Samantha’s scream made the hair on Bill’s neck stand on end. He lunged at the 911 panic button, killed all exterior lights, and then hit the gate release — the cops had to be able to get onto the property.
The last image in Sally’s brain as the lights went out was that of her daughter being strangled by some beer-bellied Mexican and yet fighting with all the strength in her little body.
“Samantha!”
Sally looked out the kitchen window in terror and then ran down the hall toward her husband.
“Bill!”
He was already on the way toward her — heading for the kitchen door.
“The kids!”
Upstairs, Bobby had been playing with his GI Joe set when he saw brown faces peering down on him through his bedroom windows. Their eyes met. The men outside his window smiled at him but it was the smile of a snake for his dinner.
“Daddy!”
Bobby came running down the stairs crying — and trying to tell his father that brown people were on the roof looking into his room.
“Where’s Samantha!”
“Go get her!”
Samantha slammed the kitchen door open with a crash. Her eyes were wild with terror. She grabbed her mother. All she could do was look over her shoulder and then dig her head into her mother’s embrace. She tried to tell her mother about the Mexicans, but was crying too hard to speak.
“The kitchen door!” Bill yelled.
Sally slammed it shut.
Bill killed the interior house lights — leaving only some tiny point-source exterior lighting along the roof line. All the lights useful to the Mexicans were now off. He figured that the Mexicans would be night blind for one or two minutes and — for now — he would have some slight advantage.
As the vermin tried to look inside the house they would be blinded by the high intensity pinpoints of light along the roof. In a few minutes he would blast them with two seconds of high intensity light and then put them back into total blackness. He had to keep them disoriented until he could pick them off one by one.
More dark, terrifying, shapes could be seen trying to clamber over the vertical poles at the southern edge of the patio. One of the shapes made it over the top, crawled to the swimming pool and started drinking pool water — then seemed to wash blood from his arms. Other shapes could be seen going around the house toward the Hummer.
Someone started pressing against the kitchen door.
Before Bill could think clearly there was a crash of broken glass as an upstairs window was smashed and then there were sounds of furniture being knocked over in the dark.
The Johnsons stood there in the hallway between the kitchen and the rec room — Bill, Sally, Samantha and Bobby — they were surrounded. The children started to whimper.
Bill looked at Samantha. His little ten year old daughter had been within fifteen seconds of a rape — or worse. There was blood running down the inside of her right leg. Rivulets of blood were now running down her lower lip and cheeks. Her lower lip was quivering.
Bill looked at Sally — then picked Samantha up and held her tightly in his arms. The little girl smelled of weeds, male piss and beer. The mother stepped forward and lifted the remnants of her little girl’s dress. The blood was only coming from a deep scratch on her inner thigh — not from anyplace private.
The parents looked at each other.
Bill handed Samantha to Sally.
“It’s gonna be okay, Sam. You just watch. Daddy is gonna fix this right now.” Bill was almost delirious with rage.
He went over to a large framed oil painting of a mountain scene — pulled the frame out of the wall and pushed it to the side — exposing a rack of long guns and pistols.
Bill took a Benelli 12 gauge shotgun from the rack. He started stuffing it with large ribbed, plastic, shotgun shells. Some people used shells filled with lead shot. Some used plated steel. Bill used shells loaded with tungsten balls.
The Benelli had been outlawed by America’s new caring government because it was not deemed to be a gun any American should have. It was black and had a rubber pistol grip. It also came standard with an eight round magazine. Bill had extended that magazine by two rounds and had added a small “Surefire” flashlight. It was perfect for rural home defense. Bill did not want any of his family to become a statistic.
Some people loaded their shotguns with shells containing 00 buckshot. This worked quite well in the old west where a stagecoach guard would send a load of “blue whistlers” into a bandit’s horse (the bigger target) but in a firefight against people loads of number four buckshot had more pellets and were far more effective at close range. In a firefight with armored opponents then a mix was good. Some people used slugs, 00 and number four. Some would gently circumcise the plastic cases of their shells just below the lowest wad. When fired, these shells would separate at the weak ring sending the entire forward portion of the shell out the barrel to explode into tiny balls only after they hit the target.
