Outside the Fire

by Boyd Craven

  “If there was anybody still in the area, they would have made their move by now, don’t you think?” Matthew asked Dwight.

  “Yeah, I reckon.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Matthew said.

  “Shouldn’t we bury them?” Angela asked her husband.

  “I’m not gonna bury the asshats who did this,” he spat, “but I don’t have tools with me. If we go to my storage unit, I have a couple of shovels. It’d be faster than going home. Maybe it’ll be cool enough for us to be able to get to Mary and Jo….” His words trailed off and his chest hitched.

  Food. This was all food. This group to the north had killed and burned relentlessly. Sure, it was circumstantial, but they were all dressed and armed the same. They were less than a mile away. They were slaughtering people needlessly. Steve kept his eyes peeled, but he was furious and that made the tears fall faster as he made his way to the Jeep. Everyone piled in. Without speaking, he fired up the Jeep when they were all loaded.

  “You got the key your girlfriend gave you?” Angela asked pointedly.

  Steve let out a sigh and rolled his eyes as Matthew leaned forward.

  “Girlfriend?” he asked, disbelief in his voice.

  “She’s not my girl—”

  “She’s pulling your chain to get you to quit dwelling on everything,” Dwight growled from the backseat.

  “I’ve got the keys,” Steve said, and smiled faintly as the old farmer’s words sank in.

  He left the Jeep idling and walked up to the gate, pulling his truck keys from his pocket. He unlocked it, and pulled the chain through and pushed open the gate. He walked back and opened the door to the Jeep when the side door opened a crack and a double barrel shotgun pointed at the Jeep. Steve paused and everyone turned to look where he was.

  “That’s his girlfriend,” Angela said with a grin as a young woman appeared in the doorway, holding what looked like an old coach gun.

  “Mr. Taylor?”

  “Yeah, it’s me,” Steve said, his mouth suddenly dry.

  “Sorry, I didn’t recognize the Jeep. Thought somebody was trying to break in or stole your key.”

  “No, this is my daughter’s Jeep. I just need to get a couple things. Has…has there been any trouble here? Break-ins?” He was curious, because she mentioned it, but now he wondered if this place would be targeted. How much of a target did it really look like?

  “No, it’s been really quiet. Nobody has tried it, but I still stay in the front office during the daytime. It’s got windows on three sides and they are all tinted so I can see out, but nobody can see in.”

  “You take your job seriously,” he said with a grin.

  She smiled. “Naw, it’s a family business type of thing. I won’t hold you up. Say hello to the missus, and maybe I’ll see you at church soon!”

  “I uh….”

  “Steve,” Angela hissed.

  “See you soon.”

  He got in and drove the jeep back to his unit. From his truck keys, he opened the large storage unit. Before he closed it up last time, he’d put in a folding ladder, a ton of gardening tools and some extra hose reels. They were all things from his garage, but they were not only cover, but they were also extras that he wanted to put in a separate location in case he ever needed them. He got the door unlocked and rolled up the door. He walked over and grabbed the shovel and was about to turn to leave when he realized that it wasn’t where he’d left it.

  He deliberately left it to the left of the step ladder. The ladder had been placed underneath the attic stairs as part of his ruse. That meant it had been leaned up against the secret doorway. He checked the floor, but nothing seemed disturbed, nothing looked like it had been dragged. He felt around and then pushed the door open.

  “Please Mister, don’t shoot!” Joseph yelled from the dark.

  “Joseph?”

  “Mister Taylor?” Joseph said coming out into the light.

  His clothing smelled of gasoline and smoke and soot still smeared his features. He held a gallon sized jug of water, but he hadn’t found the electric lanterns inside by the look of things.

  “How did you…?”

  “Amber showed me the escape hatch into the other unit. Did… have you been to the church?”

  “Joseph?” Angela screamed, having gotten out of the jeep as soon as the hidden door opened and saw the grimy boy emerge from the darkness.

