by Rick Tippins
He looked out across the expansive crawl space, with all his hanging light sticks along with the hooks set in each hatch, and felt like he was looking at something someone else had done. Jared reached down and felt the smooth handle of the Glock, which further served to make the whole situation feel surreal and more like a Universal Studios experience than something born in reality. Who the fuck have I become in the last several days? he pondered. Less than two weeks ago, he would have never climbed under a house to even check for a plumbing issue let alone for…For what? he mused. To rescue a mother? Or was he there to exact revenge on the animals he’d seen butcher two young boys? He lay there on the cool hard ground for an hour, thoughts racing through his mind at speeds that would have made cable internet providers green with envy—two weeks ago, of course.
At the end of an hour, Jared had spent his entire emotional quota for the day and was left with his simple yet very effective analytical identity. He slowly moved his head, eyes tracking about the crawl space, assessing the placement of light sticks, hooks, thinking of his overall plan to engage these felons. Now there was an interesting word, engage. What the fuck did it even mean? What did it mean now? he wondered.
Two weeks ago, it had meant something different than today. Two weeks ago, if he planned on engaging someone, it would have been in a conversation not a gunfight. Now here he was about to engage a group of felons in a gunfight—why lie to himself? There would be no talking tonight; he planned on going up through those crawl space panels and shooting the ever-loving shit out of the men in that house.
He felt absolutely detached from who he had been two weeks prior, waiting for some part of his brain to take over and tell him to get the hell out from under that house and pedal his ass back to the gun store. No such part of his brain housing group came to his rescue. In fact, his heart quickened at the thought of his impending engagement, and not in the way it had in the past when he felt gripped by fear. This was a different feeling, one he felt he could control or even manipulate into something useful. Jared rationalized the whole thing to himself: if he was a beet farmer and woke up one morning to find his fields filled with corn by some unknown power other than God, well then, he’d be a motherfucking corn farmer, wouldn’t he? Adapt or die.
Chapter Nineteen
Jared could see through the vents in the foundation and knew it was late in the afternoon, the sun starting to disappear behind the taller trees. He knew these assholes drank and hoped they would nap in the late afternoon. He couldn’t bank on it, but he could hope. He decided he would enter the house through an access panel in a rear bedroom, shoot whoever was in that room, peek into the hall and try to shoot more of the horde, then he would slide back into the crawl space and seal it up. Jared crawled to the panel and tested it.
The panel was snug, but he was able to work it loose with a little effort and hardly a sound. He pushed up on the panel, holding it up an inch or two so he could see into the room. There were no closet doors which offered Jared a clear view of two men lying asleep on two children’s beds. The men’s heavy breathing was the only audible sound he could hear.
Jared carefully slid the access panel to the side and rose to his feet. He stood in the access point, the floorboards near his waist, and the Glock trained on the two sleeping murderers. He felt like he should have some moral struggle right about now, but didn’t. In fact, he felt no preemptive feelings of remorse in regard to what he was about to do to these men. He was glad for this and worried at the same time; he wasn’t a violent person and had gone to great lengths to avoid all violence in his previous life.
He had not played contact sports; instead he competed in other ways, playing golf and tennis in high school. The last couple of weeks had changed him, and he realized these men would do far worse to him than he was about to do to them if they woke from their slumber.
Without further hesitation, Jared sighted on the closest man’s head and just fucking pulled the trigger. The bullet passed through the man’s brain, not causing so much as a flinch from the stricken soul. The second man sat bolt upright in the bed, staring blankly at the bedroom door. Jared shot him in the face, causing him to slump forward, and then like a slinky, he eased off the bed, sprawling out on the floor, blood flowing from his face like a garden hose. Without thinking, Jared picked up a child’s boot from the closet floor and hurled it at the bedroom window as hard as he’d ever thrown anything in his life. His effort was rewarded with the shattering of glass as the boot exploded through the glass pane.
Shouts came from the front of the house as Jared slipped back into the crawl space, drawing the panel down behind himself. He immediately crawled to the front of the house and positioned himself under the coat closet access panel. He could distinctly feel his heart pumping blood—not thudding, but actually the contraction of the muscle as it forced massive amounts of blood through his veins and arteries. He was also pretty sure it was making noise, which alarmed him.
He kept the Glock trained in the direction of the ill-fated bedroom and its dead occupants. Jared hoped the animals would think someone had fired on their comrades from outside the window, but realized it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what had really happened when they found the boot outside the room and not inside. Then again, they were drunken, uneducated scumbags, who lacked any sort of forward-thinking skills, so Jared hoped for the best, but planned for the worst.
He could hear most of the shouting coming from the back area of the house and figured they’d found his handiwork and didn’t much care for it. Jared’s heart continued racing as he suddenly felt sick to his stomach. The adrenaline had come and come hard. Now he was suffering from its effects, and he looked down. His hands were shaking so badly, he holstered the Glock for fear of torching off a round accidentally. He knew what was happening, and he knew he had to hang on and ride it out.
He watched the access panel he had used to kill the two men in the bedroom, waiting for it to be removed and for scumbags to pour into the tiny crawlspace; it never happened.
