Alyssa crouched against the back wall of her room with Sophie nearly draped over her like a blanket. Somehow the lame line she kept repeating quietly in her ear just didn’t hold up or fit the situation. Alyssa couldn’t really blame her. Most people wouldn’t know how to respond to explosions and gunshots.

“Shh,” Sophie whispered for at least the tenth time, “Everything is going to be alright.”

Though the wall she was leaning against had ceased its tremors, Alyssa’s body was still shaking to the point of convulsion. Sophie’s best efforts at calming her down just weren’t cutting it. “Everything is not going to be okay,” her voice was at least as shaky as the rest of her. “What the hell is going on out there?”

“I don’t know,” Sophie finally said something other than a bullshit assessment of the situation. “As soon as I heard the first gunshot, I ran right over here.”

“Where is Matt?” her tone began to gain strength. The muffled gunshots still sounded like corn rapidly popping in another room, but there hadn’t been any explosions for a few minutes.

Sophie sniffled and replied, “He’s safe. He’s with a friend of mine.”

Alyssa’s words poured out with a quick sigh, “We’re not safe Sophie. How can you say that he is?”

“I can’t really,” she admitted. “I’m trying to be nice.”

“You’re just as scared as I am,” Alyssa whispered as she pulled away from Sophie and sat up.

Sophie looked at the ground and shrugged, “I am.”

“Are you crying,” she asked. Before Sophie could answer, she added, “You don’t really know if Matty’s okay, do you?”

Sophie wiped a tear from her cheek and admitted, “I don’t.” Then she slipped something out of her pocket and placed it in Alyssa’s hand. Holding that hand in both of hers she added, “I don’t know much, Alyssa. I do know that I don’t like what my father is doing to you and your brother. I also know that I don’t want anything bad to happen to you,” she paused, “or your brother.”

“What is this?” Alyssa tried to pull her hand away.

“Wait,” Sophie shook her head. “I’m not finished. I’ll probably never have any children. It isn’t that I don’t want any. Your grandfather is just old fashioned, and he doesn’t approve of my lifestyle as he calls it.”

“Why don’t you just leave,” Alyssa’s tone was matter of fact.

A humorless chuckle fell from Sophie’s lip a moment before she replied, “He’d kill me. There is no place to hide from Mario Rosatti. I would spend the rest of my life running, and the rest of my life would be very short.”

She thought for a moment and then asked, “Is he going to kill me?”

“I don’t think so, but that man surprises me sometimes. I truly believe that he wants you to be part of his family. I can’t say the same thing for your brother,” Sophie’s gaze drifted to the floor as her voice trailed off. She sat there like that in silence for a few moments before starting like she had just woken from a dream and adding, “Anyway, I know you don’t like being here, but I like having you around. This may sound silly to you considering how completely tragic this situation is, but I’m your aunt, and I want to be that.”

Alyssa turned her head to the side and almost smiled, “That isn’t the craziest thing that I’ve heard today, but we both know that’s never going to happen. I can’t stay with that man no matter what he is to me.”

“I know,” another tear slipped quickly down Sophie’s cheek. “That is why I’m giving you this.” She released Alyssa’s hand and said, “Don’t push that button there on the side until you’re ready to spill blood. Once you’ve done it, you can never take it back. Anyway, when you push that button, the blade will pop straight out of the handle like a stab. It’s small, only about three inches, but that will do the trick. If he gives you the opportunity, stick it against his neck, push the button, and then slice it across his throat. It’s sharp on both sides, so it doesn’t matter which way you pull.”

Alyssa examined the knife in her hand. The handle was a smoky purple with chrome accents. As she watched the light glinting off of the chrome, she wondered if she could actually get herself to push that little, round button in the middle of it. Without looking up she asked, “Have you ever killed anyone?”

“Just one,” Sophie nodded. Then she shrugged and added, “I thought he was a friend. I was seventeen. We were drunk. He tried to…” her voice trailed off again. She bit her lip, looked up at the ceiling and changed course, “Even though he was planning on doing horrible things to me, I will never forget the way he looked when he died. I still have nightmares about it. Make sure you’re ready to do what you need to do before you do it. Given the chance to relive it, I’m not sure it would end the same way.”