  The boy started crying as Angela closed the distance and wrapped her arms around him. They cried together like that for a long time.

  “I guess the boy got away,” Matthew remarked from the backseat.

  “I wonder how he knew to come here?” Dwight asked.

  The story slowly came out as they drove back into the subdivision. Steve listened to Angela talking to Joseph from the backseat. She’d traded places with the much larger Matthew so everyone could fit. He was silent as Joseph described how after the service Sunday night and the communal dinner that his dad had changed and was cleaning up when several trucks pulled up out front.

  They couldn’t see it at the time, but they had been full of men. As soon as the group saw his dad, they opened fire. His father was hit in the arm and told James to leave out the back door and get to safety. He tried to argue, so he could go warn his mom, but his dad said to get safe, and then got out a big shotgun. Joseph grinned at that mental image. It wasn’t a pleasant sight.

  “Did…did my parents make it out?” Joseph asked.

  “No,” Dwight said softly.

  Steve saw the boy’s facial features harden and the muscles around his jaw tightened as tears squeezed their way out again.

  “I knew, somehow I knew. I was going to try to go home, but I told my dad where I was gonna hide and when he didn’t come to find me….”

  “I’m so sorry.” Angela said.

  “Everyone, get ready,” Matthew said in a loud voice.

  “What?” Dwight asked.

  “There’s a crowd around my house,” Steve said through gritted teeth.

  “Let me out, I can’t do nothing from back here,” Dwight told him, “Steve, you and the kid stay in here.”

  “Hell, no. Angela, I want you driving,” Steve told her.

  “Chinese fire drill?” Angela asked, the humor in her voice wasn’t mirrored by her eyes.

  “Yeah. Some of them just noticed us. Let’s do it,” he said and threw the creeping Jeep into park and then opened the door.

  They quickly got out and Angela made Joseph sit in the back seat.

  “You know how to use this?” Angela asked, showing him her AR.

  “Yeah, my dad has…had….”

  She handed it back and he took it. She could hear him work the bolt and then the safety click on and off.

  “What are you doing?” Steve yelled over the rumble of the motor.

  If the people weren’t looking at them before, they were now. The three men advanced down the road in a rough line with the jeep bringing up the rear. People started shouting in two directions. One way was towards the house and somebody ran toward the door. A shot rang out and everybody shouldered their guns, but several people in the front door turned and started running backwards.

  That’s when Matthew pointed with his left hand at the upstairs window. Two rifle barrels were poking out.

  “Hey, assholes!” Steve shouted.

  The crowd seemed to part and Doug Morris came out of the middle, screaming.

  “You catch that?” Dwight asked.

  “No, you?” Matthew asked Steve.

  Steve lowered his carbine and let it hang on his sling as his former nemesis walked towards him.

  “Slow down, I can’t understand you,” Steve told him and held out a hand to slow his approach.

  “This is all your fault, Taylor,” Doug snarled.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Steve told him, yet Morris kept stalking towards him.

  Steve pulled his pistol and left his arm at the side as Doug stopped five feet away from the group
, forcing them and the jeep to come to a halt.

  “You refused to share your food with the community and let us grow weak. When those men came in to take what little we had, they killed my Linda! This is all your fault, because you think you’re so much better than all of us. I know your kind, the smug dot-com, want-to-be-rich, little—”

  “You do realize the food that the raiders stole from the community came from me and the Taylors?” Dwight interrupted, his gun held at waist level.

  “And if you hadn’t been letting us all slowly starve we could have stopped the slaughter—”

  Another gunshot from the house drew everybody’s attention. Somebody dropped what looked to be a glass bottle with flames coming from the top.

  “Everybody move!” Matthew said and started charging forward, ignoring Doug who had eyes only for Steve.

  Not everyone in the throng of humanity moved fast enough and Matthew started pushing his way through till somebody threw a punch. He took it across the side of the head, and then he started using the butt of his carbine. People started pushing in on Matthew as Doug started screaming and charged Steve.

