“Stop,” I said.
Logan sprang to his feet immediately and crouched over Tony. I saw his fist lift, and then smash down into my friend’s face. Crack.
“Stop!”
Tony swung right back at him from the floor. Logan didn’t bother blocking the hit, and took the blow across his cheekbone.
Evie yowled and tried to twist away from Dax.
Logan reached behind his back and yanked out a knife.
Oh, shit. A couple of punches between men was one thing. Bladed weapons was something entirely different.
“I fucking said stop it!”
My voice slammed into both of them, briefly stilling all action.
The knife wavered. Logan’s resolve seemed to temporarily crumble, but he found it again, a hard set coming into his eyes.
Evie growled.
I don’t exactly remember leaping onto his back. Just that somehow I was flying through the air and then attaching myself to his shoulders. I hung onto him with my left hand and fumbled around with my right, trying to grab at the knife and generally transforming myself into the heaviest, squirmiest backpack ever.
Logan tried to wheel around, slicing blindly at the air, blood from his injured hand flying all over the place. I let go of him and slid to the ground, then spotted his legs right in front of me. I leaped for those next, wrapping myself around them.
He fell.
Tony tackled him, and after a brief struggle pried the knife away.
Something broke in Logan. He lay on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. Once I knew the blade was safe, I let go of Logan’s legs and sat up, painfully aware that I could hear my thumping heart.
Across from me, Tony wiped blood from his nose. The carpet had acquired a lovely new element of decor, one that I decided to call Blood Spatter.
“Great,” Tony said. “Now Keller’s going to scream at us for trashing the place.”
“It needs redecorating anyway,” I said.
Logan covered his face with his hands, then seemed to realize he was bleeding. He held his injured hand up and stared at it, as if not entirely sure it belonged to him. “Oh…fuck.”
Since the danger seemed past, I got to my feet. “I’ll get my first aid kit,” I said. “Stay there. Don’t touch it.”
Someone banged on the front door.
Oh for the love of…
Reason fled me. I can’t explain why I walked over to the door and yanked it open, only that I did. The neighbor we had so recently met stood out there, the whites of his eyes showing, bathrobe only loosely tied over what appeared to be flannel pants and a T-shirt.
He also clutched a tiny pistol.
At first I wasn’t sure if it was even a real gun; it was about the size of a miniature squirt gun you might find in a supermarket. It had to be real, though. Only a real gun would give him enough chutzpah to come back to what was clearly a soldier on the verge of a meltdown.
I stared at him, then at the way he held his tiny little pistol—with his fingertips, like it was some kind of dead animal to be disposed of. In those few seconds, I learned quite a bit about him.
This stupid fuck had never shot a firearm in his life. I didn’t know where he’d found this particular weapon. Maybe he’d picked it up as a curiosity before the endtimes, something to chuckle over with his wife. It might have been tiny, but it had the same effect on him as an AR-15 might have on me: the very feeling of a gun in his hand gave him some sort of inexplicable inner strength. Combine that with the sort of fearful hysteria the apocalypse tends to bring on and somehow he’d become an overconfident son of a bitch.
I continued to stare at him.
“I heard shooting.” He lifted the little pistol in what I’m sure was intended as menace.
“Accident,” I said, keeping my cold gaze fixed on him.
“You need to be quiet,” he insisted. “This is a respectable neighborhood!”
“Is it?”
Something in my stare must have unnerved him, because the glint of fear came back in his eyes.
“This is the fucking apocalypse,” I said, keeping my voice soft and level, like I was talking to a nervous child. “In case you weren’t aware.”
“Be quiet—”
“No, you be quiet!” I intended to slap the gun aside, but my palm struck the barrel and it flew right out of his hand, landing on the front porch with a clatter.
He watched the gun land, then gaped at me.
“Gotta hold it firmly,” I said. My hand shot out again, and I grabbed the lapel of his robe. Soft cotton of some sort. Very nice. I stepped forward and shoved him backward along the porch, past his stupid little gun and then down the steps and the walkway. I was dimly aware of a handful of neighbors standing there—probably awakened by the shouting and gunfire—but I no longer gave two shits.
When we reached the sidewalk that ran along the outside of the property, I yanked him close to me. “Go home,” I said. “And never come back.”
“This neighborhood—”
“You think I care about this fucking neighborhood? Go away or I will end you,” I hissed. “Do you hear me? I will end you.”