Before Alyssa could say anything else, the door to the room slammed open. Her hand instinctively flew to her pocket depositing Sophie’s gift. Whether or not she could use the thing would remain a mystery for the moment. Blood had always made her kind of squeamish, and she didn’t like hurting things or people. In fact, seeing any kind of pain had bothered her for as long as she could remember. Just thinking about it reminded her of her earliest memory of seeing real pain. She couldn’t have been more than four years old. On a stroll through the neighborhood with her dad – that same one that Mario had tried to convince her had never been her dad at all – she saw a dog chasing a cat down the driveway of the house directly across the street from her. That dog seemed so vicious; snarling, growling, and barking. She wished that she were bigger so she could stop that dog. Ideas of what she would do to him were as clear to her at that moment as they were when she first witnessed that scene so many years ago. Equally clear, was the pain she felt for that poor dog when the frightened cat led him across the street in front of a big truck that was going much too fast. But the thing that stuck out most in her memory was the contrast of that frightening beast chasing that poor cat and the quivering, whimpering lump of bloody fur slowly dying in the middle of the road. That had been the end of her walk with Daddy. He had to carry her home as she sobbed a big puddle into the shoulder of his shirt. All of the bad thoughts she had about that poor thing were replaced by empathy and honest sorrow. If an opportunity presented itself, would she see that vicious, barking monster that would tear apart that poor kitty if it could, or would she see the frightened, bleeding lump completely scared and confused about what was happening to it? She truly didn’t know.

Before either of them could turn toward the door to see who had just entered, Mario’s voice filled the room, “What the hell are you girls doing on the floor? This place is solid.” He was winded, and his cadence was accelerated.

“The walls were shaking, Dad,” Sophie turned an icy glare toward him. “We were scared.”

“Broads,” Mario shook his head and then glanced over each shoulder at the two suits standing behind him. Then he looked back at Sophie and added, “Your brother would have grabbed his gun and raced upstairs to see what was going on.”

“Well, I’ve always been your little disappointment,” Sophie shrugged.

Mario’s eyes rolled toward the ceiling as he sighed, “We don’t have time for that right now. As I’m sure you’ve probably figured out, there is a bit of a war going on up there. We need to get the hell out.”

Sophie pulled Alyssa close and said, “You’re not walking her through a war zone.”

“You’re damn right I’m not,” Mario snapped. “I’m not walking any of us through that mess. I’m not exactly sure what we’re dealing with, and with all of the fireworks the cops should be here soon. That is, if they aren’t already. No. We’re slipping out the back. Wiggles should still be next door with the boy. We’ll grab them and then we’ll slip out the back.”

Sophie looked down at Alyssa and nodded.

The gesture didn’t escape Mario. “What the fuck was that?” he asked.

“She’s terrified dad,” Sophie’s voice raised as her hands did the same.

Mario’s expression softened as he said, “I can see that.” It hardened right back up as he added, “Okay, be scared then. But do it while we’re walking out of this place. Let’s go.”

Sophie and Alyssa rose together, huddling as if they were bracing against a chilly wind. Sophie’s eyes fell to the floor. Apparently, she had seen enough of her father for one day. Alyssa’s eyes went right to his throat, right to a spot about an inch to the left of his Adam’s apple. If she could bring herself to shove the knife Sophie had given her into that son of a bitch that is exactly where she would put it. Just then she still wasn’t sure if she could. She would have to cross that bridge when and if she came to it. For the time being, she would follow Sophie’s lead and hold onto hope that nobody else she loved had been killed.

The world still seemed to be moving in slow motion despite how fast Pat was running. Flames from burning cars dragged sluggish licks across the air toward him as he rounded them to see Steve crouched to the left of Mario Rosatti’s front door. To Pat’s eye, Steve appeared to be moving through water. Each movement appeared as painfully slow as each of Pat’s steps. Though it was obviously an illusion, he willed his feet to move faster as he watched his new partner lean back behind the door jam, drop the magazine from his gun, pop in a fresh one, and lean back out to begin firing again.

By the time Pat finally rolled passed the front entrance, he counted three gunmen down and at least five more scattered about strategic locations in the foyer and at the top of a wide staircase that stretched toward the second floor of the place from a point about fifteen feet in from the doorway. The quick scan he made of the room wasn’t near enough to get a really good look at any of the targets. However, he saw enough to know that none of them looked to be over thirty. Unless he missed something, none of them could be Rosatti.

