The Few Part 6: Glass and Dreams

As Edward took their empty water cups from them, John, Wendy, and Sierra stood up to leave. Nobody said anything as the three of them walked down the Pacific Circle toward their house. John was in a daze, not able to stop thinking about Edward’s recollection of the old Sidewood.
As the three of them walked up the grass-infested concrete path to the door, John heard the twins screaming at each other. He ran up to the house and threw the door open in Wendy and Sierra’s faces. He saw the two boys fighting on the floor. Both of their faces were streaked with each other’s blood, and they were both badly cut. The two boys stopped and slowly stood up, trying foolishly to pretend as if nothing had happened.
John looked at Eddie. John had come to automatically suspect Eddie when the boys caused trouble, partly because of Eddie’s overt admiration for the trouble being caused by the adults. Eddie sighed briefly before curling his lips and defiantly looking out the window at the people rushing about in the streets.
Giving up on Eddie, John softened his glare and shifted his eyes to his other son. Mike scowled back at his father for a moment and then muttered, “You moved us to hell.”
The tense body seemed to lose it’s soul as it turned around and walked out of the room.
Now, with Wendy and Sierra busying themselves at frivolous tasks to avoid the scene, John and Eddie stood facing each other. John’s eyes chased Eddie’s, but the boy’s disconnected gaze darted from window to window staring at the growing, frantic crowd in the street.

Following his son’s preoccupied gaze, John glanced through the window at the tumultuous group gathered at the end of Pacific Circle. Some of the more excitable among them were waving their arms, red in the face, while the more composed stood in a tense nervousness.
“Maybe they’ll finally get what’s coming to them,” John wondered out loud. At the sound of this rebuke of The Few, Eddie crossed his arms in disgust and walked out through the front door. John watched him through the window as he walked over to the rapidly growing crowd of families at the end of the road.
After a few moments of listening to the conversation and trying without success to get the attention of one of the frantic bystanders, the boy turned and ran back to the house.
“They broke into the club!” he cried in the same frantic horror as the adults outside. “It’s destroyed and they took everything and we don’t know where they are!”
“Who?” John asked in a state of understandable confusion.
“The Others,” Eddie panted.
John followed his son out to the crowd of people, talking, but no more calm or coherent than Eddie. Sam approached John and whispered to him, “Get your family. We’re going downtown.”

John thought better of denying it, knowing that he had already made enemies with the victims of the last run, and he couldn’t afford to make enemies with this unpredictable, violent crowd as well. He took his time going back to the house, though, as he was afraid of taking his family, especially the twins, to another run.
He ambled up the pathway, hoping that the crowd would leave without him, but of course they didn’t. He felt the presence of eyes on him as he proceeded slowly up the pathway towards the front door.
Wendy looked up at him from the couch, where she was reading the same old copy of the Sidewood Times that she had been reading at Edward’s house. John stood there for a minute, not sure how best to corral his family after the recent argument. Sierra peered out of her bedroom door into the living room, overcome by her curiosity about the commotion, and Mike stared through the doorway from his position on the bed, almost daring John to say something to him.
John directed his gaze at Mike, knowing the other two would listen. “We’re going downtown again.”
Mike looked away. Wendy shook her head and looked back down at her antiquated newspaper. Sierra stared at him in disbelief.
The words he had spoken echoed in his head as he surveyed his family’s reaction. We’re going downtown again. He repeated it out loud, toying with the emphasis to mask his doubts. “We’re going downtown again."
This time Mike got up from the bed to throw his door shut and Sierra retreated back into her room to pretend she hadn’t heard. Wendy flicked her eyes toward him for a second and turned the page of her newspaper.
John glanced outside at the crowd impatiently waiting for him. He sat down on the couch next to Wendy. “Something happened down at the club,” he whispered. A few seconds later Mike and Sierra emerged from their respective doors.
“What happened?” they both asked in unison.
John hesitated. “Someone broke into the club,” he finally said. “and we’re going downtown again.”
The three acquiesced to his persistence and they walked outside, following the group toward the lone occupied storefront on Main Street.

A gasp rippled through the crowd as people came within view of the old building. The twins looked at each other in a shared state of panic. John looked up at the building, and his eyes darted momentarily to the members of his family, and then back up to the building. The facade had been torn from the concrete walls, and profanities had been painted over the entire surface of the building with the bloody overflow from the storm drains. The plate glass windows had been shattered and the shards stabbed into the carpet that had been pulled up from the floor. The paneling had been pulled from the interior walls and lay loosely over the empty gun racks. All of the weapons were gone.
The crowd grew more panicked as they internalized the situation, and after a lengthy pause for preparation, Sam stepped solemnly and nervously onto the hunting club steps to address them. For the first time in the memory of anyone in the crowd, he spoke softly. “This is an unfortunate turn of events,” he said hesitantly.
The people listening looked at each other as the panicked murmur grew louder. Desperate to find some way to calm them, Sam glanced back at the building, and suddenly regaining his composure shouted fervently, “And this is why we do what we do! To keep things like this from happening!”
The beginnings of a cheer were forming in the crowd when a gunshot rang out from one of the vacant buildings across the street, and Sam fell to the ground.

The crowd scattered briefly, but with nowhere to run and no idea what was happening, they gathered back in front of the hunting club, almost expecting Sam to rise from the pool of blood he lay in to give one of his passionate speeches. After a moment, the reality of their leader’s death settled upon the crowd, and heads turned toward John. An old lady, well dressed and bearing a stately posture walked up to him slowly and whispered, “They want you to speak.”
John looked back at the other members of his family, who, he realized, had slowly scooted backwards through the course of events, and were standing on the opposite sidewalk from the club. The children were staring silently at the blood-stained leader on the club steps, mouths slightly open. Wendy looked at him, and then at the old lady, and then back to him. “They want me to speak,” he mouthed to her. She shrugged indifferently.
Reluctantly, John made his way through the crowd to the front of the defaced building. The empty gun rack caught his eye, and as he turned to face the crowd, he contemplated the irony of being shot with one’s own gun. As he opened his mouth to speak to the crowd, a tall, dark female figure emerged from one of the empty buildings across the street, and shot him a brief, almost conspirital smile as she headed back towards the complexes.

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