by James Sperl
“This could have been so much simpler if you all would have just listened to me last time and let us stay. But you got confrontational. You got testy and forced us away.”
Valentina and Rachel exchanged puzzled looks. What the hell is he talking about? He's the one who became hostile.
Clarissa found their eyes and shook off their doubt. “He's playing mind games,” she said. “Don't listen to him.”
“Now we're here,” Travis went on. “But in the interest of survival and goodwill, I'm willing to be reasonable and give things another try.” He paused before continuing. “You're in my house, and I'd like you to leave. If you go in the next thirty seconds, I'll let you walk out of here, unharmed and without any threat of retaliation. Stay, and thirty-one seconds from now you'll wish you hadn't. Clock's ticking.”
Sean's face flashed panic. “This guy's crazy!”
“You think?” Valentina said.
Rachel gripped her hands fiercely. “So what do we do?”
“Nothing!” Jon and Clarissa said at the same time. Jon's response was decidedly more emphatic, but Clarissa took the reins on voicing reason. “He's a liar, Rach. He'll kill us sure as we're standing here if we go outside. It's just more of his twisted, manipulative games. Getting us to do what he wants.”
“Agreed,” Jon seconded. “I don't know this guy, but I've seen his type. Nothing good can happen if we try to leave.” Jon angled his head to look out the window; more people scattered about in the forest—he counted seven. They advanced unevenly, some braving open land for more suitable structures to hide behind near the garden. A thought occurred to him:
“Does this Travis joker know about us?”
Clarissa searched the air. “I don't know. I don't think so. Unless he's been spying on us.”
“Which he would've had to have been doing since last night,” Cesare added.
“Right,” Jon said. “And if he were spying, then he'd know we're here.”
Clarissa winced. “Okay. So?”
“So, it seems unlikely he would choose to mount an offensive not knowing how many and what sort of people just rolled in.” Jon passed his eyes over the room. “I don't think he has any idea about us.”
“I don't see how that gives us an advantage,” Sean said. “Even if we do have more people than he thinks, we're still mostly unarmed and, more importantly, not murderous shitheads.” He glanced at Elenora. “Sorry, hon.”
Elenora waved him off. “Don't apologize to me. I would have used a harsher word.”
Jon stole a quick glance out the window before facing the room. “The advantage,” he began, “would be that he's not expecting us. Even if they outgun us, finding more than twice as many people as you originally thought can throw things off drastically when you're unprepared for it. Trust me, I know.”
And Jon did. A memory from Afghanistan flashed through his mind at warp speed, though when the incident had happened time felt reduced to a godawful trudge. He was part of a late-night patrol that had gained fresh intel regarding a residence housing Taliban fighters. The suspected group had been involved in a recent firefight, which produced American casualties. Six was the number of insurgents that had come down the wire, but when his squad kicked in the doors to the single-story hovel, their adrenaline supercharged and their bloodlust for payback cranked to eleven, a roomful of children was the last thing anyone expected to see. The aftermath of that night resulted in two post-mission suicides and one section 8. Still another soldier was deemed unfit for combat for reasons unspecified, but Jon knew. He spent his requisite horizontal hours recounting the incident to military therapists then continued to try to scrub his conscience clean on his own dollar once he left the Army. It helped, but the ghosts that haunted him were a forever reminder as to how game-changing information, or lack thereof, could be.
“What about your cars?” Rachel said, pointing toward the front yard, where the group's two vehicles were parked. “Even if he wasn't spying, he's not blind. He can see there are two extra cars in the driveway. Won't he just assume there're more people here?”
Travis's voice sliced through the conversation: “Ten seconds!”
Jon thought about this—Rachel had a point. “Maybe not. I think he'll think you're planning on getting out of Dodge. From what little you've told me, it sounded like Travis put a pretty good scare into you all the other night, right?”
“Without question,” Clarissa said.
“Okay. And where's Andrew's truck and trailer?”
“In the shed.”
Jon nodded as if trying to convince himself of his growing theory. “It's a long shot, but since Andrew's truck looks like its gone, Travis might be led to believe that you all acquired vehicles to flee. He might even think that Andrew's gone at the moment, which would give us even more of an advantage.”
