This was the second time that day that I froze up completely. I stood there uselessly, entranced by the young man before me. Janet called out to the both of us, “You two! Get down!” but I drowned her out, and he didn’t care.
More crashes came from around and above us. The subject shot straight up and patted all over himself. He seemed alarmed.
I shuddered as I watched him, and then for a reason unknown to me, I turned around, opened the trunk, extracted the sheathed sword, and threw it at him. The long blade landed on the floor and skidded until it hit the tips of his fingers. He grabbed the handle right away and darted up the stairs with it.
Janet watched me from under the shelf, dazed and confused and terrorized. She was quiet now and unspeakably scared there. I finally got some sense, and I raced to the back and lay on my stomach under the shelf with her. She grabbed my hand and I clenched her knuckles tightly.
?I acted on another random impulse one minute later when I held out my palm, requesting Isaac back from her. She handed it to me, and I put it in my holster with my free hand.
?Great-Aunt Janet and I waited out the turbulent rocking of the basement which seemed to have no end. It just got stronger and stronger. I was fairly comforted, however, until the foundation of the house cracked behind me.
?“I think the roof just got torn off!” I could barely hear the woman, even though she was right in front of me, and shouting. I knew what that meant. The removal of the roof was a sure sign that Leftovers were invading the building.
?Oh crap.
?As soon as Janet said this, the boy, still covered from head to toe in a black wetsuit, darted down the stairs. He was amazingly stable despite his surroundings.
?He stood at the bottom of the steps with his sword in one hand and its sheath in the other. “Where the hell are my guns?!” he demanded.
?My relative came out from underneath the shelf, both cautiously and quickly, and opened the trunk at the other side of the room. She pulled him over to her by tugging hard on his arm, and she shoved his two pistols at him, along with the seven daggers aligned in a row and his coiled up chain.
?“Gah! I can’t carry all this right now!” he nervously shuffled his feet back and forth and spoke very quickly. “Help me!”
?Janet immediately glared over at me. “Rene! Guns!”
?I emerged from the shadows of the back of the basement, and took the two .5 caliber pistols from the subject, giving one to Janet and keeping the other for myself. He slung the chain over his shoulder and, not knowing what to do with the daggers, pressed the tiny knives at me. I separated them into all the pockets in my pants. “Come on!” he yelled, and he gestured for Janet and me to follow him up the stairs.
?My mother’s aunt and I traveled wobbly up the steps, and when we fully ascended, we saw that the entire ground floor of Janet’s home had been invaded by a humongous swarm of Leftovers.
?“Stay with me,” the boy ordered, and as I handed one of the .5 caliber pistols to my relative, the three of us hustled out of the house via the front door that had been crashed in. Janet and I had to shoot several times along the way, and the boy stabbed the Leftovers as he ran out.
?We were in the front yard, running toward the driveway where Janet’s car sat idle, ready to become our getaway. The three of us encountered no Leftovers out there, although we were almost certain that they would follow us out of the house. Janet unlocked the car doors with much haste. She got in the driver’s seat, I got in the passenger’s seat, and the boy sat in the middle seat in the back but knelt up against the console. None of us had time to buckle up—we barely had time to slam the doors shut behind us as it was. My great-aunt jammed the key into the ignition and off we went.
?When she turned onto the next road to get out of the subdivision, the three of us were jerked about very much. But we had hardly recovered from being lunged around when a Leftover pounced onto the front trunk of the car unexpectedly.
?Janet swerved back and forth with panic. “Oh, God!” I grabbed the gun I had given her and shot the skeleton through the window, nailing it right in the shoulder. It lurched backward a little bit from the shock, but then it latched on once again and smashed the windshield wide open with its fist. Glass flew everywhere, showering the three of us with crystal rain that peppered our bodies with cuts. I shot at it once again with the pistol I had just fired, but I missed the Leftover completely. When I pulled the trigger a third time, I realized that, to my horror, Janet and I wasted all the bullets. I flung it back at the boy, who was hit in the chest by it but wasn’t fazed, and then I took out the .5 caliber pistol I kept and shot five times before I ran out of ammo. The Leftover was gone now, but others had caught on and I could see them surrounding us.
?Janet made an effort to run over a few. The boy rolled down both the back windows and stabbed some more Leftovers as we drove by. I felt useless, but there was nothing I could think of doing. Guns were my weapons of choice, and I wasn’t really comfortable with anything else. So, I played lookout.
?Eventually we were on the highway, and Janet skidded to a stop. We were completely encompassed by the legion of Leftovers.
?The boy, who had amazingly quick reflexes, asked for his daggers. I extracted all the small knives from my pockets and handed them to him; he catapulted the door open and was swarmed instantly by tens of the robotic skeletons. Before Janet and I knew it, with a combination of chain flogging, sword swiping, dagger throwing, and purely amazing roundhouse kicks, he had wiped out every single one of them.
?My great-aunt and I were in awe. He was incredible!
?The young man fully clothed in the soaking wet black suit climbed into the backseat again and closed the door. “Drive!” he yelled. Janet accelerated immediately, driving over some of the vanquished Leftovers.