With an effective rate of fire of 1600 balls a minute — with each of a number four round’s little tungsten balls weighing as much as an M-16’s .223 bullet — a shotgun loaded with number four buckshot really can’t be beat for nearby soft targets.
Some gadget freaks added laser sights to their guns. The problem was that when you needed a night sight you needed to see your target — not just a 1/4 inch red spot. After all, a 1/4 inch spot on the forehead of one person looks quite a bit like a 1/4 inch spot on the forehead of anybody else and sending an ounce of tungsten balls into a person’s head at over 1,000 feet per second — blowing their skull into little pieces — should be done only when you know who you are shooting. It was true that Government agencies used laser sights — but their operating procedures were of military origin — in that world anyone to your front was fair game. Lastly, lasers are perceived as targeting devices for guns. This means that if you even have a laser pointing device used for classroom presentations and you aim it at people outside your home at night you can be charged with aggravated assault.
“Sally. Get the children into the hall closet and then guard the kitchen door!”
Sally hugged the two children to her and then swept them into the hall closet — telling them to lock the door from the inside. The closet had been built as a strong room. Its walls seemed to be just drywall and paint. In reality they were a double layer of railroad rails nested one inside the other and mounted vertically. No bullet fired within the house could penetrate such armor. These closet walls were even grenade proof. The children were safe.
Bill then handed Sally an old Mk IV Colt .45 auto and three eight round magazines. The magazines had lead weights on their ends to help them drop out of the gun faster when released.
“Sally, you guard the kitchen. Let ‘em get close so you can make certain you stop ‘em!” Bill did not use the word kill. He was afraid that the thought of killing might slow her down — and thus get her killed.
Some people had collections of guns. Some fought over the benefits of .40 verses 9mm verses .45. It was all bullshit — foisted on the unknowing by magazine writers selling magazine advertising. The answer was simple — get the biggest you can control on every shot and — more importantly — don’t miss!
Bill stopped to think. An adrenaline rush was coming over him. He had to stay calm. These little brown-skinned animals were all going to die. He thought of tying them all together by the neck — like a bunch of flowers — and then dragging the clump behind the Hummer at 60 miles an hour. Irrational. No, he would have to kill them one at a time. There would be no quarter given — and there would be no prisoners.
Looking out the window he counted seven shapes trying to climb over the fence. He saw three more creeping around the house toward the Hummer and two more near the shed. He thought it sounded like there had to be three or more upstairs.
Bill stared outside in disbelief. “Why haven’t they tried to rush the house already? Maybe its true that these scum are extremely passive — until some emotional switch is thrown. We’ve been lucky for all of about two minutes. I bet we only have twenty seconds more before all hell breaks loose!”
He had no choice. It was now or never — and never meant overwhelming odds against him and unthinkable assaults on his wife — his little girl — and maybe even his little boy.
Bill walked to the kitchen wall-mount telephone. He looked at Sally, wrapped his fingers around the phone and pulled at it as if he was going to rip it right out of the plaster. The telephone popped out — exposing two indicators and three switches.
“Not that! Do you really think we have to do that? Sally was watching Bill with horror on her face.
“There’s two of us and maybe twenty of them. We don’t have a choice! Get down onto the floor — just in case something really bad happens!” Bill hit the master switch and both lights came up green. He then depressed the two switches.
What he had done was open the valves on six high pressure air tanks. The tanks released 2,500 psi air into ten old power line circuit breakers. The breakers would send power stored in fifty old (and condemned) PCB-laden storage capacitors directly into the vertical fence poles outside.
A low hissing whine could be heard coming from somewhere underneath the house. The whine increased in frequency and volume and in less than three seconds it became a hissing scream ending in an earth shaking spasm as the breakers slammed closed.
