I sweep a place free of glass for us. We roll onto it. I reach up above us and pull a few things from the shelves. I treat the cuts on her forearms with hydrogen peroxide and I cover them with SpongeBob SquarePants Band-Aids. Then she treats my cuts while the children follow our lead and bandage their own cuts.
“Be ready for anything,” I say. “We have a long day ahead of us. If these bastards don’t have other plans, we’ll be leaving when it gets dark.”
I want to crack open the Crown Royal and take a long pull, but I don’t. We settle down to wait, but the killers don’t wait forever.
Susan
They’re running across the parking lot. No. It can’t end like this. Please.
Scott moves to cover the door to the storeroom. I move so I can cover Scott. Jerry doesn’t have to say a word. He crawls to the front door. Melanie sticks close to him. For half a minute we crawl like insects to the places where we’ll live or die. I get more cuts from the glass. The reality of our situation is hard to swallow, but I swallow it. We’re together in this. None of us is alone, and if we have to go, this is the way to do it. But no. Hell no.
The shooters are close. A voice comes from outside.
“Give it up, people.”
Jerry saying, “Sure thing—right after you give us your guns and cook us a steak dinner.”
Our attackers talk among themselves, but I can’t hear the words. The voice starts up again.
“We know it’s you, Hammersmith.”
“Who’s that?”
“That would be you.”
“That would be bullshit.”
They talk to each other again. I can’t hear what they’re saying outside, but they’re saying a lot. Three minutes pass. And then finally:
“I’m coming in. I want to talk, but my buddies say I shouldn’t bother. We have a shitload of dynamite out here. If you shoot me, you’ll die ugly. Got it?”
“Yes.”
“Okay then.”
“Okay.”
I hear the door opening. It grinds on its hinges and pushes through the debris in its path. I hear careful footsteps on broken glass. I move to a place where I can see both the storeroom door and the storefront. I get a look at the guy. He’s holding a big cowboy revolver, but he’s keeping it pointed at the floor. I get a look at his face. He’s a boy, maybe one year younger than Scotty. He’s either afraid or he’s a very good actor. I can’t bring myself to point my shotgun at him. He sees me. He stops, but he doesn’t raise his pistol. I move the shotgun so it’s beside me on the floor, almost out of his sight. For a second, he looks grateful.
Jerry stands. He walks to the boy. He walks quickly in a way that could be seen as threatening, but he doesn’t have a choice. He’s closing the distance between them, so he can keep Melanie out of any potential line of fire. He stops when he’s right up against the checkout counter. He keeps the boy at his two o’clock position, so I still have a clear shot. I slide the shotgun up and manage to aim it in the boy’s general direction.
Jerry keeps his rifle pointed at the floor. They size each other up, as males of different generations do. Jerry is bigger than the kid, but the kid doesn’t seem to be intimidated.
“We’re up from Weed. We’re looking for a man who kidnapped a girl. You’re not him.”
“Nope.”
Jerry doesn’t say anything more. He coughs once without opening his mouth. Seconds pass. The kid loses the edges of his tight posture. He lets out his breath and betrays the fact that he’d been holding it in.
“What’s your story?” he says.
“We’re coming down from Yreka, headed south. Headed home.”
“I heard it was bad in Yreka.”
“It was.”
“Who’s this with you?”
“My family.”
Jerry’s trigger finger is white against the trigger guard of his rifle.
“Okay,” the kid says.
“Okay?”
“You don’t have to be afraid of us.”
“I don’t?”
“No.”
Jerry flicks a glance at the riddled store.
“Convince me.”
“Well, let’s start by taking ourselves off high alert.”
The kid uncocks his cowboy revolver and slides it into its cowboy holster. He shrugs his thin shoulders and raises his eyebrows. Jerry nods and slings his rifle so it’s pointed muzzle down. It looks less threatening that way, but I’ve seen him bring it up and fire a shot in less time than it takes me to blink. He doesn’t ask us to stand up, so we don’t. I have a say in everything else we do, but I’ll let Jerry make the decisions about whether we should talk with strangers or kill them.
Melanie
His story about looking for a kidnapper is bullshit. He’s younger than I am. He smiles at me, but maybe he’s a monster, so I don’t give him anything. He has long brown hair and he’s wearing a natural grunge look. He looks bright enough. He could be a poet, for all I know, but all I can see is that stupid, so-called Peacemaker on his hip. I hope he’s a decent person, but I think he’s probably a killer. I want him to leave, but I don’t have the nerve to say anything.
He shouts to the other guys.
“It’s okay, men. The shooting’s over. And for God’s sakes, put away the dynamite.”
