Fall of Man | Book 2 | Homefront

by Sisavath, Sam

  Goddammit. The man had been hiding on the floor this entire time, waiting for his opportunity!

  Emily took aim. “Troyer!”

  The deputy—not that she believed he was a deputy anymore—kept going and didn’t look back.

  Smart fucker, she thought as she pulled the trigger.

  Or was in the process of pulling the trigger, because before she could, there was another massive bam! behind her.

  (The psycho. He’s still coming through the window!)

  The hesitation allowed Troyer to dive through the opening that connected the dining room and kitchen on the other side. The man disappeared out of view.

  Dammit!

  Another wall-shaking bam! from behind her.

  Emily spun around as the hulking psycho struck the piece of lumber fastened over the dining room window, cracking the wood paneling and sending splinters flying around the room like little missiles. The now-two pieces fell to the sides, revealing a dark shape that was, she could now confirm, holding a blood-covered sledgehammer in both gloved fists.

  “Troyer!” Greg, shouting as he ran toward the kitchen. “He’s getting away!”

  “Greg, stop!” Emily shouted.

  Greg stopped and looked over at her. His eyes were wide, his face white.

  “Don’t follow him inside!” she shouted.

  “What?”

  “Forget about him!”

  She knew he was about to ask Why but never got the chance, because Savannah shouted from behind them, “He’s coming in! He’s coming in!”

  Emily didn’t have to wonder who he was that was trying to come in.

  She turned back to face the window as the monstrous psycho, his neck the size of her thigh, climbed through the gaping hole in the formerly-barricaded window. He rested one large booted leg inside first, then began to pull the rest of him in.

  The psycho looked bloated, his face flushed red with blood and adrenaline. Emily didn’t know what was more imposing—all the blood dripping from his eyes and chin or the sight of a six-five human being that made the sledgehammer he was holding in his hand look like a children’s toy. At that moment, Emily was reminded of a character in one of the comic books that her young brother used to read called the Blob.

  “I got him, I got him!” Greg was shouting as he stepped forward and took aim with the shotgun at the psycho.

  Before Greg could fire, though, a second figure appeared behind the Blob and shoved something long and metal and, apparently, very sharp (Is that a spear? Emily thought) into the man’s back.

  The Blob let out a roar and pulled his leg back through the window. Blood splattered the frames as he took another spear (Where the hell did the other guy get a spear?) in the stomach. But if the other psycho thought that was going to stop the Blob, he was wrong. Emily watched, fascinated, as the bloated man simply pulled the spear (Yes, she thought, that’s definitely a homemade spear!) out of his stomach with one hand even as he swung the sledgehammer with the other.

  “Emily!” Savannah, shouting.

  Emily pried her eyes from the fighting outside her dining room window to look over at the teenager. Savannah was staring into the living room even as she backed away from it.

  The living room.

  The living room!

  “Greg!” Emily shouted.

  The contractor looked over at her. His eyes were still wide, frenzied. She’d never seen him so… Was that fear? Shock? Both?

  She wondered at that moment what she looked like.

  “The living room!” she shouted at Greg. “Cover the living room! Kill anything that tries to come in!”

  He nodded and rushed off, passing a still-backing up Savannah.

  Emily turned back to the dining room window. The Blob was done with the other psycho and was already climbing back inside. He was cutting himself on the shards of glass sticking from the window frames, not that he seemed to give a damn. Emily supposed getting sliced and diced by glass was nothing compared to the two spear holes in him—one in the back and one in the stomach. Blood poured out of the hulking figure and splashed her tiled floor.

  Sorry, Cole, but looks like we’re going to have to redecorate all over again, sweetheart!

  Emily almost laughed out loud at the inane thought. Almost.

  Instead, she walked toward the Blob as he was in the process of pulling his second leg in. Emily fired, aiming for the head, but the Blob was turning to look at Savannah when she did, and the round obliterated his right ear instead.

