The Fall of Polite

by Sam Kench

  She entered the kitchen and set her backpack down on the island. Her newly acquired satchel bag she placed at her feet. The trip to town had been more fruitful than she had anticipated. She pulled a box of cheese crackers from her backpack and immediately ate a handful. They were hopelessly stale, but still pretty good given the state of things. She pulled out an unopened carton of shelf-store almond milk that still had several months to go before reaching its expiration date. A portion of the contents were frozen solid, but there was enough still in liquid form up top to fill a small glass. Maria sipped the drink slowly, savoring a different taste.

  She unloaded the rest of the food (canned goods, dry pasta, rice) and stored it all in the nearly empty kitchen. From inside the satchel she retrieved a few paperback novels.

  In the den she had mounted a pot in the fireplace. It was a small space, just barely large enough to cook in. The warmth supplied by the fireplace had served as a constant source of comfort throughout her days in the cottage. With the house so far from the town or any main roads, she didn't worry too much about anyone spotting the smoking chimney.

  Maria wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, filled the pot with water to boil above the fire for pasta, and curled up in the semicircle of warmth with one of her new books and her box of cheese crackers.

  When the water reached a boil, Maria folded the corner of her current page and stood up off the floor. She went into the kitchen and was reaching for a box of rigatoni when she noticed a change in light beyond the boarded kitchen window. She filled her hands instead with a steak knife from the counter and the hatchet she used to chop wood from the floor by the back door.

  She crouched below window height and watched through the barricade as the back door knob wiggled quietly. She looked across the house to the front door and saw at least two silhouettes pass across the living room window, slashed into bars by the planks of nailed wood.

  A quiet voice filtered through the back door barricade and into Maria’s ears. ‘Go on, jam your blade in there.’

  A second voice, sounding closer to the door, responded at a lower volume, ‘I’m tryin’ to keep it quiet. We don’t know how many are in there.’

  ‘You pussy, get out of the way.’

  Maria listened as a thin blade penetrated the keyhole and broke the tumblers within. The door opened a couple of inches before striking against her barricade.

  A bearded face filled the crack in the door and peered inside at the barricade. Maria stood up and, without pausing to think, plunged the steak knife through the opening. She aimed for his eye and her blade struck true.

  Maria lost her grip on the knife handle as the bearded man reeled back. He fell to the ground, screaming, to reveal four other men standing behind him around the back entrance to the house.

  ‘You fucking bitch!’ The man screamed as he reached for the knife sticking out of his eyeball.

  Maria pushed the door shut and repositioned the barricade. The beating of her heart had already quickened. The sound and feel of her blade entering a human being’s eyeball made her skin crawl. It was easier than she expected. Softer. She didn't have time to think about it, so she stuffed it down, compartmentalized. Maria dashed across the kitchen and grabbed one of her handguns, the other she had left upstairs by the bed.

  ‘Don’t pull it out!’ Shouted a voice from the back yard. The door slammed back into the barricade and two men pushed against the door with all of their weight. The front door slammed into its own barricade and a bald man with a bodybuilder’s physique and a bulging neck vein took a metal baseball bat to the living room window. Glass shattered and one of the wooden planks clattered to the living room floor. The man looked through the window at Maria as she raised her gun towards the back door.

  Maria fired. Her first shot splintered the door frame. Her second shot struck one of the pushers in the arm. She stuffed the gun into her pocket and grabbed the double barrel by its center.

  Another plank from the living room window dropped onto the first and was closely followed by a third.

  Maria ran towards the front door. She held her hatchet wielding arm out and balanced the double barrel atop it, aiming at the man in the window. She cocked just one of the two barrels. She had yet to fire the gun, and hoped she was using it properly. The design seemed intuitive enough, but she wished aunt Kim had stored more ammunition so she could have practiced before this life-and-death encounter.

  The man on the other side of the window ducked out of the way. Maria held her fire. She didn’t have many shotgun shells and didn’t want to waste a single shot, especially since she didn’t know how many more men were part of this team. Suddenly, she spun on her heels and ran for the small hall table that hosted a landline telephone.

