AllFreeNovel
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1
A sullen wedge of gunmetal-colored clouds rolled in from the west, autumn’s jackboot crunching down on the Twin Cities. A cold breeze sent fallen leaves skittering along the darkened October streets as a flash of blackbirds passed above the treetops, heading south.
Alex Sand was in the side yard with his boys, Blaine and Arthur, shooting baskets under a yard light. The storm was coming fast. They could smell it, taste it, they could hear the trees bending at the wind front; the falling temperature prickled their skin.
Arthur, the younger son, rolled behind his father who was throwing a pick at Blaine, but Blaine, instead of challenging the pick, rolled the other way and met Arthur coming around, stole the ball, dribbled it once and laid it into the basket.
He rebounded his own shot, made a face at Art and called, “Hey, piggy, piggy, piggy...”
Arthur, who still carried what the family called “baby fat,” shouted, “Shut up, you fuck,” and both boys took boxing stances, feigning an intention to duke it out right there, with bare fists.
Alex: “Hey, hey, hey... knock it off, both of you. If I hear that word again, Art, I will... tell your mother.”
They all laughed at the toothless threat. Alex took the ball from his son, looked up at the darkening sky, and said, “We should get in. It’s coming.”
They hurried around to the front of the house, shoulders hunched against the first fat drops of cold rain, up the steps across the porch and inside.
They were trailed by the killer, who moved unseen from behind a privet hedge. The killer wore a dark hooded rain suit, glasses, a black Covid mask and thin vinyl gloves. Alex and the kids were only a dozen steps ahead as they went through the door.
The doorbell was right there, but... the door wasn’t fully shut. The killer pushed it with a knuckle and as the door swung open, stepped inside. The gun was out and ready. With his off hand, he pushed the door closed behind him.
In the living room, Alex’s back was to the killer. Arthur saw the intruder, eyes widened in what might have been recognition, as the killer lifted the gun and fired two shots into Alex’s back. Alex staggered and went down.
The boys tried to run, twisting, screaming, stumbling but the gun was right there, only six feet away. The killer shot Arthur first, in the hip, and the boy fell, crying out; Blaine was a step farther away, running toward the kitchen, and the killer shot him in the neck.
Alex had been hit low, and lay face-down on the Persian carpet, one hand blindly groping toward the ebony leg of the grandpiano. The killer moved close, and shot him twice more in the back, through the heart. The boys were next, one shot each, the gun dangling from the killer’s hand, only eight or ten inches from the boys’ heads.
In the deafening silence after the murders, the killer heard the baby begin to cry in a side room used as a day nursery. He went that way. The baby looked up from her bassinet, little blue eyes hazy, lips stretched open and wide, the better to scream, as the killer hovered over her....
A nightmare.
—
Like another one,on the very same day, full of the thunder of guns and the scent of blood on the ground.
Lucas Davenport crashed through a hedge and fired two off-balance shots at a fleeing killer who was too far away for his shotgun. The killer stopped, turned, and fired a long fully automatic burst back at him and Lucas was not too far away for an AR-15.
A bullet hit Lucas’s right arm like a blow from a baseball bat and he windmilled the arm backwards as he went down. He screamed, “I’m down, I’m hit.” He struggled to get back up, but his right arm hung uselessly. Pushing up with his left, he put the butt of the shotgun on the snow and used his good hand to jack a shell into the chamber.
Virgil Flowers ran up and shouted, “How bad?” and Lucas shouted back, “Go get him...” Again on his feet, his right arm flopping at his side, Lucas went after the killer, following Virgil, heard Virgil’s shotgun booming in the night, and he kept going, shouted, “Virgil! Coming up behind!”
Virgil shouted something at him and Lucas saw Virgil was bleeding from a head wound, but they both went on, encountered an FBI agent hovering over a wounded agent, kept going.
Virgil was dragging one leg. Lucas realized that he’d been hit there, too, and they went on and then the killer turned again and unloaded another full magazine at them and Lucas got hit in the chest and leg and went down again, and this time, he didn’t try to get back up.
He heard more shooting, Virgil’s shotgun once, twice, and he thought,Got him,and then blacked out for a moment, came back, looking up at the bare branches of an overhanging maple tree, and the pain came.
The pain came like an ocean wave and dimmed his sight. He groaned, once, and sputtered, and it occurred to him that he might be dying. There was a scuffling nearby, and he turned his head, and saw Virgil crawling across the thin, hard-crusted snow.
He said, he thought, “Help me,” as Virgil’s face loomed, close, inches above his eyes, and he saw that Virgil was bleeding heavily from the head wound, the blood rolling down his face and into his eyes.
Virgil’s face hovered and he asked again, “How bad?”
“I dunno...” And... blackout.
—
Anactualnightmare.
