What If? Just a Trip to the Store

The ice covering the roads was the first sign that we should have stayed at home. Sure, the conditions were awful, but our little Jetta had new tires and the dog needed food. My husband and I ignored the weather and braved the pre-Christmas crowd of crazies to grab our schnauzer some Purina, but we ended up steering a packed cart of goodies for ourselves out the door. It was so typical that we no longer thought about grabbing popcorn, peanuts, and ice cream off the shelves when the trip only required a few necessities. It took a lot to satiate our north-country induced hunger pains and late night video game sessions. Warren was concentrating on pushing our cart over the icy parking lot, but I was busy being my overly curious self. I chattered about all the cars around us and the people inside, glad we’d gotten out of the house for at least a bit. “Hey, wasn’t that Kia there when we got here?” I asked, gesturing at a neutral-colored minivan parked beside our winter rat. “Yeah,” he said as he popped he trunk to begin unloading groceries, “It looks like the people are still in it, too.” The people had been in the van long enough for snow to accumulate on the hood and top, but we had bags to shove into the miniature compartment we called a trunk before the climate got the best of us. I was pulling a pack of bottled Cokes out when a ring broke and released one of the drinks onto the blacktop. Of course it rolled several cars down before it met a tire and stopped. “That one’s yourn!” “Oh hush,” I replied to him, nudging him through his jacket, “I’ll go get it. You just get the car packed up.” When I returned with the fizzy drink in hand, the Kia had pulled out and was parked behind our car. Two scruffy men were inside. From their accents I could tell they were locals in the military town. From their tones I could tell they were angry at my husband. “Come on, Man! My kids are sick and I don’t have any I.D. Just go get them some Sudafed, I’ll pay you,” the passenger pleaded. He was wearing a snowboarding jacket and gesturing to no one in the back seat. Strangely, his cammo pants matched the driver’s. Warren was smiling uncomfortably at the strangers, clearly unhappy with the situation. I didn’t know exactly what was going on, but from his posture I knew it was nothing good. “Y’all will just have to go back home and get a license or something, I have perishables in here.” To add emphasis he closed the trunk and tapped it lightly with his knuckles. I took the cart from him and pushed it into the designated space that was conveniently nestled beside our vehicle. I was just as ready as him to be gone, now, and the guys in the beaten-up minivan were making me weary. “Oh what, jackass, you think anything’s going to melt?” I threaded my arm through my husbands and pulled him towards the front of the car. In my stomach I knew that the men were bad news, and making bad situations worse was my specialty. “War’n, come on. Let’s go home,” I whispered to him, “I’m cold.” He nodded to the guys and climbed behind the wheel of our Jetta. His dismissal was obvious, but I still didn’t like the idea of the two guys behind us. I made my way around the front of our car to avoid them, but they either didn’t have the brains or the couth to realize we wanted no part of whatever they were doing. “What about you, Little Girl? Help a guy with some sick kids out.” My ability to maintain a calm countenance left me entirely. “Little girl?” I said, angry heat burning in my cheeks, “Listen, Fella, you obviously don’t have any kids in there. I don’t know what your game is, but you can take it somewhere else.” I had hollered over the hood of our car and Warren had the motor running already, but the driver was out of his door and at mine before I could reach it. “What you’re going to do is go in there and get us some Sudafed,” he said, pointing at me. His finger was only a few scant inches away from the toggles on my coat and the proximity only caused the fire in my cheeks and head to flare. “You have no -” I began before Warren was by my side. His height and calm composure did little to put out my anger, but he spoke gently to the overbearing man. “You’ll want to get back in your vehicle. Leave us be and bother someone else.” He opened my door for me and the man in cammo pants surprised me by listening to my husband. Two such classless pieces of trash couldn’t just calmly drive away. No, they revved the puny engine, spun their tires, and squealed off. They nearly hit another car in the process. “Alright, Dear?” “Yeah,” I said, “Just angry. What was up with those guys anyway? They acted like they were on drugs.” “Really, Sara?” I perked my eyebrow at him questioningly as he merged into traffic. “Sudafed,” he said, “Is what they use to make meth. You have to have I.D. to get it and they keep track of who buys it, how much they buy, and where they buy it from.” “There are people like that here? In this town?” I had heard that there was a problem with methamphetamines in upstate New York just like there was at home in east Tennessee, but I thought people had more sense than to ask a young, well-dressed couple to buy drug making materials for their operation. Our trip home was slow but uneventful. With the exception of Wal-Mart, no one was out. I mostly mulled over our encounter with the drug manufacturers in my head as Warren likely did the same. We were a quiet couple, mostly, and the silence between us was always easy. We unloaded our trunk and put away the groceries together after arriving home. It only took a few minutes for the familiar task to be done, and we were soon settled into our sectional sofa with our schnauzer, Shotzie, for the movie we had picked up with our groceries. Warren and I had changed back into our pajamas before pushing play on the Xbox, but a harsh knock on the door interrupted our favorite part of any movie - the previews. “Who is here on a Sunday afternoon?” he asked me as he pulled on his slippers, “Everyone’s got to work tomorrow.” Our house was in the middle of nowhere with only a few trees and a big creek as neighbors. We were never bothered by unannounced visitors. Even door-to-door sales people and Jehovah Witnesses avoided driving so far away from town. It made us feel at home, though, and the few people we cared to spend time with didn’t mind the drive. “It’s probably Pete,” I said, popping off the couch to grab a drink. “He’s not been by in a while and probably has the propane bill or something.” “You’re probably right,” Warren agreed, going through the kitchen door into our front mud room. Shotzie followed obediently behind him. She was always an odd schnauzer - she never barked and favored lazing around with us while we played video games or watched movies. He came back into the living room shortly, and no one but the dog was in tow. “Who was it?” “No one was there. There isn’t even a car our there.” “Probably