  The bodybuilder took another swing at the window and cleared a path inside.

  The back door opened halfway and knocked the grandfather clock over; its glass face cracked against the tile floor. Two arms reached inside to push directly against the bookcase.

  Maria pulled open the drawer in the hall table and fetched the box of shotgun shells from within. She took them out of the box and stuffed them into her coat pocket; four shells plus two in the gun. She tried to think of how many shots her handgun held but couldn’t remember

  The large man who bashed in the window stepped aside and let a shorter man with a handgun enter first. Maria turned towards him as his feet struck the carpet. He raised his gun. Maria ran forward and to her right, getting behind the dividing wall just as he fired into it.

  Maria’s entire body trembled. She was 15 feet from the man by the window with a wall between them and twice as far from the back door that was slowly inching open. From the back door she had no obstruction, no cover. A blow from a blunt weapon struck the kitchen window and glass fell into the sink below it.

  Maria sunk down low against the wall, dropped the hatchet, gripped the shotgun, and tried to steady her breathing. She popped out from the wall, low to the floor. The short man, expecting her to be standing, fired his handgun over her head and struck the back door. Maria blasted him in the chest and sent him crashing back out through the living room window.

  The bookcase slid forward and the back door opened wide enough to allow entry. Two men stumbled inside: one in an olive-drab army jacket, the other in brown leather.

  Staying low, Maria cocked the other barrel of the shotgun and ran the few feet to the kitchen island. The leather-clad man carried a machete, the other, a snub-nosed revolver.

  Maria moved in a crouch around the left corner and positioned the kitchen island between herself and her assailants. She squatted low and ran through possible courses of action in her mind.

  A bullet split a tile in the floor beside her. The shooter cocked his gun. ‘Stand up!’ He yelled.

  ‘What are you afraid of?’ The machete wielder asked of his compatriot, ‘Get after her.’

  Maria held the shotgun over the island above her head and fired without looking. The gun almost flew from her grip as buckshot careened through the air between the two men and blew a hole in the wall beside the staircase. The thug in the olive-drab jacket dropped to the floor in fear.

  Maria stood up with a twist. She dropped the shotgun onto the island, pulled the handgun from her pocket, and fired three shots into the leather-clad man’s chest. He collapsed to the floor, dead.

  ‘Shit, Charlie!’ Maria heard from the other side of the island. She hopped atop it and ran the four feet across to the other end. She looked down on and fired at the man below her. A bullet passed through the top of his shoulder and traveled through the majority of his torso before stopping somewhere inside his body.

  Before Maria could fire a second shot to finish him off, she was struck in the side by a wooden chair thrown by the bodybuilder who had smashed his way through the living room window. Now that he was inside, Maria could see his full height. He was nearly seven feet tall and built like a brick shit-house.

  The impact knocked Maria from atop the
island. She banged her side against the counter below the kitchen window, then fell hard to the tile floor. She let out an involuntary squeal of pain and couldn’t be sure of whether or not she had cracked a rib. The massive brute moved, unhurriedly, toward the kitchen.

  The army poser struggled to lift his revolver with the shoulder he had been shot through so he switched hands and found the task considerably easier. From a seated position on the floor, he reached around the corner of the island with his gun.

  Maria, lying on her back, kicked at the gun and knocked it clean out of his hand. It fired into the ceiling and sailed through air before clattering onto the kitchen tile and sliding all the way onto the wooden floor of the hall. The gun spun to a stop as it thudded against the bottom step of the staircase.

  Maria sat forward and grabbed onto his arm. She yanked him towards her so that his head showed around the corner, then she put a bullet through it with her handgun. Peering through the mushy head-hole, she saw the hulking bodybuilder nearing her. She stood up and returned the handgun to her pocket.

  Another man entered through the back door, this one wielding a heavy pipe wrench and sporting a stomach length beard. Maria scooped up the double barrel and cracked it open. Two empty shotgun shells hit the island and rolled off to the floor.