“Or,” Valentina said sharply, “he knows you're here and doesn't give a shit.”
“Yes. Or that.”
“Time's up!” Travis shouted, his voice booming over the quiet landscape and forcing its way into the house. “So I see you've made your decision. It's a bold one. I'll give it to you, but something, I don't know, something tells me you haven't thought this through very well. I mean, I know you see my boys scurrying around out here in the forest, right? Taking up position and all that? Know how many there are? You willing to go up against that number?”
Jon and Clarissa exchanged nervous glances: What's he up to?
“You know what?” said Travis jovially. “I'm feeling extra charitable today. Maybe I'm just in a good mood. After all, it's not every day one gets a new house, is it? So, I'll tell you what I'm going to do: I'm going to give you another thirty seconds, but this time we're going to sweeten the pot.”
Jon felt his heart leap with dreaded anticipation.
A lone figure emerged from behind the goat pens. She was a young woman and sobbed uncontrollably. She was directed to the center of the drive until Travis ordered her to stop. She bawled like no one Jon had ever seen.
At first, he didn't understand Travis's play. Clarissa and her friends seemed like nice people, and if Travis knew them in even a small capacity, he knew it. Was he trying to exploit their goodness by putting in harm's way a young, innocent woman with the hope that he could draw them out? It seemed unlikely given what little Jon knew about his character.
Then he saw Clarissa. Her eyes had inflated to terrified globes at the sight of the girl, her mouth dropping open in abject terror. It was then that Jon learned Travis intended so much more.
“Stephanie?” Clarissa croaked.
Valentina's and Rachel's heads canted in unison as if in a Pavlovian response to a high-pitched whistle.
“What?” Rachel said, charging over to Clarissa and collapsing beside her. She looked out the window, the sight of her blubbering friend standing alone in the driveway forcing out a primal wail. “Oh my God!” she bellowed, before breaking into fits of hand-over-mouth cries.
Valentina arrived over her shoulder and peered into the yard. She dropped her head, her body deflated, and mumbled, “Motherfucker.” Tears raced down her cheeks. “Goddamned mother—”
“Poor, poor Stephanie,” Travis said gleefully from somewhere. “All alone with no one to help her.” Stephanie's body shuddered. Her arms hung lifelessly by her sides as if merely pinned to her body at the shoulders. “But I'm going to present you all with a one-time final offer,” Travis goaded. “Send out Clarissa, and not only will I let little Miss Stephanie go, but we'll leave and never come back. Now that's an offer you can't refuse! Tick tock, kids.”
Blood drained from Jon's face. His already throttling heart raced into unseen territory. Along with everyone in the room, he turned his expression of horror toward Clarissa. He could only imagine what was going through her mind. Though judging by her waxy pallor and thin grip on consciousness, he had a pretty good idea.
Valentina straightened in response to Travis's offer. “No fucking way,” she said sternly, as tear
s rolled off her chin. She yanked Clarissa back from the window, which caused Clarissa to stumble and land inelegantly on her backside.
Any attempts to remain hidden were summarily abandoned. Cesare, Sean, and Evan all emerged from their hiding places, Sean and Evan racing to stand beside Jon while Cesare trotted over to help Clarissa to her feet.
“She's not going anywhere!” Valentina declared to Jon before spinning on Clarissa. “You hear me? You're not doing this. I know you. I know what's going through your mind.”
Clarissa's deer-in-the-headlights eyes swept the room.
“I...I don't know...Maybe it would be better...If I go and he leaves then—”
“He's not going to leave, Clarissa,” Jon said with commanding presence. “He's going to kill her then kill you then attack us. It's lose-lose all the way around.”
“That's just it,” Clarissa managed to say. “He won't kill me. There's not even a chance of it. He's wanted me for as long as he's known me. He'd never do it.”
“There's always a chance. I don't care what sort of psychosexual history this guy has with you. He's unhinged, and now he's living in a world where his deepest, darkest fantasies are playing out for real. So, I'm with Valentina. You're not going anywhere.”
