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The corner porch post had a gaping hole in the front of the wood.
“Fuck,” Austin bellowed, covering his eye.
Stacy reached over and pushed him down onto the porch.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Three more heavy rounds from a shotgun blasted chunks of wood from the remaining two columns of the porch.
Stacy looked over and saw Austin trying to reach into his pocket for a handkerchief. His right eye was nothing but a large red and maroon smudge, with rivulets of blood streaking down his face and onto his lips.
She tried to lean over when four more shotgun blasts hit the side of the house.
The window shattered, and pieces of it blew apart from the house’s frame, blowing dust and shattered glass over Stacy and Austin.
Stacy leaned up slowly and looked down the steps into the yard. Nothing emerged but blackness freckled with the slowing rain. As she did, another shot rang out.
Bang!
This one zipped past her head and hit the side of the house.
Austin moaned. “Goddammit! My eye!”
Stacy patted herself to see if she had been hit with anything.
“I think I got some splinters in my eye from that post.”
Austin managed to press the handkerchief firmly onto his eye. The white cloth absorbed the blood and stained red. Stacy withdrew her Glock. “Can you move?”
He groaned. “I think so.”
“Good. Call for backup.”
Austin grabbed her forearm. “Where are you going?”
“To find out what the hell is going on and who shot at us!”
Austin shook his head and winced. “Don’t. Not alone.” He hissed through clenched teeth. “Not without me or backup.”
Two more shotgun blasts pierced the air and landed on the right side of the house. Another window shattered along with more brick blown off the frame.
Austin dug his cell phone out of his pocket and placed the call.
Stacy rolled off Austin and pulled herself up to one knee. The sidewalk disappeared into the darkness. She waited and listened. Nothing. Stacy scanned the scene for movement. There was none. The rain had stopped, and even the tree branches from the park ceased to rustle, the whirl of traffic also notably absent.
Stacy and Austin were at a disadvantage. Whoever was firing the shots was masked in darkness while Stacy and Austin were featured in the light.
She looked over her shoulder to see if Maria had returned or if the door had opened. Stacy swiveled her head back around. If Maria had been close to the windows when the shots rang out, she was likely dead or gravely wounded.
Austin pulled himself up, and Stacy shielded herself around him. “Try to hide until backup gets here. Keep putting pressure on that eye.”
“I’m not hiding, dammit,” he said. “We don’t know where the shooter is or if there’s more than one. Either way, you’re outnumbered.”
“I’m going to hold them off until help comes.”
“Stacy...”
Stacy, still crouched down, crab-walked her way down the front steps. Holding up her Glock, she fired a shot into the expanse of darkness. She wanted the shooter to know she was armed.
In the faint distance, she could hear the piercing roar of sirens.
Stacy slithered behind one of the bushes near the porch. She felt the chill of the damp air in her bones before she heard a loud clang, followed by a person’s heavy footfalls moving fast behind her.
Fearing an ambush, Stacy learned back into the narrow space between the bush and the side of the house. Behind the house, she saw a slender shadow, cut like a knife’s blade, moving into the dark distance behind it.
“Maria,” Stacy shouted. “Maria, stop!”
Stacy wasn’t going to allow another witness and potential suspect to get away. She silently counted to three in her head, waiting to see if she could detect any movements from the house’s front or back. With nothing, Stacy stood up.
“Maria, get back here!”
As soon as Stacy uttered the last word, another shotgun blast slammed into the side of the house. A piece of the brick façade absorbed the bullet, sending granules and dust onto her damp shoulders.
Stacy yelped and fell on her stomach. Clutching the Glock in her hand, she waited to see if she could hear any other sounds.
Ahead, she could hear faint arrhythmic stomps. She held her breath and listened. The steps came closer and grew louder. They seemed to be coming from one person, but Stacy couldn’t be sure.
She pulled herself up to her knees. Squinting, Stacy waited to hear if the steps grew louder. To her left, Austin had crawled over to the front door and leaned his back into it. He continued to press the blood-stained handkerchief over his eye as he steadied his gun with his other hand. He was breathing heavily but inaudibly.
The heavy stepping appeared to come toward the porch at a right angle from where Stacy was hiding. She closed her eyes and tried to remember the yard’s layout as they had approached the house earlier.