The capacitors hadn’t been designed to discharge into a dead short and the circuit breakers hadn’t been designed to carry anything over six megawatts. Capacitors the size of beer kegs exploded sending streams and even globs of jellied PCB down the mine tunnel. Two of the circuit breakers exploded — embedding chunks of copper, steel and ceramic into basement walls, floor and ceiling.
But outside, the effect was awe inspiring. The entire yard seemed to become the blue-white center of a carbon arc sixty feet across. Pieces of the melted barbed wire clattered onto the tile roof. A few small pieces of burned flesh splatted against the kitchen window.
Where there was once a wobbly mass of brown sub-humanity clinging to the top of the fence there was now nothing but smoking lumps of semi-cooked meat suspended in a smoky pink glow of hot steel.
“Jesus. They musta got about a thousand amps!”
Actually, the instantaneous impulse was 1,360 amps at 12,000 volts — 16.3 megawatts.
A loud crash upstairs made Bill jump.
“Don’t let anybody in! Sally! Shoot ‘em. Shoot ‘em! Shoot ‘em!” Bill’s voice trailed away as he ran down the hallway with his Benelli shotgun in his hands. The impenetrable shadows of the stairwell loomed toward him.
“How many are there. I betcha these bastards carry really sharp knives.” Bill whispered to himself. A cold chill went up his spine.
He dropped flat against the first flight of stairs. He was so close to the stair treads that he could smell the fibers of the carpet. He waited for a shape to come around the corner. He waited. He waited. There was nothing.
Slowly, he crawled up the stairs.
He reached the landing between the floors and edged up onto one knee and against the wall but well away from the corner. Then he slid his head forward ever so slightly and peeked around the corner — just one eye — and then only for a split second.
Nothing.
He stood up and leaned his left shoulder against the wall.
The Benelli was muzzle-down — all he had to do was shift it three inches and pull the muzzle up onto a target. By having the muzzle down his view wasn’t blocked by the barrel.
His heart was pounding up into his throat. He thought he could hear the blood pulsing in his neck.
He shifted his face very slowly so that his right eye could now gaze up the stairs and maybe 10 feet down the hallway.
He held his head motionless — it became just another shadow of the dark.
There was nothing. He slid sideways and crept up the stairs — half way.
Then he thought he saw something — a shadow, a shape. It could have just been his eyes adjusting to the dark — or even a ghost image created by blood pulsing to his brain.
But then he really did see a shape above him — it was moving slowly — toward the north wall — and it was silhouetted in the faint glow of starlight coming through the upstairs windows.
“This is terrible.” he thought. “I can smell this guy from fifteen feet away!”
Without a warning call or even a whisper he whipped the Benelli to his shoulder, pulled the muzzle onto the shape’s crotch and quickly let off two rounds. He’d squeezed the flashlight switch and the trigger at the same time. The strobe-like images were of puffs of dust mixed with blood and fabric. Just as he pulled off each round he counted: “TEN” and then “NINE.”
“Always double-tap!” He thought to himself as the stock dug into his shoulder.
The first shot blew the Mexican’s bladder through his spine. The shotgun’s recoil sent the muzzle upwards slightly and the second blast whizzed through the Mexican’s left lung and out his right shoulder blade.
Bill leaped from his position against the wall and flattened himself against the stair treads — if the Mexicans had guns they might shoot toward the muzzle flashes and Bill wouldn’t be there.
The now-dead Mexican stumbled forward, flopped down the stairs, slid over Bill’s back and landed flat on the stairway landing. The sticky smell of blood, shit and cordite was everywhere. This was not the movies — there really hadn’t been much action — just a Mexican falling down a flight of stairs.
“I hope that thing didn’t have AIDS!” Bill mumbled to himself as he looked down at the crumpled form on the landing. He turned, grunted, and crawled upwards on his hands and knees — toward the second floor — one stair tread at a time.
Bill peered over the top of the stairs, paused, and then carefully got to a crouch — now he could see the entire hall — all the way to the first bedroom. He slid to the right and then very slowly pushed himself up against the wall. There was a loud hiss as his shirt scraped against the rough plaster. He stopped in mid-stretch — just leaning against the wall. His hands were shaking. He had an overpowering urge to run.
