Tim McGregor - Killing Down the Roman Line

Tangling in the chokecherry bush, he pitched forward and tumbled onto his lawn. The lone bulb of the porch light left on.

The truck was still in the driveway.

He collided into the backdoor and bounced off of it. Forgetting that he told her to lock it. He banged on the glass. “Emma! Open the door.”

The window went dark. Didn’t she know it was him? Jim looked back the way he came. No sign of Corrigan, no ghostly light in the dark fields.

He pounded the wood and didn’t stop, cursing Emma to open the door. When the lock turned he almost knocked her to the floor getting inside.

Emma stopped cold when she saw his face. Flecked with blood, the raw panic in his eyes. “What happened?”

“Where’s Travis?” His eyes worked the room but couldn’t find his son.

“You’re bleeding.”

“Travis!”

“God, sit down. Let me see that.” Emma pulled a chair close but he waved it away. If he sat down now he wouldn’t get up.

“We have to get out of here.” He grabbed her shoulder to stay upright. “You drive.”

Travis ran into the room and looked out the window. “What’s going on?”

“Get away from the window!”

The window exploded over Travis’s head. A brick bounced and banged across the floor. Broken glass everywhere. Everyone on their knees. Emma pulled the boy to her, hands through his hair looking for cuts.

Travis pulled away, gaping at the shattered window. “What was that?”

Jim killed the lightswitch. “Stay down.”

The boom of a shotgun blast outside the house. Then another.

Jim inched up over the broken window sill. Two tires on the pickup were shot out, flat and dead. Corrigan broke the shotgun and reloaded. Calm and unhurried. Out duck hunting on a chill October day.

Emma’s hands pulled him back. “Get away from there.”

He pushed Travis towards the hallway. “Keep down. Out the back”

Exactly where they would go, he didn’t have a clue. Hiding inside wasn’t an option, the bastard would just blast his way in. And then where would they be?

Doubled over, Emma crabbed to the kitchen. The backdoor left open. From there, they could run straight into the fields where Jim knew the terrain. At the very least they could hide in the dark, all night if they had to. Make their way up the road when it was safe.

The kitchen window burst over their heads. The lantern hurled inside and shattered on the linoleum. Kerosene splattered over the kitchen, igniting instantly. Flames traced the fuel across the floor, licked up the walls. The old curtains blazed up, curling and blackening in a toxic stink.

They backpedalled away in a panic like swimmers spotting a jellyfish. Back to the front door, Jim leading the way but stopping short, Emma knocking into his back. A shadow filled the window in the front door. It jostled from a hard kick.

“Down!” Jim lunged at the basement door and flung it back. Wooden steps leading down. There was nowhere else to run.

The hallway between them and the kitchen was already a rectangle of fire.

Corrigan stood in the grass looking up at the house. The flames in the window glimmered up his dark eyes. The farmhouse was shabby and old, almost as old as his own house. Renovations and repairs overtop a dryrot skeleton of post and beam.

It would burn nicely.

He went around to the front and up the porch steps. The picture window a gaping mouth of shattered teeth. The door was locked, that was expected. Resting the stock against his hip he raised the barrels square at the knob. It incinerated under the gun blast. A gaping maw of splintered wood and gunblack. It kicked in easily.

There would be no reprieve for old Jim this night. The son of a whore had tried to kill him and you couldn’t let people get away with things like that.

What would the neighbours think?

Travis pulled the chain overhead, popping the dusty bulb on and making everyone blind. Jim snapped it off again. The darkness was total until their pupils shuttered all the way open.

“What now?”

“Quiet.”

They listened to the crackle of fire in the kitchen. Then the report of the shotgun, shaking the timbers of the house. The sound of the door being kicked open.

The thud of boots overhead. He was inside.

Travis’s chest was heaving. He never did well with dusty rooms and now dust salted down from the unfinished ceiling, dripping from the floor joists at the boots stomping across their floor. He looked at his dad. “Is he gonna kill us?”

“No,” Jim said. He felt Emma’s eyes but he couldn’t look at her. “No, he’s not.” Lie or no, there wasn’t any other answer to give.

Corrigan stalked into the parlour. Empty, he moved on. A closed door near the hallway, a closet or a room he didn’t know. He kicked it open and fired blind. Cans blew off wooden shelves, preserve jars exploded. Nothing more.

Pressing on. The doorway into the kitchen was orange with flames. Another closed door on his left. Same routine. He booted it open and let the shotgun rip. Paper and books somersaulted. A cramped office, also empty.

He unhinged the shotgun and reloaded. One more closed door, then the stairs leading to the second floor. Choices. If they were upstairs, he would simply let them burn.

“Jim! Come out!” Snapping the rifle closed, he took another step towards the kitchen. The heat rolling out from the back of the house toasted his cheek, like peering into the grate of a blast furnace.

“Come out, Jimmy! Come out and I’ll spare the woman and the boy!”

Emma covered her ears at each report of the gun. The three of them huddled in the dark, listening to the man blast his way through their house. She looked at Jim as they heard the ultimatum. Travis’s eyes darted between his parents and the basement door.

Jim stumbled through the dark to the window on the north wall. The only one in the basement, and so small. Travis the only one that might slither through. He tugged the handle but the frame wouldn’t budge. The old house had settled, trapping the pane in the sill.

Emma groped around for a tool. A brick, anything. “Here.” She handed up a short metal pipe from a stack on the floor.

“Look away.” Jim smashed out the glass, bashing out the shards along the pane as best he could. Dropping the pipe, he cupped his hands together for a foothold. “Travis, up you go.”

Travis eyed the narrow slot. “You can’t fit through there.”

“Run for help,” Jim said. “Keep away from the house. Take the creek back to Meyerside’s farm.”

The boy shook his head at what his dad was asking. “No.”

“Don’t argue, Travis!” Emma stifled the panic squeezing her heart. “Just go.”

“Go on, son.” Jim thrust out his cupped hands, urging the boy to step in. “We’ll be right behind you.”

“No you won’t.” Travis backed away. The look in their eyes was alien. Possessed.

Emma’s voice broke, hitching up in sobs. “Travis, please.”

The basement door burst open. Boots thudding on the steps and firelight arcing down the wall.

“Jimbo…”

Travis felt his collar yanked hard. Emma pulled him sideways and shoved him into a dark niche behind a shelf. A narrow rabbit hole, she pushed and folded her son inside. Hissed at him to be quiet.

Bootheels rang off the wooden steps.

Emma scrambled for somewhere to hide but nothing presented itself. She ducked behind the meat freezer and coiled up small as she could. Her hands were empty, nothing to defend herself with. No hammer or axe. Nothing within reach now.

Jim scrambled for the pipe he’d used on the window and gripped it tight. A foot and a half of cast iron, an inch in diameter. A caveman’s club against twin bores of twelve gauge horror. The metal was cool in his sweaty hands and he couldn’t get a solid grip on it.