Getting Home

9

Janet was sprinting through the back yards.

She heard the gunshots before she saw the soldiers.

There were two figures, just outlines in the semi-darkness of the bright moonlight. They’d taken shelter behind the corner of a house up ahead.

She threw herself down onto the hard, cold ground. The gunfire continued, ringing out loudly.

She had no cover. There was nothing nearby that she could get to quickly enough.

Her only option was to return fire as quickly as she could, hoping that they didn’t hit her in the process.

Fortunately, despite being in a militia, most of the members were bad shots. Some of them hadn’t touched a gun before the EMP. Others, like the previously-incarcerated prisoners, had handled guns plenty of times before, but they’d never really developed any kind of proficiency with them.

They were the people who sometimes held handguns sideways, like they did in the movies, and really could barely aim. They’d brandished guns at bank tellers and shop clerks, occasionally shooting them. They weren’t the types of people who went to the target range or practiced gun safety.

Janet squeezed the trigger. The shotgun kicked.

The figures were fully behind the house, taking cover, not knowing when the next blast would come. Good. That was the opportunity she needed.

She was up in a flash, sprinting, her arms pumping at her sides, her feet pounding into the grass. She got herself right up against the siding of the back of the house.

It would give her the benefit of surprise. They’d be looking for her where she’d been, in the middle of the yard.

There was a window about a foot away, leading right into the house.

More gunfire. One of the figures was leaning around the edge of the house.

Janet took careful aim, exhaling as she did, and pulled the trigger.

She felt the kick and her ears rang.

The figure up ahead looked like he’d been hit. Maybe partially. Or maybe not at all. He wasn’t dead, since he’d gotten himself out of view again.

Janet took the butt of the shotgun and smashed it into the window. The glass broke, shattering, fragments falling into the house.

There wasn’t time to worry about getting cut by the glass.

Janet lifted up her leg and stuck it through. A piece of glass cut her pants and dug into her. She ignored it, thrusting her whole body through. She had to squeeze in and position the shotgun just right.

The glass cut her face. Another piece cut her scalp. The blood was hot and poured down her face. But it wasn’t serious.

What was serious was getting shot. Dying. She could deal with a little blood. A little glass.

She fell onto the floor. Hard.

She got up as quickly as she could. She knew they’d discover where she went.

There wasn’t much time. She needed to get out of the house, making use of her small, brief advantage.

Her eyes briefly scanned the kitchen as she reloaded the shotgun.

It had once been a normal, if not quaint, kitchen, the type you’d find in almost any suburban home. The counters and cabinets weren’t of the latest style. They were the ones you would have found in a home magazine a decade ago. But they still worked. Or had worked, served their purpose, before the EMP.

Janet didn’t know what had happened here. But something had. The tables and chairs were overturned. The cupboards and drawers were all thrown open. Empty plastic bags of food littered the floor.

Blood stained one of the walls, and there was a trail of blood leading out of the room, as if a bleeding person, or a recently dead person, had been dragged from the room forcibly.

The room stank of old, rotten food, or stale, dead air.

Maybe Janet herself had come here once, on a raiding party. She didn’t remember. There’d been so many of them.

She was already out of the kitchen and into the hallway. It was dark, almost-pitch black. There weren’t windows in the hallway, and not much light came through the windows anyway.

But she kept going forward, towards the front of the house. She didn’t need to see. She knew where she had to go.

She didn’t have much time. The soldiers would follow her through the broken glass. They’d be inside any moment. Or, if they were smart, they’d cut around to the front of the house.

Should she go back out the back? Should she wait, looking out the window, to see if they tried to come for her through the back? She could shoot them. She’d have the advantage, being inside the house.

No. She needed to press on. Get out of the house as quickly as possible. More soldiers might be coming.

She couldn’t get stuck in this house. She wouldn’t be able to fight her way out.

Suddenly, something slammed into the door. Loudly.

Shit.

Were they here already?

She heard another tremendous thud. Coming to her, in the pitch black hallway, it made her panic. Her heart started to pound.

She was losing her cool. Losing her bearings. The situation was too much for her.

No.

She could do this.

Another thud at the door. They were slamming something into the door, using something like an improvised battering ram. It seemed like the door was steel, judging from the way it was holding up and the sound.

They must have been different soldiers. There was no way the two that’d been shooting at her could have gotten there that fast. She’d barely been inside the house for a full minute, even though time felt like it had slowed down to the consistency of a thick sludge.