some kids playing ding-dong-ditch,” I said. He shrugged and resumed the previews before settling back down beside me on the couch. “You locked the front door back?” “Yes Dear, of course.” Throughout the movie, the mysterious visitor continued to knock then disappear. At that point I was beginning to feel harassed, not to mention my instincts were telling me that no prankster would put that much effort into annoying a young couple. Warren stayed calm, but I could feel his anxiety in the air as if it were a palpable mass. Snow was still falling outside after the movie had ended and both of us had to rise early the next morning , but we still made the decision to stay up. It was my idea to turn the lights off, but it was his to get our guns out. “Just in case, Sara. You get the carbine and load it, and I’ll get the twenty-two.” “Shouldn’t you have the better one, though? If anything happens I trust you more…” I trailed off, wondering why we needed the guns but wishing I had my pistols all the same. New York state laws weren’t as lenient as the ones in Tennessee, and having a pistol without a permit was most definitely not allowed. I had grown up shooting pistols with my father but had little experience with rifles before I had met Warren. He could shoot anything, that was a fact. His job required him to be familiar with every type of small arms. “You’re more comfortable with the M1, Dear. We won’t have to use them, anyway, but if anything happens I don’t want you to be unsure of how to shoot it.” He kissed my forehead and made off towards the bedroom where the guns were. Thankfully, no one revisited our front door while he was gone, but I was still scared. I didn’t know who could be harassing us so much, but we called the police, anyway, when he returned with the rifles. They asked the normal questions about who we had pissed off in town and the like, but both of us came up with nothing. We told them that we’d been at this installation for almost two years and didn’t know many people, but the ones we did know were considered friends. When he hung up his cell phone, he filled me in on what they had said. They were going to patrol our dead end street through the night but suspected it was just kids that were playing tricks on the whole road. I made him a cup of coffee and a mug of tea for myself. “I don’t think this is just some kids, War’n.” I said, and it was true, “They have been here way too often and it’s a school night.” “No, they should be on winter break, Dear,” he said, sipping his hot coffee through pursed lips. “Still, it’s freezing out there. Nobody in their right mind will be out, even locals.” He shrugged noncommittally at me, staying calm as usual. Then someone began beating on the front door. It wasn’t just a few quick raps, it was an insistent, repeated slapping. My empty mug slipped from my fingers, but my reflexes took over and snatched it out of the air before it shattered on the tile floor. Shotzie had already slipped away to hind under our bed. “Get down,” he whispered, “And follow me.” I obliged him by crouching clumsily with my grandfather’s M1 Carbine in hand and scuttling in my sock feet to the mud room. The assault on the front door didn’t end before we got there, but someone started banging at the back door, too. If there was ever a time I wished we lived within the city limits (and lights), that was it. Our front door was bordered by a row of paneled windows on each side, but without a street light or a full moon, all we could see at the front of the house was the silhouette of a man. One man wouldn’t have been much of an issue for the two of us with guns, but the second stranger on the back porch was much more worrisome. Then it hit me. “The meth guys,” I breathed to him, and he nodded. The scraggly outline of hair and beard on the stranger in the front was just enough to reveal the same man we'd seed earlier. “They probably followed us here the first time, went home and got high, then came back,” he whispered harshly back to me, “Now just stay down and be quiet.” He touched by shoulder before he stood up behind the door, attempting to reassure me that he could take care of both of us. “I have a weapon!” he yelled, his face only a half inch away from the door, “I’ve also called the police.” “You think I don’t have a gun?” the man yelled back through the door, “We're gonna get in there whether you let us or not!” I saw the outline of a pump-action shotgun being pulled from behind the man and yelled to Warren. He only just moved out of the way before we heard the tell-tale sound of the gun being cocked. The knocking on the back door stopped as abruptly as it had began, then the first shot from the shotgun rang out. We backed away from the windows in the mud room and into the kitchen before the addict shot at our door again, effectively blowing the deadbolt and door handle away. From behind the tile kitchen island we heard the door being kicked in and banging off the wall. They were in the house. Our ears rang from the shotgun blasts, but we could still hear their heavy boots falling on the wooden floor. “Come out, come out, wherever you are, soldier boy!” the scraggly haired one yelled from the threshold of the kitchen. “You, too, Little Girl!” The second voice was that of the driver. I had assumed he was the second knocker, but from his condescending nickname, I knew. I was shaking with fright and anger at these two men in my house, but Warren was keeping his cool beside me; we were squatting behind the most solid surface in the house, and his entire body was steady. He had the twenty two pulled to his shoulder, his trigger finger resting across the guard. I didn’t know how to handle the situation, but when he stood with his weapon pointed at the men and fingered the mounted light on, I reacted with speed I didn’t know I had. I racked my weapon that had seen two wars and stood. While they were blinded by the ultra-bright tac-light I shot once at each man and allowed my M1 to do what it was meant to do - close range chaos. The blood spray from each man indicated that I’d hit each, though I had acted first then thought. I dropped the point of the macabre weapon, shaking, while warren assessed my damages. I had hit each man square in the chest, and the wall behind them was riddled with gore and two bullet holes. My steady husband kept the light pointed to them in the event that they could still be alive, but there was no chance for either. I was shocked at the entry and exit would a thirty-caliber round could leave, and the mess that I’d made. “Babydoll, you might want to call the police back and tell them there are two dead men in our kitchen.”

Hello, I'm a 23 year old writer, just beginning to flex the muscles again. These short stories are what I call "what if" stories - if something happens, I let my imagination run away with the idea of what could happen. I'd be happy with any comments you may have. =-]