Page 7 of When the Night Comes Knocking

The pregnant couple pauses at the doors as the shouts turn into full-blown screams, urgent and growing closer. Beyond the cracked window of Jackson’s Jeep, Winnie barks something wildly primal. Jane steps back, level with Jackson’s side, taking note of the way his relaxed posture goes rigid.

From the aisles, she sees her brother emerge. His face is slightly flushed, and he’s gripping tightly to his cast arm as he looks out the propped-open door along with everyone else.

Then Jane sees them, the two messy-looking men who had been lounging by the brown truck. They stumble into view, with the older driver supporting the passenger who’d sent warning shots off in her gut.

“Help! We need help!” the older one cries out, frantically limping toward the entrance. Blood has soaked through his denim jacket and work shirt, though as they near, Jane can see it does not belong to him.

The husband at the door lets out a childlike moan, looking ready to be sick. His face is ashen as he grabs for his wife, pulling her back from the entrance as the two men trip inside.

“Shut the door!” the older man orders, stumbling farther inside. “Dear God in heaven, shut the door!” His eyes are as big as golf balls as he briefly scans the room before looking at the unconscious man he’s holding up.

The cashier, Kimi, swiftly slips out from behind the counter, her eyes now wide awake. “What the hell is going on, Jim?” she says, then brings a hand to her mouth as she gets closer. “Oh, Jesus, what happened to Billy?”

Jim kneels down on the ground, carefully laying the man named Billy onto the linoleum. “Hey, Bill, wake up, kid. Just wake up now,” he says, smacking lightly at his companion’s pale cheeks. Billy’s arm is barely attached to his body, hanging limp by only a few stringy pieces of muscle and tissue. Four deep marks have sliced through his chest and shredded the remaining skin to a near pulp.

Jane is frozen as she stares, recalling the baby deer in the woods, split open and spilling out onto the forest floor only feet away from its mother.

At the entrance, the husband bends over and vomits.

“Jim,” snaps Kimi, kneeling down in front of the older man as he rests his hand on Billy’s chest. She grabs him by the shoulders and shakes him hard. “Jim, what is going on!”

Gone is the tired customer service mask of the young cashier, and in its place is something that makes Jane wrap her arms around herself tightly, longing for a bed to hide beneath.

Jim is silent on the floor, staring at Billy’s ravaged body. He meets Kimi’s frantic eyes; his pupils are dilated, something Jane learned from paramedics is a common physical response to shock. His Adam’s apple twitches up and down as he rests a trembling, bloody hand atop Kimi’s knee. “Lock the doors,” he whispers. “Lock them right now.”

“Why?”

It is the husband that asks. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and presses his wife close into his side. “What’s out there? What did this?”

“Is he breathing?” the wife says, assessing Billy’s body with a surprisingly steady demeanor. She starts toward him before her husband pulls her back, one hand going up to rest protectively over her belly.

“Was it a bear, Jim?” Kimi says. Her voice is only slightly calmer now, though Jane can see where the cashier’s hands still shake against the man’s stained denim jacket. “Did a bear come out of the woods? Did it get a swipe at Billy?”

Jim slams his bloody hands on the floor, shooting to his feet. “Would somebody just lock the goddamned doors!” he shouts, spittle flying from his mouth.

Then he rushes toward Jane, who has unconsciously stepped closer and closer toward Billy’s pitiful form. “We all have to hide,” Jim tells her, gripping her arms with a shrill pitch building to his voice.

She freezes as his fingers press into her. Despite the thick sweater that swallows her up, she can feel the strong pressure of his touch through the fabric like a threat that’s been tattooed to her skin. The lightheadedness comes on swiftly as he shakes her again, and for a moment the ground beneath her sways.

“Hey!”

Jane is barely able to shift her eyes from Jim’s to Thomas’s emerging form. Her brother only briefly takes in the bloodied heap on the floor before pushing Jim back with his good arm. “Back off,” he warns, though even at well over six feet tall, her brother looks like a child lost in the market compared to the stocky older man.

Jim swats Thomas’s hand away as if it’s no more than an annoying fly. “Are you hearing what I’m saying, boy?” he asks, stepping up so their faces are only inches apart. “There’s something out there. We don’t have time for your pussyfooting.”

Unsurprisingly, Thomas lunges forward. Jane wonders what kind of fight her brother could possibly put up with his dominant arm in a cast and sling, but Jackson swiftly pulls him back before any serious contact can be made.

“Just take it easy, man,” Jackson says.

Thomas scowls as he shrugs him off, then takes several steps back from the crowd. He accidentally steps into the pool of bright red blood that has spread from Billy’s body, and he trails a few bloody footprints along the linoleum.

He avoids Jane’s eyes; she is wise enough to know that his actions were not made out of any sort of protection for her, but rather her brother’s new, near-insatiable appetite for getting angry at anyone at all.

She meets Jackson’s eyes briefly as he glances from Thomas to her. Then he squats down to the ground by Billy, placing his fingers to his neck. A few seconds pass before he hangs his head, shaking it slightly. “He’s dead,” he confirms, standing and wiping his hands against his jeans.

Behind them, the sound of a lock clicks into place as the pregnant woman grips her husband’s hand and backs away from the doors. Winnie’s barking rings out across the darkened parking lot, piercing the twilight sky.

Kimi steps forward, cautiously taking Jim’s hand. “Jim, please,” she says. “Just explain to us what happened to Billy.”