After ten minutes, Jared had to smile, thinking how utterly fucked up all those pieces of shit were above him, and bizarrely, he liked it. They had no idea what happened other than there had been gunfire and two of their shithead friends were dead. Again, Jared was surprised by how little he felt in the way of guilt for having killed two human beings. He wondered what they were thinking and wished he could see or even hear them. If they thought someone had broken the window and executed the two in the bedroom, would they go next door looking for the culprit? This, in turn, could cause them to find and kill that little girl.
Jared moved around under the house, peering through the vents in the foundation, trying to catch a glimpse of the shit bags and what they were doing. He crawled to the side that flanked the house the little girl was hiding in, straining his ears in an attempt to ascertain whether they had gone next door. He heard nothing and was relieved.
After putting his knees and elbows through hell, he crawled back to the front area of the house and rolled to his back, the adrenalin beginning to wear off and fatigue beginning to envelope his body yet again. How much more of this could his body and mind take? he wondered. Then in the darkness, Jared shook his head, thinking how all of this stress was his own doing. He had chosen to crawl under this house and kill those two miscreants.
Every step of the way his mind and body begged him to stop, yet some part of him had not stopped. In fact, something inside of him charged forward with the ferocity of a Bengal tiger. Jared knew he could stop now but what would be the point? Maybe he should stop because the asshole he saw murder the two boys was not one of the two he’d gunned down in the bedroom.
Jared lay under the front area of the house for what seemed like hours, drifting in and out of a sleepy state, waiting for his next opportunity. The next opportunity finally presented itself; he heard voices accompanied by footsteps on the front porch. Several men entered the house and were talking about what happened or
what they thought happened. Jared realized the men thought the attack came from a neighbor and overheard them discussing how they planned on going on a killing spree as soon as the sun went down. Jared heard them planning and realized, after listening to the voices, there were only three shitheads left alive.
Jared stretched and moved into a better position to hoist up the access panel, slowly pushing up on the panel, which rose up easily until he could see into the interior of a black room. Still hearing the men’s voices and seeing a dim light seeping under the doorjamb, Jared knew he was in some sort of coat closet. He slid the access panel slowly to the side, felt around the small closet, familiarizing himself with its size, then stood up in the hole.
Again, the floorboards were near his waist like they’d been in the bedroom. Jared knew the front wall of the house was directly to his right, so if he opened the closet door, he would be sweeping to the left, which, in theory, would be where the shitheads should be.
Jared weighed his options, trying to decide if he should try to open the door slowly or simply come out blasting. He analyzed these two choices, knowing both had pros and cons. If he tried to slowly open the door and by chance one of the shitheads saw a closet door opening after what had happened earlier, Jared was fairly sure they would simply pour a couple of hundred rounds through the closet door and that would be the end of him. He didn’t care for that outcome---not even a little bit. If he were able to get the door opened slowly, he would have time to acquire his targets, but he was not comfortable with his fifty-fifty chance of getting ventilated in the process.
If he flung the door open, he would surprise the holy crap out of these three, but would have less time for target acquisition. Jared surmised a dynamic and fast operation was in order. Bart had always preached being fluid and keeping your opponent off-balance. Jared was pretty sure these guys’ nerves were more than a little rattled after the mysterious killing of their fellow criminals. He further surmised they would experience an “oh shit” moment when he came blazing out of that coat closet, and that would be all the time he needed to kill at least one or two of ’em.
In the end he decided to fling the door open and shoot while standing in the access hole. Jared gave it not a second more thought, reaching forward, turning the doorknob and heaving outward on the door.
When the closet door flung open, Jose Martinez was sitting on a couch in the living room, talking with his two friends Geraldo and Matias. Jose saw the closet door swing open and saw a white boy standing in the access hole to the house’s crawl space, which all seemed surreal. The man standing waist deep in a hole inside the closet did not fully register with Jose as a threat. When Matias pitched forward, smashing through a glass table, it registered—all of it. Jose tore at the pistol he kept shoved down the front of his pants as Geraldo also crumpled to the ground, clutching his throat. Jose’s gun was out and he fired wildly at the devil in the closet.
Jared felt a tug at his right hip and then a burn at the side of his neck; he knew he got two of these guys and tried to focus on the third. As he aimed at the third man, he realized it was the same man who’d killed the two kids. Jared squeezed the trigger, the bullet catching the man in the left cheek, knocking him back onto the couch. Jared continued to fire as he rose from the access hole, exiting the closet. Jared was screaming at the top of his lungs as the smug look on Jose’s face vanished, replaced with a look of panic.
Jared fired till the slide locked to the rear, indicating an empty magazine. Jose was shot and wounded badly, but not dead as Jared reloaded, crossing the room in two easy steps. Even as he walked in the open, he could hear Bart’s voice. “Cover will save your life; don’t be a Rambo out there. Being in the open during an active gunfight is a sure way to die,” Bart had said. “Destroy your target; then and only then can you venture into the open.” Jared knew it was wrong, but he was so far off the reservation that neither fear nor training was controlling his actions at this point. Rage sat comfortably in the driver’s seat, piloting Jared’s every move.
