“SON OF A BITCH!” Steve screams in pain as he shoves McFadden away and tries to get the dog off his leg.
The pitter-patter of dog toenails echoes around us as Mrs. Justin Bieber flies into the living room to get in on the action. Luckily, she’s decided to be a joiner, chomping her teeth down on Steve’s other leg.
Without hesitation, I lunge forward, grab McFadden’s arm, and drag him behind me as fast as I can toward the front door while both dogs bite down harder on Steve’s leg and he shouts and flails around the living room trying to dislodge them.
We stumble out the front door and down the steps when it hits me that I don’t have my keys and have no way to escape. I don’t have time to worry about that right now though, because it won’t be long before Steve comes racing out here after us, guns a-blazing.
Yanking McFadden in front of me, I shove him as hard as I can and scream at him to run.
“GO! Into the corn! Don’t stop until I tell you!”
We sprint full speed the ten yards or so across the grass until we burst into the first row of corn, smacking stalks out of our way as we go and hearing the first sounds of a gun being fired in our direction.
I’m too busy running and looking over my shoulder to notice McFadden stop suddenly and I slam into the back of him, both of us stumbling forward.
“What the hell? Why are you stopping? KEEP GOING!” I yell at him as another shot echoes behind us, this one closer than the last.
“A crop circle,” he whispers in wonder. “Oh my God, they’ve been here. They’ll save us!”
Looking around him in irritation, I see a huge, matted-down area of cornstalks directly in front of us.
“For God’s sake, get your shit together, man! We need to get the hell out of here!”
The hard, cold steel of the nose of a gun presses roughly into the back of my head and I realize we’ve just lost our chance at escaping.
GD crop circle.
CHAPTER 20
Will you stop crying? Goddammit, you’re giving me a headache,” Steve complains to McFadden.
I have an unnatural urge to reach out and smack Steve upside the head. However, this wouldn’t be a wise idea since he currently still has a gun aimed at me.
“Just tell me Tinkerdoodle is still alive!” McFadden sobs as he stands next to me in the middle of the “crop circle” where Steve forced us to walk.
Oh, don’t worry about me with a GUN TO MY HEAD. The dog that you stole is perfectly fine, thank you very much.
“Hey, dude. I heard some shots. You need my help or something?”
Pothead waltzes into our little party with a gun in his hand, using the tip of it to scratch his head.
This just keeps getting better and better.
“It’s about fucking time you got here. Keep an eye on Martin; this one’s all mine,” Steve says as he wraps his fingers tightly around my upper arm and digs the gun back into the side of my head.
“You couldn’t just forget about Martin and go on your merry way. You had to keep digging, didn’t you? Now you’re both going to die,” Steve threatens.
McFadden begins wailing embarrassingly loud and Steve and I both groan in annoyance. At least we’re in agreement on something: McFadden is irritating. But not so much that he needs to be shot in the middle of a cornfield.
“Look, how about you just let him go and deal with me?” I ask him, trying to plead with the tiniest bit of humanity I hope he still has left in him.
“Sorry, no can do. I don’t trust either of you. You’re each getting a bullet to the brain.”
Okay, maybe not. On to Plan B.
Except I don’t have a Plan B. I’m pretty sure I didn’t even have a Plan A.
“I don’t think that will be necessary, Steve.”
Pure elation and downright dread fight in the pit of my stomach when I hear the sound of Griffin’s voice and the click of a gun that I’m pretty sure he has aimed at Steve’s head right at this moment.
I’m so happy he’s here that I want jump up and down and point and laugh in Steve’s face. But I’m also scared to death that he’s here right now. What if he gets hurt? Griffin can’t get hurt just because of me. Especially when he doesn’t even know I love him.
“What are you going to do, hotshot? Shoot both of us? In case you haven’t noticed, there are two of us with guns and only one of you,” Steve taunts Griffin.
We all turn at the same time and look at the pothead standing on the other side of me, swaying back and forth, twirling his gun through the air like he’s writing his name with a Fourth of July sparkler.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Gunnar, FOCUS!” Steve yells at him.
Gunnar? Note to self: Never name any future children that I may or may not have Gunnar. They will indeed be brainless twits.