They had a shotgun pointed at him.
"Where are the Baylors?" yelled Chuck, backing away slightly, moving his gun back and forth from one person to the other. "What did you do with them?"
That sense of unreality gripped me again as terror settled into my gut.
"We told you to get out of here, boy!"
"I"m not leaving! You tell me what-"
With a sharp crack and a boom, Chuck"s gun and the shotgun went off at nearly the same time. They shot him at point-blank range, and even from a distance, we could see blood splatter as he lifted into the air and fell spinning off the deck. Lauren cried out beside me, and we ducked down.
"Run," I whispered to Lauren, pushing her ahead of me. "RUN!"
Doubled over, we ran past the parked cars and down the driveway, and then straightened up, running at full speed back up the road. My lungs burned, my arms and legs pumping, barely feeling like I was connected to what was happening.
I should have brought a gun. Why didn"t I bring a gun?
If I had, I"d probably be dead too.
Just run.
Behind me I could hear some commotion, some yelling. They must have seen us.
Run faster!
After what felt like an eternity, we reached the driveway of our cabin. Maroon 5 was playing loudly on the truck"s sound system, its windows down, and Adam Levine was singing "Moves Like Jagger." In the distance I could hear something else.
A car engine.
They were coming after us.
I reached into the truck as I pa.s.sed, grabbing the other .38 from the glove box.
"Go around back. They must be in the hot tub!"
We came flying around the corner to find Susie dancing on the deck with Luke, Tony kneeling down as he held up little Ellarose"s hands.
"Get down! We need to get out of here!" I screamed.
Tony looked at us in shock.
"What happened?"
"Just get down! We need to get in the truck!"
Lauren was already reaching up to grab Luke.
"Where"s Chuck?" asked Susie, her voice rising in fear.
She picked up Ellarose from Tony, and they were running down the deck stairs toward us.
"Come on!" I yelled.
But it was too late. Over the crooning of Christina Aguilera, I could hear another car crunching into the gravel in the front of the house.
What should I do?
"Where"s Chuck?" asked Susie again, pleading.
"He was shot. He"s down at the other house," I replied, trying to think. "Tony, take the shotgun and take them in the cellar, I"m going to talk to them."
"Talk to who? What the h.e.l.l happened?"
We could hear car doors slamming shut out front.
Susie was on the verge of tears.
"Take Ellarose," she said breathlessly to Tony, handing her over to him. She kissed Ellarose, tears streaming down her face. "I need to find Chuck."
"What are you doing? He"s dead, he"s-"
But she ran off toward the other side of the cabin away from us.
I pushed Tony and Lauren ahead of me, reaching down to open the cellar doors, urging them down, just as three people came walking around the corner, two of them holding shotguns. Leaving one side of the cellar doors open, I stood my ground.
Maybe this is all just an accident. But those bones...
"What do you want?" I yelled, waving my gun around, but without a word one of them fired, and I felt a terrific concussion as the shot roared past me.
Terrified, I jumped down the stairs into the cellar, pulling the doors shut behind me and sliding a wooden beam into the handles to uselessly keep them shut.
We need something to keep them out.
Next to the stairs was a metal rack stacked with wood, and with shaking hands, I started pulling it, dragging it so it would block the doors if they opened them.
There must be a back way out of here.
But as I pulled, the rack fell onto me, crushing me.
Lauren shrieked.
"I"m okay," I groaned, trying to pull myself out.
"For G.o.d"s sake, don"t let them take the children!"
Lauren cradled Ellarose, crouching in the corner across from me, as far from the cellar door as possible. It was dark and smelled of sawdust and oil and old tools. Luke was standing next to her, his face streaked with mud, mute with terror. Groaning, I pulled and squirmed to get my jammed leg out from under the pile of logs.
"Don"t worry, Mr. Mitch.e.l.l, I"m not going to let anyone in here."
Tony was standing up on the stairs, squinting into the sunlight streaming through cracks in the broken wood of the cellar door. "There are four of them."
"We killed yer friend," came a whiny voice.
Lauren began crying, clutching the two children closer.
"We didn"t wanna do that, mind you," the voice continued. "Now this is all messed up."
"Leave us alone!" I yelled. Tony took a step back down the stairs, moving sideways and pointing his rifle up at the cellar door.
"Send those kids and your lady out."
I strained again to pull myself from the wreckage, in bone-cracking, skin-ripping agony. Lauren was violently shaking her head.
"Don"t let them eat my babies, Mike."
And then silence-just my heart pounding in my ears and a shuffling through the leaves outside. I tried to steady myself, blotting out the pain, making sure the safety was off the .38. Tony glanced over, nodding, telling me he was ready.
With a terrific roar, the cellar door exploded. Tony staggered back, dropping to one knee. Another shotgun blast caught him, and he spun sideways but still managed to bring up his rifle and pull the trigger. Squeals of pain erupted outside, followed by another shotgun blast and then another through the cellar door.
