Author Note!

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  Chapter 20 Part A

  It’s morning again, and I wake up from the front room recliner their to hear a few quick thumbs on the door. It’s takes me a second to get my brain to wake up because of what had happened st night.

  I’d had to stay up all night in the area near the front doors to guard the house. I’d literally been pacing the ‘shop’ area in my wheelchair with binocurs, which was literally what was left of blending my living room with much of my kitchen with a divider wall.

  You see those thugs had come back searching through the neighborhood again te after a lot of people had already gone to bed. And there’s multiple cruisers of thugs at night now also. Probably one group or another had come by at least once every few hours st night.

  I’d been OK because I wasn’t addicted to watching movies and distractions, which let me be more alert. But I’d have not noticed if I wasn’t a really disciplined person. I think they look for which houses have lights on. It works in my favor that some houses are empty due to foreclosure waves also. So they knew they couldn’t do every house. And that meant not raiding houses with lights off like mine.

  So it turned out that st night I’d seen them go door to door looting and shooting things. Even before I noticed I saw little fshes of sparks in the street and realized that was the muzzle of pistols with silencers. But not all of them had those.

  The gunshots were pretty obvious, since gun technology really hadn’t changed much since World War II a hundred or so years past practically anyone can recognize a gun shot. They’d again raided the old dies house that they’d killed a few days ago, hoping she’d have valuables, food, and supplies that they’d been unable to get at that time. They had a white van this time which matched the description of the van that I’d seen on the street the day after that incident occurred. And then they were loading stuff from her house into the van noisily for about 20 minutes.

  They left the now dead old dy’s front door wide open which doesn’t help. But after they’d looted her house right before driving away, they’d ended up shooting the neighbor next door to her, who had come out to find out what all the noise and shouting in the neighbor’s yard was. It also helped deflect them from going to my house but I feel bad for the guy who lost his life. It was an HVAC guy, raising a family I realized with a sinking feeling in my stomach. They probably initially shot him from discovery but then they started to stare at his house and property and decided to target his family for his van after he’d been put down like a dog, bleeding huge puddles all over his wn. But after they shot him they found his van was too full of stuff already like tools, and commercial contracting equipment. Its not stuff that just anyone can use without the proper training so they quickly become dissatisfied with the van full of parts and tools.

  The irony is if those guys didn’t have drug addled brains they would have realized that guy’s tools are probably worth more than half the stuff in the houses on this street combined.

  But that didn’t stop them there. They kept going hoping to find something valuable. There was no mercy as they swept through his yard and up into the front door in a line all with guns ready. So after that they went upstairs and shot the wife and a few kids. It wasn’t hard to tell even though I wasn’t with them the whole way. I heard the screams and the bullets but didn’t dare go out to look since I couldn’t predict how long they would be in there. I also couldn’t tell if there was more than one look out or just the one that I could see in the driver’s seat of their van.

  The other neighbors left of this house had their lights instantly go on too as the whole neighborhood was waking up. The driver shouted from the street to hurry up in some kind of accent that seemed to match people from the northeast area around New York, New Jersey, or New Engnd.

  The thugs then wanted to leave but not because of getting noticed. They didn’t seem worried about that. Instead they were worried about too many to fight at once and the police blocking off the street, judging from their shouting. But why are they so brazen and openly like this? It shouldn’t be like that.

  This was open warfare almost. But as they were leaving one of them tries to throw a Molotov cocktail into the house but instead his aim is off and it ignites the front wn instead.

  That’s kind of pathetic for bandit. But someone that unskilled as a bandit normally would be picked off by police really fast. That’s how you know something is off. And these guys sloppily are in drunken slurs going back to their vehicle. They hit a fire hydrant backing up also with their bad driving and couldn’t hardly even get away.

  Whew. Thank goodness. I would have been in serious trouble if that house had caught fire. Because it would likely take the houses next to it.

  And what’s up with this guy? A fail bandit? Its kind of funny in a way and now his buddies are ughing at him for being an idiot. They congratuted him on sying the grass. Then he’s telling them to F off. But he’s so drunk he can’t hold up the middle finger straight which made them ugh at him even more.

