~ * * * ~
The surreal nightscape that greeted him when he stepped out of the shack was a far cry from the tidy, pristine blocks of Paramus. The collection of discarded refuse Stan perused took on the appearance of some stark, post-apocalyptic tableau, the scattered relics left behind like a reminder of a crippled civilization that no longer existed. There was no sign of Munyon in the immediate vicinity as he tiptoed forward, crouched down and duck-walked through the debris, taking refuge behind one heap of junk after the next. He bobbed his head up and over the edge of each barrier to check for any lurking danger before edging ahead, careful not to wander too far astray and outside the range of the porch light. Once he completed a loop around the front periphery of the property, he made a mad dash for a corner of the shack and peeked around to the rear into a black void.
“Mr. Munyon?” he whispered.
No response. He turned, hustled across to the other side of the shack, and again checked the unlit area behind it. “Mr. Munyon?” he called out, louder this time, but still no reply.
His reconnaissance concluded, Stan returned to the middle of the yard, perplexed yet emboldened by the calm that surrounded him and the lack of anything that resembled a threat to his safety. “Mr. Munyon,” he yelled, “it’s Stan, you know, the big cheese. If you can hear me, I just wanted to let you know that we decided to stay. We’re not leaving.”
After waiting for several seconds for an answer that didn’t come, Stan sighed and headed back toward the entrance to the shack. Before he could set a foot onto the porch, however, the percussion of a gun blast rang out. KAPOW! Out of the shadows emerged Munyon, retreating backward and onto the porch, his shotgun poised and ready.
“You hungry for more?” he snarled into the darkness. “Huh? Then swallow some of this you sorry-ass worm eaters!” He leaned around the corner of the shack and fired off another round. KAPOW! “Bull’s-eye! HA! You’re dead—again!” he chortled.
Munyon turned and beat a hasty retreat toward the door when he spotted Stan. “Get in! GET IN!” he ordered.
Stan scurried forward and charged inside with Munyon hot on his heels.
“YEAH!” Munyon exclaimed, as he swatted the door shut and thrust out his fist with a vigorous pump. “Blew me a head clean off!” He proceeded to parade around the room, prance past the Letter 13 team, and slap high fives with each of his less-than-enthusiastic, nonplussed guests like he just scored the winning touchdown at the Super Bowl. “Come on, give it up! Gimme some skin!” he urged as he continued his giddy celebration, gyrating like an arthritic go-go dancer with a slew of awkward shimmies and crude pelvic thrusts. “That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout!”
Stan ignored Munyon’s theatrics as he braced himself against the table, his face blanched, his body heaving and shaken. Keisha approached, but kept her distance, sensitive to his post-traumatic symptoms. “Stan, you okay? What happened?”
He waited until his breathing slowed before he replied. “I’m all right. I didn’t see anything. Just heard the shots. I guess it was an attack.”
“You GUESS?” Munyon roared. “You think I was out there playin’ Tiddlywinks with them ugly suckers?”
“No, of course not,” Stan stammered. “I didn’t mean it like that. Sorry.”
“As well you should be,” Munyon admonished. “What happened is they got the jump on me when I wasn’t lookin’. I hightailed it back here, but they followed me. That’s when I popped a cap into one of their skulls. Now that was a sight to behold. Exploded like a ripe tomato!”
Bryce looked at Munyon like he was some fourteen-year-old trying to slip past a club bouncer with a fake ID. “You popped a cap? Okay, so what now…homie?”
Munyon scurried to the cupboard, rustled inside, retrieved a pull of unwrapped jerky, and gnawed off a chunk. “Now we wait,” he explained between chews. “I suspect they’ll be along soon enough. Meantime, care for a bite, whiner?” Munyon extended the remainder of the smoked meat toward Bryce.
“No, thank you.” Bryce scrunched his face in disgust as though the wad of dehydrated brown beef Munyon was chomping on was a dried-out turd. “How can you even think about eating at a time like this?”
