Tim McGregor - Killing Down the Roman Line

She followed him onto the porch where he pointed across the field. An orange glow lit up the treeline like a false sunset. Flames wisped up and winked out and rose again. Whatever was burning out there had to be big. The house itself?

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. Come back inside, honey.”

“No.”

She chased him back inside and locked the door and hurried him into the kitchen. Crises spilling all over the place, one went to the kitchen. Why? To brew more tea? Make a sandwich?

She should call the police. They would stop it. But Jim had told her to leave if he called. He meant for her and Travis to be far away when the trouble started.

“We should go over there.” Travis pressed his nose against the dark glass of the window.

“Stay away from the window, honey.”

“What if Dad’s in trouble?” Travis didn’t move, didn’t even turn around.

“Get away from the window!”

Travis spooked like a horse and turned with a nasty look on his face and she immediately regretted it. She was regretting a lot of things tonight. Let this be the last of it.

Travis flopped into a chair and she dialled Jim’s number again.

Bill Berryhill was still alive. Out there in the dark, calling for help. For his mother. Pleading with God to make the hurting stop.

Jim couldn’t tell where the voice was coming from. Just out there, somewhere. Puddy stifled his moaning and stilled himself, listening to those awful cries. “Can you see him?”

“I can’t see anything.”

The crackle of the burning truck and then the cries started up again. Bill called out Jim’s name, begging Jim for help.

Jim crept forward, one knee in the damp clover, ready to go to him. He did it without thinking. His name called out by a man injured in the dark, a magnetic pull impossible to deny.

Puddy held him back, hissing in his ear. “Don’t be stupid. He’ll shoot you down before you get there.”

“I can’t just listen to that.”

“Do you think I want to?”

Bill wouldn’t let up, calling and crying and pleading. When no one came, he turned nasty. Jim, you fucking bastard! This is your fault! This all your fucking fault you fucking bastard!

Worse than the cries for help, stinging deeper than the lead shot puncturing his leg. Worse because of its veracity. Puddycombe gripped his arm, worried he’d run but all Jim did was lower his head.

“Don’t you listen to that,” Puddy hissed. “He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

An image popped into Jim’s brain, slotting down in front of his eyes. Stones tumbling into the weeds, rolling and knocking through strands of timothy. The tractor blade pushing down the old stone fence that divided the property.

Who was going to know? Go ahead, till that unused land.

In knocking down the stone fence he had rifled a graveyard that should never have been disturbed. Shaking loose the old ghosts, uprooting them from the cold soil. Uprooting Hell. Bill was right. He wished he could tell him that.

Puddy was hissing into his ear again. Tugging his sleeve the way Travis used to, hijacking attention. He snarled at Puddy, annoyed at the man’s insistence but then he saw what it was.

Corrigan stood in the yard, twenty feet to their left. Looking north into the night, to the sound of Berryhill’s cries. In plain view and wide open. The shotgun in one hand, cracked open at the hinge. Slotting fresh hulls into the barrels. Vulnerable.

The Mossberg lay in Jim’s lap. One round left, loaded into the chamber. One shot, make it count. His fingers wrapped around the grip but his hands had gone numb like frozen clubs at the end of his wrists. But all he had to do was swing the gun up to his shoulder and blow the son of a bitch away. He didn’t even have to really aim at this distance. The spread of buckshot would flay the man to shreds. But he had to do it slow, a sudden movement would alert Corrigan.

Puddycombe held his breath and leaned back away from the gun barrel. Hope bubbled his stomach, they were gonna make it after all—

Ring. Ring.

The phone in Jim’s pocket.

As loud as bombs.

Click. Corrigan had the gun snapped and shouldered in less than a heartbeat. Squinting down the barrels with Jim dead to rights.

Jim’s hands atrophied. He almost pissed himself, eyes dilating at the twin bores pointed at his face.

The phone rang on and on, burning a hole in Jim’s pocket.

Corrigan leered at him. “That’d be the missus, yeah?”

Puddycombe started whimpering. Arms covering his head like it could ward off the shotgun blast. “Please…”

“Don’t beg, Mister Puddycombe,” Corrigan spat. “You come up here like cowboys looking for blood, the least you can do is take your punishment like a man.”

“Wait,” Jim broke, his guts ready to pour out. The rifle a stick of useless in his frozen hands. “Just wait a minute.”

The gun barrel raised up a notch, Corrigan squaring the bead between Jim’s eyes. “Goodbye Jimmy Hawkshaw—”

A new sound broke the spell, sharp and metallic. The click-clack of a bolt sliding, locking. Corrigan tore his eyes from his gunsight.

Combat Kyle shimmered in the heat ripple of the burning truck. His face freckled with blood and Hitchens’ lost rifle in his hands. Aimed square at Corrigan. His teeth bared, chittering at a curse. “F-f-fucking p-p-pig,” he spat, taking forever to chew off each consonant. “D-d-drop the f-f-fucking gun!”

Corrigan, cold as stone. “Go home, little man.”

Nobody moved. A Mexican standoff.

“Fucking shoot him!” Puddy shrieked.

No one was minding the bottle. Least of all Kyle. Still burning less than a stride away from his foot. The Molotov exploded, the inferno swallowing Kyle to the waist in flames and glass shrapnel.

The shockwave punched Corrigan out at the knees. Slammed Jim and Puddycombe hard up against the tank.

Combat Kyle bansheed at the flames riffling over him. It didn’t sound human. The burning man scurried this way and that like some lesser demon spit out of damnation to dance on the ground, flames dripping from its flailing hands. The man no longer visible, a black silhouette inside rippling waves of orange. He fell and then crawled towards the two men and then collapsed. Rolled over. A godawful hissing sound leaked out of him.

Jim felt his arm being tugged. Puddycombe pulling him away, screaming at him to run. Jim stumbled along, legs stiff and uncooperative. Dragging the Mossberg along.

God knew where Corrigan was. Hell with it. Keep running.

They tripped over Berryhill. The big man on his hands and knees, crawling away in the dark. “Help me up!” Bill’s voice shrill and terrified.

They each hooked an arm and hauled Berryhill to his feet, grunting and wheezing under the strain. “Move your feet, you fat bastard!” Puddycombe barked, blowing out his cheeks. “I can’t carry you!”

Jim looked over his shoulder. The house, the burning truck. The smouldering man. No Corrigan.

Keep moving.

Berryhill lurched and pitched on puppet legs. Clinging to the two men, a hair away from bringing them all down in a tumble. “Don’t you fucking leave me!”

Jim bit back the pain in his leg. He could feel it bleeding fresh, leaking down his ankle into his boot. Soaking the sock sticky and hot. Eyes front. Where to run? Hitch’s Tahoe sat in the rutted track where they’d left it. “Get to the truck! Move your fucking feet, Bill!”

“I am!”

They jerked and stumbled like tenpins. Hitchens had left the keys in the ignition. Jim remembered seeing them there.

A gun blast, the shotgun report cracking in their ears. All three went down. When Jim looked up, he saw the blown out front tire of Hitch’s Tahoe. Something shuffled in the darkness and the shotgun sang again. The vehicle listed as the rear tire was shot out.