Suddenly from his right a stinking brown body lunged at him. Bill dropped to his knees, snapped the gun to the right and fired “EIGHT!” The explosion went right between the Mexican’s feet and the shotgun pellets blasted long strips out of the carpet, bounced off the concrete floor and took photographs off the south wall. The Mexican skittered like a cockroach and took refuge in the shadows.
There was a whisper:
“Hey, Gringo, you gonna die. Hijueputa! You gonna die real slow! Fucker!”
The Mexican whispered his sweet murmurings as he quietly moved around and behind pieces of furniture — staying out of Bill’s sights but moving closer and closer.
Suddenly, Bill saw a faint glint of starlight reflecting off a knife or screwdriver just before the piece of steel whizzed past his head. Bill grabbed at a filthy shirt and the Mexican lost his balance and went tumbling and crashing down the stairs — head first — and right on top of the dead Mexi-mess laying on the landing.
Bill spun around, fell backwards and landed flat on his back with the edge of a stair tread cutting into his shoulder blades. All he could do was hold the shotgun more like a stick than a weapon and fire three wild, rapid shots “SEVEN / SIX / FIVE” as the Mexican tried to get to his feet and scramble down the stairs.
A line of death sliced across the Mexican’s path.
The fifty-four .24 caliber balls from the first two shots slammed into the stairway treads and wall. Pieces of wall, carpet and carpet pad flew into the air and chunks of concrete landing disintegrated. At this range Bill’s shots spread less than six inches.
Bill’s last shot hit the Mexican right in the ass. A whizzing cloud of 27 tungsten balls tore at the Mexican’s coccyx, rectum, bladder and sexual organs. Bits of these tissues — and the concomitant fecal and seminal material — spattered all over the walls and stairs. Chunks of this cordite flavored stew spattered back onto Bill’s face. The sudden fecal stench was overpowering. Bill vomited.
The Mexican was not yet dead.
Leaking digested intestinal syrup the Mexican went into shock — but his strong, sinuous muscles kept him going. He gathered his intestines into his two hands, then got up and ran — tripping over his dead brown brother again — and then tumbling down the stairs toward the kitchen. He had been handed a fatal wound and would die in a minute or two — or three — but that might not be soon enough.
Bill fired another round and missed.
“Shoot, Sally! Shoot!” He screamed.
Sally had been trained well. She was in the kitchen and flat on the floor. The .45 was in her right hand and supported by her left hand. The muzzle of the .45 was just peeking around the corner of the cupboards. If she fired from this position the gun’s recoil would raise her point of aim with every shot and if she started at the guy’s crotch every round would be another hit.
Sally heard the Mexican’s liquid spattering footsteps closing in on her. He came closer and closer — so close she could hear his heavy wheezing. She snapped open one of the kitchen cabinet doors just as he came around the corner. The door hit the Mexican square in the face and he dropped — making a wet, splatting sound on the tile floor.
Bill had taught her to make certain she stopped an assailant — and that the closer the bad guy was to her the more rounds she should put into him. Sally fired her entire eight round magazine into the Mexican’s legs, crotch, belly, chest, throat, mouth and nostrils.
Her last shot missed the Mexican’s head and hit the strong room’s steel rails. Bobby and Samantha screamed.
“That’s okay kids! This ‘ll all be over soon! Stay quiet! Don’t make a sound!”
Sally didn’t know what else to say.
She could tell them that she had never been so scared in her entire life. These Mexicans wanted to kill everyone in the house and if even one of these guys found a way into the closet then her little babies would be held hostage — until the parents gave up — and then they all would be killed.
Sally’s ears were ringing from the eight violent explosions that sent hollow point .45 slugs at over 900 feet per second into the twitching, blood-soaked lump now laying on her kitchen floor.
There was silence. Then the silence was interrupted by the bell-like clinking of the last empty .45 case bouncing around on the tile floor.
The room was filled with cordite smoke.