Her eyes snapped open. She remembered that there was a little bit of a rise from the ground to the sidewalk. The shooter would have to take a slower step as he got to the pavement from the grass.
Stacy waited a few more seconds. The stomping feet slowed a bit. Then there was a pause. Stacy made her move.
She dug her boots into the soft earth and pushed off from her heels with all of her strength. She made a slight scream and ran into something thick and large. It was a man, and he groaned with surprise at the collision. While she wanted to knock this person off-balance, his strength and standing position gave him an advantage. Stacy bounced off him. Unable to gain traction, Stacy felt something large grab her shoulder. She was then thrown to the ground, knocking her gun away from her.
Austin called out from the porch. “Stacy!” Then, a bullet from his gun erupted into the night. Almost immediately, another shotgun blast rang out and ripped into the front porch post. The shotgun’s sound came from behind Stacy, meaning the shooter wasn’t the same person she ran into.
Away from the porch, the darkness in the yard was suffocating. The outline of Fairview Park still arched into the yard from her left. Stacy reached her arm out and patted the wet, muddy ground, looking for her gun.
The darkness in front of her and the blackness suffocated her senses. The wet air, wet clothes, and damp chill smothered her body, and it felt like every inch of her skin, even her mind, was being suffocated.
Stacy could hear steps coming from the right. These steps were lighter and less purposeful, but closer. Stacy held her breath and waited for them to approach. Stacy kept searching for her gun. Suddenly, a pair of hands lifted her from the ground.
She pushed and squirmed as the hands pressed into her shoulders. It felt like they would tear the shoulders of her jacket. As Stacy was spun around, she whipped her leg around and drove her knee into the air.
A thud was followed by a pulse of air coming out of the figure in front of her. Stacy had landed her knee into something. She heard a dull groan, which sounded like it came from a man, but this groan was higher pitched. Stacy reached back and punched the person in the face.
This time, he yelped. Stacy felt the sting of a hand strike the side of her cheek, the blow discharging some blood and spit from her mouth. The force of this knocked Stacy to one knee. The whole side of her face felt like it was on fire, and she struggled to blink back the white stars that filled her vision.
The person behind began to retreat. As Stacy tried to stand up, her foot collided with something. She reached down and found her gun.
She staggered herself to her feet. “Police. Stop!”
The footsteps stopped. Stacy thought she could hear the pump action of a shotgun. In an instant, Stacy fired her Glock.
The bullet disappeared into the dark, but then a guttural scream rang out.
“Fuckin’ bitch!” the higher-pitched voice screamed.
A dull thud followed the words. Then silence. Stacy didn’t have time to approach the sound because headlights had emerged from beside her.
An engine roared and purred. Two headlights kicked on from the front of the car. Stacy held her hand over her eyes as the sudden light coupled with the searing pain in her face, making it hard to see. Before she could react, the tires on the car spun, screeched, and then the car came speeding toward her.
Stacy backpedaled slowly and then cut to the left. The car, which looked boxy like an SUV, made a sharp turn to follow and came barreling toward Stacy. The headlights washed over her and then illuminated a path in front of her.
The briefly lighted path in front of her was problematic. The distance between herself and Mable Court was too far to make by running. The car could easily catch her before she made it to the road.
Sirens wailed louder in the distance, and they were coming closer. Stacy had to stay alive long enough for them to arrive.
She stopped, made a sharp turn to the right, and then began sprinting toward the park’s entrance. All Stacy could see was darkness and fog in front of her. The engine of the car thrummed harder and louder. Stacy ran as fast as she could, her boots sinking into the soft, wet ground. She knew that mud would be congealing around her heels, which would make her steps slower.
As she ran into the park, the car struggled to maintain consistent positioning behind her. The tires swerved and scudded against the same wet ground. Despite this, when Stacy looked back, the vehicle continued to close the distance between them.
Her lungs began to burn. Not now, she screamed to herself. This was not the time nor the place to have an attack.
Stacy felt her entire body burning, her legs becoming heavy as her boots kept pressing into the soft earth, and fatigue set in. She didn’t know how long she’d been running, but the main area inside the park was still far away.
