Story code: ST-000868
Part 2: The Intruder
David’s thumb found the rubberized switch on his heavy aluminum Maglite. He pressed it, his rehearsed legal threats dying instantly on his tongue.
A brilliant, blinding cone of white LED light violently illuminated the center of the lawn, shattering the heavy shadows.
The larger man, the one violently plunging his weight downward, was Arthur Miller. He was a retired commercial real estate broker who had spearheaded the neighborhood watch initiative. Tonight, he was completely stripped of his usual arrogant suburban swagger. His reflective silver vest was smeared with broad, wet streaks of dark fluid.
Beneath Miller’s locked, driving hands lay a figure. It was a young man, maybe sixteen or seventeen years old, wearing a faded gray hooded sweatshirt.
The heavy, rhythmic thudding-the exact concussive tempo that had shuddered through the floor joists and rattled the brass pulls in Leo’s perfectly soundproofed nursery-was the sound of Miller’s palms driving into the teenager’s sternum with panicked, uncontrolled force.
The second man, kneeling in the wet grass and crying hysterically, was Greg Henderson. He held his tactical penlight with a violently trembling hand, unable to keep the beam steady on the boy’s pale, motionless face.
“One, two, three, four,” Miller chanted, his voice a ragged, breathless wheeze.
David stared at the thick pool of black liquid spreading through the manicured blades of his expensive Kentucky bluegrass. The fluid was pooling in the deep aeration holes he had paid a landscaping company to punch into the soil just three weeks ago. It was blood. So much blood that it was soaking entirely through the knees of Miller’s khaki cargo pants.
In a fraction of a second, David’s carefully controlled, sterile world fractured completely. The acoustic paneling, the gas-filled double-glazed windows, the white noise machine-none of his expensive barriers could keep out the sheer, messy horror bleeding into his earth.
“What did you do?” David whispered, his voice catching in a throat suddenly tight with nausea.
Henderson looked up, temporarily blinded by David’s flashlight. His face was ashen, slick with cold sweat and tears. “He came out from the side of your house, David! From by the gas meter! Arthur told him to freeze. We thought he had a tool… a crowbar or something!”
“I told him to freeze!” Miller barked between desperate thrusts, his face contorted in a grimace of absolute terror. *Thud. Thud. Thud.* “He didn’t freeze! He lunged at me. I hit him. I just hit him.”
David stepped closer. The freezing dew soaked his bare feet, but the biting chill didn’t register. His eyes darted around the illuminated patch of grass. He aimed the beam near the boy’s outstretched, motionless hand. There was no crowbar. There was only a shattered plastic flashlight, cheap and brightly colored, the kind a child might carry on a camping trip.
“You’re doing it wrong,” David said, his voice dropping into a hollow, mechanical register. “You’re too high on his chest. You’re going to break his collarbone.”
“He’s not breathing!” Henderson wailed, clutching his own head. “He’s not breathing, David!”
David dropped his Maglite. It hit the soft, wet earth with a muffled thud, keeping the grotesque scene harshly lit from a low, dramatic angle. He fell to his knees in the slick, metallic-smelling wetness, the blood instantly staining his skin. He shoved Miller’s shoulder, forcing the exhausted, heavier man off the boy’s ruined chest.
“Call 911!” David ordered. He pressed the heels of his hands exactly in the center of the boy’s chest, lacing his fingers together just as he had been taught. He locked his elbows and pushed down. The boy’s ribs shifted and ground unnaturally beneath his palms-Miller had already broken several of them in his panic.
David began his own compressions, trying desperately to maintain the steady, life-saving rhythm he and his wife had practiced on plastic dummies in the infant and adult CPR class they took before Leo was born. The terrible thumping resumed, echoing off the brick facades of the quiet street, but this time, David was the one creating the nightmare sound.
“Henderson! Call the police!” David shouted over his shoulder, locking into the grueling physical exertion.
Neither man moved. They didn’t reach for the heavy two-way radios on their chests, nor did they touch the cell phones clipped securely to their tactical belts.
Henderson looked at Miller, his eyes wide and wild. Miller was kneeling silently in the wet grass, staring at his own blood-stained hands, his heavy chest heaving in the cold air.
“Arthur,” Henderson stammered, his voice dropping to a terrified, reedy whisper. “If the cops come… they’ll see the kid didn’t have a weapon. They’ll see you struck him in the head first.”
David kept pumping, the sweat breaking out on his forehead. “Are you insane? He’s dying right now! Call an ambulance!”
Miller slowly wiped his bloody palms on his thighs. He looked up, his eyes locking onto David’s face in the harsh, raking light of the abandoned Maglite. The raw, disorganized panic in the older man’s expression was rapidly calcifying into something much colder, darker, and infinitely more dangerous.
“He was trespassing, David,” Miller said, his voice terrifyingly steady and devoid of its previous breathlessness. “He was prowling around your newborn’s nursery window in the dead of night. Who knows what he was planning to do to your family.”
“He’s just a kid!” David screamed, breaking his rhythm for a fraction of a second in sheer disbelief.
“He’s a violent intruder,” Miller corrected softly. He shifted his weight, his right hand dropping to the thick, heavy aluminum Maglite David had abandoned in the grass. His thick fingers wrapped tightly around the textured shaft. “And we are just a couple of concerned neighbors protecting our community. Right, Greg?”
Henderson whimpered, nodding frantically, backing away slightly into the heavy shadows of the manicured shrubs.
David pushed down on the boy’s chest again, the wet, concussive rhythm suddenly feeling horribly loud in the vast, open darkness of the cul-de-sac. He was unarmed, kneeling barefoot in a puddle of blood, trapped outside the fortress of his home. Just thirty feet away, his son was safe in his crib, but out here, David was utterly isolated with two men who were quickly realizing that a dead prowler was much easier to explain to the authorities than a half-beaten teenager.
“Stop pushing, David,” Miller said. He took one slow step forward, the heavy flashlight gripped tight in his fist like a club, casting long, menacing shadows across the lawn. “Just stop pushing, and let’s talk about how this is going to look.”