Nathan Jones - Shortage

Unless…

Matt abandoned his spot at the window and ran over to where Tam had positioned herself along the other wall. “How many people do you see out there?” he demanded.

The petite woman frowned. “Half a dozen or so. Why?”

“It looks like there’s seven or eight out front. Razor had over 50 men with him.”

Tam’s expression became alarmed. “Wait, you’re saying they’re just keeping us pinned here? That means they could be trying to find another way in here, or they could be—”

“Attacking the rest of the town that doesn’t have weapons to defend themselves,” Matt cut in. That explained Sam’s screaming.

More importantly, if she was screaming she must have been in immediate danger and he’d already wasted half a minute. He left Tam at the window and sprinted through the door at the back of the store into the stockroom. On the other side of the room there was a rolling loading door at the back of the building that was shut and locked, and beside it a normal sized door. Both barriers were shaking and thumping to the sound of men trying to break in, while Chauncey and his son Rick crouched behind piles of stuff Ferris had confiscated ready to open fire on the first attackers to make it through.

Matt hurried over to the two men. “Razor’s keeping us pinned here while his men attack the rest of the town,” he hissed.

Chauncey went white. “I sent Edna and Wes home to hide! We thought he was only interested in this place.”

The memory of Sam’s yelling was making Matt physically sick at how long it was taking him to go to her. “I heard Sam screaming for help,” he snapped. He pointed at the normal sized door. “I need to leave through there!”

“Wait wait wait,” Rick said, almost frantic. “You can’t go out that door. Don’t you hear them trying to break through?”

“If they’re trying to break in they won’t expect us to just open the door,” Matt replied in a whisper, sincerely hoping he was right. “Cover me.”

Without waiting for a response he rushed to the door and, holding his Glock ready with one hand, unlocked it with the other and yanked it open. Outside two men holding sledgehammers stood frozen in shock, while behind them two other men holding pump action shotguns who’d been looking nervously to either side began to turn towards him.

Matt emptied his .40 into the four men and they scattered, all thoughts of attacking him vanishing in their need to escape being shot at point-blank. Three went down while the fourth, one with a shotgun, managed to bolt for cover behind the Tillmans’ delivery truck. Matt ducked to snatch up the other shotgun with his free hand and pursued the lone survivor, seeing but not caring about the six other men gathered around the loading door. One of them had a rifle, which he did care about, and he burst into an all-out sprint for the same cover behind the truck.

Behind him Chauncey and Rick ducked out the door and began firing at the six men off to the left, who suddenly had bigger issues than attacking Matt. The rifleman got off one shot towards the two Watsons before going down with several bullet holes, but since Matt didn’t hear either of his friends cry out in pain he hoped the man had missed.

As Matt reached the cover of the truck he shoved his empty pistol into the front waistband of his pants so he could properly hold the shotgun. He’d gone around the side opposite the thug with the shotgun, and by pure luck the man was so focused on what was behind him that when Matt burst around the back of the truck from the other direction he caught the guy facing the other way.

Matt shot him in the chest before the thug could turn fully around and aim his shotgun. As the man fell Matt racked another shell into the chamber as he bolted for the fence of the house behind Tillman’s, desperate to reach Sam.

He knew there were others around who might be a threat but he couldn’t afford to waste time, so his only option was to go as fast as he could and run a zigzag pattern as he went. When he reached the fence he dove over it, losing the shotgun as he awkwardly caught himself with his hands and rolled to keep from breaking his neck.

He’d heard plenty of gunfire as he ran, but as far as he knew none of it had been aimed at him. Matt crawled on his stomach back to the fence and picked up the shotgun, checking its feed. He could see at least one shell in there, which meant when he’d pumped the action it had injected another shell into the chamber. That gave him two or more shots. He also had the remaining magazine for the Glock, which he took a moment to reload before shoving it back into his waistband to hold the shotgun.

Even those necessary tasks felt like a waste of time as he pushed to a crouch and hurried across the yard, eyes alert for any threat.

Now that he was outside Matt could see that his fears were confirmed that Razor wasn’t just attacking Tillman’s Sporting Goods. It looked as if the nondescript psycho had kept half his men there keeping Aspen Hill’s defenders pinned down while the rest of his gang spread out ransacking houses.

Matt didn’t know what the refugee thugs thought they’d find after a month of Ferris’s “inspections”, but almost immediately to his horror he learned that they’d found something they wanted as much as food.

In the direction of his home and Sam’s danger, the next house along from the yard he was in, was the Thorntons’ residence. At first he thought it was abandoned as he approached the neat rose-lined picket fence leading to it, with the door thrown open and a few bits of furniture strewn over the lawn, but then a muffled noise and a motion by the door made him dive behind the fence in front of him.

A member of Razor’s gang emerged from inside dragging the Thorntons’ 16 year old daughter Alice by her long blond hair. The girl’s face was bloody and she was half naked, begging incoherently between terrified sobs and clutching her hair desperately to keep it from being yanked out at the roots as the thug tossed her onto the front lawn and began fumbling with his grimy pants.

The sight enraged Matt, but it also made him almost frantic with panic as he thought of Sam suffering the same fate because he couldn’t get to her in time. Still, in spite of his overpowering emotions he forced himself to move smoothly as he set aside the shotgun and carefully rose, propped his arms on the fence, and sighted his .40 on the rapist’s center mass.

He couldn’t afford to miss and possibly hit Alice, but he had to take the shot. So just like he’d practiced all those times at the range he fired, regained the target and fired again. Immediately after firing the second shot he snatched up the shotgun and hopped over the fence in case anyone was coming up behind him, doing his best to keep his sights on the falling thug as the man crumpled thrashing atop Alice.

The young woman’s sobs became screams at the sound of gunshots and the man falling on her, and Matt pocketed his Glock again and hurried over to yank the body away one-handed and check that Razor’s thug was dead. He wasn’t, yet, but from the looks of things he would be soon.

Alice stared up at him in numb terror. “Run!” he told her, doing his best to keep his voice calm for her sake. “Find someplace to hide and stay there until this is all over.” Without waiting for a response he sprinted across her yard towards his house once more.

“My dad!” she shouted behind him. “He needs help!”

Matt grit his teeth but kept going, calling out an apology over his shoulder. Much as he would’ve liked to help Mr. Thornton his only thought at the moment was getting to Sam.

The other yards along the street were also strewn with debris from inside the houses, most doors gaping open, but nobody else was in sight so the looters must have moved on. He found out where they’d gone when he reached his house and saw that the front door had been broken open and heard cursing and cries of pain coming from inside.