Half Past Midnight

Three houses on the street were aflame, illuminating the macabre scene, and while I saw no signs of life, there must have been thirty bodies visible by the flickering light. I was relieved to see that the vast majority of them wore uniforms-Larry’s men. I also noted with approval that none of the corpses still had their weapons. That meant several armed citizens were in the streets nearby. All I had to do was find them without getting myself shot by friendly fire.

An abrupt volley of gunfire punctuated the night, and I instinctively ducked behind a tree before I realized the sounds had come from several blocks north. Checking for any signs of life, I scanned the other houses. Nothing. No movement anywhere. Were they hiding nearby, waiting to shoot the first thing that moved? Or had they moved on to another location? The Petry home was three doors down on the right, but I hesitated at the thought of making myself visible. Instead, I went to the back of the nearest home and began scaling fences until I reached the backyard. Inching my way up to the kitchen window, I peeked inside.

“No!!” I screamed, and threw myself to the ground just as the window exploded above me, and the relative quiet was shattered by the sound of a shotgun blast. Glass shards rained down on me as I tried to identify myself.

“Wait! Eric, it’s Leeland!!” I rolled to the side of the window in case Eric Petry hadn’t heard me before correcting his aim. During that panicked moment, I heard the elder Petry pump the shotgun once more before my words must have registered.

While I was trying to do a belly-crawl through the broken glass at the speed of a desert jackrabbit, I heard his hesitant call. “Leeland? Lee, is that you?”

“Unless you fire that next round, it is! Jesus H., Eric. You nearly blew my head off!” Panting, I rolled onto my back and stared up at the beautiful trail of the Milky Way above. As my heart tried to burst through my rib cage, it occurred to me just how close I had come to never seeing those stars again.

“Lee?” Eric’s voice was above me, concerned, perhaps a little frightened. I looked up and saw his face, upside down from my perspective, as I lay there in the grass… and the glass. “Lee, did I hurt…? Aw, hell, did I shoot you? Are you shot?”

“No,” I gasped. “But not for lack of trying. Oh God, Eric!” I nearly laughed, I was so giddy with relief. Then the pain hit me. “Jeez, I think my arms are cut up from crawling through what’s left of your window.” Raising my arms, I saw that the cuts were all superficial-painful, but far from dangerous.

Megan’s future father-in-law reached down through the empty window frame and offered me a hand. “Better get in here before the shot attracts attention.”

“Yeah.” I groaned as he helped me through the window. “Everyone all right?”

“No.” He turned and walked back into the kitchen. As I followed him in, I saw the blood. God, there was blood everywhere! On the walls, the floor, Eric, and splattered on the food at the table. Smeared, bloody footprints were all over the place. A uniformed man sat in a pool of blood in the far corner, staring down through sightless eyes at the steak knife protruding from his chest. It had been done right, shoved in and twisted, maximizing the damage beyond what the little knife would normally do. The man had probably gone into shock immediately.

“Megan got him.” Petry explained. “She was faster than the rest of us.” He shook his head. “Me and Andrew just sat and stared when they went for their guns. But not Megan.”

My heart jumped into my throat. “Where is she?”

“We realized what was going on then, and we jumped after the other guy.” He nodded to another body, fallen behind the dinner table. “But he had his pistol out by that time. Andrew got to ’im first, and then me, and by God, Leeland, Megan was right there with us. She was so freakin’ fast!” He began to sob. “She just wasn’t quite fast enough. None of us were.”

I was frantic. “Eric, where is she?”

Eyes filled with tears, he pointed upstairs. “I don’t even remember hearing the pistol go off. She tried, Leeland. God in Heaven, I never saw nobody try so hard!” His emotions finally got the better of him, and he sobbed out the rest. “She just wasn’t quite fast enough.”

I tore up the stairs, following a trail of blood so solid it looked as if someone had painted it on the carpet-a trail that led to Megan. She was sitting on the floor of a bedroom with her eyes closed, leaning back against the wall. Her shirt was nearly solid red, covered with blood, her face and hands coated as well. I wanted to scream, but my voice caught, trapped behind the constricting of my throat. My daughter… my baby!

Then she opened her eyes, and I did scream as I stumbled back against the doorframe. “Dad?” she sobbed. “Daddy?” She staggered to her feet, and I barely caught her as she fell against me. It took a moment for me to comprehend what she was saying as she sobbed against my chest. At the sight of Andrew’s body lying on the bed, I finally understood.

“They killed him. They killed him.” She kept repeating it, her personal mantra, her litany of anguish.

“She wouldn’t leave him.” Eric’s voice behind me gave me a start. “How could I do less? The others in the neighborhood left a few minutes ago, but Megan wouldn’t go until we got him up here and laid him out proper. She wanted a few minutes alone with him, so I went downstairs. When I heard you comin’ over the fence… well, you know the rest.”

I suddenly felt self-conscious, holding my daughter in front of Eric, while just a few feet away, his son lay dead. I knew how he must be feeling since I had just run that gamut of emotions myself. But mainly I was just grateful that it wasn’t Megan lying on that bed.

He didn’t seem to notice, though. He stared sightlessly at Andrew’s body.

“Where were the others going, Eric?”

“Big Cypress Creek.” His voice was as distant as his sight. “Said they’d wait there for a little while ’til they could figure out what to do next.”

“How many of them?”

He finally pulled his eyes away from Andrew’s body and turned to me. “’Bout fifty, I guess. But a few of ‘em were hurt pretty bad, so there might be some that didn’t make it.”

“Can you show me the way? I’m supposed to help gather folks up and get them to Amber Peddy’s place as soon as I can.”

Eric nodded. “Go on downstairs. Give me a minute with Andrew.”

Megan sobbed as I half-carried her out of the room and down the stairs. We waited by the front door until Eric came and led us out without a word. As we left the street, I looked back to see the house aflame, burning from the upstairs bedroom down. Turning to Eric, I saw tears and anguish, but mostly I saw hatred-raw, burning hatred for those who had taken his son. I never once saw him look back.

We made it to the creek with no trouble and found the impromptu meeting place where Eric’s neighbors, along with others, had gathered. More than a hundred people were assembled trying to cope with the fact that their lives had just been irrevocably altered in the last hours as much as they had been on D-day.

I sat Megan at the edge of the water and began to clean the blood off of her while listening to the frightened whispers of the crowd. Megan was in shock, unresisting, but not helping either, so it took me a few minutes. As I finished, I scanned the faces around us.

It was immediately evident that these people had absolutely no idea of what to do next, so it took little coaxing to convince them to accompany me to the rendezvous at Amber’s. We broke into three groups, and each took a different route to gather as many people as possible along the way.

A ragtag parade of Rejas refugees, our group skirted the town, gathering others before making it to my home just before the appointed time. When I got there, I had to push my way through a crowd to make it to the house. People milled about, crowded together like the proverbial sardines in a can.

Finally reaching the back door, Megan and I entered to find the inside even more chaotic than the yard. Debra, Cindy, and Zachary, as well as several others I didn’t know, were busy tending the more seriously wounded. Debra saw us as we came in and ran to help as I led Megan inside.

“What happened?” Her voice shook, and she was obviously fighting to keep control. “Oh, my God! Is this blood on her? Her whole shirt is…” she trailed off and frantically began to unbutton Megan’s shirt. I closed the door behind me to preserve my daughter’s modesty.

“She’s not hurt, Deb.” Debra didn’t stop until she had confirmed it for herself. Then she turned frightened eyes to me.

I hesitated, not wanting to mention what had happened in front of Megan. But then I thought that any