by Paul Curtin
She complied and strapped herself first, fed the cuff around one of the thick poles of the radiator, and clasped the cuff around her daughter’s wrist. The tall man smiled, his gun never leaving Kelly, walked over to the two women, and pressed the cuffs down against their wrists so tightly that it dug into their skin. Elise gasped. “That’s better,” the man said. “I had a captive slip the cuffs on too loose one time. Won’t be happening again.”
The man rotated his head toward Kelly, and Elise’s insides scrambled. They couldn’t reach any of the guns on the floor. She grabbed Sean’s arm, pleading—demanding that he do something. From the way he looked at her, she knew he was trying.
“What am I to do with you?” the man asked Kelly.
She stood with her hands locked next to her sides, her hair covering part of her face. With each step the man took toward her, she took one back, the tall man seeming to relish the chase. He rotated his gun in a circle. “Spin around for me.”
She didn’t move.
“You deaf?”
Her lips parted, but she said nothing.
“Spin for me.”
He stuck his pistol out toward the others. “How about I blow one of their kneecaps out right now? We’ll start with the little one. Sound good to you?”
“Don’t. Please,” Kelly said.
“Spin.”
Elise’s skin crawled. Kelly spun, but he demanded it slower. So, she closed her eyes and did as he asked. “You remember what the boss said earlier. Your shirt belongs to me.”
Kelly froze. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Give me your shirt.”
The garage door downstairs screeched in its tracks. A tear rolled down Kelly’s cheek. She gripped the edges of her shirt and paused. Looked over at her niece.
“Stop looking at them.”
She pulled her sweatshirt off and tossed it to the ground, now standing in a tank top, covering herself with both arms.
“Your other shirt.”
She sighed and grabbed the straps on her shoulders. She yanked it up when the tall man shouted, “Slow it down.”
She obeyed, now standing topless before him. “Well, look at those,” the man said.
Elise pulled Molly into her chest, shielding her eyes. Kelly reached to cover herself, but the man shouted for her to stop. He commanded her to drop her pants.
Elise looked at Sean. He was trying in the subtlest way, dipped below the edge of the bed, to reach out further. But his hand was a foot short of the table, let alone the contents on top. She racked her mind for a solution that would extend his reach.
The tall man was no longer paying attention to him. Kelly stood naked before him, and his focus was on her. Tears coursed down her cheeks. Elise turned away, knowing this would be the first time but not the last—imagining what these people had in store for later. Again and again. And again. For all of them.
“Lay on the bed. On your stomach.”
She crawled on top of the mattress.
“Make it sexier.”
Kelly choked up. Sean strained, blood dripping from the cuffs tearing into his skin, but could only get another few inches and nothing more.
As Kelly lay atop the bed, shaking, the man said, “Ass up.”
She raised her hips a little and turned her head toward the others, her eyes red. The man wrestled with the front of his pants. Elise mouthed to her that she was sorry—God, this was her fault—holding her daughter, but knowing there was no consolation. Forgive me, she thought, please, I didn’t know. But there was nothing she could say to a person about to have the deepest parts of her soul violated. A part of her that should be kept safe but was now raw and exposed.
A place where goodness lived but would soon die.
Sean
His straining was getting him nowhere. Each attempt to reach the gun sank the handcuff deeper into his skin. But he tried again.
Kelly gasped, and Sean turned his head. He didn’t want to see, but he turned anyway. Frustration was brewing on the tall man’s face, the man looking down at Kelly, his scowl growing angrier. Sean made another try at the nightstand but collapsed in defeat.
The tall man said something, staring right at Sean.
He froze like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
“Where’s the lube?” he said again. Sean hadn’t heard him the first time.
Sean’s hand shook as he pointed to the nightstand. The same nightstand with the gun. The tall man tumbled over the bed, his pants at his ankles, and reached out for it. Grabbed at the top drawer and jerked it toward himself. The nightstand tipped forward—Sean had always meant to fix that poor center of gravity—and the contents on top spilled onto the floor before it rocked back into place. Elise gripped his arm. The tall man waddled back and flipped the cap off the lubrication.