  An arc of blood sprayed her wallpaper. The same wallpaper she’d had to fight tooth and nail to pick out because she and Cole couldn’t see eye to eye. In the end he’d relented, telling her that he loved her, and he’d give her the kitchen and every other part of the house as long as he got a man cave in the back.

  The Blob turned back to her, his red face as flushed with blood and adrenaline and God knew what else as before. He pulled the rest of him through the opening while a healthy stream of blood dripped from what remained of his ear.

  Emily fired again, aiming for the largest part of her target.

  The man was already inside when her round struck him in the chest. He staggered, but didn’t stop. Instead, he lumbered in her direction, dragging the hammer behind him.

  She squeezed the trigger again, and again, and—

  Click!

  As the 1911’s slide locked back.

  Empty!

  She’d lost count of how many bullets she’d fired and had wasted everything trying to put the Blob down.

  But he hadn’t gone down.

  Instead, the man continued to move toward her, dragging the sledgehammer behind him. Blood poured from his wounds. Too many to count. The spear had gotten him deep in the gut, but her own rounds had taken their toll, too.

  Not enough, as it turned out.

  The man squinted at her, the corners of his mouth curving up into a wide, almost maniacal grin. If the Blob could talk (Can they still talk? she wondered), he might have said to her, My turn now, little missy.

  But of course he didn’t say that. He didn’t say anything, in fact, as he stalked toward her.

  Emily dropped the 1911 and reached for Troyer’s gun. It was stuffed in her front waistband along with Barton’s, and in all the action she had managed to hang onto them. Thank God, because—

  Boom! as Greg fired with the shotgun and the psycho’s right arm, holding the sledgehammer, fell off. Blood gushed from the man’s neck where some of the buckshot had landed, but most of it was coming from the stump. Emily wasn’t sure if that was where Greg had intended for his shot to land. If not, it was a damn lucky accident.

  The psycho stopped for a moment, as if confused by what had just happened, and stared almost nonchalantly down at his right arm lying on the floor. The fingers of the detached appendage, Emily saw, were somehow still wrapped tightly around the sledgehammer’s handle. One or two of them might have even still been twitching.

  Greg similarly stared at the hulking figure as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. Emily didn’t wait for Greg to finish off the Blob. She stepped toward him, Troyer’s Glock in her hand, and fired.

  Instead of shooting for the chest again—it was massive and an easy hit—she went for the head.

  It only took one shot.

  The psycho’s head snapped back, and he collapsed in a pile.

  Emily didn’t have a chance to make sure he was dead—but he’d have to be, there was a bloody hole in his forehead where she had aimed—because another dark figure appeared on the other side of the now-open dining room window.

  She turned, aiming with the Glock, when the figure dashed out of view.

  Emily began to back up.

  “You okay?” Greg asked.

  “The living room,” Emily said.

  “It’s okay. They’re so busy fighting each other out there that no one’s tried to come through yet.”

  As if on cue, they both heard someone screaming outside the house. It
was loud, but short.

  Psychos.

  Psychos fighting psychos.

  Good for us, she thought.

  For how long, though? Sooner or later one of them was going to try to come in. That was fine. It wasn’t going to be hard to deal with just one psycho.

  But how many were out there? How many had been waiting in the dark for the opportunity to pounce? They were doing that right now, but to each other.

  Another scream, followed by the echoing thwack! of something solid—maybe even metal—cutting into flesh.

  “Emily,” Greg was saying.

  “The bags,” she said.

  “What?”

  “The bags.”

  Emily ran over and grabbed one of the duffel bags by the strap and lifted it. It was heavy. Way heavier than she’d anticipated. She slung it anyway, then reached for another one. Greg beat her to it and snatched it up from the floor. Then he did the same to the third and final bag.

  “Where to now?” the big man asked. He had both shotguns slung over his back.

  “The backroom,” Emily said.

  “You sure? We’ll be stuck in there.”

  “It’s better than being out here.”

