John grabbed the woman’s rifle and gave it a quick shake. “Slow your breathing down. Take your eyes off these guys and get your breathing back to normal,” was all he could think to say.
He waited for the punch to the back of the head that never came. He almost laughed at the thought of being immersed in a firefight while taking a beating from behind from a pissed-off lady whom he’d somehow offended.
The four men continued down the sidewalk closest to the side where Jared and company were waiting inside the house with the wind chimes. When the four would-be robbers, or murderers, or whatever they were, reached the halfway point, John snugged the rifle in his shoulder and leaned forward.
“Fire!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.
He snapped off two quick single-fire shots into the man closest to Jared’s position and watched as the man dropped straight down like a pile of sand. The front of the house Jared occupied erupted as Jared and crew joined the ambush. Curtains actually blew out the window openings as the gasses from Jared’s team’s weapons burst through and out into the formerly quiet afternoon air, effectively drowning out the soothing noise of the wind chimes. John tracked to the next man just as the guy fell, mortally wounded by the looks of his crumpled body on the ground.
From inside the house, Jared watched as the four men came abreast of his ambush position. His finger was itching to make contact with the trigger, but he held, waiting for John’s signal. When he heard John’s booming voice from the far end of the block, Jared torched the first two rounds high, missing the man he’d lined up in his sights as an easy kill. Jared and John hadn’t spoken about whom they’d shoot, so at the moment John yelled, it was a free-for-all. As Jared regained control of his weapon, he fired several rounds into one of the three remaining men and saw he wasn’t the only one pounding the poor soul. The man’s shirt fluttered with the impact of bullets right before gravity snatched at him, dragging him toward his final resting spot on the hard pavement in front of a small modest home with a wind chime.
Jared saw the light-skinned black man turn towards Jared’s position and raise the shotgun. Jared was obscurely aware of the boom from the man’s weapon along with the clattering sound the weapon’s projectiles made when they reached the open windows. Jared wanted to duck, but was acutely cognizant that if he were to duck, it would allow the man an unfettered approach to his position. Rather than duck, Jared fired half a magazine at the man.
As he shot at the man, his mind registered the only other remaining man as he too toppled like a washed-up prizefighter. Everything slowed as Jared saw sparks fly from the shotgun-toting man’s weapon as Jared’s bullets tore into not only the man, but his shotgun as well. It was mesmerizing, like a firework show with all the sound of gunfire, the sparks from Jared’s ricochets, and all the while, a live human being writhed right in the middle of it all. What a wonderfully horrendous occurrence to bear witness to, Jared thought. The aesthetics were dazzling while the reality of the affair was heartbreaking on so many levels.
The world had declined so swiftly Jared’s head swam. These men made a choice to do unspeakable things that would have constituted lifelong prison sentences in the world of old, and now Jared and his friends were ripping them to shreds. When the last of the four men lay in a myriad of contorted and unnatural positions on the sidewalk, street and even the front lawn of Jared’s ambush house, he and his team stopped firing. Faintly, Jared could hear John’s distant voice calling for a cease fire before the last of the shell casings tumbled off windowsills to the floor.
As Jared’s world slowly began to transition from slow motion to real time, he heard Devon’s frightened voice. “Guys—ahh.”
Jared whirled, immediately seeing the cause of Devon’s concern. Dwight was lying on the floor faceup, blood soaking through the front of his shirt. His chest was rising and falling, but his head listed to the side, and his eyes were rolled back slightly in a way that struck panic in Jared.
“Man down!” he screamed out the same window he’d recently been using as a gun port.
Up the street, John heard Jared’s cry and raced to the door of the house he’d used to ambush their assailants. “Come on,” he ordered the women. Both Stephani and Claire leaped to their feet, not wanting to be left alone anywhere, especially after what just happened.
Jared dropped to his knees next to Dwight while Devon and Barry stepped back, shock painted across both their faces. Jared wasn’t trained for this type of incident, possessing no knowledge of how to cope with such an injury. He started to roll Dwight’s head back to face the ceiling, then stopped himself as he heard four quick shots from what sounded like John’s suppressed rifle. He swung his weapon up, training it on the door just as he heard John call out, “Coming in!”
Jared lowered his rifle as John burst through the door, followed closely by Stephani and Claire. At the
