Free The Devil's Right Hand by J.D. Rhoades Page A

“Put it down !” Keller
bellowed. The man looked stupidly at him, the gun in his hand still
moving upwards towards Keller. Keller’s reflexes took over. The
shotgun in his hands roared. Keller couldn’t recall having pulled
the trigger. The blast of the gun was followed by the crack of the
man’s body as it met the wall of the house, slammed back by a full
load of #4 buckshot. Keller reflexively jacked another round into
the chamber and swung the shotgun to bear on the Latino who had
knocked on the door. That one was panting in fear and crawling away
on his hands and knees. He stopped crawling and vomited into the
grass. No target . Keller swung
back to the man he had shot. He had slid downwards into a sitting
position, his back against the building. His entire front was
chopped meat. He stared at Keller. He shook his head as if trying
to shake off a hallucination. When Keller failed to vanish, he only
looked more bewildered.
    The front door yawned wide open, inviting
Keller into the darkness beyond. He heard screaming from inside. He
swore softly and moved into the darkness.
     
    DeWayne heard the door open, then the pistol
shot. There was a muffled scream, then the sound of something heavy
hitting the floor. Instinctively, he leaped to his feet, picking up
the flimsy coffee table as he rose. In the room’s dim illumination,
he saw a large man with curly hair come through the doorway from
the hall. DeWayne saw the dark skin and thought at first it was the
Mexican pizza guy. This man, however, was much taller and broader
and dressed in a suit. He was holding a pistol in his hand. DeWayne
heaved the table at him. The impact spoiled the man’s aim and
knocked him on his ass. The first shot went wide and blew out the
curtained picture window behind the couch.
    A high pitched rhythmic sound came from the
hallway, like some great mechanical bird. It was Leonard screaming.
“Leonard?” DeWayne said. The curly-haired man was picking himself
up. He had lost the tinted glasses. DeWayne saw his eyes for the
first time. They were a pale green. As the stranger raised his gun,
DeWayne remembered the old Indian man they had killed. He looked
down the barrel of the upraised gun and saw his death there.
     
    Keller advanced down the hallway, his
shotgun at the ready. He heard a crash, saw a confused tangle of
movement in the dimly lighted room. “ Freeze, goddamn it!” he yelled.
     
     
    Raymond heard the voice behind him, realized
that it wasn’t John Lee come to back him up. He whirled and fired
almost in the same motion. The dark figure in the hallway dropped
to the floor. When Raymond turned back, DeWayne was gone.
     
    DeWayne didn’t know who the voice from the
hallway belonged to, and he was too terrified to care. When the big
Indian turned away and fired, he hurled himself towards the
kitchen. He scooped his own gun off the kitchen table as he passed.
He fumbled with the door, almost sobbing with frustration as his
fear-numbed fingers refused to work. Finally, he was able to yank
the door open and stumble into the back yard.
    The tiny back yard was overgrown with weeds.
A rusting metal shed, barely six feet tall, sagged in one corner.
DeWayne ran towards it, hoping to hide out inside. He yanked at the
shed door. It was padlocked. Behind him, the kitchen door slammed
open. DeWayne shrieked in panic and fired blindly back towards the
sound. Glass shattered in the window. The figure silhouetted in the
doorway didn’t fall, but it did pull back.
     
    As the man in the living room had turned,
Keller had instinctively dropped and sought cover. The only thing
to get behind was to be the body of the man from the doorway. Now
Keller lay full length on the floor, trying not to look at the eyes
of the dead man. The body was close enough to touch. There was a
sticky wetness under him and the familiar sharp metallic smell of
blood. Keller realized that he was lying in a huge smear of it
where the man had tried to drag himself down