Home Sweet Home Part 1

Home Sweet Home

Somebody set off a flash bang outside, rattling the windows even with the boards over them. I doubted that it was the cavalry coming to the rescue, the local county Mounties and city PD were both holed up in the county law enforcement center, a walled former mall that had gone belly up in the early 80s and been bought up by the county for a song. There was a second window rattling dull boom, and this time I hear the sound of bits of plastic shrapnel dusting the siding of the house. Ah, so it wasn’t a flash bang after all, just the Stevens brothers outside fucking around again.

I didn’t bother getting up from the floor where I was sitting. I had a coffee table propped up in front of me and a couch and a love seat dragged to either side with my back to the wall. It wasn’t the best cover in the world, but anyone – and more importantly any thing – trying to get at me was going to have to stumble over the furniture. I tightened the ACE bandage wrapped around my knee. That was probably a good thing, as I wasn’t as mobile as I’d like to be since I’d jacked up my knee getting away from the mailman. Or what had been the mailman anyway…

There was one more window rattling explosion followed by the booms of two shotgun blasts. The Stevens brothers were my neighbors. They were a couple of good old boys. The sort who liked to fill PVC pipes with gunpowder and set them off to celebrate the Fourth of July and always kept a couple of shotguns around, laws about felons having firearms not withstanding. They probably having a ball in their own way, or at least they would be until they ran out of beer, illegal fireworks, and whatever else they had squirreled away in their place. I just hoped that they didn’t manage to burn the house down.

I’d grown up here, well sort of. My mother had put the house up for sale and moved to Florida after she’d finally called it quits with my dad. The real estate market had been down, so the place had been sitting vacant. I’d promised to check on it periodically whenever business called. Truth be told, I never bothered, let the Realtor do that. I could give a rat’s ass less. Mom and I didn’t exactly get along. A lousy standard issue traumatic childhood will do that to you.

I’d know the Steven brothers growing up, we’d shared a study hall and I’d helped them do their math homework in exchange for car care assistance. Paul and Mark were decent guys in their own way, just a little crazy. There was another explosion, this time larger than the last. Okay, maybe more than a little crazy…

Still, the nice thing about being out in the country was…. Well at least it wasn’t the city. I’d like to say that I’d gotten out when the getting was good, but I’d actually been caught ass out. I’d been supposed to meet the Realtor out here and sign some papers since my name was on some of the land accompanying the sale of the house. It hadn’t sold, so dear old Mom had decided to rent it, and since that was now what I did (not that Mom thought I was applying myself), I was also supposed to give the place a look over. Then of course I hit a deer and busted out the window on my Scion and also fucked up the axles when I ended up ploughing into one of those ten foot deep country ditches getting out here, I‘d forgotten that when one saw one, that a bunch of deer were probably nearby and hit number two running across.

A hundred miles was a bit far to walk to get back to my apartment in the city. At first I figured that I’d just be stuck out here for a few days until I got the Scion fixed, it was easier to just do it here then have it towed back home a hundred miles, or take the rental home and have to come back. Yeah, that would have been nice. That was before the fucktards started showing up outside and the mailman tired to bite my side out.

On the plus side, this area had seen at least some development. When I was a kid, it was a 20 or 30 minute drive to get to the local K mart and A&P. Now there was a Target and a Super Walmart five minutes away.

What saved might have been that I was a slumlord, or so I used to say when I was feeling in a humorous mood. I hadn’t really known what to do when I’d finished my undergraduate work in business. Law school hadn’t exactly worked out, maybe I was too morally flexible even for a career in law. So I’d sunk a minor inheritance into a buddy’s business and ended up in the property management game, renting low cost apartments to various crazies and degenerates. You’d think that a business degree would have helped with that, but really I should have studied criminal justice or abhorrent psychology. Long story short, I’d seen some crazy shit, been stabbed twice, car jacked once, and had to face down some moron with a five gallon can of gas trying to burn down one of our eight units because he was pissed at his baby’s momma.

Yeah, six years of college and I got to deal with dopers and stick my hands down people’s toilets. I should have listened to my dad and become an engineer. But then I probably wouldn’t have been in the habit of wearing a bullet proof vest and toting three pistols around. Hey, it isn’t paranoid if people really are out to get you.