  They both hurried into the living room, but stopped for a moment to look toward the windows. Some of the barricades had been knocked down, giving them a good view of multiple dark figures flashing across the openings. Someone else screamed, and she heard the thwack-thwack! of metal connecting with flesh again.

  “Your neighbors,” Greg said. He sounded tired and was breathing hard.

  She was too, she realized, when she answered, “Uh huh.”

  The contractor glanced back toward the dining room. “What about Troyer?”

  Emily followed his gaze. “If he’s smart—and he is—he would have gone for the garage next door.”

  “You think he’s still in there?”

  “Maybe. He’d be stupid to go out into that bloodbath.”

  “He’s unarmed…”

  “Maybe not. Cole had tools in the garage. And there were knives in the kitchen.”

  “Right. I forgot about those.”

  Another scream from outside, just before something crashed into the front door.

  Emily and Greg glanced back reflexively. Then, without coordinating it, simultaneously took a step back.

  A voice said from behind them, “Guys?”

  Emily looked back at Savannah, standing in the dark in the back hallway behind them.

  “What now?” the teenager asked.

  “The backroom,” Emily said to Greg.

  Greg turned and went first.

  Emily backed up, her eyes glued on her living room windows as more dark figures flashed back and forth. The loud patter of running shoes, the thwack-thwack of more steel going into flesh, and pained cries filled the night sky outside her dream home’s walls.

  “Emily,” Greg said from behind her.

  She turned and hurried over, then slipped past him. Greg pulled the door shut behind her. It clanged into place, sealing off the chaos outside.

  Chapter 16

  Furniture falling, glass breaking, and occasionally the loud grunts of men and women fighting for their lives—and trying to kill each other. A battle royale of psychos taking place in her living room at this very moment. If they even remembered she, Greg, and Savannah were inside the backroom, not a single one of them attempted to assault the door to get in at them. Maybe not a single one of them had made it to the back hallway before they succumbed to another killer.

  And then, after what seemed like hours of fighting, pained grunts, and the almost-staccato (and never-ending) thwacks of hard objects striking exposed flesh, there was…nothing.

  Silence.

  Total, dead silence.

  Emily exchanged a look with Greg, stationed on the other side of the steel door. She had a feeling he was mirroring her own questioning look: “What’s happening now? Is it over? Are they all dead?”

  Greg didn’t say anything, and neither did Emily. It was almost as if they were afraid to make a sound, something that would lead the psychos to their position. So far, they’d managed to escape unnoticed.

  So far...

  The night dragged on.

  And the silence continued.

  Finally, after about an hour of nothing, Greg whispered, “I don’t hear anything.”

  She shook her head. “Same.”

  “Maybe they did it. Killed each other. All of them.”

  “Maybe,” she said, but of course she didn’t believe it.

  Looking at Greg’s face, visible in the glow of the LED lamps they’d brought in from Greg’s van earlier in the day, she knew even the contractor couldn’t bring himself to buy it.

  “I didn’t know there were so many of them still out there,” he said. “Where were they hiding all this time?”

  “Everywhere, apparently, just waiting for the opportunity to strike.”

  “Why are they still here? Why didn’t they try to leave? It can’t be the fence.”

  “It’s not. Oh, I’m sure some of them tried—and succeeded—in leaving Arrow Bay. Whether that’s forcing the gate open or climbing the fence. Given how fast they can move, I don’t think a ten-foot wall would stop them if they wanted to get out.”

  “So why didn’t they all leave?”

  “Why should they? This is the perfect spot for them.”

  “I don’t understand…”

  “They’re predators, Greg. Arrow Bay is surrounded by a ten-foot fence on one side and the lake on the other. It’s the perfect killing ground. Why would they go out there in search of other prey when we’re still in here?”

  Greg didn’t say anything for a moment. She imagined him running everything she’d just said through his mind. If he was anything like her, he wouldn’t like the conclusions.

  “You think there’s still a lot of us in here?” the big man finally asked. “Unaffected?”