What seemed like hours after he had left Cheeks by the fountain, Pat finally came to rest in a prone position just behind Steve. In actuality, it had been less than a minute. Pat’s perception of time meant very little to him at that moment. What really mattered was the fact that they were pinned down. The moment his movement stopped, the barrel of a gun with a face behind it poked up from behind an overturned table. Pat instinctively squeezed his trigger, and there was one less gun firing at them.

“I counted five still standing minus one that I just put down,” he hollered up at Steve.

“Yeah,” Steve agreed as he spun back behind the wall to reload again, “there are at least that many.” After dropping his magazine and slapping in another he added, “This ain’t working. Give me a minute.”

Pat rolled to the right and emptied his gun into the doorway. No bodies fell, but all of the heads he could see slipped back behind cover once the bullets started flying. When he rolled back to reload, Steve had his backpack off and was fishing something out of it. Pat paid little attention as he reloaded and rolled back in front of the door to empty his gun again. Five shots in, he noticed a small, dark ball flash by the periphery on his left side. By the time he had finished emptying his gun and was rolling back to reload again the ground beneath him was shaking and his ears were ringing with more vigor.

“What the fuck was that?” he shouted up at Steve.

Steve didn’t reply immediately. Instead he slipped back around the door jam and began firing into the room again. Once empty, he flopped back against the wall and said, “Grenade. I have one more. Think I should use it or save it?”

“How many are left?”

“I only saw two at the top of the stairs.”

“Save it,” Pat replied as he rolled right, fired twice, and then scanned the room again, his gaze following the path of his barrel.

A moment later, Steve slipped back around the door jam and scanned the area in the same fashion. After three seconds he whispered, “Clear?”

“Clear,” Pat agreed.

“Cover me,” Steve said as he crouched around the corner and headed left.

Pat slowly rose to a crouch and then shuffled closer to the doorway. There was no movement in his line of sight. By the time Steve’s head interrupted his view and said, “All clear,” he already knew that to be the case.

“I’ve got my last magazine loaded,” Pat whispered.

“I’ve got one more,” Steve replied. After scanning the room again he added, “Watch the stairs and the hall while I see what our friends are packing.”

Pat sucked in the slowest, deepest breath he could remember. Then he let it out in one quick blast. Reality hit him in the head like a baseball bat. While bullets were filling the air, his instincts had been in complete control. Now that he had a minute to assess things, the severity of the situation began to sink in. They would all be fired. There were dead bodies all over the place and at least four of those kills were his, maybe more. An unfamiliar coldness battled in his gut with an all too familiar sense of dread. The coldness was new, foreign. That sense of dread was something he had known since childhood. As he waited for Steve to finish scavenging everything useful from the newly made corpses they had created, he counted every instance in his life that he felt it. It was a hollowness that filled him, shut him down, and kept him from reacting or even moving at all sometimes. Luckily, the coldness seemed to be winning the battle. He was ready to face whatever other horrors Mario Rosatti’s lakeside funhouse had to offer and face the consequences once his work was finished.

Steve flopped down beside Pat, handed him a gun and two magazines, and said, “They were all carrying nines.”

“Really?” Pat glanced over at him. “I would have thought they’d all be packing something bigger.”

“Me too,” Steve shrugged. Then he glanced around the room and said, “We should move.”

“Yep,” Pat agreed. “Up or down?”

“I can’t be sure that it was him, but I might have seen Rosatti head down that hallway toward the back of the house. I don’t know what he looks like, but this guy carried himself like he was in charge. He had a couple of younger guns following him to, protection maybe.”

Both men looked at each other for a few seconds before Pat finally broke the silence. “That’s the best lead we’ve got. You ready?”

“Yep, let’s go,” Steve replied. After three steps, he looked over and asked, “Where the hell is Cheeks?”

“He was hit,” Pat replied soberly. “The bullet just grazed his shoulder. He was bleeding pretty good, but I wrapped it up and told him to sit tight by the fountain.”

“Good call,” Steve replied. “Okay, stay alert.”

Pat nodded as the two crouched behind their guns and slipped down the hallway toward the back of the house.