The car cut sharply to the left and then veered back to the right. The motion made Stacy lose her sense of distance, and she stumbled. When she did, the driver pounded the accelerator pedal and aimed right at Stacy. Stacy leaped as the right fender clipped the back of her leg, feeling the heat from the engine behind her.
Stacy tumbled to the ground, her hands landing in two shallow puddles of water, which smelled dirty and earthy as thick mud encased her fingers. Her lungs seared with pain, the burning in her stomach only matched by the stinging pain in her legs and feet.
But she had to keep moving. As she looked ahead, she saw a light in the distance. It was the front porch light of Maria Fernandez’s house. The beam of light was long and white, and it looked as if it were suspended in the fog.
Behind Stacy, the car engine revved again, and the driver slammed the accelerator pedal. He was going to try to run Stacy over.
She pulled herself up and began running toward the light. Her pace was slower and more stilted than before. She managed to turn and get a wild shot off from her gun, aiming toward the car, but the round didn’t reach near it. Stacy cut a path to the right. The car veered to the right behind her and stayed on course. And it was gaining on her.
As she got closer, the porch light started to form a shape. Stacy kept running as hard and as fast as she could.
The car finally closed the distance between them. Stacy could hear its frame rattling as it moved. This time, she darted to the left. The car didn’t anticipate her move, and it wasn’t able to follow her. Instead, it drove ahead.
Stacy had looped back around to the right and to the porch light when she lost her balance and fell. As she fell face-first into the ground again, her chest and lungs felt like they were being smashed with a hammer. Stacy rolled over to one side and looked back to see that a large divot in the yard had been covered up with grass and water, hiding its actual depth below the surface.
She stared at the depression in the ground for a minute. Then, as if she had just made up her mind on something, drew her gun at eye level.
The car had stopped and gone into reverse, cutting to the left and then slowly straightening. Once it did, Stacy fired a shot. The bullet managed to shatter the plastic dome covering one of the headlights. Stacy fired again, this time exploding the blub into pieces.
“Yes!” she shouted.
The light dimmed between her and the car, but its speed accelerated. Stacy jogged backward a few yards as the automobile grew close. She gripped the handle of her gun tightly. She only had one bullet left, and she didn’t want to waste it.
“Come on, you son of a bitch,” she growled. “Come on. Hit me! Come on!” she screamed, her voice cracking and shrieking into the night.
With one headlight out, the driver didn't have enough light to see the divot in the ground. Stacy stepped closer until she was a few feet from the divot. The car grew closer. Stacy clenched her teeth and began running in a diagonal line, away from the oncoming vehicle and back toward the park entrance.
The driver followed her movements, but the ground’s speed and unevenness were too much for the massive SUV to handle. Once the two tires hit the divot in the ground, the car started to tip to the right. Brakes squealed loudly, and smoke wafted out from under the frame. The driver tried to regain control by jerking the wheel to the right, but it was too late. The SUV rolled to one side and collapsed into the ground.
Stacy stopped running and leaned down for a moment, resting her hands on her knees. She opened her mouth and tried to gulp down as much air as she could. When she felt more composed, she held her gun out and approached the car.
The driver’s side window was shattered, and Stacy could see a shadow creeping along the ground, growing larger with each passing second.
“Cleveland Police,” Stacy said. “Stay on the ground.”
It was too late. The driver stood up.
“Hands over your head. Hands over your head. Do it! Now!”
The driver froze.
“I’m not asking again. Hands. Over. Your. Head!”
The spool of light from the car headlight, and the backlighting from the porch, helped define the driver’s features. As Stacy approached, she could see the driver was a light-skinned black man with an angular face, broad nose, and pockmarked skin. His face was tight with concern.
“Slowly, and I mean, slowly, get down on your knees with your hands still on top of your head.”
The driver held a steely gaze on Stacy. As he began to drop down to his knees, the light that framed him went away, and his silhouette darkened.
At that moment, he made his move. He reached for his pocket and pulled out a small handgun. He aimed it at Stacy’s chest.
Before he could pull the trigger, a gunshot rang out. The driver’s mouth grew slack, and his eyes suddenly widened and became hollow. The center of his chest had been blown open, revealing a gaping red wound. He collapsed in front of Stacy without saying a word.
As Stacy stepped closer and prepared to take a shot, she saw Austin.
“Are you okay?”