Technically a bullet proof vest is more bullet resistant than bullet proof. They are very hard to bite through though. Thus when Sid the mailman had wandered up with his pith helmet ajar and turned his head sideways to try to sink his teeth into me (twisting like some sort of crazed animal), I’d been knocked on my ass and twisted my knee, but teeth aren’t going to penetrate Kevlar. I hadn’t been expecting trouble so I’d left my Browning in the house, but I didn’t so much as walk out to get the paper without my little Smith and Wesson .38 in my pocket.

Only problem was that Sid had me pinned to where I couldn’t get to it and was still trying to gnaw into my ribs, making snarfly eating noises some kind of dog with a rawhide chew.

Fortunately for me, I’d taken to carrying a third gun, a little Bersa .380 automatic, tucked over behind my left hip so that I’d be able to get to it if someone had a hold of my right arm or I was pinned. Stabbing number two would have been prevented if I’d figured that out earlier you see.

At that point I still didn’t know why exactly Sid was trying to kill me, and the first thing I thought was that he’d just gone “postal”. I wasn’t in a mood to reason, and my attempts to shove him off me weren’t going anywhere with his weight pressing down on me (Sid was a fat fucker). I was able to clear the Bersa though and jammed the muzzle right up into Sid’s love handles. That little .380 held seven rounds in the mag and one up the spout. I pulled the trigger until the side locked back. I got lucky, real lucky given that a .380 is rather anemic as bullets go. One of rounds must have angled upwards just right and severed one of Sid’s vertebrae. He ended up rolling onto his side and making a god awful moaning noise.

My knee was already throbbing, but I shoved the door back open and got my ass back inside, slamming the door shut behind me and locking the deadbolt. It was a hell of a morning. Truth to be told, I’d drank half a fifth of bourbon the night before out of boredom. Thus at that point I had one hell of a head ache already and now I’d just had to shoot my mother’s mailman. (Mom was careless about things, part of why she and dad hadn’t gotten along. She hadn’t bother to forward her mail, expecting me to pick it up and go through it, and the power, cable and phones were still on at the house, as well as the paper still coming.)

I reached for my G’zone that should have been on my belt, but it wasn’t there anymore. Looking out the window, I saw that it was now laying next to Sid, who was flat on his back, thrashing around like a beached whale, only paralyzed from the waist down. Yeah, I wasn’t planning to go back out there and grab it.

I realized that I was still holding the empty Bersa, so I hit the mag release and let the empty fall to the floor. I had a spare magazine in my pocket, so I dug it out and shoved it into place before hitting the slide release, chambering a fresh round.

I’d taken a course after stabbing number one and learned my way around using a handgun. The instructor had stressed always reloading and getting your gun back into action since you never knew when a fight would be over. I’d been pissed at the time that I’d dropped a grand and a week of my life on the course, as I was still naïve enough at the time to think that it was excessive.

It was at that very moment that I got my money’s worth and then some, as the sliding glass window near the deck came crashing in. Fat fuck number two, who I didn’t recognize, but was wearing torn farmer’s overalls had just come rolling in through the window.

He had a face full of glass, but that didn’t seem to be anything that he’d notice, nor did the fact that his belly was torn open and some of his insides were spilling outside really seem to faze him.

I probably should have wondered what the fuck was going on, but training, habit, or just luck made me level the Bersa. I probably should have tried yelling “Freeze” like on Cops or something, but a fat bloody guy with a face full of glass who’s tripping on his own intestines stumbling towards you can leave you at a lost for words.

I pretty just shoved the Bersa out in front of me, having switched it to my right hand at least, and started pulling the trigger as Farmer Fat Fuck (a lovely bit of alliteration that ran through my head instantly) shoved a kitchen chair out of the way and started towards me.

A .380 doesn’t kick all that much, at least compared to some guns, but recoil will still make a muzzle rise on any gun, putting follow up shots high. I think my first shot probably hit Farmer Fat Fuck just above the navel, but the last two before the slide locked open hit bracketed his right eye, above and below, dropping him with a disconcerting and bloody splat right through my mother’s prized glass dining room table.