The .45’s effect on loose intestines was truly disgusting. It was as if she’d shot a gallon sized bowl of warm chili from 18 inches away. The entire room was spattered with globs of shit. Sally was covered with big blotches of the stuff but only discovered it when she licked her lips. She wretched and then vomited all over the kitchen tile floor.
Bill stood up and crept onto the second floor. He glanced out the stairway window and then froze in morbid fascination. He could make out the contorted shapes of illegal aliens hung up on the fence line — bits of their limbs glowing like burned bits of steak on a charcoal barbecue — some of the bodies were actually on fire.
What really got him was the smell. It didn’t smell like death. The cooked meat outside smelled like a barbecue! It actually smelled good! Pork ribs! A shiver came over him.
Everything was now quiet and time stood still.
Sally sat there on the cool tile floor of the kitchen wondering what to do next. All she could hear were the nearby random rustlings of a dead Mexican’s twitching leg muscles.
Then the creaking at the kitchen door started again. This time the knob turned. This time the door opened just a crack and then a bit more. Then starlight flooded the room and a faint shadow extended across the kitchen floor.
Sally aimed and tried to fire her .45. Nothing happened!
The magazine was empty and the slide had locked back to the rear — waiting for another eight rounds of brass and lead.
Sally screamed. The Mexican lunged through the door and into the room — blindly bouncing off the kitchen counter at the center of the room and then falling to the floor.
Sally screamed and screamed and screamed and tried to scamper away — slipping and sliding in stone-cold liquid Mexican feces and her own vomit.
“Your fucking BITCH. I gonna cut you lady! I gonna cut you real bad!”
The coyote had finally arrived. He’d hoped that his brothers would have killed off all of these Gringos by now. They certainly hadn’t done a very good job so far. Now it was time to show them how to do it.
This Mexican thought himself to be one mean son-of-a-bitch and there was no way he was gonna take any shit at all from some woman!
Sally had lost her two spare pistol magazines. Her hands were shaking so badly that she could barely hold onto her .45. She tried to push herself farther away from the door but there was so much liquid on the tile floor that she couldn’t get any traction.
All she could do was push her hands into the cooling pools of stinking muck and use her fingernails to claw at the tile grout and drag herself forward. Then suddenly, she felt a cold, firm, heavy .45 magazine at her fingertips.
Her hands were so slippery that she almost dropped the magazine as she brought it to her lap. She released the empty magazine from the pistol and slapped in the new one. The pistol’s slide release was far too stiff for her to free with her thumb so she lowered the gun and pushed the slide back with her left hand and pushed the release lever down with her right thumb. The slide rammed forward and stopped halfway!
“Shit!”
Sally hit the back of the pistol with the palm of her hand and heard the reassuring “shluck” sound as a .45 round was finally peeled from the magazine and slammed into the chamber. She actually could feel the slide move forward and peel a round from the magazine. Her terror turned to rage.
A rough hand grabbed at her leg.
“Hey, bitch! I found you!”
The Mexican’s calluses felt like fish scales rubbing the wrong way.
Sally snapped the gun’s muzzle in the direction of the foreign wrist and fired three shots. This time she was gonna keep a few rounds in the magazine. The first two rounds hit the tile floor and then her KitchenAid dishwasher. The third round blew the Mexican’s wrist bones apart and little pieces of wrist spattered against her face.
The Mexican screamed “AYEEEE!” and scampered and slithered in vomit, shit and spurting blood to get away from her.
“I gonna cut you bitch — I gonna cut you real bad!”
“That’s okay honey. You come on over here and try. My husband used to tell me about Russia — and their Chechens and Georgians. And how they were the Mexicans and Negroes of Russia — the violent scum that had actually bled that place into virtual extinction. I didn’t really believe the stories of Chechen torture and murder — even of little children in hospitals — things they did just for fun. Now I know those stories were all true. And you guys are the same!
Mexicans! Now I’ve seen it for myself. You are the destroyers of my America.