“Where’s the lady from next door?” Jared demanded in a slightly higher and more hysterical voice than he would have liked to use.
Jose didn’t answer, as it would have been too difficult in his current state. He was pretty broken up, and he knew he would be dead soon, whether this crazy white boy finished him or not. He couldn’t breathe, and from what he heard, that meant he had a collapsed lung. Jose lay on the couch, looking at his gun on the floor in the middle of the room, and couldn’t even remember how it had gotten there. Every gunfight he’d ever been in had involved him and several of his friends ambushing someone. He couldn’t believe how absolutely violent this little encounter had felt. What the fuck just happened?
As Jose lay there dying, he wished he could kill this white boy. Where did he come from anyway? He walked right out of a closet and killed them all and was undoubtedly the same person who’d killed Thomas and Manny a few hours before. He couldn’t remember searching the closet after the gang had taken over this small home. Jose wondered if this guy had been in the closet the entire time. He tried to breathe, but ended up coughing and spraying blood everywhere. The man was standing over him, inspecting him now.
“You killed those two kids a few days ago, and now look at you,” the man said.
Jose was confused now, dying and confused, not a state he much liked, but he didn’t really have too much of a say in the matter.
“You killed the guy next door and now you’re gonna die,” Jared said as he stood towering over the dying man. “You could have helped those people; instead you’ve killed and turned this neighborhood into a lawless wasteland.”
Jose stared back at Jared, wondering what the hell he was talking about.
“I was a computer engineer, man and now, in less than three weeks, I’m out here killing people in order to survive. You and your people did that to me, not this power outage; you did it to me,” Jared shouted. “I should be drinking a mocha and checking my fucking email, not crawling around under your house, trying to figure out which room to pop up in so I could kill you.”
It was then Jose realized what had happened. The bullet left the Glock, entering Jose’s forehead, deflected slightly to the right, and exited through his left ear, where it lodged deep in a cushion of the couch.
Jared turned and swept through the house, searching for other members of Jose’s group and the woman from next door. He found her in the bathroom, very dead and very naked. They had most likely defiled her in ways Jared didn’t want to think of, and then cut her throat as she lay broken and helpless in the bathtub. The woman’s body brought Jared back from the fog caused by the gunfight.
He quickly realized he wasn’t shaking any longer, but that he was bleeding. He looked in the mirror and saw a nasty tear in the side of his neck. The bullet had grazed him, but it also caused a significant wound, which was oozing blood down the front of his shirt. His hip had also been grazed, but that had already stopped bleeding and was simply aching now.
Jared looked down at the woman lying in the tub before dropping to the floor and rummaging through the cabinet under the sink. He didn’t find a first aid kit, but he did find a bag of feminine pads, which he ripped open, applying one to his neck. He pressed down, grabbed another pad, and did the same. He placed three of the pads against his wound and then searched for a way to secure them so he had the use of both of his hands.
He was about to take his own belt off when it occurred to him to use the belt from one of the dead bodies in the next room. They liked to sag their pants, yet they still wore belts; these people were essentially aliens to Jared. He had no understanding of their culture or any of their ways of life.
Jared moved back to the living room and chose Matias, who had the least amount of gore associated with his demise. Jared quickly stripped the man of his belt and returned to the tiny bathroom. The belt only wrapped around his neck once, leaving eight inches of length to flap around. Jared inspected his work in the mirror.
He was a horrible sight with the blood-soaked pads secured to his neck with a length of red cloth belt. He looked like something out of a bad horror film.
Jared staggered out the front door and walked to the next-door neighbor’s house. Inside, he found the little girl still holed up in the cupboard. He opened it, motioning for her to come out. She did the opposite, using her feet to push herself back farther into the recess.
He closed the door and sat against the wall, thinking about what had just happened, what he’d just done, and pretty much the state of his whole world. Jared was not a particularly religious man, but he raised his face to the ceiling and mentally sought some sort of divine guidance. Nothing happened, so after a few moments, he lowered his face into his hands and, again, cried. He did this quietly, but the tears flowed like rain down his face, dripping onto the filthy kitchen floor. This was beginning to be a regular thing, and Jared didn’t even care, the recent cries somehow cleansing his mind, after which he felt refreshed, like he performed a reset of sorts.
Taking a deep breath, he wiped his face, opened his eyes, and stared directly into the wide and uncrying eyes of the little girl. She cracked the door of her sanctuary spot and was gaping wide-eyed at this man curled up on the floor of her parents’ kitchen floor, crying like a baby. Jared could definitely see fear in her eyes, but not as much as he’d seen before. Much of the fear was replaced with bewilderment and curiosity.
The little girl slowly crawled out of the cupboard and slithered into Jared’s lap, shocking him so thoroughly, that he didn’t move. She made her way into his arms, glancing at her dead father for but a second before readjusting her head on his chest to face the opposite direction. Jared slowly drew his arms around the frail little frame of this tiny human and squeezed her to him, feeling her little body move with each breath.
