by Hunter Shea
“You said it was just you and your wife. You and I both know that wasn’t the truth.”
Buck inhaled. “Now, you can’t blame me for that. I didn’t know you from Adam. You come banging on the door in the middle of the night looking like you were itching for a fight. We’d dealt with a gang in Yonkers a week ago. I had to be careful.”
“I’m disappointed, but my beef isn’t really with you. Give them up, and you’ll be fine.”
“Give who up?”
Vin spat on the lawn. “The fucking Arabs you came in with. It’s their kind who destroyed everything. Just hand them over.”
Buck stared hard at the man, ignoring the others. “You must have lost your mind. The people I’m with aren’t Arabs, not that it matters. Even if they were, they weren’t the ones who dropped those bombs or released that poison. Besides, even you don’t know who did this to us. It could have been the goddamn Canadians for all you know.”
Vin took a step toward Buck.
“I’m not asking. We saw all of you. Our eyes don’t lie. You think we don’t know Arabs when we see them?”
Someone jostled Buck aside. It was Daniel.
“You’ve all made a mistake,” he said, hands held up as if the police had guns trained on him. “I’m an American, just like you. My family came here from Puerto Rico before I was born.”
“Bullshit,” a woman wearing a Walking Dead T-shirt and cargo shorts said.
“My family and I have gone through the same hell as you. We lost our son. Our lives will never be the same, just like you. We’re not your enemy.”
“Sure looks like it,” someone muttered.
Buck saw the crowd was getting jumpy. Hands tensed around weapons. This was going to easily get out of hand.
Vin said, “That’s pretty much what the last Arab said to us, except he said he was from Pakistan or some shit like that. You’re all natural-born liars who have no value on life.”
“My name is Daniel Padilla! Does that sound Arabic to you?”
Someone laughed. “They can make up any name they want.” Buck couldn’t see who’d said it. His finger slipped past the trigger guard.
“I know you have a woman and three kids,” Vin said. “I need you all to come out now. If not, we’ll just take all of you.” He sneered at Buck. “In fact, that’s just what we should do.”
Daniel said, “You’re not touching my kids.”
There was a moment of silence as Daniel’s words hung over the justice-hungry, misinformed crowd. Buck knew for sure there had to be parents in the mob. Surely they could sympathize. Maybe Dan had found the secret code to defuse the situation.
Daniel continued, “I understand your anger, I feel your pain. I want to lash out and find someone, anyone responsible for who did this to our country. But I know I can’t just vent that anger blindly. I love my children, and I’ll be damned if I let anything more happen to them after all we’ve been through to get this far.”
Buck and Daniel flinched when someone fired a gun into the air.
150
“Don’t listen to his lies!” a woman screamed.
Elizabeth shouted to her kids, “Get away from the windows!”
Grabbing a gun off the living room table, she ran to the front door just as the mob was making their advance.
“Take all of them!”
“Alive if you can.”
“Not for long!”
Buck got tangled on his own feet and fell backward into the house. Daniel held his ground. “Get back. I told you you’re not touching my family!”
No one was listening. They’d been harboring hate for so long, it was going to be unleashed on their family no matter what Daniel said. Mob mentality had taken control. There would be no reasoning with them.
So Elizabeth did the only thing she could do.
Stopping next to her husband, she shot the man nearest to the front steps. The bullet caught him in the mouth just as he was calling Daniel a “no-good sand nigger.” He collapsed onto the woman close behind him holding an ax, red paint flaking off the head. She fell onto the ax, the blade slicing into her side.
For just a second, everything seemed to stop. The mob paused, the gunshot and the woman’s cries momentarily shocking them. It passed quickly, their clamoring and anger increasing tenfold.
“Daniel, we can’t let them in,” she said.
“I know.”
He grabbed the gun he’d tucked behind his back, firing off three quick shots in a small arc, hitting the front row of the mob. The siding of the house popped as shots were fired back at them.
Elizabeth felt something sting her arm and her fingers went numb. Blood splashed her face. She lifted her other arm, shooting wildly into the crowd. Daniel grunted and dropped to a knee.
Buck was shouting, “You sons of bitches! You sick sons of bitches,” as he tried to drag Elizabeth and Daniel back into the house. Alexiana had a grip on Daniel’s shirt. His stomach was a spreading, crimson stain. Still, he tried to shoot back, but his gun was empty.
And so was hers.
Hands grabbed Elizabeth’s legs, pulling her down the two front steps. Daniel was dragged next to her into the mob. She could hear her children screaming for them, hear Buck’s anguished cries, blocking out the wild epithets and threats to kill her right now. Someone kicked the side of her head and her vision tripled.
“No!” Daniel screamed, breaking free to throw his body over hers.
Then there were other screams, panicked yelps. Elizabeth couldn’t see what was going on through the tangle of legs around her. If it was at all possible, it sounded as if things were about to get much, much worse.
151
Buck couldn’t believe his eyes. From out of the side yards of the houses across the street, a hundred or more animals came swarming into the mob, alerted and excited by the commotion. Dogs, cats, muskrats, raccoons, even a family of wild turkeys, ran for the mob. The animals were rangy, blood-caked, and ravenous.