Okay, Mr. Mexican. You come on over here! You wanna rape me? You wanna get at my little kids? Come on over! I’m gonna put this .45 right down your taco-stained throat and blow your lungs out your ass.”
She never thought words like these could come from her mouth. But she had seen too much — and right in front of her. No longer was this some remote event happening to someone else. It was her life and her children and her house and her country that was being defiled.
Now Sally was busy. She was trying to figure out how to wipe Mexi-feces from her eyes. Her clothes were coated. Her face, arms and hands were coated. She suddenly remembered that she had some Christmas theme’d kitchen towels in the drawer and proceeded to crawl over and get them. She thought that she was crying — but she wasn’t sure.
As she wiped her face she thought the towels smelled of Christmas pines and German cookies. Now they were part of the New America, “The New World Order’s” America — covered in Mexican shit.
To make certain she would know if her little wristless Mexican tried to sneak up on her she quietly stacked cans of food into pyramids — one pyramid on each side of the kitchen’s cooking island. All she could do now was crawl against the far wall and wait.
Upstairs, the last Mexican had climbed up on top of a bookcase and laid there — six feet off the floor. He had a nice big hammer in his hands and all he wanted to do is pound it right through the top of Bill’s head as he walked past.
Bill had lost count of rounds fired. All he knew for certain was that he had just four left on the elastic band around the gunstock. One of those rounds was filled with powdered magnesium. If he fired that thing in the house he had no idea what would happen. Out in the open these rounds sent a two foot wide flame 25 yards. Rather pointless but there was nothing he could do about it now. He felt the brass base of each round. Some had brass that was higher than others. Were the magnesium rounds the “high base” or the “low base”? He couldn’t remember!
He loaded all four spare rounds into the gun.
The problem with wearing four or five layers of clothing is that it collects dust and dirt in every nook, cranny, seam, pocket and cuff. As Bill slowly stuck his head out from behind his favorite Lazyboy recliner in the upstairs den he looked down the hall and noticed a fine trickle — a cascade of dirt — pouring off the top of the bookcase and reflecting a faint glimmer of starlight.
Bill slowly edged down the hallway — keeping his back against the wall. He then brought the Benelli up — very slowly — and carefully — and then used the shotgun’s black muzzle to follow the tiny sparkling waterfall of dust upwards — toward the ceiling.
He was about ten feet from the doorway. He aimed just a bit higher than the dust trail — at a point just above the door jam — and fired right through the wall.
BOOM!
Chunks of wooden door frame and white chalky drywall rocketed down the hallway. Bits of wooden door frame and drywall blasted back into Bill’s face. One of the shotgun pellets bounced of the concrete ceiling and came right back into Bill’s forehead — and stuck. Bill dropped the shotgun and slapped his forehead in pain. All he could feel was something like a huge hard pimple that felt like it had just started burning a quarter inch diameter hole in his head.
Bill cupped his hands over his face and tried to squeeze the steaming pimple. God the thing hurt. He clawed the quarter-inch diameter tungsten ball out of his head with his fingernails.
He dropped to his knees, picked up his Benelli and crawled toward the doorway to the next room.
There had been no reaction to his shooting. Nothing. Silence. Maybe nobody was there.
Then Bill saw an arm hanging down off the bookcase. He pointed the shotgun muzzle at a dangling hand and then followed the arm toward the top of the bookcase — there was nothing but blood-smeared carnage.
Bill’s shotgun blast had planted pieces of 1” thick drywall deep into the Mexican’s brain. The shotgun pellets and pieces of drywall had taken off the top of the Mexican’s head — and sliced down into the motor centers of his brain and spinal column. This guy could just as well have been a stuffed and enameled fish — mounted as decoration above the bookcase.
Simon Aliverra was not going to Los Angeles.
Bill slowly moved from room to room until he was certain that the second floor was clear of more Mexicans. He then turned and walked down the hall to the stairs.
His legs were shaking so hard he could barely stand up.
“Sally, it’s me!”
“Watch out Bill!” Sally screamed. “I got a Mexican cornered in the kitchen!”