  A lean man dressed in burgundy began climbing through the kitchen window to her side. Maria canceled her reload and slammed the double barrel shut. She drove the stock into the burgundy man's chest, not doing much damage, but knocking him back out of the window and into the yard.

  Before she could resume her reload, the gun was knocked from her hands by the baseball-bat-wielding giant. He took another big swing.

  Maria ducked as the bat passed over her head and smashed its way through two glass jars on the countertop, one of flour and one of sugar. Fine and coarse powders rained down on her in equal measure as she ran in a crouch to the other side of the kitchen.

  The bearded man cut her off on the other end of the island, and with the giant behind her, she was cornered. The burgundy clad man began climbing through the window again and she could hear footsteps by the front door.

  Maria didn’t slow down. She scooped a ceramic cookie jar up off the counter and hurled it at the bearded man in front of her. He wasn’t fast enough to dodge and it shattered against his face, cutting his cheek badly, knocking him off balance, and showering him in pieces of moldy, homemade oatmeal cookies. The bugs in his beard didn't get the chance to prey on the crumbs. Maria charged at him, driving the tip of her elbow into his sternum before sending a left hook across his padded jaw.

  He hit the ground, dazed, his pipe wrench clattering across the floor. Maria stumbled over him and nearly lost her footing. The hulking figure with the baseball bat followed closely behind her.

  Stepping into view of the living room, she looked into the eyes of a tiny man leveling a shotgun at her. He hesitated for fear of hitting his two fellow militiamen directly behind her, and she seized the opportunity. She withdrew the handgun from her pocket and squeezed off two rounds into his chest and neck as she continued to run toward him.

  He fell limply into the open front door and knocked it shut. His dead body braced it, serving as a replacement barricade.

  Maria let out a yelp as pain shot up the back of her leg. The baseball bat struck her calf and knocked her off her feet. She fell to her chest and rolled over onto her back. As quick as she could, she gripped her gun with both hands and shot up at the man who towered over her. Her first shot only winged him, blowing off a piece of his coat and biting into his upper arm. Her second shot embedded itself in the ceiling. There was no third shot as the slide of her gun stayed back and the trigger clicked ineffectually.

  ‘Fuck!’ She yelled, before rolling back over and scrambling further into the living room on her hands and knees

  He lifted the baseball bat high above his head.

  Maria reached out as far as she could and got a grip on the handle of the boiling water pot above the fire. She launched it into the bodybuilder’s face and he was instantly consumed by steam. His skin bubbled and peeled apart. He let out an agonizing baritone scream as every inch of exposed skin was covered with blisters and burns. His bat fell to the floor and he dropped to his knees, clutching in agony at his disfigured face.

  Maria reversed directions and crawled as fast as she could to the dividing wall where she had left her hatchet. She gripped it tightly and rose to her feet with an upward swing that slashed through the mid-section of the man in burgundy. His clothes turned a shade brighter and a shade darker all at once. He doubled over and took a chop from the hatchet to the back of his neck that embedded itself half-way through his spinal column.

  She yanked the hatchet free and made for the burned man wailing on his knees, but stopped in her tracks when the front door was shoved back open and pervaded by three men, all with guns. She threw the hatchet in their direction and spun toward the back door.

  The men dipped aside as the hatched sailed through the open door and landed in the snow. The man with the knife in his eye stepped through the back doorway and haphazardly opened fire in her direction.

  His shots went wide, his aim clearly impaired. Maria dove into the kitchen as the knife-blinded man wounded one of his own men with a stray bullet. She picked up the shotgun and laid on the floor behind the island. She reloaded the gun, her shaking hands fumbling terribly with the shells.

  ‘You can do this,’ she said aloud to herself, ‘You can do this.’ She launched to her feet in a full sprint towards the impaired shooter. He fired into a cabinet behind her as the others in the house took aim. She held the gun lengthwise and forced it against the man’s neck. She pushed him forward with her as she ran toward the staircase across from the kitchen. A powerful yell exited her lungs as she ran.