  But even the wn being on fire is a pain in the ass, though its really thick and wet green grass, so it doesn’t burn as well. The fire didn’t seem to go anywhere because of how wet the wn is. Our city has one of those water saving ordinances where the sprinklers go on after dark and that’s the only thing that’s kept the whole street from not getting burned up I think.

  The thugs even ughed that the sprinkler just happened to turn on right then from its timer. Which makes the fail bandit even more fail. One of them is ughing so hard at his failure that he fell down while holding a beer.

  Ah yes. That’s why they aren’t doing well. They are all drunk. As I peek out the windows I see a LOT of beer bottles in the back of that pickup. Hell they might not even notice me if I were to go out there, not that I’m into tempting fate.

  This could have been really bad.

  Hearing about a fire doesn’t really cut it for how awful it really is. Even though it’s only a small patch of wn, the smoke is terrible and goes everywhere bnketing a whole neighborhood and even if it’s not your house you still choke half to death. The smoke chokes at you and makes your throat itchy as hell and feeling like little cuts lining the back of your throat while your eyes sting and water like crazy so badly that you can barely open your eyes even a few seconds from the heat wave coming at you.

  And I’m one of the lucky ones. My house is on the other side of the street.

  It’s strange too, why isn’t there any cops coming? And no fire trucks? What the hell is going on? The gangsters are gone, but still…

  I had hit 911 but the network was down? How is that possible? Because this house was built so close to the one next to it, now both of them are going up and there’s a shitload of screaming from people that are gathering in the street.

  My heart is racing too. This is like the weirdest feeling ever.

  A lot of people had heard the guns and knew it was bad but still were like myself not wanting to come out or not having guns themselves. There was also a lot of people that were in their yards getting their roofs soaked with water and turning their yards as quickly as they could into a ke after those guys left. One of them put a hose extension onto his hose and then started to try to put out the fire all the time swearing about how unreliable the emergency services were.

  An hour ter the fire engines showed up with no expnation of why they were so te. But their uniforms were dirty as hell. They looked worn out and scratched up. Their truck was also damaged with dents and all kinds of debris.

  The grass fire is still going in pces because it had tried to resist its own death though its 90% put out. Probably some of the water spigots were busted up. So only part of it was out. I have to give them points though. Even though that house was partly damaged, they did manage to save it and the neighbor’s garage…and part of that house too.

  So they hadn’t come straight from the station. Something else was going on.

  In a nutshell, I spent the whole night in mortal fear of my life. So I could barely wake up when all the knocking was happening the next morning.

  Again I hear the knock once it was morning and sleeping that te had made my head ping like a hangover. It’s louder this time…the door not the simuted hangover. Then it sounded again after that.

  Oh right…I’m in the recliner to sleep again. It takes some work to get up. I have to work hard to even get my bance. Slowly I’m able to get on my feet after agonizing work trying to push myself up with the two hand canes that I’ve been using for support.

  I’m feeling grateful that my house didn’t burn down though.

  “Just a minute, I’m coming,” I yelled out loud.

  They should hear that…I think. Sure enough they stopped knocking and are waiting.

  Then a quick quieter but still sharp series of knocks in a rhythm a little ter probably because I limp slowly.

  Slowly I open it.

  A bundle of blonde hair flies past under me, almost tipping me over.

  “Shut the door fast!” another girl’s voice says.

  She looks like around 18 to 20 years of age or something like that.

  “What? Who are you?” I demanded.

  “Just shut it. It’s not safe! I’ll expin in a second. For now get inside. Shut the door, hide,” she said with a desperate sounding voice.

  It takes a minute to get settled while she’s trying to look through my peephole in the curtains. Wow she’s quick. She went right to the window.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked. I tried to maneuver myself back to my recliner. Since I was wrecked health and staying up…right now I didn’t have the strength to stand guard anymore. Anyway since it was day time now I had to save up my strength for tonight when the real chaos would happen if those guys were to come back.

  This girl waits a sec, looking left and right.

  “I was worried they’d catch me. I think they spotted me near the main road but then I thought I lost them but they kept somehow being on every street I was on two hours ago.” She’s biting her lip in frustration.