Tony grunted and tried to get out of the way, collapsing in front of me. I reached for his hand and pulled him toward me, but it was too late. His body convulsed. Looking into my eyes, he blinked back tears and then went still.
"Tony!" I grunted, trying to pull him towards me. His eyes stared back at me blankly, unseeing. My G.o.d, you can"t be dead, Tony, wake up, come on...
"G.o.dd.a.m.n it, boy, you blew Cousin Henry"s ear right off!" said the whiney voice from outside. "Either you send out your woman and those kids, or we"ll burn the whole G.o.dd.a.m.n place down!"
Tears streaming down my face, I yanked my leg again, shredding flesh, but I couldn"t get free. Lauren was sobbing in fear, Luke staring at me with wide eyes beside her.
"So what"ll it be, boy?"
Clenching my jaw, I released Tony"s hand and leaned down to the woodpile. This can"t be happening, this can"t be happening- A gunshot boomed outside, the shot thudding into the earth on the other side of the cellar doors.
"What the h.e.l.l?" screamed the whiny voice.
I could hear people running into the woods, confusion and yelling.
"There"s someone in the house!"
More shooting, and gla.s.s began shattering. And then a sharp crack echoed through the trees, a different gun, further away, and there was more shouting and gunfire. After a short silence, I heard a car"s engine fire up and then the throaty rumble of our truck"s engine.
With a final effort, I pulled my leg free of the woodpile and jumped up, limping up the cellar stairs. The growl of the truck"s engine grew louder, and through the cellar door I could see it roar past. With a terrific crash it smashed into our deck, destroying it and the hot tub. The house shuddered above us, and then gradually the noises began to fade.
Tentatively, I peered out from the doors and then threw one, and then the other, open. I poked my head out. Susie was standing there, gun in hand, looking down the driveway. She glanced back at me.
"It"s okay. They"re gone," she called out, but someone was ambling up our driveway.
He was holding a shotgun.
"He"s got a gun!" I yelled at Susie, ducking my head back down. "Get out of there!"
Silence.
"It"s me, you idiot," called out Chuck in a hoa.r.s.e voice.
Relief at hearing Chuck"s voice washed over me, but I was already back down at Tony"s side, ripping open his shirt. Should I do mouth to mouth? His body was a b.l.o.o.d.y mess. Lauren was still in the corner of the cellar, gripping the children and staring at me and then at Tony.
Did he have a pulse?
My hands shaking, I held two fingers, sticky with blood, gently to his neck and leaned in to see if he was breathing.
No pulse. No breathing.
"Get down here!" I yelled.
Day 32 January 23.
LAUREN PICKED OUT a beautiful spot to bury Tony. It was in a clearing of woods, to the north of the cabin, just beside a stand of dogwood trees. They were bare now, but soon, in the spring, Susie said, the dogwoods would flower and bloom.
It would be a beautiful place to rest.
Maybe a beautiful spot, but beyond the first few inches of decomposed leaves the earth was thick with knotted roots and rocks. Digging a deep hole required hacking away at the roots and leveraging out the rocks. It was hard work, made harder still by the realization of the task itself.
We were burying Tony.
He"d volunteered to stay at the building when he could have left for Brooklyn. I was sure he"d stayed for us, for Luke. If he hadn"t stayed for us, he"d probably be down in Florida in the sunshine with his mother. Instead, we were digging his grave.
There was nothing we"d been able to do for Tony. He"d been killed almost instantly. I"d tried to clean him up, but eventually I"d resigned myself to simply covering him with a blanket.
I"d sat and cried on the cellar steps, talking to Tony"s inert corpse, thanking him for trying to protect us. In the evening I couldn"t bear the thought of leaving him alone down there, so I"d brought a cot and slept with him.
Birds chirped cheerfully in the trees as Susie and I pulled Tony"s corpse through the leaves. He was heavy, well over two hundred pounds, so we"d dragged him in the blanket I"d wrapped him in.
Finally reaching the clearing, a few hundred feet from the cabin, we pulled him over to the edge of the pit. The sun was out in a blue sky, and I was sweating, doubled over and panting from the effort. Nodding at Susie, we both reached down and grabbed an end and then did our best to gently lower him into the ground. He slid in awkwardly, falling crumpled with his legs to one side.
"I"ll fix him," volunteered Susie.
Gingerly, she climbed down into the hole, reaching down to set Tony in a comfortable position. I sat down in the leaves, staring up at the sky while I regained my breath.
"Is everything okay?" called out Lauren in the distance. She was staying with the kids while we did a little ceremony for Tony.
Susie was back out of the grave, rubbing dirt onto the sides of her jeans. She nodded at me.
"We"re good!" I yelled back, thinking exactly the opposite.