The Storm (33 page)

              “Stacy!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. There was no answer that came back, and I glanced right into the kitchen and noticed that every drawer had been pulled and ransacked. Our house had been thoroughly vandalized, and the floor was strewn with broken plates and assorted devices that no longer functioned. To the den I walked, when my heart sunk and I nearly died of shock.

              There lay Stacy with her back against the wall, sitting upright, dead with a gunshot to the head. Her rifle lay across her lap. Immediately I dropped my gun and fell to my knees.

              “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” My shriek was agonizing and bitter. Instantly I was choked up with tears and my vision blurred as my eyes turned blood red. I crawled forward on all fours, like a baby would do. “Oh god no, no, no, no,” I exclaimed.

              As I got close to Stacy, I looked to my right, and there lay my children. Little Paul was face down on the carpet with a bullet through his back and Tabitha next to him, her little hand still holding his. Slav had taken everything from me.

              “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” My screams lasted through sun up as the community woke to the horror that had come from within during the night.

Chapter 17

End of the Line

              Two hours had passed, and with it the sun had gently come up to begin a new day. Every day continued to be a little bit longer as life bloomed outside. Spring brought an annual revitalization in nature, but in my world, there was only darkness and death. There would be no blooming in the Myers house. I sat on the floor, continuing to sob profusely with the bodies of my family lying close by. I could do nothing but grieve.

              Rick and Roald had entered, trying to console me, but I threw them out. Others had stood at my broken front door and gazed in at poor Josh and felt bad for my situation but left me with little more than supporting words that meant nothing. Everything I had worked for in life was gone. Slav had taken all that mattered. I didn’t even know when I shot him that I was exacting a revenge kill. If I’d known what he had done to my family, I would have made him suffer for a prolonged period, but it was too late. He was gone, but he took everything down with him. My world was now empty. I reached out for Stacy’s leg, which was by now already cold to the touch. “I love you so much.” It came out choked with tears of agony.

              Nature’s balance is a wicked thing. Some worthless people get to live a life of luxury and others struggle. Wicked people rise to the top, while good people get killed in their own homes. I gladly would have traded myself so that they could live, but it wasn’t an option. I was out risking my neck for the good of the many when one of them decided that the good of himself was more important than the rest. Individualism and survival trumps logic in nature. Not even one of my children would be going forward with me and with that realization setting in began thoughts of suicide. Why should I want to go anywhere but to them? I was confused and psychologically devastated. I knew not what to do next, but only to grieve.

              Samantha had come by a short while ago and was mortified. Even Miller was shocked at what Slav had tried. I tried to thank them for coming but could barely keep it together. There was no funeral home to go to anymore. Nobody to come and take the body and make it nice for one last viewing. It was all on me. I would have to bury my family. Miller said he would help me as soon as the meeting was over, and Samantha had given a hug. They meant well, I knew, but it mattered not.

              Air horns blasted throughout the neighborhood to wake everyone up. Runners went up and down each street, knocking on doors. Samantha was calling an immediate emergency meeting. We came back alive but empty handed from Castlewood Ridge, and now people in the community were already starting to turn on each other. With all of our external threats, the last thing we needed to worry about was who was desperate enough to assault us from within our own neighborhood. It was a clusterbuck, as my old man used to say in a polite but nonvulgar way.

              Samantha had asked if I wanted to attend the meeting but took a look into my eyes and knew the answer before she had even finished the question. My place was here, and my mind was trying to determine if I should just end it all or keep going on for some greater cause that escaped me. She had given me a hug and said we would chat later that day. We needed to strengthen our defenses around the neighborhood and also come up with a new strategy for food. Hunting was an option for birds, deer, and duck, but those would run out eventually. I couldn’t think straight and had nothing to respond with.

              After the air horns blasted, it was queerly quiet for a while. Virtually the entire neighborhood but myself was congregated at the pool house to figure out a way forward. I looked at my sweet Stacy’s face. It was cold and solemn, but her hands still clenched the rifle. She had gotten a shot off and hit Slav in the waist. If only I had left her with the large rifle instead of the small caliber .22. Her shot might have killed him or knocked him back, but the bullet from what she had was too small. It only hurt him and didn’t stop his murderous rampage. I was proud of my wife for fighting to the end but felt guilty that I should have been there to protect her and my sweet babies.

              After a long period of feeling sorry for myself, I was about to go and get some baby wipes to clean up their bodies when I heard the first voices.

              “Pool House” . . . “Everyone’s there.” It came from a man passing quickly in front of the house and sounded familiar. I knew that I knew it but couldn’t place it. It piqued my curiosity. I gave a kiss to my fingertips and placed them on each of my children’s heads and then Stacy’s lips before grabbing my gun and stepping outside.

             
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM
!

             
I was outside for less than half a second when the massive barrage of gunfire started. It wasn’t directed at me and wasn’t even around me. It was close by, but it sounded like an army firing their guns collectively at the range.
Oh god
, I thought,
the pool house!

              My soul was empty like a pond freshly drained of water. Even a drained pond has a small layer of wet mud at the bottom, and that was about all that was left of my mind, but it was enough to push forward with gun in hand to see what was happening. I rounded a few houses and made my way toward the field we had freshly planted before the pool house. What I saw mortified me.

