Bad Blood

anything. Had he imagined it? Possible. Had to make a decision, and made it.
     
     
    SCARED OUT OF HIS MIND, Virgil ran down the tree line, banging through the underbrush and ricocheting off the smaller trees that he couldn’t see coming, until he was even with the back door, and then dropped on the ground, silent, listening for reaction. Somebody was shooting one of the semiautos, but most of the other guns were silent, and then there was a BOOM-BOOM on the far side, a shotgun, and he feared for Jenkins, but then got an answering burst. Jenkins wasn’t dead yet; other than that, there were no guarantees.
    A truck backed wildly down the driveway, and another followed it, and men were screaming. He was directly at the back of the house now, couldn’t see anybody in either direction—heard another short burst from Jenkins, now firing down the far side of the house—and dashed across the open space to the back door.
    He kicked it once, as hard as he’d ever kicked a door in his life, felt it sag, kicked it a second time and the lock and latch blew open, and he was inside, at the bottom of a four-step set of stairs. He climbed the stairs, leading with the muzzle of the M16, did a quick peek, saw that he was coming into the back of the kitchen. The kitchen floor was smeared with blood. Light from heavy flames, and a boiling black smoke, poured from the living room beyond.
    There were no more bullets going through the house. He heard another burst from Jenkins’s rifle, and thought that the farmers around the place were probably more worried about being attacked by a guy with a machine gun than continuing their attack.
    Whatever.
    He looked both ways, and dashed across the kitchen. The living room had apparently been splashed with gasoline, and the fire was large and growing quickly, the furniture fully involved. He could see a body stretched in the flames, already badly burned, unrecognizable. Nothing to do about that. He turned up the stairs, shouting, “Virgil, Virgil,” turned the corner at the landing, saw a dead man lying on the stairs. He hopped over him, shouted, “Virgil,” turned the corner at the top and saw Coakley standing in the open bathroom doorway.
    He went that way, saw Dunn sitting behind the bathtub, and a young girl inside it. He shouted, “Come on,” and Dunn said, “My foot’s gone,” and Virgil said, “Push yourself up the wall.”
    He handed the rifle to Coakley, who was holding the cardboard photo box, said, “Give the box to the kid. C’mon, you lead.”
    Virgil half squatted, told Dunn to drape himself over his shoulders, got one arm between the other man’s legs, and lifted him in a fireman’s carry.
    They went down the hall, Coakley leading with the rifle muzzle, the girl following, and then the girl darted into a side room, and Coakley screamed at her, and she came back out, carrying a coat. Virgil and Dunn last; Dunn probably weighed two hundred pounds, but wasn’t so much heavy as awkward.
    Nobody on the stairs, the fire growing wilder, and down they went, into the kitchen, to the top of the stairs by the back door, and Coakley said, “Oh, shit,” and turned and gave the rifle to Virgil and said, “I’ll be right back. Ten seconds.”
    “Where the hell . . .”
    But she was gone, and a minute later, over the sounds of shouting outside, and the sounds of cars, and more gunfire, there was a sudden crash of glass, and then Coakley was back, took the rifle and they were out and Virgil was shouting, “Right into the trees, right into the trees.”
    He ran as best he could, with Dunn on his shoulders, and when they got into the tree line, they stopped, crouching behind the thick-trunked box elders, and Virgil put Dunn down. Dunn groaned as he did it, and then said, “Man, thanks. Thank you.”
    Virgil took the gun from Coakley and said, “You guys stay here. There’s another guy with me, he’ll be coming round the back of the house, probably, don’t shoot him. His name is Jenkins.”
    “Where’re you going?” Coakley asked.
    “I’m going to shoot some more people,” he said.
     
     
    HE DIDN’T. There’d probably been a dozen of them, or even twenty, but they’d taken casualties and had finally broken, running for it, piling into their trucks and cars as Jenkins gave them a send-off. One truck was nose-down in the driveway ditch, with its headlights still burning. There were two bodies on the ground in front of the house.
    And it was silent, finally, and