Story code: ST-000049
Part 3: The Line of Fire
The man’s chest heaved. “I am giving you one final warning.”
The words hung in the freezing air, brittle and sharp, dissolving into the aggressive hum of the security floodlights. Brenda stared down the matte black barrel, the red dot burning a phantom hole straight through her skull. The homeowner wasn’t a hardened killer holding his ground; she could see the violent tremble shaking his broad shoulders. His knuckles were stark, bloodless white against the tactical grip of the rifle. His fear was raw and volatile, making him infinitely more dangerous than a man with cold intent. He was a terrified civilian convinced he was the victim of a home invasion, and his finger rested flush against the trigger.
In her raised hand, the phone buzzed continuously, sending a painful, stinging vibration down her frozen forearm. The translucent five percent battery warning completely obscured the frantic chat, but the tiny green numbers of the donation tracker flickered behind the dialogue box. She was agonizingly close. She needed only fifteen dollars to hit the eighty-dollar threshold that stood between Arthur and a diabetic coma.
“Please,” Brenda breathed, her voice frail and breaking under the weight of the biting wind. She didn’t dare wipe the freezing tears from her cheeks. “Just let me wait for a few more minutes. It’s my husband. He’s sick. I am not trying to hurt you.”
“I said get on the ground!” the man screamed, his voice pitching up into a frantic, erratic octave that shattered the quiet of the neighborhood. He stepped out of the heavy oak doorway, the tread of his boots crunching loudly onto the frost-covered porch. “Face down! Do it right now or I am putting you down!”
Brenda’s knees knocked together. She bent her legs, preparing to sacrifice the camera angle, preparing to let the screen go black against the concrete to save her own life.
Before her knees could touch the freezing stone, a strange, heavy sound echoed from the dense darkness beyond the illuminated perimeter of the driveway.
*Scrape. Shuffle. Thud.*
Brenda froze halfway to the ground. The neighbor froze with her, his head snapping violently toward the noise.
The sound was coming from Brenda’s side of the property line, moving slowly and clumsily over the weed-choked turf she had just crossed. It was the distinct sound of bare feet dragging, unable to lift their own weight.
“Arthur?” Brenda whispered, the name slipping out as a terrified gasp.
A towering figure breached the edge of the blinding motion-sensor floodlights. It was Arthur. He was wearing nothing but his thin, worn flannel pajama pants and a gray cotton undershirt. His bare feet scraped mercilessly over the frozen, jagged blades of frosted grass. His face was a mask of deathly pallor, completely drained of color and slick with a greasy, cold sweat that caught the harsh glare of the lights like a sheer layer of ice.
He was deep into a severe glycemic crash. His body was starving, his brain completely shutting down basic motor functions and logic in a desperate, failing bid to keep his vital organs functioning. He swayed wildly on his feet, his knees buckling inward with every agonizing step. His eyes were wide open but entirely unfocused, staring blankly into the blinding white wash of the security lights as if he were hypnotized by the glare.
“Artie, no,” Brenda gasped, abandoning her crouch and taking a terrified step away from the porch. “Go back inside! You’re freezing!”
“Who the hell is that?!” the homeowner yelled, panic completely hijacking his vocal cords. The barrel of the rifle swung wildly between Brenda and the new threat. “Is that your accomplice? I knew it! I told you to stay on the ground!”
“He’s sick!” Brenda screamed, thrusting her phone outward again, the battery warning still glowing desperately in her trembling hand. “That’s my husband! He’s in a diabetic crash! He doesn’t know where he is or what he’s doing!”
Arthur let out a low, guttural groan, a heavy, wet sound utterly devoid of human reasoning. He stumbled blindly over the decorative stones lining the property boundary and lurched onto the pristine asphalt of the neighbor’s driveway. His massive arms flailed outward, his thick fingers curling and uncurling as he tried to grasp at empty air to steady himself.
To Brenda, he was a dying man clinging to his last shreds of consciousness, wandering out into the freezing night looking for his wife. But to the terrified homeowner holding the rifle, Arthur looked like an absolute monster-an erratic, groaning behemoth advancing aggressively out of the midnight shadows directly toward his front door.
“Stop right there!” the neighbor bellowed. He stepped backward, bracing the heavy butt of the rifle brutally hard against his shoulder. “I will shoot! I swear to God, I will shoot you both right now!”
Arthur didn’t hear him. The warning never penetrated the chemical panic drowning his brain. He took another rapid, lurching step up the driveway, his bare foot slapping wetly against the freezing concrete. His eyes rolled slightly back in his head as his balance gave way.
“Arthur, stop!” Brenda shrieked, her voice tearing her throat.
The red dot vanished from Brenda’s face.
She blinked, the ghost of the crimson light still swimming in her retinas. She tracked the bright red beam as it sliced rapidly through the freezing air, sweeping away from the porch and down the incline of the driveway.
The laser settled dead center on Arthur’s thin, sweat-soaked undershirt, hovering right over his heart.
“Get back!” the homeowner shrieked, backing up until his spine hit the open front door. He was absolutely consumed by the nightmare unfolding on his lawn, convinced this unblinking, stumbling man was coming to kill him.
Arthur kept coming. He lunged blindly forward, his heavy, uncoordinated frame tilting dangerously toward the driveway as his hands reached out toward the blinding source of the light.
The neighbor gasped, a sharp, ragged inhalation of pure, unadulterated terror. He flinched, his shoulders violently hitching upward as he braced himself for an attack that wasn’t coming.
Brenda didn’t think. The phone slipped from her numb, frozen fingers. It tumbled through the air, hitting the expensive stone of the porch with a sickening crack that shattered the glass screen. The livestream, the anonymous donors, the fifteen dollars she needed to save his life-all of it ceased to exist in an instant.
There was only the red dot burning a hole into her husband’s chest.
Brenda launched herself off the top step of the porch. Her heavy winter boots scrambled against the icy wood, her body hurling recklessly forward into the empty space between the terrified homeowner and the driveway. She threw her arms wide, an instinctive, desperate human shield against the inevitable.
She stepped directly into the blinding beam of the laser sight, the red dot slamming hard into the side of her neck just as the terrified homeowner squeezed the trigger.