“They brought them here!” a man with a handlebar mustache cried, pointing at Liz and Dan as they lay bleeding in the grass. They’d taken out seven of the mob, their bodies twisted and lifeless. Buck had to get them back into the house.
“Alex, I need you to cover me,” he said, handing her his gun and motioning toward the window. She nodded, knocking the glass out of a window.
“Mom, Dad!” Max shouted, running to the door. Buck had a hard time holding him back. “If you can, get the hell out the back door with your brother and sister.”
“No. I won’t leave them.”
“I’ll get them inside. You have to protect Miguel and Gabby.”
Max stood panting, humming with indecision.
Half the mob was fighting off the animals, the other half resuming their march on the house. There was no time to even think of his next move. Buck sprinted for Daniel and Elizabeth while Alexiana fired into the crowd. A woman who had a dog latched on to her leg spun as a bullet caught her in the collarbone. The dog was happy for the assist, as were its companions that tore into her.
Buck hit the ground. “I’ve got you.”
Daniel’s head rose. “Save the kids,” he said, blood dribbling from his mouth. “Please, save the kids.”
Elizabeth was under him, barely conscious and bleeding in several places. Buck tried to get a good enough grip on their shirts to drag them back into the house. A fist came crashing into his mouth, breaking his handhold on the Padillas. Flipping backward, he saw a seagull come nosediving for him. It missed, bashing into the chest of the man who had punched him.
“What the fuck?” Buck said, scanning the pandemonium.
It was hard to tell where the mob began and the wild animals ended.
He didn’t have long to watch before a bat crashed into his knee. “Fucking Arab lover,” one of the goons from the night before spat. Something pulled him deeper into the mob’s violent core. He couldn’t tell whether it was man or beast.
Alexiana yelled for him. “Lock the d
oor!” he shouted back.
When he looked back, he saw it was too late. Three men had grabbed her, shoving her to the ground, letting a handful of muskrats get at her as they clawed and nibbled at her face. Her cries were unimaginable.
Buck tried to get to his feet, but the mob pushed down on him, driving every molecule of air from his lungs, the weight increasing so he couldn’t breathe. A black Labrador snaked its way to him, fangs bared. He prayed he’d pass out before he felt the first bite.
152
After Alexiana had run from the house to get Buck, Max slammed the door shut. A couple of rats had made it into the house. He made quick work of them with his bat.
Miguel and Gabby were eerily quiet, but heavy tears made snaking rivers through the grime on their cheeks.
“I want Mommy,” Miguel said. His chest heaved frantically, an asthma attack fast approaching.
Max looked out the window. His parents were lost in a sea of angry humans and hungry animals. There were more gunshots, some at the larger animals, others at Buck, Alexiana, and his parents. Birds of every feather swooped down, pecking at anything that moved, feeding on the bodies that had fallen.
They talked about Hell in church and school. Everyone had a similar vision of it—fire and cratered canyons, black smoke and the cries of the damned. And lording about it all, a cloven-hoofed Satan, ram horns reared back with sinister laughter.
That was a fairy tale.
Max knew, this was true hell.
He had to protect Miguel and Gabby, but how? He was one kid against everything that wanted inside the house. With so many animals around, they wouldn’t stand a chance going out the back door.
“What do we do?” Gabby said, holding a gun.
“Put that down,” he said. “It won’t do us any good.”
Something slammed against the front door. A mirror in the living room exploded as a bullet shattered the glass. Miguel screamed.
When Max ducked, he saw the answer. It was a horrible one, but perhaps the only one.
Buck’s remaining grenade sat in an ashtray by the couch. Max had seen enough movies to know how to use it. You pulled the pin, threw it, and took cover.
The only way to stop this was to lob it into the crowd.
The same crowd where his parents, Buck, and Alexiana were, helpless, probably dead, but very possibly still alive.
He picked it up, looked to his brother and sister.
Gabby wiped her tears. “You have to do it.” She covered Miguel’s chest with her arms, trying to settle his breathing down. Miguel pressed his inhaler, but nothing happened. That had been the last one.
“But what about Mom and Dad?” Max said. The grenade felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. His arm suddenly felt weak, lifeless.
Gabby slowly shook her head. Even if they were still alive, what could they do to fix their wounds? They both knew their parents had been shot, more than once.
It was the only thing to do.
Max couldn’t let the mob or even the animals touch Gabby or Miguel. It was what his parents would have wanted. He’d get them out of here, find a safe place, and stay there. Someplace where there were no people.
Miguel struggled for air while Gabby spoke softly to him, just as their mother had.
Stifling his tears, Max gripped the front doorknob and flung it open. Outside was utter madness.
He pulled the pin, releasing the lever.
“Fuck all of you!” he screamed, throwing it into the center of the mob.
Slamming the door closed, he yelled, “Get down!”
The explosion came faster than he thought it would.
PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2015 Hunter Shea
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
PINNACLE BOOKS and the Pinnacle logo are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
ISBN: 978-0-7860-3477-2
First electronic edition: August 2015
ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-3478-9
ISBN-10: 0-7860-3478-5
