The moment of relief I feel is quickly replaced by the memory of the third man I’d heard in the hall. As I roll over to check the door, I find that he’s just entering the room. The sight of his two dead homeboys causes him to hesitate and gives me just enough time to roll to my right towards the living room.
He’s quick on the recovery and opens up fire. The bullets shred the floor behind me. I come out of the roll, clumsily, and stagger to my feet. I throw myself towards the couch, a messy and desperate dive for the only cover available. I go ass over tea kettle as I tumble over the back of the couch and land in a ball on the other side. He continues to fire. The bullets exit the back of the couch just above where I’m laying, dislodging the guts of the furniture, and bathing me in scorched pieces of peach-colored stuffing.
I’m done for. He’s got me pinned. He’s moving towards me, firing in small bursts. I try to poke my head around to get a better view and almost get it blown off. The coward left in me wants to scream for my wife’s help. I suppress the coward, hold him down, and cover his mouth. I’m not going to put Tasia in danger. The sacrifice is mine and mine alone. Paul should be about done with the floor; hopefully this will give her the time she needs to escape.
I love you Tasia.
I love you Alisa.
The gangster is standing by the arm of the couch, looking down at me, gloating, golden grill on full display. His finger is wrapped around the trigger, squeezing slowly, cherishing the moment.
I stare right back into his eyes. Chin up. I will die with my pride in hand.
“This is for Pook and Andre, mothafucka!” The entire right side of his head explodes, plastering the white ceiling with brain matter. He flops across the arm of the couch, dead, his mouth frozen open, golden grill on permanent display.
Tasia is standing just inside the hallway, the gun of the gangster I’d downed trembling in her hands, the barrel still smoking.
I grab the gun off the third gangster, dislodge my hatchet from the second one’s head, and run to Tasia’s side. “You okay?” I snap my fingers in front of her face and she jolts. “Hey, you okay?”
“Yeah…yeah, I’m okay.”
I holster the hatchet in the front chest pocket of my coveralls. “You did good baby, you did real good; saved my ass. You hold onto that.”
She looks at the machine gun like I’ve just handed her a glass of poison and told her to take a drink.
“Where we’re going, you’re gonna need it.” It occurs to me that we both have the same amount of experience with a machine gun; I’ve never shot one of these damn things, not until today, and neither has she; looks like we’re both naturals. I step back into the bedroom. Alisa is still in the corner. Paul is walking a slow circle around the middle of the room, the saw bouncing up and down in his hands, dust and carpet fibers flying into the air. “How much longer?” I yell.
He doesn’t seem to have heard me. He just keeps bouncing along, pausing every now and then to sneeze or blow the small fibers of carpet from the tip of this nose.
“Paul, how much longer?” I bend over, getting in his face.
He stops the saw, throws it to the ground, and stomps down hard.
At first, I think I’ve pissed him off and he’s getting aggressive with me. I jump back, not quite sure how to take it.
Paul stomps again. The floor quakes. Dust begins to rise. And then everything in front of us falls away, including the saw.
“Ah, well, shit. I wasn’t planning on using it again anyway,” Paul stands over the hole, admiring his handy work.
The three of us move in behind Paul and lean over our newly crafted escape hatch. As the dust clears an empty room—except for the pile of fresh debris—reveals itself below us. It looks familiar; pale carpeting and off-white walls.
I grip Paul by a shoulder and give him a little shake. “Nice work, my friend! Nice work!”
He turns and smiles at me. “You better get them out of here. I’m sure more will be on the way soon.”
“You’re not coming with?”
“Oh no, no, I’m not. I reckon this is my home. I’m going to sit right here and watch my TV.”
“Paul, they said airstrikes could be on the way, you can’t stay here,” Tasia joins my pleas.
Paul nods. “Yep, I heard the same thing.”
“And yet you’re staying?” I ask.
“And yet I’m staying,” Paul responds with a smile, his cheeks flushing red as he backs away from the hole.
I hold out my hand. “You take care of yourself, Paul.”
“You do the same.” He waves us towards the hole in the floor. “Now go on, get out while you can.”
I’m the first in, sitting on the jagged edge, legs dangling, listening for any hostile noise. I hear muted voices, but nothing that sounds like it’s coming from the room below me. Nothing that indicates anyone is awaiting my arrival. “Hold these for me and then hand them down if you would.” I hand off the gun and hatchet to Paul. I say a silent prayer and push myself over.
The pile of debris doesn’t make for a smooth landing. My feet slip out from under me and I roll down the small hill of wood and metal and dust. I find myself face down on the floor, covered in powdered plaster. I come up to my knees and take a quick glance around the room.
I can still hear the muted voices.
I can hear footsteps in the hall.
No bullets.
No one yelling for back up.
It appears my entry has gone unnoticed.
I jump to my feet and shake myself off. “Gun and hatchet,” my voice is a raspy whisper as I stand on the tips of my toes and strain to reach the weapons that Paul is dangling above my head. I set them at my feet and reach out to receive Alisa as Paul gradually lowers her into my arms. After that, it’s Tasia’s turn.