Bill caught the stair’s handrail to stop himself and then slowly peered down the hallway. There was nothing. He then blinked the shotgun’s flashlight switch and moved, then blinked and moved. He carefully scanned the rec room and hallway to the kitchen. Nothing. He came down the rest of the stairs, crossed the rec room and approached the kitchen. He crept to the kitchen entryway.
Ever-so-slight movement by the kitchen sink caught his eye. He pressed the flashlight switch and saw what looked like some kind of Mexican disco fever aficionado in a cheap flowered “silk-ette” shirt, yellow polyester pants and two inch heeled cowboy boots. And the guy had a green belt.
Bill aimed his 12 gauge at the Mexican’s chest.
“You move and I’m going to blow your ribs through your spine!” Bill announced — in his old military command voice. The Mexican did nothing but look back at him. The Mexican’s possum-like eyes glowed brightly in the shotgun’s flashlight beam.
Bill tried the only Spanish that mattered: “Manos Arriba! — Hands up!”
The Mexican did nothing but stare into the bright beam of Bill’s flashlight.
“Bill, I fired three rounds and I think I got him once. “ Sally said — as she squatted on the floor with her back against the far wall.
The Mexican was on the floor in the corner — leaning up against a kitchen counter — holding his right wrist with his left hand and trying to stop the flow of blood.
The Mexican hissed: “Fuck you Gringo piece of shit White piece of fuck!” He then spit a glob of something in Bill’s direction.
“Get up” Bill said — with an almost psychopathic pleasantness in his voice.
“Fuck you! My men will get you. They have you surrounded!”
Bill casually painted the shotgun’s light over the Mexican’s body — looking for the perfect place to shoot him — then aimed the 12 gauge at the Mexicans good left arm and pulled the trigger.
The Mexican flopped around in his own blood and screamed a bit but actually took the amputation with some decorum.
“If you think that I’m gonna kill you then you are wrong” Bill whispered to the Mexican. “I’m gonna cut you down into a little stump so that you can go back to Tijuana and sell Chicletts from a skateboard”
“Fuck you …”
Bill left the flashlight on and slowly moved closer to the Mexican — and then lowered the 12 gauge until only the Mexican’s right boot was illuminated. Bill pulled the trigger.
The blast removed everything below the Mexican’s right calf.
“How many men did you bring with you?”
All Bill heard was excessive panting …
“How many men did you bring with you?”
More panting. Bill moved the 12 gauge so that the light shined on the Mexican’s private parts.
“Basta! Basta! Basta! Enough! — I had 17 in the truck!”
“Thank you”
Bill moved the gun up to let the flashlight shine in the Mexican’s eyes for several seconds and then he turned it off. This would keep the Mexican night blind and disoriented.
“Let’s see, 18 total. We got that one over there on his back with his guts blown out — damn what a mess, this one breathing hard in the kitchen, one on the stairs with no asshole and no shoulder, one upstairs with no head — and fourteen more — Jesus!
Sally started to be shocked at the simple, cold, descriptions of the carnage around her — then she stopped and thought only of revenge: “Good!”
Shit. I forgot the toasties.” Bill looked out the window and counted.
“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Let’s see, that leaves fourteen minus eight — six remaining.”
The eighth one was flat on the pool decking. In cold, clear starlight the eighth one looked familiar. There was something about the shape that made Bill shudder.
Bill grabbed the subhuman stump of Mexican disco fever by the shirt and dragged it out the back door.
“AAAAAAGH!” The stump struggled and twisted but no longer had the strength — or limbs — to fight.
The remaining illegals froze in the shadows and watched their leader being dragged across the pavement by the White man. Mexicans clustered together in the shadows — like wild dogs — waiting for the lead dog to point them at new prey.
“Hey Amigo! You wanna fight us? You wanna try something with all of us?”
Laughter came from the shadows and Bill sensed that this pack of vermin were now inching toward him. Now they were less than 30 feet away and moving closer and closer.
