Travis the only one that might slither through. He tugged the handle but the frame wouldn’t budge. The old house had settled, trapping the pane in the sill.
Emma groped around for a tool. A brick, anything. “Here.” She handed up a short metal pipe from a stack on the floor.
“Look away.” Jim smashed out the glass, bashing out the shards along the pane as best he could. Dropping the pipe, he cupped his hands together for a foothold. “Travis, up you go.”
Travis eyed the narrow slot. “You can’t fit through there.”
“Run for help,” Jim said. “Keep away from the house. Take the creek back to Meyerside’s farm.”
The boy shook his head at what his dad was asking. “No.”
“Don’t argue, Travis!” Emma stifled the panic squeezing her heart. “Just go.”
“Go on, son.” Jim thrust out his cupped hands, urging the boy to step in. “We’ll be right behind you.”
“No you won’t.” Travis backed away. The look in their eyes was alien. Possessed.
Emma’s voice broke, hitching up in sobs. “Travis, please.”
The basement door burst open. Boots thudding on the steps and firelight arcing down the wall.
“Jimbo…”
Travis felt his collar yanked hard. Emma pulled him sideways and shoved him into a dark niche behind a shelf. A narrow rabbit hole, she pushed and folded her son inside. Hissed at him to be quiet.
Bootheels rang off the wooden steps.
Emma scrambled for somewhere to hide but nothing presented itself. She ducked behind the meat freezer and coiled up small as she could. Her hands were empty, nothing to defend herself with. No hammer or axe. Nothing within reach now.
Jim scrambled for the pipe he’d used on the window and gripped it tight. A foot and a half of cast iron, an inch in diameter. A caveman’s club against twin bores of twelve gauge horror. The metal was cool in his sweaty hands and he couldn’t get a solid grip on it.
He slid behind the metal shelf of sleeping bags and a six-man tent that still had the tags on it. A camping trip he had promised Travis. Bass fishing up in the Lake of Bays, where an uncle had taken him fishing as a boy. Another broken promise to be stacked up with the others. Lies and half-truths. Promises made heedlessly just to end a conversation or stifle a tantrum.
The footsteps stopped. A silhouette towered at the bottom of the stairs, backlit against the flames arcing down the doorway. The rifle in hand, squinting into the blackness.
Jim ducked low, raking the end of a fishing pole against his ear.
“Travis come out!” Corrigan slurred forward. “You and your mother can leave. Your father and I need to talk.”
Jim strained his eyes into the shadow where his son was hiding. He saw nothing of the boy but he could feel Travis holding his breath. Fighting himself to remain absolutely still.
Corrigan cocked his ear, listening for sounds above the crack and pop of the fire. “Quickly son! Before the flames get us.”
The shadow where Travis nested spilled noise. A crinkle. Shoes scraping the gritty concrete. Corrigan angled his ear towards it, triangulating the source in the darkness.
Jim was sure the man could hear his heart clanging in his chest, it was that loud. Could Corrigan see them hiding like kids in a pathetic bluff of blind men? Jim shifted the pipe to his left hand and smeared his right palm against his jeans.
Corrigan skulked in. Called out to him in the dark. “Did she tell you, Jimmy? Did your wife tell you what we did?”
Barbed and sharp, ripping through his chest like the dirty nail that tore up his back. Jim tried to squeeze the words back out of his ears.
Like telling a drowning man not to swim. His knuckles turned white over the pipe. He clocked Emma across the room, squeezed up against the freezer. She was looking right at him, the terror naked in her face. She was shaking her head, silently communicating the same words in his head.
“She’s soft as a kitten, she is.” Corrigan wouldn’t let up, knowing which buttons to push. The shotgun bolstered against his hip. “She’s a fighter, I’ll give you that but oh my…”
“…she knows how to fuck a man dry.”
There was no doubt how this would turn out. And everyone in that hot dark space knew it.
Jim sprang from his hidey-hole, swinging the pipe overhead. In his mind, an image of Corrigan’s skull split down the middle like a pumpkin.
Corrigan blocked the strike with the rifle but felt Jim tumble into him. The barrel knocked against Jim’s jaw and Corrigan pulled the trigger. The buckshot hooked Jim’s ear and shredded it clean off. The noise ruptured the tympanic membrane but his momentum carried him forward, crashing Corrigan into a cabinet.
Wood popped and split. They tumbled through, Jim clawing at the weapon. Corrigan rolled with the tackle, came out on top. He cracked the stock into Jim’s backbone.
He went down. Felt the floor against his cheek, cold and hard. Then heat like hot tears. Blood trickling out of his blasted ear. Eyes swimming up, Jim looked square into the twin bores of the shotgun.
Corrigan gnashed his teeth. “Time to pay the piper, Jimbo.”
Something buzzed through Jim’s head, something he’d heard or read. “A prayer,” he spit. “Gimme a moment to pray.”
Corrigan’s teeth unclenched and he laughed like he’d never heard anything so funny. “That’s good! Well played!”
Jim remembered where he’d heard it before. The last plea of the Corrigan woman before the vigilantes broke her skull.
Corrigan thumbed back the hammer on the shotgun to play his part to the end. “You can pray in Hell.”
Kingdom Come.
A rustle from the corner. A scream. A banshee flew at Corrigan with a ball peen hammer in both hands. Emma swung for the gunman’s head. Corrigan blocked it with the rifle. The metal clang rattled Emma to the bone. He slammed the pan of the stock into her cheek.
It was all so fast. Jim kicked out like he was on fire, hooking the bastard’s knee. Cartilage popped. Corrigan stumbled but didn’t lose grip of the gun.
Jim swept the floor, snatched up the iron pipe and smashed it against Corrigan’s gunhand. Fingerbones splintered. The rifle dipped, then clattered to the floor.
Overtop the white sting in his ear, Jim could hear someone urging him on. Travis.
He swung hard and drove the pipe into man’s back. The kidneys. Corrigan dropped.
Emma felt her heart burst, juiced on so much adrenaline. And the man went down. They weren’t dead. Travis spurring his father on, yelling at him for more. She pulled the boy into her, bearhugging his flailing arms when he fought back. Hushing him like a baby. “Enough. It’s all over. “
The boy squirmed but Emma coiled tighter until he was spent. She felt the first hiccup of a sob shudder and then he went limp. She called out to Jim.
He didn’t react. Didn’t hear her, didn’t hear anything. His entire being focused on the piece of shit writhing on his basement floor. The iron pipe still in his hand. It felt solid and true and his palm was no longer sweaty. A good grip, he closed in.
William Corrigan caught the look in Jim Hawkshaw’s eye and crawled away. Crabbing backwards, his shattered hand cradled into his chest. The good hand raised up to ward off the coming blow.
“Jimmy,” he wheezed. “Jim…”
Jim stomped on the man’s ankle to hold him still and swung with everything he had. The iron broke Corrigan’s skull above the left eye. A black hole that welled up with blood. The eyes rolled over white. The legs twitched and the arms jerked as the man went into spasms.
Jim swung again. Putting his shoulder into it. Blood flecked up his arm. The seizures fired and Corrigan flopped like a fish scooped into the bottom of a boat.