With the tall man’s attention back on Kelly, Sean stretched his arm out toward the gun safe that was now on the ground. He gritted his teeth and reached as far as he could.
Still short.
His flashlight lay just out of reach of his fingertips. He jerked his hand forward but couldn’t get it. Couldn’t give up. With his teeth clenched, suppressing a scream, blood trickling down his wrists, he jerked forward one more time and his fingertips stuck to the flashlight. He flexed and pulled his fingers, inching it closer millimeter by millimeter.
His heart’s thumping drowned out almost all the noise around him. He finally took the flashlight in his hand. With his extended reach, he got the edge of the flashlight around the side of the clock and slid it a hair toward himself. He looked back at the tall man—wishing he hadn’t—and saw that the man, mouth hanging open, was not paying attention to him. Sean’s wrist was flashing white hot, screaming for him to stop the abuse. He extended the flashlight again and nicked the corner of the safe. Did it again. Each motion moving it a little closer.
The tall man jumped backward and looked between Sean and Elise. “What’re you doing?” he said.
A light beeping sounded through the room, and Sean raised his pistol up over the mattress. The tall man screamed, but it was cut short by the gun popping and a hollow-pointed bullet drilling into his chest. He whirled back. Sean fired three more times after that to make sure he wouldn’t get up, the last bullet catching the tall man just below his larynx. He wasn’t aiming for it, but he’d take it.
The sound of the gunshots had reverberated off the walls, crushingly loud, so now an intense ringing sustained in his ears. A thin, acrid smoke dissipated into the air. His hand didn’t shake. After the second shot, he didn’t even think about squeezing the trigger, as if something had clicked into place, and clicked perfectly. He lowered his weapon, and the realization rushed over him.
He had killed a man.
And he would do it again if he had to.
The world seemed distant and hollow like he was watching a slow-motion version of his life. Soon the voices came back. His wife, as if miles away, was calling to him. He looked at her but couldn’t hear her words. Kelly’s sobs entered the foreground as if appearing out of nowhere. A Doppler Effect in progress, gaining momentum until he was thrust back into the world in terrifying crescendo.
“Sean,” Elise yelled out.
He looked at the door. Someone had to have heard the gunshots. They might come back to see what was happening—they might just leave, and they were taking everything. Everything. If they got away—
Kelly, now on the other side of the bed to cover herself, was sobbing. “Kelly, Kelly,” Sean called after her.
Her eyes rose over the bed.
“Kelly, you have to listen to me,” he said, his neck cranking every few seconds to look at the door. “You need to be brave. You need to check the man for keys to get me out of these cuffs.”
The rapist lay at the foot of the bed, his leg twitching every few seconds. She
wouldn’t look at him. “Kelly. Please. They are taking every ounce of food from us right now. If they leave, we’ll have nothing. We’ll all starve.”
“I can’t do it.”
“I know you can. Please, Kelly, they’re going to get away with this. They can’t get away with this.”
She shook her head and crinkled her face. Her hand clenched the comforter, and she writhed as if making the decision was agony.
“Please, Kelly.”
She nodded over and over as if to convince herself, and her eyes met his. “Okay.”
He could hear a commotion downstairs, the sound of baseboards taking weight and releasing pressure. “All right. Search his pockets.”
She crept toward the man on her hands and knees, out in the open now. Her pale skin was spotted with drying blood. Sean looked away. It felt wrong, seeing something he shouldn’t be. She knelt in front of the man, trembling.
“You’re doing great. Check his pants pocket first.”
Something creaked on the steps. Sean’s eyes shot to the door. Kelly padded the man down and stuffed her hands in his pockets. “I can’t find it.”
“Check the back pockets.”