One of the Mexicans had stolen a screwdriver from the shed. The Mexican held it loosely in his hands — bouncing it in his palm, weighing it, and weighing his chances of placing it firmly into Bill’s face.
The Mexican slowly edged sideways and then stepped to the rear of the pack — into the deepest shadows. He then brought the tool above and behind his head and then with a massive downward movement he threw it at Bill’s left eye.
The screwdriver hit Bill full in the forehead. The screwdriver’s tip scraped up the front of Bill’s skull — gouging the flesh right up to his hairline and then it sailed into the air and bounced across the patio.
Bill snapped the Benelli toward the cluster of brown shapes and fired. The world became the inside of a flash bulb. Rather than a “Boom” the round made a “Whoosh.” At this close range three of the Mexicans were set on fire. The rest scattered — blinded by the magnesium flame. Screams of the burning Mexicans were muffled by screams from other Mexicans running blindly and headlong into walls, patio equipment, the pool filter and more.
Bill too was blinded by the flash and could only make out a dim flicker from the kitchen door. He stumbled over the slithering Mexican disco-stump and staggered inside the kitchen.
“Turn on the lights!” Bill screamed.
Sally flipped on the lights in the kitchen and had to turn away from the blood and brown horror she saw before her.
Bill stumbled over to the gaping hole in the wall where the telephone had been and pulled what looked like the eject handle from an F-18 ejection seat.
“Sally, close the kitchen door and run down the hall!” Bill’s face was a massive spider web of blood. He wiped his face with his hands and tried to clear his eyes — the whole front of his shirt was dripping with blood. All Sally could do was stand and stare.
A gurgling sound followed by hissing could be heard outside. It sounded very much like he had turned on the lawn sprinklers. And in fact that was exactly what he had done. But instead of normal well water being spread over the landscape the liquid was being drained from the second fiberglass septic tank hidden one hundred seventy feet up the hillside and containing a mixture of used motor oil and gasoline. Nothing was gonna stop a 120 psi ram of death from kicking his lawn sprinklers into action.
The ever-louder “hsssssssss” of the sprinklers seemed odd in the present context. For a radius of more than fifty yards around the house the land was being coated in fuming death from more than 700 little green plastic 2.5 inch pop-up lawn sprinklers — at 2,200 gallons a minute.
After what felt like an eternity but was really less than 45 seconds, Bill sent 12 volts down to squibs mounted at some of the sprinkler heads. The squibs flashed to life and vaporized. The yard exploded into a fireball a thousand feet high. The sudden thermal impulse — a shockwave of infrared — made the paper calendar on the kitchen wall start to curl. Bill and Sally dropped to the floor as the crackling and screams from outside went on and on and on.
The fireball churned above the house in a myriad of mixed colors of red, yellow and black. The overly-rich fuel to air mixture literally screamed for air and sucked oxygen from every source. Air was sucked from under the doors and even right up the chimney. The sudden drop in air pressure made Bill’s ears pop. It was as if they all had been rocketed to the 14,000 foot level of Mt. McKinley.
The drop in air pressure was but a sign of worse things to come. The drop in air pressure meant a fire storm was swirling — a tornado of fire was burning just above their heads. Small objects from even a quarter mile away were being sucked toward the flames. It sounded like a hail storm as leaves, twigs, bushes and even rodents were sucked against the house and into the flames.
All Bill could think of was how much this must be like living through a nuclear explosion. In the present case a nuclear explosion gone wrong.
For some reason he thought of the July 6th, 1962 “SEDAN” underground nuclear explosion in Nevada — when 12 million tons of sand and rock were accidentally blasted out of the earth at such velocity that they caught fire from air friction. Fiery yellow / red blobs of what can only be described as hyper-velocity lava pelted the desert — covering more than a hundred square miles.
Maybe Bill’s mushroom cloud was worse than SEDAN — because all of this stuff was flying towards him instead of away from him. And every leaf, twig, bush and mouse sucked towards the center of the swirling flames was fuel and helped the flames get higher and hotter.
All Bill and Sally could do was lay on the floor, grit their teeth — and wait.