With everyone safely on the ground, we bid Paul farewell and begin to make our way through the seemingly empty apartment. We don’t talk unless we have to, using whispers and one word sentences to express ourselves; everything else is communicated through hand signals and facial expressions.
I’m cooking along at a decent pace, the girls are staying close. We’re moving into the hallway and towards the living-room. I still don’t have any idea how we’re going to make it back to the stairwell; there’s an army of Golden Boys blocking our path. But just as that thought begins to swell in my head, a potential answer reveals itself in the living room.
“Wow!” Tasia breathes in my ear.
“Wow is right.”
It’s the Golden Boys’ weapons cache. There are guns upon guns scattered across the floor. It’s obvious they’d come through earlier to arm themselves; it’d probably been shortly after the shit hit the fan. There are tipped over boxes of ammo and empty magazines strewn about. But despite that, there’s still plenty of hardware to go around.
“We can definitely use this stuff.”
It’s mostly AK-47’s and handguns; there are a few rickety-looking revolvers in the crowd.
“Take this.” I hand Tasia one of the AK’s and two magazines to go along with it.
“I don’t know how to shoot this,” she says, pointing the rifle towards the ceiling and turning it in her hands.
“Neither do I.” I’m still of the mindset that if those punk ass thugs can do it, so can I.
She sighs and sticks the extra mags in the front of her waistband.
“Here, back up.” I hand her a pistol and take one for myself. “Tuck it next to the mags, just don’t shoot yourself; keep that finger far away from the trigger.”
I remove the hatchet from the chest pocket of my coveralls and extend it to Alisa. “You hold onto this.”
She frowns at the blood on the blade. “I don’t want to have to hurt anyone else.”
“Hopefully you won’t have to, but I can’t promise you anything.” I lift her head up by the chin. “Listen, right now you need to be brave. There are folks out there that want to hurt us, you know that, right?”
She nods.
“Sometimes being brave means you have to hurt people that are trying to hurt you. And it’s not because you want to or because you enjoy it, it’s because you want to survive, you want to protect yourself, you want to protect the people you love.” I hold up my rifle in front of her face and pull the lever, chambering a round. “I don’t want to have to use this. But when we go out that door, chances are, there will be folks that will try to do harm to you and your mom. The only way to stop them will be for me to hurt them. I don’t want to. I won’t enjoy it. But nothing is going to take you away from me or me away from you.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
“Yeah,” she nods rapidly, her fingers closing tight around the handle of the hatchet, “I do.”
“Good, now let’s get out of here.”
I go to stand but she grabs me by the sleeve. “Dad, wait.”
“Yes, sweetie?”
“Thank you for saving me.” She wraps her arms around my neck and I can feel myself begin to choke up a little.
“Oh, baby girl, you don’t have to thank me for that. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. Besides, I couldn’t have done it without your mom.”
She quickly releases me and her arms coil around Tasia’s waist. “Thank you, Mom.”
“Aw, anything for you, baby.”
I stand and give Tasia a quick peck on the lips. “Ya’ll ready?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Tasia says.
7
They make it look so easy in the movies. The good guys storm the enemy compound, creeping along unseen until they find the perfect position to lay their ambush. When they strike, their bullets always seem to travel with a godlike precision, putting the enemy down silently without alerting the others; rinse and repeat until the mission is complete.
Maybe the
it
factor is that they’re trained military.
Or, maybe, it’s that they’re bullshit figments of Hollywood’s imagination machine.
Whatever the case may be, there’s nowhere for us to go.
No perfect target.
No perfect position for us to lay our ambush.
I lean from the doorway to find the hall crammed with close to a dozen Golden Boys. All of them are armed to their golden grills. They look war-torn. The bullet-riddled bodies of their fellow gang members are lifeless at their feet.
“Man, this is fucked up!” One of them says.
“We heard you the first fifty fuckin’ times you said that, bruh. Give that shit a rest.”
“Nah, man, nah! You didn’t have to put your own brotha down! You don’t know what I’m goin’ through, mothafucka!”
“Yo, man, chill the fuck out! We all goin’ through it! We just gotta keep this shit together.”
“This is some evil, satanic bullshit, bruh, for real.”
“We don’t know what this shit is, so ya’ll just shut the fuck up, stay cool.”
I lean back inside and place my forehead against Tasia’s. “There’s no other way. We have to go through them. You ready for this?”
Tasia gives a nervous, little laugh. “Do I have a choice?”
What’s one more war? All three of us already look like we’ve been through a couple; beat up, bumped up, covered in blood that’s not our own.
“Alisa, you stay put till we come get you, got it?”
She nods and scoots back deeper into the apartment, clutching the hatchet to her chest.
