Gutter

Danny-Boy dragged Jynx up on the porch and helped him into one of the vacated chairs. His leg was soaked, but his gun arm was as strong as ever. Once Jynx was positioned, Danny dropped to one knee, resting the shotgun on the porch rail and awaited his enemies.

The inside of the house was a mass of chaotic sound when Gutter crossed the threshold. The television was tuned to BET and playing slightly louder than it needed to be. The smoke alarm blared as something left on the stove when the shooting started burned. An attractive Latino woman stood in the doorway of the kitchen chanting something Gutter couldn’t make out, while a child wailed somewhere in the distance. Mo-Mo tried to run across the living room, but Rahkim kicked him roughly in the ass, sending him bouncing off the wooden steps and onto the carpet.

“Man, why you fucking wit us!” Mo-Mo yelled. He was in so much pain that he couldn’t even roll for his pistol, which had slid across the room when he bounced off the steps.

“Cuz y’all fucked wit my family,” Gutter shot back, moving to where Mo-Mo was laid out.

“Blood, Gunn drew first blood!” Mo-Mo tried to explain.

“And we’re gonna draw the last,” Rahkim interrupted. “Now die with some fucking dignity!” There was a thunderous roar, but it hadn’t come from Rahkim’s gun. He looked at his nephew quizzically, as if he’d just realized the seriousness of what they were about to do. There was a neat hole in the center of his forehead that had just started to leak blood down his cheek. Rahkim opened his mouth to say something, but there was only the sound of him hitting the floor face first.

“No!” Gutter howled, rushing to his uncle’s side. Rahkim flapped around on the floor like a wounded fish. The blood had now begun to squirt from his head, soaking into the carpet below, while Gutter looked on in horror. Rahkim’s karma had come back around to collect on the debt. No longer able to see his uncle suffer, he finished him with a heart shot. Rahkim Soladine had taken his last ride.

THE MEN who rushed the house were young… the oldest couldn’t have been more than eighteen. They were armed with sticks, bats, and a variety of small-caliber handguns. They had no idea what was going on inside the Drayton residence but they knew that some Crips had invaded their neighborhood, which was reason enough to rush head-on into danger.

Jynx leaned over in the lawn chair and waited for the first victim to step into view. He wore a hard face, but his eyes weren’t those of a killer. He was just a young man willing to live or die in service to his set, and Jynx was all too willing to treat him to the latter. The boy didn’t even have time to scream as the top of his head came off.

Danny’s heart pounded so hard in his chest that he was sure everyone on the block could hear it. When Jynx licked off the mob scattered, but they were still advancing on the house. Sweat ran freely down his face, and his palms were so slick that it’s a miracle that the shotgun didn’t jump out of his hands. A chubby cat armed with a hunting rifle came creeping from the yard of the next house. His were the eyes of a killer. “Kill or be killed, baby boy,” he could hear Gutter telling him. Blinking a bead of sweat out of his eye, Danny caught his first body.

HAD IT not been for quick reflexes, Gutter would’ve gotten hit when Reckless darted out from the back room, firing blind as he hit the stairs. He was a man cornered and would fight until his last breath, but that was fine by Gutter. He wanted him to fight before he made his child a bastard. Drawing Big Gunn’s.44 he took off after Reckless.

By the time Gutter made it to the bottom of the stairs, Reckless was just hitting a landing. He fired a shot, hitting his rival high in the back. Reckless staggered forward, but the railing kept him from falling down. Gutter licked a second shot, but Reckless was off down the hall. When Gutter cleared the second-floor landing, he played the wall and peeked around the corner before jetting into the line of fire.

Reckless’s jog had slowed to a shamble, bouncing him from wall to wall like a drunk. The sheet he’d been clutching to his chest to stop the bleeding got tangled with his legs and he fell to one knee. Firing the gun blindly over his shoulder, Reckless staggered into a bedroom. A wicked smile crept across Gutter’s lips as he knew he had his prey cornered.

