Page 3

He pushed Elaine away again and used the button on the knob to lock himself in the spare bedroom.  That was where he slept when he couldn't stand to be by Elaine.  The house was secure--he had barred the windows a few years ago, when he still traveled for business, and put stout deadbolts on the front and back doors, and no one alive or dead could lift the garage door against the door opener.  They might break the windows, but they couldn't get in.  He would sleep.

After an hour, he gave up trying.  Elaine kept hammering on the door with a slow irregular rhythm.  Once in a while the thumps would travel down the hall and then stop for five or ten minutes but they always began again.

Hank rubbed his eyes and grabbed the rifle.  He yanked open the door in mid-thump, ready to push Elaine out of the way.

It was Mabel standing there.  Behind her, Jim Vanderbeek, and then two people he didn't recognize.  He backpedaled as they fell forward, hands grasping for him.  He slipped and Mabel Walter fell on him, trying to bite and tear him.  His hands sank into the flesh of her belly as he tried to keep her off; her weight pressed his back into the floor and he kicked with his feet, skidding along the hardwood, along the bed.  He rolled her off him--he automatically noted a mouse in the mousetrap, should have cleaned that up, Hank, but you always get stuck under that bed--and he scrambled along the foot of the bed, then clambered over the bed to get out the door.

His house stank now of rot and death.

Red Crenshaw was stumbling up the stairs and Hank kicked him in the face so hard Hank's slipper flew off as Red tumbled downstairs.  Red fell head first and didn't move again as Hank stepped over him.

There were more of them on the ground floor, Deb Lichti and Vern Hywood and people whose names he didn't know.  Maybe they had all been drawn towards the light.

He shot one stranger several times, then another, and another, and another, always shooting too low so it took three and four shots to re-kill each of them.  Blood spattered on their wedding photo and on the hall mirror and on the sofa's plastic slipcovers.

Out of bullets.

He clubbed Vern Hywood with the butt of the rifle and moved toward the garage, through the kitchen.

There were three of them in the kitchen, one a dead man holding the butcher knife.  The other knives were spilled on the kitchen floor, and one of the women was standing on a steak knife, leaking dark blood.

Through the door to the garage he could see outside.  Elaine must have bumped or hit the garage door button.

The man stepped forward and swung the knife with a clumsy overhand swing.  Hank blocked it with the rifle but his grip was poor; the impact knocked the rifle from his hand.  He scrambled for it and felt one of them grab at his side.  He fell knocking that away which left him open to the slow female who grabbed his foot.  He kicked at her and swung at the other and writhed on the floor to avoid the third.

When his foot was free, Hank scuttled across the kitchen floor, slicing his fingers and knees on knives, and fell down the two steps into the garage.  He reached up to slap the garage door button and was relieved to hear the grinding noise of it shutting.  Vern Hywood appeared in the doorway, his eyes sunken and dull, his belly exposed, his feet and calves purple with settled blood.  Hank pulled himself up using the workbench and grabbed a mallet.

It made a sickening sound when it hit Vern's head.  Hank swung the sledge again.  Vern fell down in the doorway, blocking Hank from closing the door.

Hank shoved the open box of .22 shells into the breast pocket of his pajamas.  He went to grab a crowbar rather than the mallet but the fingers on his left hand wouldn't close, and they were slick with bright red blood.

The bandages and medications were all upstairs in their bedroom.  To take care of Elaine.

The rifle was still in the kitchen.  Hank didn't have time to wait for each of them to wander to the garage door.

He quickly wrapped his left hand in a rag.  His legs seemed okay but the pants of his pajamas were heavy with blood, most of it his.  His right leg hurt to put weight on it but he could walk with a limp.

The one with the butcher knife stumbled through the doorway.  Hank struck it twice in the back of the head before it could get up.  He didn't even stop to think if it had been someone he knew.

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