Me and Tasia lean from the doorway; I’m standing and she’s crouched below me. We take aim and I’m the first to fire. My rounds land in the back of the Golden Boy closest to me, face planting him. After that, I can’t really follow where my bullets are going or who I’m hitting. But there are wounded screams and men on the ground, so I know I’m doing something right. Tasia is firing too, but she’s letting off small bursts and getting roughed up by the recoil. I reckon we’ve put down close to half of them with our first barrage. There are maybe four or five left and they’re taking up cover around the corner near the stairwell entrance and inside nearby apartments.
I notice that two apartments up, on the right, the door is open. It’s time to relocate.
“Cover me!”
“Wait, wh—”
“Cover me, goddamnit!”
I move sideways out of cover. I’m shuffling my feet, stepping with the front and dragging the back. It’s a deadly game of whack-a-mole as I move; every time I see one of them attempt to poke their head out, I lay down a quick burst of gunfire.
Tasia is late on the trigger. I’m halfway to my next position before I hear her AK spring to life.
I roll into cover as one of the remaining gangsters blind-fires; he gets lucky and lands a few shots close to my position.
With my back against the door frame, I change out magazines and chamber a round. “You boys want to live or die?” I don’t have anything planned, no mental script, I’m just drunk off the adrenaline of full-blown combat.
“You the one that’s gonna die, old man!” He punctuates his proclamation by squeezing the trigger and sending a swarm of lead whistling past my head.
We’ve both said our peace. I don’t suppose there is any further conversation to be had. I go down on one knee. I can see the doors on the left side of the hallway running all the way up to the window on the other end. Three apartments up from me, on the left, I can see the heel of a white Nike tennis shoe with a gold-colored checkmark. I aim and fire.
Three shots.
One goes wide.
One lands in his heel.
One lands in his ankle.
He yelps and falls over sideways into the hall.
Before I have a chance to finish him, Tasia pumps five rounds in his back.
“Mothafuckas!” One of the gangsters rolls into the hall, fanning his weapon back and forth as he holds down the trigger.
Debris fills the air around me as the bullets shred the walls and ceiling. I put my body back behind cover and leave my weapon exposed, returning fire blindly. I look to Tasia. She’s braving the storm, flinching against the barrage, her index finger bouncing against the trigger.
Our enemy goes silent.
I roll back out and take aim, waiting for the dust to clear.
He’s down and dead, blood pooling beneath him.
“Ah, fuck, they killed Elmer, bruh! They killed him! He’s fuckin’ dead!”
“I’m gonna get you muthafuckas, that’s on my word!”
Their voices sound like they’re coming from the opening to the stairwell.
I keep my rifle aimed at that corner. “Only two of you left, you really wanna die over this shit?”
“Hell yeah, I ride for mine, I die for mine!”
He swings around the corner. Before he even sets his foot down, I’m lacing him with bullets and Tasia is doing the same. His body convulses as he absorbs the rounds and falls backwards against the wall, dead.
“What about you, last man standing, you ready to ride and die for yours?” My confidence is soaring. And I don’t mean
confidence
in a cocky sort of way. I mean confidence in my ability to protect my wife and daughter, my confidence in my ability to stare down adversity and to survive.
There’s the sound of heavy breathing. The metallic sound of a magazine being unloaded and loaded. The sound of a round being chambered.
“Aigh
t…
aight, I’m coming out. Don’t shoot me, bruh, you win, aight, goddamn, you win.” He tosses the machine gun into the hall and then comes around the corner with his hands raised.
I don’t recognize him, but with their gold embroidered shirts, their grills, and the constant sneers they wear on their faces, I could never really tell them apart anyway. I stand, holding him in my sights. “Tasia, get Alisa, tell her to keep her eyes closed till ya’ll get to the stairs, I don’t want her seeing all this mess.”
There’s a thick silence that develops between me and the grimacing gangster. Maybe it’s the sight of his dead homeboys or the fact that he’s been out gunned by a man twice his age, but his reverence quickly turns into rebellion. “You gonna pull that muthafuckin trigger, old man? You gonna smoke me?”
Tasia goes slinking by me, guiding Alisa by one hand.
“Oh, you better pull it, ya hear? I got somethin’ for your ass. I got something for her ass too.” He thrusts his crotch towards Tasia as she rounds the corner towards the stairwell.
“You sure you want to disrespect my wife while I’m holding a gun on you?”
“Man, you ain’t gonna do shit. You can’t protect a dime piece like that. You wait; I’m comin’ for your ass, old timer. And then I’m gonna be comin’ on her ass.”
There are certain things we do and we’re not quite sure why we do them. Our body just reacts to some invisible signal from our brain. And as hard as we might try, we’re never able to trace it. All we know is that something happened and we reacted. That’s how it is as I pull the trigger. I feel disconnected. I don’t notice any spike in anger. My finger simply compresses that little bit of curved metal, as if acting outside my will.
The gangster makes a sound as if he’s been punched and the wind has been taken out of him. His eyes go wide with surprise. His hands come to the center of his chest, trying to plug the massive leak that has just erupted there. He crumples to his butt, teeth chattering as he goes into shock.
I stand above him and watch him die.
Me and mine, we will survive, no matter what.