Ryan Westfield - Getting Home

She could do this.

Another thud at the door. They were slamming something into the door, using something like an improvised battering ram. It seemed like the door was steel, judging from the way it was holding up and the sound.

They must have been different soldiers. There was no way the two that’d been shooting at her could have gotten there that fast. She’d barely been inside the house for a full minute, even though time felt like it had slowed down to the consistency of a thick sludge.

Janet slammed into something. She was moving so fast, and totally unable to see, that she’d crashed into a small wooden table, knocking it over completely. Her foot got tangled somehow in it, caught up in the thin spindly legs, and she fell over.

The shotgun clattered noisily to the wooden floor. Janet’s head smashed into the edge of the knocked-over table.

Just then, the door burst open.

Janet hadn’t realized how close she was to it. There must not have been any windows up there by the front door.

Moonlight crashed through, lighting up the area with that dim yellowish off-white light that seemed to make the whole scene more eerie.

A booted foot passed through the threshold of the doorway.

Janet was reaching for the shotgun. Her hand had been moving blindingly across the floor looking for it.

Her head was turned, looking for the gun. With the influx of moonlight, she saw it. Light glinted off the metal.

Her hand touched the metal, but no reassurance flowed through her. The blind panic, the clumsiness, though, did seem to fade. She was left with nothing but the cold knowledge of what she needed to do.

She raised the shotgun with her left hand, bringing it in front of her torso. Her other hand grabbed it.

A second boot crossed the threshold. The barrel of a shotgun was next.

As soon as the torso appeared, Janet pulled the trigger.

The shotgun kicked painfully into her breast. She hadn’t had the time to get it positioned properly.

The figure was thrown back into the busted partially-opened door that had been knocked off its hinges. It hung there loosely until he slammed into it.

His chest was torn up from the shotgun blast, little pockets of blood on his filthy t-shirt.

She saw his face as he slid down, his legs giving out from under him. It wasn’t anyone she recognized.

But she didn’t breathe a sigh of relief. She was fine, at this point, killing those she knew, those that she’d lived with and fought with.

What sent a chill down her spine was the knowledge that another regiment had been dispatched.

There’d be… well, there wasn’t any point in calculating the number… but it was a lot. A lot of soldiers who’d be hunting her down like a dog.

There was another soldier right before the threshold of the door. He was hanging back. He obviously knew that the second he stepped across, he’d be met with a blast from the shotgun.

Janet couldn’t stay there forever.

She needed to get out.

She’d have to make the first move.

With her left hand, she seized one of the thin legs of the knocked-over table. She yanked it hard. The wood snapped.

She didn’t waste a second. She scrambled to her feet, shotgun in one hand, the wooden leg in the other.

Quickly, she got close to the door. As close as she could without actually exposing her body to gunfire.

She tossed the wooden leg out the door, as hard as she could, exposing her hand and arm only for the couple seconds that it took to toss it.

She didn’t wait to hear what happened.

She lowered the shotgun, both hands on it, finger on the trigger, and stepped out in front of the busted and opened door.

She stood in a wide stance, legs spread, her feet around the half-dead man she’d just shot.

Throwing the wood had given her the split second that she needed. It had distracted him just enough to give her a slight advantage.

It was a duel. Whoever was faster would win.

Janet saw the whites of his eyes. She saw the surprise on his face. She saw the dawning realization that he was about to die.

She squeezed the trigger.

The shotgun kicked.

The soldier fell. It had been a good shot, catching him in the head and the neck. Close range. He was done for.

She didn’t bother looking at the destruction she’d caused.

Underneath her, she heard the moaning of the half-dead man.

She heard movement. Something scraping.

Janet looked down. The soldier had taken a knife, and he was waving it around pathetically in the air, trying to slice Janet’s ankles or legs.

Flipping the shotgun around, Janet slammed the butt of it into the man’s face as hard as she could. It made a sickening sound.

The pain must have been too much for him. His hand seemed to go limp, and his grip on the knife fell away. Janet reached down and took it from him easily.

She said nothing as she ran the knife across his throat in one single quick and effective slice.

The blood gushed out.

Janet dropped the knife. She already had one.

The whole fight had taken only a couple minutes. It had felt like an eternity, but now that she was out of the thick of it, she realized just how little time had passed.

Those two other soldiers would have heard the gunshots. They’d be here any moment now.

Or maybe they were waiting for her outside, having gotten into some unassailable position.

What should she do?

Rushing out into the street, through the front door, meant certain death. If it wasn’t the next two soldiers that killed her, it’d be the next two, or the next two. And that was if she was lucky.

She knew she’d already been lucky. Sure, she might have been smarter than the rest of them. Maybe her reflexes were better. But her luck wouldn’t run forever. There was a practical limit to it. And that limit was death.

The tall man stood there with a blank expression on his face.

“Hands in the air,” shouted Max, aiming his Glock, finger on the trigger.

The man did as he was asked. Slowly, he raised his hands above his head. The man had lost a lot of weight. His shirt hung strangely and loosely around him. With his arms in the air, the sleeves of the shirt fell away, revealing how emaciated his biceps had become.

His arms were like sticks, with the elbow the widest part of the arm.

“Don’t move,” shouted Max.

Max moved forward, and Mandy followed.

“Pat him down,” said Max, standing about ten feet from the man, the Glock pointed right at his face. “One false move and you’re dead. You try to hurt her, and you get a bullet. You understand?”

The man nodded. There wasn’t fear in his eyes. There was nothing. Blank, wide eyes that said nothing at all.

Mandy patted him down quickly, doing a thorough job.

“He’s clean,” she said. “No weapons. Nothing at all.”

“Who doesn’t have a weapon these days?” said Max.

The man didn’t answer.

“Tell us what’s going on,” said Max, nodding to the Glock as an incentive. “How many of you are there here?”

The man began to speak in a halting voice, as if he wasn’t used to speaking. “About twenty… no, I mean ten… of us.”

“Which is it?”

“Ten, now.”

“What happened to the rest?”

“Something bad.”

Max interpreted that to mean they’d been killed.

Either the man was dumb, or he’d been through something horrible that had knocked a part of him loose, in some sense. But starvation alone was enough to do that to a man. It shouldn’t have surprised Max.

“Do you have the key to the convenience store? Is that how you’ve been living? Eating the food there?”