He calls one of them inside. The door opens again and a huge brown kid comes in. He’s really big, but he looks like he’s about sixteen. Dad treats both the young guys like men. They probably think they are. Dad introduces himself and shakes their hands. They shake, but they keep their serious boy-man faces on. The big one says his name is Luscious. He looks straight at Dad when he says it, like he’s daring him to say something. The leader calls himself Bill Creedmore Junior. His eyes are bright and he has the same wild look on his face that my brother has. It’s like they think this is some kind of extreme sport. If I thought it would do any good, I’d remind the testosterone-poisoned males of the world that the process of evolution has a habit of weeding idiots from the herd.
Maybe he’s a killer, but Bill Creedmore Junior has an interesting smile. It’s sad, but there’s somet
hing complicated in it, too. His eyes do that sparking thing that shows he wants to tell me something interesting. Something that has nothing to do with this shit.
But no. I’m with Dad on this one. Being peaceful doesn’t mean you have to be a sucker. Like that old maggot Ronald Reagan said: Trust but verify.
Scott
No way do I trust them. They might have Dad and Mom and Mel thinking they’re okay, but not me. Something’s wrong with them. They’re saying all the right words, but it’s like they’re reading from a half-assed script. Look. There. The smaller one just apologized for shooting at us, but he’s a shifty-eyed bitch. And he’s standing all stiff and uptight. If he was really sorry, he’d relax a little bit. Maybe he’d look down at the floor. But not this dude. I know he’s lying, the little dickhead. Maybe I can’t read minds, but I know when someone is lying. I’ve spent enough time in front of a television to know bad acting when I see it.
They’re still talking, but I keep watch on the storeroom door. I lean the .22 against a shelf of cleaning stuff and take out Dad’s Beretta. The pistol packs more punch at close range. I back up so I can see Dad better. There’s another dude, a big kid who looks like he’s made up of every race and creed on earth. His acting is just as bad as the first kid’s. The smaller one lights a cigarette with a pack of Circle-K matches. He doesn’t shake out the match. He lets it fall to the floor and then he stomps it with his weird gray shoes. They’re walking shoes. They don’t have any brand labels that I can see. The other kid is wearing the same kind of shoes. Two more kids come into the store. They’re all wearing the same crappy shoes. It’s like they’re in a cult or something. Like the cult that thought there was a spaceship hiding in the tail of Halley’s Comet.
More of them move up and stand at the door, and all of them are kids, and all of them are carrying black rifles. My ears start to buzz and I can see almost too clearly and my face is hot. I try to get Dad’s attention, get him to check out the bad footwear and the military rifles, but he’s keeping a tight focus on their eyes and hands. I don’t think he’s bought their story yet, but I’m afraid he will. Unless he’s putting on an act, too, it looks like he’s already starting to relax. I take the Beretta off safe and wait for the little shits to show us what they’re really all about.
Bill Junior
You have to be patient, but also you have to know when to make your move. What’s the difference between a player and a bitch? The player knows when to do what needs to be done.
The man’s getting old. He was probably a tough motherfucker when he was young, but he’s got that old-man hesitation thing now. Unless it’s an act, his ass is mine. But it’s his daughter’s ass I’m after. The mother doesn’t look too shabby, either. She’s a project the men could get behind. But the daughter is a natural eight, even dirty as she is. A real stunner.
I give her a smile. It’s my mysterious smile, the one I used to practice when I was locked down in juvie and dreaming about girls, the smile that says, Baby I could show you things you couldn’t imagine learning anywhere else. She tries to look through me, but I think the smile got to her, because she’s working hard to pretend I don’t exist.
Her old man sees the smile, too, but he doesn’t get mad. It makes my alarm bells start to ring because it shows that he’s a good salesman, too. He’s not afraid of me, that I can see, and he probably wants to blow my guts out for what he must know I’m thinking about his girl, but he looks right into my eyes and asks me if any of my men are wounded. He says he has some training in first aid, and maybe he can help.
“No,” I say. “Nobody’s hurt, thank God.”
I add the “thank God” thing without thinking about it, and I like how it makes me sound like a man with values. The truth is, I don’t know if any of my guys were hit. I kick myself inside a little bit for not asking right away. The sales job I’ve got here extends to my men, too. It takes both carrots and sticks, and I should’ve at least put on an act and checked on my men, first thing.
Jerry
I don’t think they’re okay, but I want them to be. Maybe they are. Two more of them come inside. They smell like sweat and tobacco smoke and a night of drinking. Their leader, Bill Junior, is looking at Melanie. He has a good poker face but it doesn’t take much imagination to see the lust in his eyes, and it says something that he doesn’t hide it from me.
He changes course and takes a good look at my rifle.
“Nice AR. Can it shoot like a machine gun?”
“That would make it illegal.”