She reached back but came up empty. Another groan at the staircase. His blood ran cold through his veins. “His coat pockets.”
“There’s blood all over it,” she said.
“You can do this.”
“I can’t.”
“You can.” He looked her right in the eyes. Only the eyes. “You can do it, Kelly. I believe in you.”
Cringing, she pulled down the zipper of the tall man’s coat and plunged her hands into the wet fabric. She explored inside until she stopped, looked up, and pulled out a set of sticky keys. “Toss them over,” Sean said, motioning.
She did. He caught them in the air and turned his attention to the cuffs. Only two keys on the loop, and he got lucky on the first try. The key clicked, and the cuff’s tension released with a pop. He grunted. The cuff had left a deep indentation in his wrist, ribboned with dripping blood. He stumbled forward, dropping the keys to the floor. He tossed the rapist’s gun onto the bed and looked to Elise. “Shoot anyone who comes through this door. And if this piece of shit isn’t dead,” he said, “shoot him again.”
Sean rushed to the door. He looped his finger into the trigger guard and delicately pressed the door lock until it disengaged. He rotated the handle and edged the door open, not seeing anyone in the hall, creeping forward with his gun extended, his nerves skyrocketing, pressing his back against the wall, calming himself before spinning around the corner.
The leader was there.
He lunged for Sean’s gun, catching Sean’s wrist and jerking the weapon upward. It went off into the ceiling. Sean lowered his shoulder into the man, pushing him back, and plowed him into the wall. The leader slipped on impact, losing his own gun, and ended up on his back. Sean positioned himself on top. The leader scratched at Sean’s face, but Sean leaned more weight into his opponent and swatted his limbs away.
The two wrestled, Sean trying to aim the pistol at the leader’s chest, but the leader reaching up with both hands and securing his wrist, pushing the barrel of the gun away from his body. Grunting. Fighting.
But Sean was bigger. Stronger. The disaster hadn’t emaciated him. He moved the gun closer to the leader, just an inch. “No,” the leader said. Another inch, Sean forcing it downward, overpowering the leader, the barrel pressed into his shoulder now. The man shouted, “No,” and Sean fired. The man yelped, flopping backward, and Sean stuck the gun at the base of his throat and fired again.
Blood squirted out like a torrent, splattering Sean’s arms and chest. Sean fell back on his rear, watching the leader’s mouth flapping like he wanted to scream but couldn’t. The man’s heart eked out its last few pumps until the torrent turned to a trickle and then stopped altogether. Sean blinked—stunned, but not upset. He did what he had to do.
The son of a bitch deserved it.
Sean snatched the man’s gun and held it in his other hand. He rushed down the stairs, flying two steps at a time. When he was six steps from the landing, the drywall in front of him exploded. He fell back and caught himself on the railing. He rolled down the rest of the stairs and another shot penetrated the drywall around him. He dropped as low as he could and scrambled on his hands and knees until he was behind the couch.
A moment of calm. Then the cushion above him burst into a cloud of white stuffing. Another shot. “Don’t waste it,” someone yelled from the other room.
They were shooting from the den next to the garage. He crawled into the kitchen, leaned against the counter, and raised his gun. He found the door to the reserves locked. Nobody was getting out from there. He watched the back of the kitchen near the mudroom.
Aidan stuck his head out. Sean gasped and then pressed his finger to his lips. He motioned for the boy to get out of sight, mouthing the word hide to him. The boy nodded and disappeared behind the corner.
Sean entered the dining room but found no one. The living room was empty too. The pistol-gripped shotgun lay abandoned in the middle of the room. His vision tunneled so his peripherals disappeared. He came into the den. Checked the corners. Not a soul.
He was sure the gunshots had come from that room. It clicked. The garage. They probably had taken food into the garage. A lump formed in his throat, and he swallowed to keep it down.
His breath grew heavier. He twisted the doorknob on the heavy door leading to the garage. Flung it open and heard the motor running and smelled the distinct burn of diesel fuel.