That had been my last magazine for the Bersa, so I jammed it into my waistband and pulled my little Smith and Wesson .38 snub and covered the Farmer. I just about pissed myself and spun around as a fist went through the bottom of one of the windows facing the porch. I spun around to see Sid shoving first his hands, oblivious to a fist full of glass shards, through the gap, followed by his face, his nose now bisected by yet another piece of glass.

“Oh fuck me,” I muttered as I lowered the muzzle of the snubby and pulled the trigger until it went click. I counted three bullet holes in the floor later, but two of my five hit their mark, at least one getting Sid right between the eyes and decorating the floor with brains as his chin slapped into the floor.

I didn’t have a reload on me for the .38, but I still dumped the empties by reflex onto the floor, thumbing open the cylinder release before I even realized that I didn’t have anything to put into the now empty cylinder. I snapped the gun shut and jammed it back into my pocket, grabbing the phone off the wall and mashing “911”, wondering how the hell I was going to explain all this.

911 was busy. I’d have expected that back in the city mind you, it wasn’t terribly uncommon to have to wait on hold for 911, so I tried again. This time I got a message that all circuits were busy.

I looked at my watch, it was 11:30 in the morning and I still hadn’t cleared the remains of my hangover from my brain. My ears were still ringing from firing my guns indoors without ear plugs, but I hadn’t noticed that yet and was only just starting to feel how badly my knee hurt. I didn’t have much time to focus on either, as I noticed what I thought might be Mrs. Farmer Fat Fuck crawling up the steps on the deck and heading towards the broken window to the kitchen. She was missing one leg, but was crawling along on three limbs like a sick old dog that one of my tenants had had for a while until it’d been hit by a city bus while dragging its ass along the street.

I blinked twice, maybe three times, and then I started up the steps, taking them two or three at a time and pulling myself along with the handrail to keep my knee from giving up. My Browning was sitting on the dresser next to my old bed where I’d spent the night waiting on auto repairs, and suddenly I wanted it very badly.

I heard more glass shatter downstairs, telling me that my new visitor had probably made it inside. I pushed myself over the top of the bed and grabbed the Browning out of its paddle holster. I always kept a round chambered. I overshot the bed a bit and ended up landing on the floor, but I kept the Browning in hand. I finally took a deep breath and realized that I hadn’t been followed. I had two spare magazines, so I pulled them loose from their pouch and stuffed them into a pocket and walked back out of my room to where I could cover the stairs. There was no longer the sound of breaking glass from downstairs, but I did hear the snarfly eating noises again.

I descended the stairs more slowly then I’d gone up them, my knee starting to give me even more trouble. There I found Mrs. Farmer Fat Fuck with the missing leg munching happily on the intestinal loops hanging out of the guts of Mr. Farmer Fat Fuck. I gagged slightly, and if I hadn’t already puked up the food on my stomach when I’d woken up (thanks to the bourbon and the bad Chinese food that had been dinner), I’d have probably had more than just a passing set of dry heaves.

The woman looked up at me, and a pendulous gray breast flopped out of her torn sun dress. I noticed that the nipple was gone and looked bitten off. I didn’t stop to think, but simply centered the front post sight on my Hi Power on the woman’s face and thumbed off the safety. For some reason, probably my already screwed hearing, the shot itself barely seemed to register, but I remember the sound of the empty brass shell casing pinging off the linoleum.

I was probably slightly in shock, but I found myself wondering how the hell much it was going to cost me to get this mess cleaned up in order to get the place rented now.

 

 

I didn’t have much time to sit, or stand rather, and ruminate. The unmistakable – at least if you’ve not led a sheltered life – sounds of a car accident, replete with someone leaning on the horn and squealing tires sounded like it had just taken place in the front yard. Limping a bit, I turned and went back into the living room. There was still the face of a dead man jammed in next to the front door, so I stayed the hell away from that and instead used the muzzle of my Browning to push back the drapes away from the big picture window in the living room and take look outside while still keeping myself pushed flat against the wall.