“What’s going on over there?” Marty Price yelled over the radio on Cami’s belt.
Cami snatched at the radio with a hand that trembled. She ducked down below the sink to answer as Gary looked for a target through the slot in the plywood. “We’re under attack!” Cami reported. “The HOA sent some thugs to break in and take our supplies—they’re not messing around anymore!”
“Roger that. Keep your heads down—I’ll see if I can’t even the odds a little. You kicked over quite the hornet’s nest, missy,” Marty reported.
“What am I looking at?” she replied.
“I see…at least half a dozen men—big ‘uns, too—in your backyard. Another group out front. Going loud.”
“What?” Cami asked, but Marty didn’t reply.
A thunderous boom reverberated through the house and a man screamed outside, a sound shrill enough to shatter glass.
“Whoa!” Gary said as he stepped back from the window. He looked at Cami, his eyes wide. “Some guy just lost an arm out there! It…it blew right off!”
Cami grinned. “Marty just joined the fight.”
“With what?” asked Gary. He turned back to the window and raised the AR, then fired off a quick shot. “Missed! Dang it…” he shifted his aim and looked for another target.
Cami scrambled from the kitchen and raced for the stairs. She found Mitch at the front door. “I’ll watch the front—Amber’s okay—they shot at her and missed, it just surprised her, that’s all.”
Cami nodded and ran up the stairs. She had to see for herself that her daughter was okay. “Amber!” She cried when she went into the empty FROG.
“Back here—my room!”
Cami thudded down the hallway and flew into Amber’s room.
“Get down!” Amber hissed from the corner nearest the only window. Shattered glass peppered the floor, and Cami dropped immediately. A rifle shot cracked from outside and bits of drywall dust rained down on Cami. She looked up and saw two bullet holes in the ceiling.
“Are you okay?” she whispered.
Amber nodded. “It just scared me—they know I’m up here now and I can’t shoot back…I’m sorry…”
Fury roiled in Cami’s chest. Some dirtbag not only shot at her home but tried to kill her daughter. “Pass me the rifle.” Amber slid the scoped weapon across the glass-covered floor, and Cami backed out of the room. “Wait until I shoot. Use your pistol.” Amber nodded, tears on her cheeks. “You can do this, baby. These people out there, they’re the ones who started this, never forget that. But we’re the ones who are going to finish it. You understand me? They don’t want you to ever see your father again.”
Amber narrowed her eyes. That was exactly the response Cami had hoped for. She stood in the hallway and ran to the second guest room where she and Reese kept the bulk of their emergency food and supplies. The blinds were still drawn, so she moved quickly and managed to open the window just wide enough for her to get the rifle through without being seen.
In the face of the incoming gunfire that chewed up her house, Cami slowly raised the blinds and found her targets halfway between the house and the garden. They hid behind the shed and took random shots at her daughter. They laughed.
“I got a joke for you…” she muttered as she put the crosshairs on the snarling face of one of the targets. She dropped the reticle to his chest, but before she could fire, he ducked behind the corner again. She spotted his foot, still visible on the ground, so she knew he hadn’t gone too far around the corner. The shed was made of mostly OSB clad in thin cedar siding. Cami shifted aim a little in from the corner and squeezed the trigger.
The rifle bucked and a chunk of wood flew from the corner of the shed, followed by a man who toppled over into the grass and writhed on the ground. She hoped he screamed, too, but she couldn’t hear because the rifle’s report, contained inside the guest room, had been deafening.
When Cami's ears stopped ringing, she peeked around the corner and saw a body on the ground behind the shed. The second man had disappeared. She swung the rifle around, and hoped to find another target, but they'd all taken cover. Incoming fire against her house seemed to have slacked off as well. She crept down the hallway back to Amber's room.
"How's everything in here?" she asked Amber.
"They got real quiet after you shot that guy by the shed. Nice one, mom."
Cami raced back down the stairs and decided to deal with her daughter’s congratulations upon killing a man in her backyard later. Much later. Downstairs, she found Mitch still at the front door, though he danced from one foot to the other.
"I can hear them outside Cami, they're up to something—but I can't tell what."
She moved forward and cautiously looked out the peephole. Shorty was back, along with two other men, all of them armed. She stepped aside just in time for a bullet hole to appear in the center of the door. "Get back," she yelled, and shooed Mitch into the living room. He crept up to the plywood-covered window and peered out the slot. "I can't see them from here.”
More gunshots crackled at the back of the house, and someone screamed from the kitchen. "Stay here, and blast anybody that gets through that door!"
Mitch nodded and took up a position in the corner of the living room that allowed him to cover the front door with minimal exposure to himself. “Good to go!” he reported.
Cami sprinted down the hallway and skidded to a stop in the kitchen. Gary lay