Clarissa stiffened. Conflicting emotions played out at the corners of her twitching mouth and within the lines of her uncertain eyes. “You can't tell me what to do. If...if I want to go help my friend, I will.”
Jon stepped in front of the door. “The hell you will.”
She panned over the room in a plea for support but found only resistance in the defiant stares that greeted her.
“What's wrong with you people? She's my friend! Rach, Val. We can't just leave her out there.” Rachel and Valentina looked at the floor.
“If she's truly your friend,” Sean said solemnly, “then she'd want you to stay here. I know I would.” Clarissa heaved though she wasn't out of breath. “And incidentally,” he continued, “I know we just met, and that we don't know each other, but if you even try to go out that door, I'll tackle you to the ground myself and drag you back inside by your hair.”
Jon couldn't help the bubble of pride he felt despite the in-progress tragedy. He looked at his partner—his gentle, pacifist, borderline effeminate partner—and acknowledged his empty threat with a bitter grin.
Clarissa, on the other hand, was a mime of powerlessness. Jon had seen that look many times before, from the displaced souls who wandered war-torn landscapes in search of a home, to the helpless eyes of mothers who cradled dead children amid the rubble of an errant strike. It sickened him to admit that he'd gotten used to such expressions of misery. But with acceptance of a situation came clarity, and at the moment, Clarissa was far from thinking clearly.
“Five!” bellowed Travis. “Four...Three...Two...”
Everyone hugged the casing to the window nearest him or her and peeked outside. Stephanie was still the only person in the yard.
“I have to tell you, Clarissa,” said Travis, “I'm a little disappointed. I thought friendships like yours bordered on sisterhood. Guess I was wrong.”
Stephanie's body wracked with sobs, and it was the first time Jon realized just how drenched with sweat she was. Her hair was matted and stringy and her blouse and pants splotched with wetness. The woman was terrified, and that terror seeped from her pores by the ounce.
A second person emerged from behind the chicken coop. It brought everyone inside the house to their full height. The person held a megaphone in one hand and something indeterminable in the other. No one needed to tell Jon who it was.
“Oh well,” Travis said, tucking the indistinct item under his left arm and transferring the megaphone to the hand of the same. “Guess I'll just have to find me another girlfriend.” He casually reached into his pocket with his right hand and produced something small. “Remember, you asked for this.”
Travis grinned, and in the seconds that followed his evil smile, Jon pieced together what was about to happen. Dropping the megaphone to the ground, Travis proceeded to flick the lighter he held in his right hand. A teardrop of flame burst to life, and no sooner did it create fire than Travis held it to the rag-stuffed end of what Jon now recognized was a Molotov cocktail. The tattered fabric erupted into a minor inferno. Without a second's hesitation, Travis faced Stephanie and, pinwheeling back his arm, released the bottle with the velocity of a high-speed pitch from less than five feet away.
The bottle smashed into the side of Stephanie's head with a wet thunk. The impact sent her careening to the ground, but not before the contents exploded and enveloped her in liquid fire.
“NO!” her friends screamed in unison.
Rachel sank to the ground in a devastated heap; Valentina sobbed into her hands. Clarissa's wrath and anguish were far less passive. She wheeled around and made a bid for the door, screaming with raw grief. Cesare, who stood beside her, was briefly caught off guard by her sudden flight, but he managed to loop an arm around her waist and hold her back.
“No, Clarissa,” he said. “No, honey.”
“Let me go!” she hollered, flailing and kicking, her reactions rooted in the primal. “Let me go...! Stephanie!”
Valentina, her face a road map of tear tracks both fresh and old, moved to her friend and placed a hand on each of Clarissa's cheeks. “She's gone, Clar. She's gone.” Clarissa's emotions quickly devolved from rage to unrepentant anguish. She wailed and crumpled into Valentina's arms.
Jon turned from Clarissa's undoing and looked back into the yard. Stephanie's body twitched on the ground. He had never wanted more to put a bullet in a person's skull than he did for Travis. He was a vicious, cold-blooded murderer who didn't deserve the benefit of life. His insanity was outdone only by his cruelty. He seemed to relish Stephanie's agony, watching in perverse pleasure as her body's failing nerve endings made her convulse until the fire devoured everything that made her human. When she stopped moving, Travis leered at the house. With unsettling calm, he lifted the megaphone to his mouth and shouted with a madness shared by the damned.