  His gun barked and the top of Doug’s head split open. He fell as Matthew started falling under the combined weight of people attacking him. Dwight saw the bottle of flaming fluid picked up, and in a heartbeat, he knew what he had to do.

  The voice of his instructor, almost a ghost, seemed to reverberate inside his skull.

  You will shoot the fucking target. You will not miss. You miss and your men will be killed. In return, I’ll fucking stick my boot so far up your miserable ass you’ll taste the polish I used on it this morning. Do not fucking fail. Sight, acquire, fire. Motherfucker, I said fire!

  Dwight had a split second, but with the angle he was standing he knew that he had one of Steve’s windows behind the bottle and the bullet would enter approximately six feet above the floor. It would exit almost eight feet on the other side of the house. Even if somebody was on the first floor, none of the ladies were that tall and odds were, the littler girls were in the shelter or in the upstairs. This all happened in half a heartbeat as he lined up the shot in one motion and fired as the bottle was drawn back to throw.

  The bullet shattered the bottle just above the neck, dousing the man holding it with something that immediately ignited, turning him into a human torch. The gunshots did two things. It made everyone pause, because they weren’t warning shots from the house and made people start to turn in the direction of the five of them. That allowed the screams of the man on fire who tried to run through the crowd to scare and scatter them. He made it half a dozen feet and collapsed. People started breaking and running.

  All except several who were piled onto Matthew and pummeling him. Steve stalked over and debated on butt stroking them, but he heard Matthew cry out in pain. He grabbed what he thought was a neighbor from Doug’s side of the community back by his greasy hair. He screamed in pain and his eyes went wide as Steve put his pistol to his temple.

  “I’ll stop, I pro—”

  The gunshot was angled down away from the bodies writhing on the ground but that shot, and the spray of gore more than anything else, had men up and scrambling to their feet. Steve shot another one in the stomach as he turned towards him and then raised his pistol to point in the face of the last man who paused. Matthew made his way to his feet slowly, blood gushing from the center of his nose.

  “We’re just trying to—”

  Matthew pulled his own pistol and ended him where he stood and reached down, getting his dropped carbine.

  “When they rode me down, I didn’t want to lose control of the gun,” he said, by way of apology.

  “You guys ok?” Amber called from somewhere inside.

  “Yes,” Dwight said, walking over to the grass and stomping at the flames that had lit on the patches of grass that hadn’t been tilled under.

  “Garden didn’t make it,” Steve said looking at the ruined plantings.

  That’s when everyone was startled when the Jeep roared and tires squealed as it tore into the driveway, the horn blaring suddenly. Steve looked around at the bodies, the singed grass, the bloody work on Matthew’s face, his ruined garden, and the furious looks Angela was throwing at the bodies on her lawn. She shut it off and got out, holding the door for Joseph.

  “You ok?” she called to Steve.

  “Yeah, you ok?” Steve called back, walking her way.

  “Yeah. Did they really try to burn us out?” she asked, looking at the man who now resembled a crispy critter and had quit screaming, unlike the gut-shot man.

  “That one did,” Steve said.

  From above, a gunshot went off and the moaning man holding his stomach went still. They both looked up to see Lucy lower a carbine, a grim expression on her face.

  “I need a drink,” Dwight said suddenly.

  “I do, too,” Steve said.

  “You might want to wait till you hear who Joseph saw in that group there,” Angela told them.

  They all turned, puzzled and horrified at how the day had effectively turned to shit.

  “The one man, near the back? The one who ran? He was at my parents’ house. He was next to the guy who first shot my dad.”

  Steve’s face went dark.

  “Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”

  “Yes,” Joseph said, though his tone made it sound like he was numb, going into shock.

  “Let’s get everyone inside and get Matthew cleaned up.”

  “Tis only a flesh wound.”

  Dwight groaned, but they went inside where the two younger Taylors had been running down the stairs.

  “Mom, Dad? Joseph?” Amy called, her look confused.