He didn’t own a car with a diesel engine.
They were planning to take the food away in a vehicle.
His food.
He rushed forward through the breezeway. Heard someone shouting, “Go, go, go.”
They were leaving. With all the food. Leaving them to starve. Their tires released a demonic, high-pitched screech and the smoke from burnt rubber swirled into the air. The engine noise grew more distant. Sean ran into the garage. Cans and jars were scattered around the floor. He saw the pickup truck barreling away from the house into the dirty snow.
He raised his pistol and emptied the magazine but didn’t hit enough to stop it. The truck, its chassis raised by a lift kit and its massive tires treading through the snow, swerved into the road, tossing a wave of ash and snow into the air. It jammed into gear coming out of the turn. Sean dropped his own gun and transferred the leader’s pistol into his right hand. Raised it up. Led the truck. He only had one opportunity. He steadied his hand until the shot was in place—a good fifty feet away, but he could hit it—knew he could. His finger squeezed the trigger, the firing pin struck forward, but the gun didn’t fire.
“No,” Sean yelled.
He pulled back the slide, hoping to eject the faulty round but nothing came out. “No.”
He looked through the ejection port. Not a single bullet in the gun. Nothing. Empty.
Sean looked over at his own truck. One tire removed. The others slashed. The same with Michael’s car in the driveway. They didn’t want him to follow, and now he couldn’t.
He lifted his head toward the ceiling, screamed with all the breath in his lungs, and tossed the weapon against the concrete. He collapsed to his knees while the truck rumbled away, the light snow concealing their escape as they disappeared into the gray beyond.
He watched the powdery gray snow drifting downward. The damn ash. Soon it would bring starvation, as he had to watch his family thin until they were nothing but bones.
Though the cold burned his bare skin, he leaned down, pressed his forehead to the concrete, and wept.
Andrew
Travers had locked Andrew and Michael in the basement, leaving them in darkness after they had disconnected the generator. With nothing to distract him, Andrew couldn’t escape the image of the man holding the knife
to Molly’s finger, of the blood welling up under it. Then he saw Aidan’s panicked face as he tried to breathe. Andrew closed his eyes, but it was if the scene was projected on his eyelids on perpetual replay.
When the gunshots started, they both had ducked low, Michael telling him to just calm down, Andrew thinking those words were more for Michael himself than for him. Afterward, Andrew had tried to open the door—locked—so instead he paced, asking Michael who he thought had been shooting, Michael telling him to calm down. This time the words were for Andrew.
Nothing happened for a few minutes. His whole body shivered. In the quiet, he kept seeing the guns in the intruders’ hands while he loaded the truck with Michael and Aiden. He remembered the shotgun barrel pressed against his spine when he dropped a jar, Travers telling him that he’d blow his head apart if he broke another, laughing after he pulled the gun away. He imagined them shooting Molly upstairs but shook the thought from his mind.
Someone unlocked the reserves. They perked up, and the light from upstairs lit up the wall in a triangle shape. Someone thudded down the stairs. Andrew grabbed Michael’s arm. He wanted to be brave, to face whatever was coming like a man. The figure sunk below the plane of the ceiling. Sean. Clothed again. He stood at the bottom of the steps, the glare off his flashlight obscuring his face.
“They’re gone,” he said.
Michael stepped forward. “Who is?”
Sean didn’t answer. He raised the beam of the flashlight to the shelves that once stood bursting with food, now like roadkill picked apart by vultures. Jars and cans lay on their sides, a few shattered across the concrete ground. He shined the flashlight back and forth. Not even half remained.
Sean covered his mouth and walked toward the shelving. Placed a jar back on its base. “Go to your wife,” he said, tilting his head toward Michael but not looking at him. “She needs you.”
“What happened?”
“Just go. She’s upstairs. Grab Aidan from the mudroom before you go. Cover his eyes the whole way up.”