The kids get a big kick out of that. They’re all armed with military M-16s and M-4 carbines. They stand behind Bill Junior and have a good laugh, but Bill Junior doesn’t laugh.
“Nothing is really illegal anymore, is it?” he says.
“Some things always are.”
“Yeah? Maybe you’re right.”
“I hope so. When people can do anything they want, some of them tend to do the wrong things.”
“But what if they’re only hungry? Is it still wrong to take what you need to live?”
“I’m still working on that one.”
The kid nods and relaxes a bit more. I notice the shoes. Gray walking shoes. All of them.
The big one offers me a cigarette. I shake my head no. Bill smiles and says, “Naw, Luscious, you don’t get old by smoking that shit.” The kids are smiling, but there’s a predatory sharpness to it, and I’m absolutely certain that I’m standing face-to-face with the monsters that shot up the families on the interstate and the people at the farmhouse. I’m a father and a career man and I’ve learned how to keep emotions from my face, but I feel rage rising inside me. I remember the road ambush, and the woman’s high scream, all the horror of loss and the true promise of killing it held. I don’t say anything else, because the time for talking is over.
I take mental snapshots. The posture of each of them. The way they hold their weapons. The weapons are filthy, and that tells me something. The kids are wearing serviceable coats, but they’re stained dark in places. They’re wearing layers of clothing, torn and dirty. They’re dirty. We’re dirty and the whole world is filthy and stinking, as far as I know. Long hair and as much beard growth as their ages will allow.
One of the new ones looks like a teenaged Jesus. He has hard booze on his breath, and not from last night. The smile on his face contains the opposite of mirth. All of them are smiling and it won’t be long now.
They seem to think my silence is a sign of weakness. I can see it in their eyes and in the way they’re moving around me. Three more of them come into the store. More gray walking shoes. They stand close to me. Too close. I look over at Susan and give her the look. Get ready. She is ready, God bless her. She gets a good cheek weld on the stock of her shotgun and she dials in on one of the new ones. The kids broaden their wolf smiles, and I back up two steps to improve my position. All the fights of my life coalesce into this one.
One of the kids comes at me with a horizontal butt stroke. He’s very fast. I backpedal, but he whacks the butt of his rifle across my face. I roll with the blow, and I take a glancing hit. I go down on my back, but I manage to get the rifle up between my knees and I go to work. I’m in the cocoon of it, muzzle blasts going like flashbulbs, and I have no choice but to serve my purpose. I hear only the voice of my own weapon. Susan and Scott are firing, but I don’t hear their shots or the shots coming at me. I don’t know if I’m hit, but it doesn’t matter because I’ll keep fighting until I win or die.
Susan
Lord help us. I fire the shotgun and work the pump, and my life is boom, pump, boom, pump. I’m shooting and some of the boys are hit and some are running. Jerry’s on his back but he’s banging away with his black rifle. All but two of the little monsters are running away. The two that stay are hit and hurt, but they’re on their feet, holding their rifles out like lifted crutches and trying to shoot back. Their faces are twisted and older, as old as they’ll ever be, and they’re shooting and we’re shooting an
d they’re wilting and it’s horrible, horrible, horrible.
Bullets pull at my clothes, but I ignore them, and then the two boys are down and I’m outside, chasing the others. The leader and the big kid and a half dozen more of them make it into the parking lot. Boom, and another one is down. Three of them peel off and get behind a minivan and start shooting back at me. Rack, pump, rack, click. Running out of ammunition is like running out of oxygen. I kneel in the parking lot and pull shells from my coat pockets. My hands are clumsy but I force them to slide four fat shells into the shotgun’s loading gate. Bullets smack the ground around me. I make the shotgun ready to fire. I raise it to my shoulder, but then I hear a snapping sound and feathers fly up from the sleeve of my down jacket.
My left arm stops working. It drops of its own accord to my side. The shotgun swings down and hangs in my right hand. My breath is stuck inside me. I feel very small. When I try to move my arm, it’s like lightning hit me there, just below the elbow. I can’t move it and I don’t want to move it, but then Scotty comes out of the market, firing the pistol. One of the boys lifts his head from behind the minivan. He has brown hair and wide brown eyes and his thin lips are moving. He says something and the three boys stand up and point their black rifles at my Scotty.
I don’t remember loading the shotgun. Did I load it? But then I’m up again. I still have one good arm. I walk wide around the minivan to get a better angle. I’m on a mission to kill roaches. I’m bringing insecticide to a hive of vermin, but they keep the car between us. Scotty comes around the back of the minivan and shoots one of them in the chest. I hold out the shotgun with one hand and shoot the thin-lipped boy. The shotgun bucks itself out of my hand and Scotty’s pistol is out of ammunition, but the last surviving boy runs away, the gray soles of his shoes flashing left right left. He run across the road and out of sight.