“Light it up!”
Jon barely registered the command before the first Molotov cocktail crashed through the window at the corner of the house near the fireplace. It exploded in a torrent of fire. Another sailed through a smaller window near the kitchen, smashing into the stove and igniting it in a brilliant burst of atomic orange. Like that, the house was ablaze.
Screams filled the air. Everyone clustered in the foyer, where the fire had yet to reach. Cesare sprinted into the dining room where Elenora, who had been sitting on a chair at the end of the table, cowered in terror. He scooped her up and scuttled her over to the rest of the group.
Jon ripped back the curtain and glared outside. Travis's minions now moved about with abandon. Masked and hooded individuals made no attempt to hide as they circled the property, stopping only to set fire to cloth-stuffed bottles of fuel before they launched them in flaming arcs at the house. They came from all directions—bottles crashed along the blind side walls followed by the carpet-snap whoosh of fire.
“We've got to get out of here!” shrieked Valentina. She sank to the ground with Clarissa and Rachel to avoid the rising smoke.
“Where're we going to go?” Evan shouted, his shirt collar pulled taut over his mouth. “The only place is out there!” He cocked a thumb toward the front yard.
Jon dropped to a knee just as a cocktail smashed into the eave overhanging the front porch. Fire splashed over the railing and deck. Glass broke from several places upstairs. Within seconds a sunset-orange glow flickered from the second-floor bedrooms.
“He's flushing us out,” Jon said. “He knows there's nowhere for us to go but through the front door.”
Sean grabbed Jon's shoulder. “So he's waiting for us?”
Jon eyed his partner, doleful. “Without a doubt.” Then a thought sparked behind his eyes. “Clarissa, you said Andrew had a large store of food, right?”
Clarissa palmed the
tears away from her face. “Yeah. Why?”
“Do you know if the room he keeps it in is fireproof?”
Clarissa's eyes bulged with hope. “I don't know,” she said, everyone shifting with optimism around her. “It would seem like a big oversight on his part if it wasn't.”
“Can you get us there?”
“Yeah,” she said, nodding furiously. “Yeah, it's in the basement, but the door there needs a key. And Andrew's got that one too.”
Jon shook this off. “We'll kick it in if we have to. Just get us th—”
As if in direct opposition to Jon's plan, a fire bomb rocketed into the hallway leading to the basement door. Fire splattered the walls and spilled into the dining room, setting alight the dining room table where Elenora had sat only moments ago. Any attempt to reach the basement was effectively cut off.
“Goddammit!” Jon raged. With gun in hand, he charged to the front side window and pistol-whipped the glass. It gave on contact. Shards rained down in razor-sharp, vampire-tooth wedges, but Jon didn't care. He jammed the gun through the craggy opening and let fly a volley of shots.
The people in the yard scattered like a mob of hunchbacks, everyone ducking for cover. Though Jon's mini offensive was reactionary, he learned something potentially valuable—no one lobbed a Molotov cocktail when he fired. Return fire, however, was immediate. Shots pinged off the stone walls and destroyed many of the front-facing windows, forcing Jon and the others to flatten themselves to the floor. The attack confirmed what he already suspected: Travis's group had armed themselves with more than just fire bombs. Even so, he had introduced uncertainty into this lopsided battle. Now they knew he had a gun as well.
Racing back to the group, he collected everyone in a close circle and knelt with them out of the curtain of smoke that pushed down from the ceiling. “We've got to make a break for our cars!” he said, releasing the magazine from the gun and thumb-loading it with fresh rounds. “It's our only chance of getting out of here. This house is going up!”
Fire raged, and Jon entertained a moment of ill-timed thought when he considered how something so soundless on a small scale could be so deafening when permitted to rampage. Smoke billowed and drifted in its own weather pattern inside the house, filling the room and choking the air with vaporous poison. There wasn't much time.