“Don’t you know? A man gets a hunger after a killin’,” Munyon replied, as he tore off another portion like a buzzard picking at carrion.
Bryce glanced away. “No, as a matter of fact, I wouldn’t know.”
“Well now ya do,” Munyon said, as he contorted his upper torso under the sink faucet, turned on the water, and slurped it straight into his mouth to wash down his meal.
Stan and Dana busied themselves preparing their cameras while Irv connected various cables to his audio gear. The flurry of activity piqued Munyon’s interest, more in the amused way someone might react to seeing a poodle in a tutu. “You think you’re gonna fight ’em off by taking their picture?” he inquired.
Stan was too occupied checking his video settings to look up. “We have a movie to make. And if something else happens, at least there will be proof.”
Munyon dug a wooden matchstick from one of the pockets in his overalls and began to mine any leftover jerky from the crevices between his teeth. “Well, ain’t that mighty thoughtful. Your next of kin will appreciate that!”
When Stan, Dana and Irv failed to acknowledge Munyon’s gallows humor, he tried his luck tilling a more fertile field. “Guess that leaves the whiner and sugar boobs here to do all the battlin’,” he declared, as he grabbed the ax and strutted across the room like a rooster in a hen house to where Bryce and Keisha stood.
“Whiner,” he told Bryce, “I’m thinkin’ you’ll be a bunch of useless once all the fightin’ starts.” Munyon then let his eyes rove up and down Keisha like he was salivating over the sleekest chassis in a new car showroom. “That’s why I’m figurin’ Bad D here should be in your purty hands, princess, since you look like you know what to do with somethin’ this size.”
Munyon tossed the ax to Keisha who plucked it out of the air as if it were nothing more than a number-two pencil and assessed the heft and length. “Kind of smaller than I’m used to actually,” she declared.
Keisha stiffened as Munyon bellied up to her with the kind of lewd smile scraped straight out of a gutter and stroked her arms. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, chocolate puddin’,” he suggested.
She flipped the ax upside down so that the cutting edge of the head dangled opposite Munyon’s groin. “Oh, I think I’ve seen a whole bunch of nothin’,” she replied.
Munyon took note of Bad D’s position, grunted, and backed off as he turned his attention to Bryce. “As for you, whiner, you’ll be a lookout. You see somethin’, just give a yell.”
Bryce stomped past Munyon and stationed himself in front of one of the windows. “Don’t you mean squeal like a piggy missin’ his mama?”
“And try not to wet yourself while you’re at it,” Munyon added, as he blew Keisha a quick kiss and moved on to the kitchen area, where he started to rifle through the drawers and shelving. He rummaged inside them all, but came up empty. “Dagnabbit,” he muttered.
Stan was peering into his camera viewfinder as he conducted a test recording. “Problem?”
Munyon slammed a cabinet door shut. “Nah, just a slight miscalculation.”
Stan set his camera aside. “How…slight?”
Munyon frowned and stared at the floor like a kid who was afraid to tell his mother he lost her house keys before lifting his eyes to meet those of the Letter 13 team. “Seems I’m plumb out of ammunition. Must have used it all up. Thought I had me a fresh box of shotshells. Guess I was wrong.”
“You GUESS?” Bryce shouted. “Well, isn’t that just dandy. So what are we supposed to do without a gun, throw moldy beef jerky at them?”
“Figure it out when the time comes, that’s what,” Munyon replied, with no more concern than if he just opened his pantry and realized his party guests would have to make do without macadamia nuts that evening.
Just as th
e revelation of Munyon’s oversight began to sink in, a tiny squeak from the rotation of the doorknob snared everyone’s attention like the grating of a hundred fingernails across a blackboard.
“Like now,” Munyon stated.
Stan nudged Dana. “Roll!” he ordered, as they aimed their cameras at the gyrating doorknob. Irv lifted his boom pole so that it hovered above the sightline of the lenses.
