The Runaways

Chapter 16

Caleb

I guess I owe God a favor.

One round from shotgun to spine takes three seconds to send a guy like me halfway to heaven. Seven came and went, and there was no bullet in my back, just a little girl in my arms, sobbing stains into my skin.

I whipped my head around in the dark and the cracks between the window boards lit up in a headlight sunrise. Thirty-minutes was enough to bring out the pigs. They’re quick when you threaten them, slow when you need help.

Everybody under our roof needed a hand, but we were past the point of asking, and Anderson wasn’t coming to talk.

Bad news was fast on its feet. The cops were quick to the trigger. Before any of us could get our heads around what was happening, two bullets shattered the wood from the outside and sent a thousand splinters flying our way, each one catching the light off the cop car high beams like dust in the sun.

On any other night, in any other place, it would’ve been beautiful, but there was nothing beautiful about this place anymore.

I stood in the dark, no more than a couple feet away from what was left of my family, trying to figure out why I was still breathing, while bullets broke through the window boards.

The four of us knew what was coming. A quick shutter and twang of the heartstrings, and all that numbness we’d gotten so good at pretending we felt, leaked down the insides of our jeans.

The room got so loud I went deaf to the gunfire, but the quiet didn't take away the fear. I couldn't breathe ‘cause of it, and I kept having this feeling that it would get under my skin and split me into pieces if I didn't keep it in check.

I froze up. Like the same sorry kid who pissed himself every time his father took off his belt. That was the man I was now. That's what I boiled down to after seventeen years—less than nothing.

But if there was any comfort in that truth, it was scrawled all over my brothers’ faces, each of them gray and empty in the half-dark. We were all the same men then, wearing our broken masks while we soaked through our clothes.

Half a minute into the shootout, some big shot pig called out a ceasefire over the police radios. Once he screamed at his dogs and muzzled their teeth, silence fell down on top of us again and covered the whole fifty-acres of our place ‘til a hard, ugly crash, broke everything into pieces.

Cillian’s shotgun hit the floor. He'd never dropped a weapon in his life. Wasn’t like him to be careless. Wasn’t like him to miss an easy shot either. I turned back to where he’d been standing and saw Liam alone—his face twisted up worse than the barbed wire he’d left tangled around the room.

He stared at me, pupils wider than I'd ever seen and choked up all of a sudden. Liam couldn’t keep his eyes off the dark space on the floor near his feet.

Couldn’t make out what he was looking at—wasn’t sure if I wanted to—but I stood there for a long time, staring at what I hoped was nothing, waiting for the helicopter searchlights to clear out the shadows.

Red and blue flares spilled over the floorboards and Cillian lay there looking like he’d fallen five stories from his feet to the ground, sprawled out and squirming. I thought he was messing around. Faking being gunned down like he used to when we were kids.

He never turned down a good game of Cops and Robbers. You know the popguns and corks kind? He loved all that. Me and Marcus would go after him, shooting wood bullets like crazy. He'd laugh whenever he got hit, just stop everything and roll around on the rug, giggling like a loon.