  “We have a lot to talk about,” Angela said.

  “Yeah, y’all do,” Dwight said, “after this fracas, is it gonna be safe for any of you all to stay here?”

  “What do you mean?” Lucy asked.

  “You and Matthew just defended this place, and they were already sore at Steve here. They tried to burn them out. Now that there are dead bodies…theirs…you think they are gonna call it quits?”

  “I hope they do,” Angela said.

  “Well, I do too, but we need to make a plan, in case they don’t,” Dwight told her.

  “Well, shit,” Amber said and then looked shocked when her parents didn’t even correct her.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Amy told Joseph. “Has it been crazy at your house too?”

  Joseph’s eyes filled with tears. Angela pointed towards the living room and Amy and Amber took him by the hand and led the way, a girl on each arm.

  “You got a plan?” Steve asked Dwight.

  “Oh yeah. And if that don’t work, we’ll see what my son thinks.”

  “Your son?” Angela asked. “I thought he was deployed somewhere?”

  “Got back this morning,” Dwight told her, as he continued to scan the bodies on the ground.

  “Shit. We should’ve brought him along with us,” Matthew said, putting a handkerchief Lucy provided across the bridge of his nose.

  “Nope. Didn’t want him to know the shenanigans I was up to. He and some buddies finally made it back to the farm. If I would have known all this was gonna happen…let’s just say that they are probably already scoping this place out.”

  “You got that right,” A big man said walking out from the kitchen.

  He was dressed in jeans, a white cotton t-shirt, and a cowboy hat. He carried a Mossberg 12 gauge loosely in one hand by the middle.

  “God dammit, Carter,” Dwight said.

  Angela was the closest and could see that the big man was in his mid-forties. He had a scar that ran across his neck on a diagonal, and his right hand was horribly scarred across the top like he’d had it pressed into hot coals and it healed badly. The face and look in the eyes were unmistakable: it was Dwight’s boy.

  “How’d you get in here?” Dwight asked.

  “Came in the back door. Lock sucks, ma�
�am,” he said tipping his hat to Angela. “When I saw the fracas y’all were in, I ghosted in the back to make sure nobody came in the bottom to flush y’all out. Monk, Bear, and Loki are out back, covering the other sides.”

  “Excuse me?” Steve asked, confused, disarmed, and not keeping up.

  “We knew this had to be your place by dad’s description this morning. When the shooting started, we made our way over and got into position. Glad to see the old man still has good aim, thought he was gonna wing me when that shot went through the house. I was ready to make my presence known when y’all showed up.”

  “God dammit, Carter!” Dwight said angrily.

  “Carter, thank you,” Steve said holding his hand out.

  After a moment, the soldier returned grips with him.

  “You got a plan?” Steve asked him.

  “I have a feeling he does, look at that shit-eating grin!” Dwight said, suddenly chuckling.

  “Dad was pretty good back in the day. I’m still pretty good now, and I brought my fire team with me.”

  “They any good?” Steve asked.

  “They’re deadly.”

  “Good, I have a feeling the neighborhood just went to shit. We have to figure out who here is working with the guys in the black BDUs.”

  “We’ll recon that later on, let’s get the leakers off your front lawn.”

  “Leakers?” Lucy asked.

  “Inside joke with our boys. The guys out front.”

  Lucy nodded and smiled and turned to Matthew. “You should go get Matty, and we should sit down and make some plans.”

  “That sounds like a good idea,” Matthew said.

  “He’s still at the farm,” Carter told them. “I’ll radio one of the guys to run back and escort him here.”

  Amy walked out of the living room, having listened to part of the conversation. She had tears in her eyes from Joseph’s story he told in part, and she kept looking between Carter and Dwight.

  “Is it going to be ok?” She seemingly asked Carter.

  “Yes ma’am. I promise you,” Carter told her, tipping his hat to her.

  From the living room, they could make out the soft sobs of Joseph, and the quiet murmuring voice of Amber.