“Time to die, pussy,” Gutter said, moving toward the bedroom. Playing the wall, he inched along it and peeked inside. Reckless had his back to the door, frantically fumbling with the window, his spent pistol lying on the floor a few feet away.

“This for my family, nigga!” Gutter roared, cutting loose with the.44. The next few moments went in slow motion, but would forever be etched into his mind. The bullet seemed to move like a slow trickle, but its screech was like the wailing of one thousand police sirens. It was then that Reckless turned to meet his end and Gutter felt his soul shift. The thing he’d been clutching to his chest wasn’t for the bleeding at all… it was his son.

“LOOKS LIKE they came out in full force, huh?” Tears joked, weaving the car left to right down Lime Street. There was a knot of people consisting of angry young men and people trying to be nosey forming a wedge in the middle of the street. On the other side he could see someone bucking a shotgun from the porch.

“Then let’s turn this shit into a mass murder,” Blue Bird said, sliding the AR from the backseat. After chambering one of the missilelike bullets, he sat on the driver’s side window and leaned over the top of the car, bracing the AR against the roof. “Hoover!” he bellowed before scattering the crowd with a barrage of missile-sized bullets. The fortunate bounced off the hood of the car, but the unfortunate would have closed casket funerals.

When Danny spotted the car breaking the crowd he immediately moved to fire on it. Had it not been for him recognizing the silhouette of Blue Bird’s enormous head he would’ve hit the car up.

“Hold your fire, lil nigga!” Blue Bird shouted as he climbed out of the car. “Damn, y’all tore shit up out here.” Blue Bird surveyed the damage.

Danny ignored Blue Bird’s comment. “Jynx is hit, man, and Rah is dead.”

“Hell nah, not my fucking folks!” Blue Bird’s face saddened. For a minute it looked like he would fall over, but Tears helped him to right his self.

“Man, we need to wrap this shit up. With all this gunfire and things I doubt if Mad Man and Lil Blue can keep the police outta here but so long,” Tears said.

“Get Jynx to the whip. I’m ’bout to check on Gutter,” Danny said, disappearing into the house before anyone could protest.

HAD IT not been for the wall behind him, Gutter would’ve landed flat on his back. It felt like someone was squeezing his windpipe, only allowing air through in spurts. His body trembled uncontrollably as he whispered, “No,” over and over. All the rage and hate he had carried in his heart when he entered the house drained away and was replaced by great sorrow as he surveyed the damage he’d wrought.

Reckless was slumped against the wall, just below the window. His eyes were vacant and half of his throat was missing from where the.44 slug hit him. On one side of him lay the pistol that had clicked empty and on the other side, still wrapped in the sheet, was his son.

It was at that moment that Gutter realized that he’d gone too far. Totally forgetting all else he rushed to the child. He was screaming his lungs out and splattered with blood, but from what Gutter could tell he hadn’t been hit. Looking at the dead man and his son and thinking of his own impending delivery made him ill. Hugging the child to his chest, he gave thanks that the boy was unharmed.

There was the sound of movement coming from behind him, but by the time Gutter turned around to see what it was he was deafened by the roar of a shotgun. The woman who had been screaming in the kitchen slammed against the bedroom door with Mo-Mo’s abandoned pistol in her upraised hand. She tried to right herself, but a second blast splintered the door and sent her flying into the dresser behind it. Gutter looked up in total shock as Danny came into the bedroom holding the smoking shotgun.

Danny moved over to the woman’s broken body and nudged her with his foot. He looked over at Gutter who was just staring at him in disbelief and simply said, “She was gonna pop you, man. I had to shoot the bitch. Tears and them is outside, cuz. We gotta dip.”

Gutter looked from the monster he’d created to the young life he’d almost snubbed and let out a heavy sigh. When he’d set out, Reckless had been little more than another enemy to be executed, but the child in his arms changed the dynamics of that. By his own hands another black baby would have to grow up without his parents and