Desolation

“Is that when we leave?” John asked, as he, Peter, and the whole crowd were listening to Thomas’s every word.

“That’s up to the Teacher. He will tell us. We leave when he is ready.”

There was a moment or two of silence, and then the helpers continued with the questioning. Thomas left them to seek out the Teacher and further instruction.

10. Defending Your Life

Near Joliet, Illinois

Darla slept so deeply as a child that more than once, to rouse her from her slumber, her parents had had to shake her hard enough to almost cause bruising.

When two intruders broke into the house, Darla and Danny were sleeping so soundly the loud disturbance didn’t even register in their dreams. When her can-alarm sent the empty corn and juice cans crashing at the base of the stairwell, she stirred only slightly, immediately returning to sleep’s embrace. Even the sound of one intruder tripping over the secondary line and crashing down the stairwell didn’t break her torpor. Instead, it was Danny’s tugging her hair that caused her to bolt upright, even as her sleepiness pulled at her.

Panicked, Danny whispered, “There’s someone in the house.”

It wasn’t his alarm that shocked her to life, but his spectral form made pale by the night’s green light. Even as an adult, she hated how the night made everything more terrifying.

Not sure if he really heard anything or not, she chose caution. “Shhh, kiddo,” she whispered back, punctuated with her forefinger in front of her mouth. “Hide under the bed.”

She quietly slipped out of her Wonder Woman sheets, but clung to the spear gun, thankful for the protection it offered both of them.

A creak from the wood landing outside the door confirmed Danny’s warning.

She scurried across the carpeted room, taking cover behind the only dresser, pointing the spear gun at what she guessed would be chest-high, trying her best to mentally calculate for size based on the heavy footsteps she heard.

The bedroom door’s hinges groaned, and even in the murk, a pistol’s unmistakable outline poked in first. The door opened farther, as if by its own power, until it was wide open. The black space was occupied by a beast of a man. He looked right at Danny’s hiding place.

“Come out from under the bed, little boy, or I shoot you,” the throaty voice announced, an Arnold Schwarzenegger without the Austrian accent. He clicked the hammer back on the gun.

Darla’s brain yelled to her brother’s, don’t move - don’t move - don’t move, while she stared at his feet sticking out from under the bed.

“You, behind the dresser,” the voice called to her.

She wasn’t sure if it was her being more startled, or just deciding this wasn’t going to go well; the result was the same. She squeezed the trigger. In that moment, a chunk-flop came from the gun, the sound of the spear firing and then hitting tissue. She looked at the gun tip to confirm the spear had left and then up at the man, who glared at her from one confused eye.

The spear had connected directly with his left eye socket. He hovered, unsteady, saying only “Ah, wha—” and then collapsed forward, his weight pushing the spear through his skull and out the back side. Darla and Danny caught every millisecond of it, wide-eyed. Danny was so terror-stricken, he peed himself and screamed with all the power his lungs could muster.

“Yo, Frank, what happened? Where are you?” A voice from down below called and then she heard another set of footsteps bounding up the landing. Danny’s screams had given their position away for sure, if the man hadn’t heard his partner fall.

Darla looked at the empty spear gun, knowing there was no time to pump, load, and shoot it. So, she let go and scuttled like a crab toward the prone giant, searching the carpet for his gun. She peeked up and saw the other man’s head coming up the stairwell.

She felt the gun, snatched it and immediately started pulling the trigger over and over. A single crash stung her eardrums and silenced both her brother’s screams and the intruder’s advancing footsteps.

Holding her breath, she focused her eyes into the dark, searching for any sign of success. She remained motionless, partially from fear, but mostly in an effort to hear something from the other man. Her ears were ringing from the gun’s blast in the small bedroom.

Another creak, this one outside in the hall. Damn. She’d missed. Her heart beat so hard, she thought her chest would explode. The gun was empty, her spear gun was empty, and she was out of options.

The other man appeared at the master bedroom doorway and bolted toward their door.

Shocked at this turn, she involuntarily scuttled backwards until her back hit the wall. As the man came to the door, she second-guessed herself, instead rushing to protect Danny.

The man, watching her the whole time, paid no attention to his dead partner in the doorway and simply stumbled over the body. Inertia drove him forward, impaling his body on the spear tip jutting from the big man’s head.