Page 80 of So Far Gone

“Dean!” Bobby said again. “What the fuck! What do we do now?”

What rubbish, Kinnick thought, hisAtlas of Wisdom. Now, at the end of life, how short, cruel, and pointless it all seemed,wisdom, what a waste that houseful of books before him had turned out to be. He looked up at Dean Burris, who stood in the middle of the driveway, panting, handgun hanging at the end of his big right hand, while, just a few feet away, Bethany held the newly dead Shane and wept.

“He attacked me,” Dean said flatly. He took in a deep breath, let it out, and turned to look at Bobby. “Well,” he said, “I think we gotta clean this up now.” The coldness in his voice.

“No.” Bobby shook his head. “No fuckin’ way, Dean.” He put his hands out to the side, as if saying,I’m not helping you with this—but I’m not stopping you, either.

Kinnick had crawled all the way to his target, the air rifle, and he rolled over and picked it off the ground.We gotta clean this up, Burris said. Rhys remembered Chuck’s advice. If the man is wearing Kevlar, aim for his front pocket. From his side, he blinked the tears from his eyes, brought the air rifle to his shoulder, flipped the safety off, and pointed at Burris’s left front pocket (Kinnick always kept the Dragonfly pumped at least ten times, and loaded with pellets), and, as Burris turned away from his goateed friend, Kinnick pulled the trigger, and with a pleasingpfft, a single pellet flew twenty-five feet and hit Burris, not in the left pants pocket or right pants pocket, but right between them, right, as Chuck might have said, in the dickhole.

Of course, even pumped ten times, the pellet wouldn’t break the skin, or go through Dean’s jeans, but the shot must have really hurt, because Burris doubled over, and with an “Oof,” he dropped his handgun to the ground, and instinctively covered his groin with both hands.Probably too far for Kinnick to get the gun, but he scrambled to his feet, and staggered, listing left, before finally moving toward the big man, pumping the air rifle barrel as he went. One, two—

That’s when he saw, over Dean’s shoulder, a plume of dust. A car turning up his driveway. Three, four pumps—

Kinnick kept moving and pumping the rifle—five, six—maybe he’d get even luckier this time and hit Burris in the eye. He wondered if anyone had ever won a fight as badly outgunned as he was now.

But even outgunned, Kinnick knew he would not stop, not until Burris killed him, and he was filled with grim determination:I will never give up.I will protect Bethany and my grandchildren, I will beat this man to death with the stock of this pellet gun, I will beat this man with the broken bones of my own battered face—

He staggered toward Burris—seven pumps, eight—and from fifteen feet, raised and fired again, but he was on the move, and this time the shot went right, pellet hitting dirt as the big man looked up, picked his gun off the ground, and rose to fire—Kinnick realizing that he wasn’t going to reach him in time.

So, he threw the air rifle, which caused Burris to duck, and this gave Kinnick a quick view of the car that had come up the drive, and that had stopped some eighty feet away: a Ford Bronco, Brian already leaning out of the open driver’s-side door.

Burris rose again, straightened slowly and said, “You fucking son of a bitch!” He raised the gun toward Kinnick, who apologized again in his mind—I’m sorry, Beth, I really thought—when a crack echoed from what he instinctively knew was a larger gun, and Dean Burris’s right arm seemed to explode—slivers of bone, mists of blood—the handgun dropping from Burris’s destroyed right hand to the dirt, the big man following his shattered arm to the ground with a banshee’s scream.

Kinnick managed the last steps to Burris’s feet; woozy, he bent over and picked the handgun from the dirt where Dean had dropped it. Recalling his brief firearms training (feet apart, left foot forward, barrelpointed slightly down, thank you, Crazy Ass Chuck) Kinnick pointed the gun at Bobby, but the goateed man had not pulled his own weapon. He dropped to the ground and cried out: “No! Please!” and began scurrying under the truck.

Kinnick thought he might pass out. He steadied himself. Eighty feet down the driveway, he saw Brian, leaning out over the open door of his Bronco, still looking through the scope of his .30-06. Exhausted, Kinnick sat down in the dirt, alternating pointing the gun at Bobby, and at the screaming Burris, then at Bobby again, who was completely under the truck, now, only the pale palms of his hands showing. Kinnick let out a deep breath as his daughter sat rocking her dead husband, her helpless cries joining the whelps of the one-armed Dominion Eagle Killer, rising together in the still air.

Eight

What Happened to Brian

With the shot still ringing in the air, he swung the scope to the second man, who looked properly, pants-shittingly, terrified, and who immediately fell to the ground and began crawling under the truck. Brian swung the scope back to the bald man, writhing on the ground in front of Kinnick. His friend’s face was plump and bloodied, but he held the handgun steadily, pointing it from the scared man under the truck to the one Brian had just shot.

Oh God, Brian realized,I just shot someone.

“Brian?” Joanie said from inside the Bronco. “Is he—”

“It’s okay, Joan,” Brian said. “I got him.”

Only then did he realize how badly he was shaking.

***

Joanie took the Bronco back up the road until she got a phone signal. She made the first frantic call, and within fifteen minutes, sirens could be heard roaring up the highway in the valley below. They came in waves: paramedics and ambulances from Chewelah and Spokane, Stevens County sheriff’s deputies from Colville, assisting deputies from Spokane, the town marshal from Springdale, a random volunteer firetruck, a tribal cop from Wellpinit, a forensics team from Spokane, and a wildlife agent who just happened to be in the area; even a couple of FBI agents would eventually drive up the dirt road to Rhys Kinnick’s little house in the woods.

Dean Burris had gone into shock, and thankfully passed out; his tortured cries had been almost as unbearable to Kinnick as poor Bethany’s weeping. She’d let go of Shane’s body, finally, wanting to go check on the kids, but Kinnick had stopped her and pointed to her chest. “Beth, wait—” His broken-mouthed voice sounding raspy and mushy in his own ears.

She looked down at her sweater, covered in Shane’s blood, and began weeping again. Thankfully, Joanie was back, with a jacket she’d had in her car, and she put her arms around Bethany, and covered the bloody sweater with her jacket, zipping it up so that Bethany could go inside and check on the kids.

David Jr. had risen to the moment, it turned out, keeping Asher and Leah huddled in Kinnick’s bedroom upstairs, and telling them to stay calm and stay put, even after the gunfire started. Davy had been the one to find the pellet gun, though Bethany had taken it from him.

Pale, unconscious Dean Burris was loaded into the back of the first ambulance, a deputy accompanying him for the forty-mile ride to Colville, to Providence Mount Carmel hospital, and eventually, to the Stevens County Jail. They didn’t handcuff him, Kinnick noted, either because he was in shock or because there wasn’t enough left of that right arm to cuff. They did put bracelets on Bobby, however, who eventually crawled out from under the truck. “I’m sorry,” he said to Kinnick, “I didn’t—” But he wasn’t able to finish his apology before his head was pushed into the backseat of one of the sheriff’s cars, which followed Burris’s ambulance off the property.

After twice giving his version of events to a sympathetic sheriff’s detective, Kinnick was put on a gurney and loaded into the other ambulance, where he was given ice packs for his face and some pills forthe pain. Out the back door of the ambulance, he could still see poor Shane, his body on the dirt driveway. “Can I talk to my daughter before we go?” Kinnick asked.

Bethany had come back out of the house, eyes dusted and teary. Joanie’s jacket was zipped up to her neck.

She stood at the open back door of the ambulance. “Are you okay?”

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