The one he’d hit in the gut with the shotgun moments before was pulling himself along the floor, heading for the front entrance. John used the pistol to finish him off. Soon it was clear that all of Cain’s men who’d stormed his house were dead, but the violence outside was still raging.
John exited via the front door, a move his tactical training suggested wasn’t a great idea, but right now, climbing through the windows he’d laced with razor wire would have made even less sense.
The sight that greeted him outside was hellish. Three houses across the street were on fire, along with two on his side. One of those belonged to Al, and John hoped to God he and Missy weren’t still inside.
The deputies in the foxhole were still being pinned down and John made it his mission to get them back into the fight. He moved rapidly away from the burning house to keep his position hidden and took cover at the base of a nearby tree. From there he spotted the muzzle flash from the guns keeping his men trapped. The shots were coming from the western barricade. John zeroed in with his Trijicon scope on three men with automatic rifles. Frank’s Barrett M107 hadn’t sounded off since the tractor had burst through their defenses and John hoped his friend had managed to reposition himself.
The AR kicked slightly as John placed rounds against his targets, killing one man outright and wounding another. The third scrambled for cover, but he couldn’t outrun a bullet and down he went. Then John realized a fourth man had been with them and in the firelight from the burning houses, he saw that it was Cain. Four more shots rang out from John’s AR, but each of them narrowly missed as Cain sprinted around obstacles, heading for the line of houses.
John rose and chased after him. Other battles were going on around him. The deputies at last were able to emerge from the foxhole and began fighting back.
The heat from Al’s burning house was intense and the feeling running past it was like running your hand over a BBQ pit. Up ahead, Cain disappeared into the Hectors’ house. By the time John arrived a moment later, threads of orange flame and black smoke had already begun to spill out of the broken front windows. Cain must have lit the drapes on fire soon after entering.
He was trying to deter anyone from coming after him. A technique that might have worked on a regular man, but not John.
AR at the ready, John circled around back and entered the house through a yellow door. It led in through the Hectors’ garage. The important point was to avoid being where Cain was expecting him. He also wanted to ensure the drug-dealing thug hadn’t tried to escape through the backyard.
Inside, the ceiling was beginning to fill with black smoke. John moved purposefully from room to room, AR at the ready. It wasn’t the ideal weapon for close quarters, but he could have his S&W out of his drop-leg holster and in his hands in a split second if he needed to.
A figure zipped by him ten yards away and fled up the stairs to the second floor. John didn’t have enough time to take a clean shot and didn’t want to give his presence away just yet. He wanted to see the surprise on Cain’s face when he sent the man back to hell.
John grabbed a dishtowel from a rack in the kitchen and held it over his nose. He then proceeded toward the stairs and began mounting them. He would need to get this done quick since the fire downstairs was beginning to grow.
After reaching the top riser, John scanned the landing without seeing any sign of his target. Checking each bedroom was his next priority. He was about to enter the first when he heard a noise to his right. Cain was there about to fire his AK-47. John dropped to one knee, aimed in that direction and fired. The shots narrowly missed, blasting holes in the wall by Cain’s head. Splinters of wood and gyprock blinded Cain and he fell back into one of the front bedrooms. As he did, the AK fell from his hands and landed in the hallway.
Weapon or not, this was a dangerous place to be since the fire raging below them was directly underneath the room Cain had retreated to. John pressed on nevertheless. He needed to finish this, even if it meant further risking his own life.
Black smoke inched down at him from the ceiling. John did his best to keep low.
When John reached the doorway, he saw Cain fiddling madly with a stuck window. Perhaps sensing him there, Cain turned and immediately charged toward John.
John squeezed the trigger right as the floor at Cain’s feet gave way, swallowing him whole. Flames licked up through the opening as though John’s prediction had been right and hell itself had taken him back.
John turned and began to make his way downstairs to be sure the job was done. When he reached the first floor the flames in the front of the house where Cain had fallen through were raging out of control. No one could have survived that and John decided to retreat and help with the other beleaguered defenders before he was overcome by fumes. Surely with their leader gone, the criminals’ will to fight would die as well.
Chapter 34
The scene that greeted John was one of complete carnage. The bodies of friend and foe lay side by side, an image that reminded him of accounts from the Civil War. Soldiers had often described the dead being so thick they could walk from one end of a battlefield to the other without touching the ground.
There was enough space between each of the houses that the fires wouldn’t jump, but already three homes across the street were reduced to smoldering ash. So was Al’s house.
Here and there, sporadic gunfire broke the eerie silence, but the peak of the battle had passed. Now that Cain was gone, John rushed back to his own house so that it too wasn’t torched. The pod was designed to be fireproof, that wasn’t the problem. It was the oxygen getting cut off in the event of a fire that worried him most.
When he was nearly there, dark figures ran toward the park on their way out of Willow Creek. They were carrying jugs of water and large sacks presumably stuffed with canned goods. He lowered himself onto one knee, peered through his Trijicon ACOG scope and shot three of them dead. The last managed to dart behind cover before he could finish the job.
The street was in complete shambles. With Cain dead and his thugs on the run, it appeared the people of Willow Creek had won, but at what cost? No one would know until dawn when they would begin to tally their losses.
John slept slumped in a chair in his kitchen, the Kel-Tec KSG laid across his lap. He’d dragged the dented steel plate back into place and waited for the light to come. There’d been an eerie silence outside and John couldn’t help wonder which of his friends and neighbors had survived.
Finally, faint light began to trickle in through the now shattered front windows. John peered outside for any signs of Cain’s men. The prospect was doubtful. He would have heard them looting and pillaging throughout the night but all he’d heard was deathly silence.
The sight outside was sobering. Men and women with red bandanas mixed with Cain’s thugs were dead and scattered for as far as John could see. A few stunned figures had emerged from their homes, most of them bloody. They staggered among the dead, weeping. It really did look like a battlefield and when things were finally put right, John hoped there would be some sort of memorial here to the people who’d given up their lives for the right to live without fear of oppression.
John went down to the pod and got Diane and the kids. They were visibly frightened and had stayed up throughout the night. Even buried underground, they’d still heard the battle going on topside. They were sure no one was left and John didn’t have the heart to tell them that they might be right.