I moved.
The iron bar swung with everything I had.
It cracked against his gun wrist. He screamed. The pistol clattered across the concrete into darkness.
He spun, eyes wide, and saw me.
For a fraction of a second, shock froze him. Then his face twisted into rage.
“What the hell?” he snarled.
I swung again at his knee, but he jumped back, quick, and then he charged like a bull.
The impact slammed me into the sacks stacked by the wall. Air exploded from my lungs. The bar fell from my grip. Cyclops was on top of me in an instant, hands around my throat, fingers squeezing, squeezing.
“I’m gonna kill you, old man!”
My vision darkened at the edges. My chest fought for breath. I heard Matthew screaming, a desperate animal sound.
My hand fumbled in my jacket pocket, found the oak handle.
I flipped the knife open with a click I felt more than heard.
I didn’t stab wildly. I remembered every time I’d butchered an animal and precision mattered. I drove the blade into Cyclops’s inner thigh where blood runs fast.
His scream tore through the shed. He released my throat, clutching his leg. Blood spurted hot and bright. I shoved him off and rolled away, gasping, lungs burning.
Cyclops tried to crawl toward the dropped gun, leaving a dark trail behind him.
“Matthew!” I rasped. “The gun!”
Matthew, bound and shaking, stretched out and caught the pistol with his tied hands. His arms trembled as he aimed.
“Freeze!” he shouted.
Cyclops lifted his hands, bravado collapsing into cowardice. “Don’t shoot,” he panted. “It was a joke.”
I grabbed the iron bar again and brought it down on the back of his neck. Cyclops collapsed, unconscious.
I stood panting, body shaking, blood on my hands that wasn’t mine. Everything hurt, but the only thing I felt clearly was grim satisfaction.
“It’s done,” I told Matthew. “We’re leaving.”
But Cyclops’s scream had traveled. The music inside the house stopped. Voices shouted, panicked.
“What happened? Rick?”
I searched Cyclops’s pockets and found keys, a fob, cold metal biting my palm. Thank God.
Matthew was still chained. I didn’t have a key for the padlock. I grabbed a wrench and worked at the bolt securing the chain to the concrete. The metal was rusty. It bit into my skin. My hands tore. I kept turning, jaw clenched, refusing to stop.
The nut finally came free.
“We’ll go with the chain still on you,” I said. “Move.”
I hauled Matthew upright. He hopped on one leg, leaning heavily on me, each movement a jolt of pain through his body. We stumbled out into the ruined garden.
A bright porch light snapped on, blinding.
“Freeze!” Frank stood in the doorway with a double-barreled shotgun.
Beside him, Lauren’s mother shrieked, “Kill them! He killed my son!”
A shot blasted the dirt near our feet. Frank wasn’t warning. He was trying to kill.
“Run!” I dragged Matthew toward the side fence. Another shot cracked, splintering branches overhead. We crashed through bushes into the front yard where the trucks sat like black beasts.
I hit the key fob. The middle truck blinked.
I shoved Matthew into the passenger seat and jumped behind the wheel. Frank came around the corner, shotgun raised, eyes wild.
“I’ll blow your heads off!”
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