Steven Konkoly - Event Horizon

“Nice job, Walkers!” he yelled, nodding at Samantha as she climbed over the sandbags.

His hands automatically reloaded the rifle while he assessed the situation. He didn’t detect any return fire, which confirmed his panicked suspicion that the thirty-caliber machine gun had been the centerpiece of the militia’s attack. Panicked for a reason. If the thirty-caliber had come into play, most of them would be lying in their own blood on the floor. Designed to stop standard .223 projectiles, the sandbag barriers would prove little match for the .30-06 bullet fired by the Browning machine gun. He’d spent more than half of a thirty-round magazine putting the gun out of action, killing its crew and disabling the ammunition box. The gun was still serviceable, but he doubted anyone would heave the bodies out of the way and try to work the gun.

A bullet snapped through the pine cabinet to the right of the kitchen window, knocking the door open and spilling blue ceramic fragments onto the granite counter. Another bullet hit the top of Ed’s protective barricade, spraying dirt over his clumsy attempt to reload the AR. It was taking everyone too long to reload. Ryan’s HK416A5 answered the sporadic crackle of distant small arms with a sustained burst of automatic fire. Alex caught movement beyond Ed, near the corner of the barn.

“Get down!” he screamed, kneeling behind the safe box.

Bullets sliced through the kitchen, shattering the sliding glass door and splintering the kitchen table. He felt the safe box shudder as projectiles hammered through the sheet metal, their energy absorbed by the tightly packed dirt. He dashed across the open area in front of the basement door in an attempt to reach his father, who was firing rapidly at the left side of the barn. He slid into the great room on the hardwood floor, bullets puncturing the wood behind before he reached Tim Fletcher in the corner. A quick glance through one of the western windows showed a figure stumbling into the open, a victim of the .308 bullets that his dad had fired through the barn. A single aimed shot from Tim’s Vietnam-era relic collapsed the man on his stomach.

“Focus on this side!” he yelled and sighted in on the men exposed beyond the right corner of the barn.

The sandbags and windowsill in front of Alex exploded, driving him beneath the top of the barrier. He spit dirt and pieces of wood onto his vest as the fusillade continued. An extended burst of automatic fire from Ryan’s position slowed the rate of incoming fire long enough for him to put his rifle into action. Jamming the vertical fore grip against the sandbags, he canted the rifle and fired rapidly using the forty-five-degree angled iron sights. Under heavy fire, the men disappeared behind the barn; one pulled lifelessly out of sight by his legs.

Tim squeezed beside him, seeking some of the cover provided by the barricade. Bullets snapped and ricocheted through the great room, clanging off the wood-burning stove behind them. Alex glanced around the half wall separating the great room from the kitchen and watched their once beautiful kitchen methodically disintegrate as the rate of fire increased.

Most of the cabinets sat wide open, knocked off their hinges to expose broken plates and glasses. The stainless-steel refrigerator’s door panel was dented in three places around small holes. Water spewed out of the shattered chrome faucet. A bullet burst through the half wall a few inches left of his head, splitting the distance between Alex and his father. Unfazed by the fresh coating of drywall dust, Tim Fletcher kept shooting his M14 at the trees.

The men hidden in the woods were finding their rhythm after the intense fusillade that sent over two hundred rounds of various calibers into the trees without warning. Even if Alex’s crew managed to kill or disable half of the men, six ARs in semi-proficient hands were capable of returning the same number of bullets twice every minute. Alex wiped his yellow-tinted shooting glasses with his sleeve and leaned into his father’s ear.

“Ryan, what’s your status?’

A few nervous seconds passed.

“Busy. They’re finding good cover behind the trees.”

“Copy. Keep your fire rate high. Out.”

Another round of bullets sliced through the drywall, stinging his face.

“Watch the left side, in case they send another guy. I’ll be right back,” he said to his dad and slid along the floor to Ed’s position. “What are you seeing?” he asked Ed, firing three rounds at a head peeking around the barn.

“Not much of anything! I can’t see shit anymore!”

Alex scanned the tree line through his riflescope and saw the problem. The bright light reflecting off the leaves and bushes contrasted with the dark forest behind them, making it nearly impossible to find a well-concealed, man-sized target in the short period of time allowed by the incoming bullets. The effect was similar to looking inside a dark house on a sunny day. The militia had the opposite situation. Even though they couldn’t easily identify individual targets within the house, the windows and doors made obvious targets for their rifles. Dirt sprayed Alex’s face, followed by several thumps against the sandbag barrier.

“It’s holding together nicely,” he said, patting the sandbags.

“Doesn’t matter. It’s getting harder to put my head over the top to fire,” said Ed.

Alex checked his watch. “The marines arrive in seven minutes.”

“That’s too long,” said Ed, rising to fire.

Somewhere in the distance, the sound of a second battle rose to a crescendo, competing with the gunfire from the northern tree line.

“What the hell is that?” said Ed, ducking as dirt sprayed and the sandbags thumped.

The Thorntons.

Linda leaned into the sandbags and sighted in on the first man to emerge from the trees. Bullets tore chunks out of the drywall around her and fractured the windowsill, stinging her face as she fired three steady shots into the man, dropping him in the tall grass. Alex wasn’t bullshitting about needing these glasses.

“I need some help here!” she said, catching Charlie’s arrival in the adjacent window through her peripheral vision.

A bullet or splinter grazed her hat, followed immediately by a metallic crack that almost knocked the rifle out of her grip. She jammed the rifle into her shoulder and stared through the EOTech, quickly determining that the sight had been destroyed. Linda flipped the sight’s quick-release lever and yanked it off the tactical rail, tossing it aside. She triggered the rear flip-up sight and leaned into the gun, finding a staggered column of four men sprinting toward the house. One of them fell to his knees, a geyser of bright red arterial spray erupting above his left clavicle as he pitched forward. She aligned her rifle’s sights with the next uniformed target and pressed the trigger rapidly, tumbling the man into the patchy field.

She shifted her aim and started to press the trigger when a bullet exploded through one of the sandbags in front of her, striking her in the chest below the rifle and spinning her forty-five degrees to the right. Unable to breathe from the hammer strike to her ribs, she attempted to turn and face the window. Still kneeling, a second bullet caught her in the left ankle.

Charlie fired at the magnified target in the middle of the green holographic circle and shifted the rifle to find another. He aimed at the next man’s stomach, knowing that the bullet would arrive a fraction of a second later, when the man’s upper torso crossed the bullet’s path. Leading a target moving toward or away from the shooter at this short distance required minimal adjustment. He eased the trigger as the man tumbled out of view, leaving a splash of red in his field of vision.