“It’s not locked!” Keisha cried out as she made a dash for the door with the ax clasped in her hands.
“Darn. Don’t you just hate it when that happens?” Munyon observed, as if Keisha was fretting over nothing more serious than a date who had arrived earlier than expected.
The door cracked open, and Keisha hurled her body against it. As she held off the incursion, Munyon rushed across the room, latched onto Bryce by his jacket collar, and chucked him into the fray. “Get in there, whiner!”
Bryce and Keisha barricaded the door with their shoulders as it careened back and forth between open and shut.
“PUSH!” Keisha screamed.
“I am!” Bryce shouted back.
“Harder!” Keisha urged.
They were losing the relentless skirmish. Overpowered from the other side, a skuzzy hand jutted through a six inch gap, dug into Keisha’s neck and pinned her to the door frame, forcing the ax to drop from her grasp. It was ashen gray with blistered, scabby skin while the section of forearm that was visible was draped by a dirt-smudged, dark blue, pinstriped suit jacket.
Keisha grappled with the bony fingers adorned with jeweled rings that were choking her, but to no avail. “Do something, Bryce!” she sputtered.
Bryce slapped, punched, and karate chopped at the arm, but his efforts proved futile. “This is all the something I got!”
As she squirmed and tried to wriggle away, Keisha managed to secure enough leverage to twist her body so that her mouth could make contact with the intruder’s arm. She bit down hard, and an anguished howl followed as the hand released its grip from around her neck and slithered away. Keisha rammed the door and bolted it shut. As Bryce slumped to the floor, she staggered to a chair and collapsed.
“Awesome!” Stan exclaimed. He set down his camera and hustled over to Keisha and Bryce. “You guys were amazing! Are you okay?” he asked Keisha.
Keisha massaged her throat and nodded. “Okay enough.”
“I got some incredible footage. Want to see?”
“Maybe later,” Keisha responded, as she stretched her neck and attempted to swallow. “I could use some water.”
Irv was already at the sink and rinsing a glass jar. “Coming.”
“Well, I’m not okay, in case anybody cares,” Bryce groused.
“Whatsa matter, whiner,” Munyon sniggered. “You’re alive ain’t ya?”
Bryce shot him a scornful look. “No thanks to you. Enjoy the show?”
“Matter of fact, I did,” Munyon admitted. “Mighty entertainin’.”
“We could have used some help,” Keisha said, as she accepted the water from Irv and swallowed a sip. “Everyone’s help. We’re all in this together. That means you, too, Munyon.”
“Ain’t my problem,” Munyon declared. “’Sides, ya won, didn’t ya? Next time, though, be even worse.”
“How much…worse?” Dana asked.
“The whole lot kind,” Munyon replied. “You just got a little sample.”
Dana charged toward her brother. “Stan! I want out of here, now!” she shouted.
Stan raised his hands to fend her off. “Dana—”
“NOW, Stan, NOW!” she screamed, her eyes welling up. “Don’t you see what’s happening? Look around you!”
Stan glanced down at Bryce, languishing in a stupor, his eyes fixed on the floor. “I won’t even have an open casket because I’ll be in too many pieces,” he bemoaned and gazed up at Stan in the listless way of a man who had abandoned all hope. “Like Humpty Dumpty.”
Stan turned to Keisha. She managed a weak smile and shrug. “Happily-ever-after endings are overrated anyway.”
Irv’s prognosis was more specific, but just as gloomy. “Still a few more hours until sunrise,” he noted. “I’m not sure though we can hold out that long.”
Stan nodded, sunk onto a chair and joined the rest of the Letter 13 team in their club of the catatonic. Munyon downed a slug of his homemade hooch from his jug and issued a dire warning. “If any of you are the religious type, I’d advise you make your peace with the Big Guy in the Sky right quick.”
It wasn’t necessary for Munyon to suggest that they bow their heads while doing so. In fact, all of them already were.
Chapter 20