  “I think there’s enough. But it’s not just us. It’s the others, too.”

  “The other psychos.”

  “Yes. As soon as the prey runs out, they’ll move on. The ones still alive, anyway. It’s Darwinism. Survival of the fittest.”

  “Us, or them?”

  “Both.”

  Greg didn’t say anything for a while again. This time, she couldn’t imagine what he was thinking.

  After another excruciating five minutes of silence, the contractor asked, “You think he’s still alive?”

  “Who?”

  “Troyer.”

  She thought about it for a moment, before answering. “It’s possible. I think he’s too smart to just run out of the garage with all that killing out there. He’d probably bide his time, waiting for us to come after him.”

  “I was about to do that…”

  “It would have been a mistake.”

  “Maybe.”

  “No, Greg, it would have been a mistake. The garage is dark, and Troyer would have already armed himself. A screwdriver in the right place feels just as bad as a bullet.”

  “Oh, since you put it that way…”

  She agreed with Greg, though. The last thing she needed right now was to have someone like Troyer loitering around in the background. If she’d been able to take him out of the equation earlier…

  Shoulda, woulda, but didn’ta, ol’ girl.

  Troyer was a dangerous man. Even more so now that they had killed Barton and Chrisman. If Troyer was still kicking out there, he would come back firing, whether with a gun or some other deadly weapon. She’d taken his guns from him, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t just find another one. Or an effective-enough substitute. How many knives, or machetes, or sharp instruments were lying around out there waiting to be picked up?

  “If he was smart, he would have made a run for the boat in your backyard when everything calmed down,” Greg was saying.

  Another possibility, and one she was hoping for, even if it meant losing Cole’s boat. If nothi
ng else, it would take Troyer out of her hair.

  “Or your Audi,” Greg said.

  “My Audi?”

  “If he made it into the garage, what’s to stop him from taking it?”

  Emily pulled the key fob for the Audi out of her pocket. “This, for one.”

  “Oh.” Then, “Can’t he just hotwire it?”

  “You’ve been watching too many Hollywood movies, Greg. Most people in this world don’t know the first thing about starting a car without the key. Even if Troyer was a criminal and not an actual deputy, the chances of him knowing how to hotwire a vehicle made after 1999 is so remote, it’s not even worth exploring. There’s a good reason we haven’t heard the car start up yet.”

  “Hunh. You know a lot about this stuff.”

  “As Cole would say, just enough to get in trouble.”

  Greg chuckled.

  “I think he’s still in that garage right now, biding his time,” Emily continued. “He’s too smart. He knows that’s his safest play.”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  Emily got tired of thinking and talking about Troyer and started to get up. “I’m going to check on Savannah.”

  The big man nodded. “Okay.”

  She found Savannah curled up on the loveseat on the other side of the room. The duffel bags were piled up on the table in front of her. The girl was sleeping peacefully, which was shocking, given that Emily was wide awake and so was Greg. She wished she could fall asleep that easy tonight, but she had a feeling that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

  Emily grabbed one of the bags and put it on the floor and unzipped it slowly, making as little noise as possible so she wouldn’t wake the teenager up. Emily had brought one of the lamps with her and sat it down next to her, before laying the bag’s contents on the floor and inventorying everything she found.

  It wasn’t the same bag that Savannah had opened in the dining room, but another one. Instead of the familiar M4 she had seen earlier, Emily pulled out a SIG716 semiautomatic rifle with a nylon sling. Not bad, even if it only had iron sights. She continued rummaging around and found two extra mags for the rifle, both already loaded with 7.62 rounds along with an unopened box of ammo.

  There was only one additional Glock inside—a G43 model, just a bit smaller than the ones she’d taken off Troyer and Barton. Emily kept it for herself, having already given Greg one of the handguns. She thought about letting Savannah have the smallest of the three pistols but decided it was probably not a good idea. The only thing more dangerous than an enemy on the battlefield was a friendly civilian who didn’t know how to properly handle firearms.