Janet slammed into something. She was moving so fast, and totally unable to see, that she’d crashed into a small wooden table, knocking it over completely. Her foot got tangled somehow in it, caught up in the thin spindly legs, and she fell over.

The shotgun clattered noisily to the wooden floor. Janet’s head smashed into the edge of the knocked-over table.

Just then, the door burst open.

Janet hadn’t realized how close she was to it. There must not have been any windows up there by the front door.

Moonlight crashed through, lighting up the area with that dim yellowish off-white light that seemed to make the whole scene more eerie.

A booted foot passed through the threshold of the doorway.

Janet was reaching for the shotgun. Her hand had been moving blindingly across the floor looking for it.

Her head was turned, looking for the gun. With the influx of moonlight, she saw it. Light glinted off the metal.

Her hand touched the metal, but no reassurance flowed through her. The blind panic, the clumsiness, though, did seem to fade. She was left with nothing but the cold knowledge of what she needed to do.

She raised the shotgun with her left hand, bringing it in front of her torso. Her other hand grabbed it.

A second boot crossed the threshold. The barrel of a shotgun was next.

As soon as the torso appeared, Janet pulled the trigger.

The shotgun kicked painfully into her breast. She hadn’t had the time to get it positioned properly.

The figure was thrown back into the busted partially-opened door that had been knocked off its hinges. It hung there loosely until he slammed into it.

His chest was torn up from the shotgun blast, little pockets of blood on his filthy t-shirt.

She saw his face as he slid down, his legs giving out from under him. It wasn’t anyone she recognized.

But she didn’t breathe a sigh of relief. She was fine, at this point, killing those she knew, those that she’d lived with and fought with.

What sent a chill down her spine was the knowledge that another regiment had been dispatched.

There’d be… well, there wasn’t any point in calculating the number… but it was a lot. A lot of soldiers who’d be hunting her down like a dog.

There was another soldier right before the threshold of the door. He was hanging back. He obviously knew that the second he stepped across, he’d be met with a blast from the shotgun.

Janet couldn’t stay there forever.

She needed to get out.

She’d have to make the first move.

With her left hand, she seized one of the thin legs of the knocked-over table. She yanked it hard. The wood snapped.

She didn’t waste a second. She scrambled to her feet, shotgun in one hand, the wooden leg in the other.

Quickly, she got close to the door. As close as she could without actually exposing her body to gunfire.

She tossed the wooden leg out the door, as hard as she could, exposing her hand and arm only for the couple seconds that it took to toss it.

She didn’t wait to hear what happened.

She lowered the shotgun, both hands on it, finger on the trigger, and stepped out in front of the busted and opened door.

She stood in a wide stance, legs spread, her feet around the half-dead man she’d just shot.

Throwing the wood had given her the split second that she needed. It had distracted him just enough to give her a slight advantage.

It was a duel. Whoever was faster would win.

Janet saw the whites of his eyes. She saw the surprise on his face. She saw the dawning realization that he was about to die.

She squeezed the trigger.

The shotgun kicked.

The soldier fell. It had been a good shot, catching him in the head and the neck. Close range. He was done for.

She didn’t bother looking at the destruction she’d caused.

Underneath her, she heard the moaning of the half-dead man.

She heard movement. Something scraping.

Janet looked down. The soldier had taken a knife, and he was waving it around pathetically in the air, trying to slice Janet’s ankles or legs.

Flipping the shotgun around, Janet slammed the butt of it into the man’s face as hard as she could. It made a sickening sound.

The pain must have been too much for him. His hand seemed to go limp, and his grip on the knife fell away. Janet reached down and took it from him easily.

She said nothing as she ran the knife across his throat in one single quick and effective slice.

The blood gushed out.

Janet dropped the knife. She already had one.

The whole fight had taken only a couple minutes. It had felt like an eternity, but now that she was out of the thick of it, she realized just how little time had passed.

Those two other soldiers would have heard the gunshots. They’d be here any moment now.

Or maybe they were waiting for her outside, having gotten into some unassailable position.

What should she do?

Rushing out into the street, through the front door, meant certain death. If it wasn’t the next two soldiers that killed her, it’d be the next two, or the next two. And that was if she was lucky.

She knew she’d already been lucky. Sure, she might have been smarter than the rest of them. Maybe her reflexes were better. But her luck wouldn’t run forever. There was a practical limit to it. And that limit was death.