Testament by David Morrell

now. Maybe they’d already gone. Maybe nothing. He saw the flash of the shotgun across the street, heard the simultaneous blast, the scream, he didn’t know whose, and that was the end, he had the door shut, locking it, and one of the gunmen across the street must have been using a solid high-velocity slug for deer instead of the standard shotgun pellet load because pellets never would have ruptured through the two inches of the door, deafening him, reeling him back blind in the dark as something slammed his shoulder, numbing powerfully, and spun him.
    The screaming outside wouldn’t stop. But it wasn’t out there now. It came from him, and he was braced somehow on his feet against the archway to the living room, clutching his senseless shoulder, screaming. There wasn’t any blood. He couldn’t understand why there wasn’t any blood, and then he realized that the slug had not been what hit him, just a bursting fragment from the door, but that didn’t make a difference. He just went on screaming as the second slug came walloping through the door, chunks and splinters flying, and then the shotguns started up again, all of them at once, sporadic cracks of handguns in return, then no handguns, only shotguns, and his mind went out of control, they’ve finished the police, they’re going to come for me, for all of us, and he was charging up the stairs.
    He stumbled, clutching his shoulder, reached the top of the stairs, and rushed to where his guns were in the closet. He couldn’t find them in the dark. He had to turn on the hall light. He still couldn’t find them. Claire. She must have moved them, afraid of Sarah touching them. He heard Sarah crying hysterically in their room. Why hadn’t they gone into the bathroom as he’d told them?
    “Where are the guns? Where did you put the guns?”
    And then he found them. On the top shelf. Under some blankets. The rifle was too awkward in close quarters. He shoved the revolver into the knapsack that contained the money. He stuck the pistol under his belt.
    At once he noticed the blood on his hands, staring in surprise. It was sticky, leaving traces on the knapsack. He checked his shoulder again. Just handprint smears of blood on his shirt. It wasn’t his shoulder, it was his hands. From the glass that had fallen on him in the bedroom. He hadn’t even known that he was cut.
    The shooting outside was stopped now. They finished the police. They’ll come for us.
    “Claire,” he said and rushed into the bedroom. “Get up. We’re leaving.”
    But she made no move to stand. She made no sign she even heard him. The scream outside was beginning again, a constant high-pitched strident shriek that raised his skin and sent it prickling, and she was cradling Sarah, rocking her in the dim light from the hall, kissing her hair.
    “Oh my God I am heartily sorry,” she was saying. “For having offended Thee. And I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all—”
    And Sarah was crying, and he told them both, “Shut up. Get on your feet.”
    “Because I have offended Thee, oh my God, Who art all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve with the help of Thy grace—”
    “No,” he said. “We’re leaving.” He dragged Claire up. “Do you hear? We’re leaving.”
    The broken glass littered the room like shards of ice. The slap across his face was so sharp that for an instant he saw double, his eyes watering. He blinked repeatedly. He staggered back and shook his head to clear it.
    “Don’t tell me to shut up,” Claire said. “We’re going to die because of you.”
    “That’s right. If we stay here, we’re going to die.”
    He lifted Sarah awkwardly, her tears warm and wet through his shirtsleeve onto his arm as he carried her out of the room, down the hall and the stairs, away from the light up there, darting past the front door in case of another slug, into the dark living room, toward the kitchen and the