              Ahead were four men at the edge of the plowed field. Two were on the ground with machine guns pouring thousands of live rounds into the pool house. Beyond them across the field there was the occasional tracer fire of more machine gunfire from other directions going to the same destination. The damn apartment gangs had come for vengeance or our supplies and had the whole neighborhood surrounded in the pool house and were slaughtering them. Gunfire poured into the structure from all sides.

              Before I could even think, I remembered a childhood lesson every boy in Southeast Kentucky is taught. The old feud of the McCoys and Hatfields. Each time they killed one another or struck, the other side had to respond in kind or with a larger degree of force. Over the years, there were tons of deaths and the families wiped each other out to a large degree. For tiny town America in Appalachia back then, it was a massive loss of life that was unwarranted and due to the pigheadedness of each side. Neither family would concede defeat, and all slights had to be countered. It is an equation of exponential escalation that ends badly for everyone. It was playing out again here today in its final tragic stage.

              There were two men with machine guns, each lying on their stomachs across the ground and fully engaged with their weapons. Behind them stood two men. One was massively tall and the other sported a bald head. It was him! The bald man with long hair from the back was here in front of me, barely thirty yards away. His attention was one hundred percent directed toward the pool house. Just then two people made a break for it and leaped outside a window from the pool house. It was a quick well executed move as they landed on their feet and hit the ground running, but it didn’t make any difference. I recognized Rick and Roald with their purple and aqua green shirts. Within seconds, each was riddled with hundreds of bullets and went to the ground, their shirts being the only identifiable remains of them.

              It was too late to make any difference. Thousands of shots crashed into the pool house through its thin walls. If anyone was alive now, it would be by the grace of God, which had been distinctly absent from this world since he threw the storm at us. I raised my rifle and aimed at the bald man. He was their leader and I would at least take him to hell with me. I pulled the trigger and my bullet connected right behind his right ear. It was like a bowling ball had smashed the pins at a thousand miles an hour because his ear and that whole third of his head went flying into the air forward while the rest sported a huge hole. He immediately fell forward to never rise again.

              My hands instinctively cocked the rifle, and the barrel moved subtly over to the tall man. He was already taking a step backward but was turning to look, and I only saw one half of his face, but it was enough. It was the holy man Allie. That son of a bitch had been a spy and came to scout us out before. Supposedly a man of God, I was about to buy him a ticket on the express train to hell. I fired again, this time missing his head but connecting through his neck. The bullet severed a jugular because blood jetted out like water from a hose and he spun down to the ground, withering in pain as the justice death can provide took him away.

              The other two guys were still gunning away and were only vaguely aware that something was happening around them. I cocked the rifle and fired again, this time easily putting a bullet between the shoulder blades of the man on the left. Reloading again, I fired hastily at the man on the right. He was looking left as his friend died and was aware of his imminent danger. He rolled right just as I squeezed the trigger and my bullet flew into the dirt.

              As the man in army fatigues pulled a pistol from his boot, he returned fire rapidly in my direction. Three shots rang out, but all were high and wide. It was panic fire. Steadily and calmly, I cocked the rifle again and re-aimed. The man was trying to get to his feet, only a half second from turning into a full sprint toward cover when my steady Winchester blasted off another round. This time, it connected right into his shoulder and sent him back down to the ground. As he flew down, his gun dropped from his hand and landed a few feet away.

              Again, I cocked my rifle. I was probably down to my last shot or empty, but I exhaled and took aim again.
Just like being back home, shooting soda cans in the woods,
I told myself. Although wounded, he was trying to get to his feet again in one last adrenaline-fueled rush for safety. The barrel was pointed right at his chest and my fingers contracted around the trigger.
BOOM
!
The man fell down to the ground, dead before he hit the earth. The bullet passed right through the chest and took his soul along with chunks of the heart. He was gone.

              I tried to exhale again, but there was no breath left in me. I collapsed to the ground. Gunfire continued the demolition of our pool house and community within it. It was almost a certainty that everyone who was in there was now dead. There was nothing I could do for them now. I had taken a few of them out with me, including their leader and that piece of trash who said he was a man of God. They must have sent him to scout us and been waiting for one of our next town meetings in order to catch us all in one place. It was a good strategy on their part, but it wiped out my entire community and sense of belonging. My neighborhood was dead. My family was dead. There was nothing left for me to do. Every fiber of my muscles and soul ached.

              Slowly I limped back to my house. I had the satisfaction of having killed the bald man and that seemed like a strong action to hang my hat on as I went out. After they finished at the pool house, they would almost certainly be fanning out into the neighborhood to kill off stragglers and take supplies. At this point, all I wanted was to be with my family. The small bundle of supplies amassed by Slav in my front yard was still there as I stepped over the broken front door back into my house. In front of me lay all that mattered.

              I blew a kiss to my family before me and climbed the stairs to the bedroom. Death would soon be coming for me to reunite with them, and I wanted to gaze upon them as I remembered them, alive and vibrant. Stacy had always kept a prodigious album of pictures in our room, and I meant to go and review it one last time. It was where she had last left it, right next to her perfume on the nightstand. I sat at the foot of the bed where Murphy used to sleep and opened the album. At least when death would come, I would be in a happy place.

*****************************************

              Hours passed before I heard voices. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but they drew near. The splintering shriek was audible as they kicked in neighbors’ doors and moved from house to house. At the foot of my bed, I sat looking at the album of when the kids were tiny and we were all happy. My gun sat empty next to me. My fight was over, and I would almost beg them to kill me now.