  Automatic and semi-automatic gunfire erupted to her right as she ran. Bullets perforated the wall behind her as she moved, their aim slower than her run. The man on the other end of her shotgun hit the wall and they both crashed down onto the first few steps of the staircase.

  As she landed atop him, she pulled the trigger in the general direction of the shooters in the living room, not trying to hit any of them, but doing what she could to buy time. The ceiling exploded above the three shooters. They cringed away from the impact as their vision was obscured by a haze of wooden splinters and powderized drywall.

  Maria felt along the floor beneath her and got a grip on the fallen revolver. She cocked it, placed it against the one eyed man’s chest who she was atop, and squeezed the trigger. A pop of blood splashed her face and got in her eye. She stepped over him and ran up the stairs as the shooters resumed firing and more men funneled in through the back door. The back of her hand rubbed at her wet eye as she stumbled up the steps.

  Once she could see again, she picked up speed. She ran with one hand on the shotgun and the other on the revolver. Rounding the corner on the landing, she banged into the wall with her shoulder, then made it the rest of the way up the stairs to the second floor.

  Entering the bedroom at a full sprint, she dropped to her knees and slid to the end table where she stored her other handgun. She tucked the Walther PPK away in her pocket and stood up. The Nazi she had taken the gun from had consumed most the ammunition. She tried to remember how many bullets were in the magazine when she had counted, but a great deal of time had passed. Two or three shots was her best guess. No time to check now.

  She bent down behind her aunt’s hope chest and started moving. She pushed the chest out of the room, down the hall and to the top of the staircase. With two men rounding the corner on the landing, she gave the chest a shove over the edge. The hope chest tumbled end over end with increasing velocity and opened up, spilling family photo albums, expensive jewelry, legal documents and old quilts across the staircase.

  One of the men dove out of the way and tumbled back down the first leg of the staircase, the other man took the full brunt of the heavy wooden chest’s impact. Hi
s entire torso was pinned against the wall and his back broke half-way through the painted wooden boards that lined the staircase. His mouth filled with blood from internal bleeding and he couldn’t find the wind in his lungs to cry out in pain. Still, he found strength in his unpinned limbs and tried to pry himself free.

  Maria took aim at his head with the revolver and fired. Her first shot caught the underside of the hope chest. Her second shot blew off the corner of his head and repainted the wall red.

  Shouting bellowed from downstairs as the men began climbing over the chaos on the staircase. Maria ran down the hall to the attic hatch. She climbed onto the chair she had parked underneath the hatch and grabbed onto the pull-string. She lowered the rickety ladder and looked up into the black square above her. Unable to climb with her hands full, she tossed her guns up through the hatch, then followed after them. She considered her ability to climb the ladder a good sign that she hadn’t cracked any ribs against the kitchen counter, but didn’t rule out the possibility that she was being fueled by pure adrenaline.

  As she neared the top of the ladder, a blast from a rifle weakened the structural integrity of the ladder. Maria grabbed onto one of the boards that served as sparse flooring in the attic and pulled her legs up through the hatch. She lifted the shotgun, cocked the other barrel, aimed straight down through the hatch... and waited.

  A few seconds later, a mustachioed man ran into sight, a rifle slung over his shoulder and his hands reaching obliviously for the ladder rungs. He looked up as he began to climb. Shock and terror overtook his face, then it was all gone in a deafening flash.

  Maria dropped straight down through the hatch and landed on the newly faceless corpse at the bottom of the ladder. She picked up his gun, a weathered bolt-action hunting rifle, and slung it over her shoulder. She quickly climbed back up the ladder with her new firearm in tow.

  As she was nearing the top of the ladder, the boiled bodybuilder ran down the hall and began climbing behind her. Maria made a hop and kicked with both feet for the weak spot of the ladder. The bottom half was dislodged and the boiled man fell atop his faceless friend. Maria dismounted the ladder inside the attic.