“Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam!”
Gus awoke and sat straight up in her bed. She threw off the covers, jumped out of bed, and grabbed her Smith and Wesson pistol from her top nightstand drawer. The red LED readout on the nightstand clock read 3:05 a.m. Gus’ adrenaline was surging, causing her sleepiness to quickly dissipate. She was positive she had been awoken by four quick gunshots somewhere just outside her home.
Gus momentarily held her breath, stood completely still in the darkness and listened. Nothing. No one was in her house. At least not yet. She quickly went to the bedroom window and moved the curtain back slightly with her left hand. She saw no movement outside in the yard. The black and white unit was parked in her driveway as expected, but something seemed off.
After focusing on the patrol car, Gus’ heart sank. From her vantage point on the second floor, she could see the driver’s side of the car. In the dim illumination from the streetlamp, she could see the driver’s side window of the cruiser was shattered. She could just make out a figure inside slumped against what was left of the window. Since there was no visible movement anywhere in her front yard, her mind leaped forward with the conclusion that both officers had been executed simultaneously from both sides of the car, meaning there had to be at least two gunmen. Gus knew she didn’t have more than a couple of seconds before the assassins broke down her door or crashed through a window looking for their prime target.
After momentary sadness over the loss of two fellow officers halted Gus’ movements for a few brief seconds, fury quickly replaced her sorrow. The two officers in the cruiser were more than just coworkers. She considered them her family. She quickly decided that instead of going on the defensive, she would go after these bastards and make them pay for what they had just done.
With her decision made, Gus immediately bounded down the unlit stairway two steps at a time. The pictures of her deceased parents on the stairway wall were a dark blur. At the bottom landing, she took a hard right and dove behind the old Barcalounger she had inherited from her father.
Just as Gus ducked behind the old easy chair and scrambled onto her knees, the front door burst open violently with a crash, causing splinters from the frame to fly through the air. The door slammed against the stop, putting a hole in the wall. The dark silhouette of a man immediately appeared in the doorway.
From Gus’ vantage point behind the chair, she could only make out two things about the intruder. The silhouette was holding a pistol in his right hand, and he had at least two gold teeth. The dim light in the living room was enough to cause the intruder’s gilded teeth to sparkle. Gus took aim at the glistening dental work and shouted, “Drop your weapon!”
Instead of freezing in place, the figure in the doorway started raising his weapon. Before he could bring his pistol to bear on her, Gus fired twice. She struck the man with both rounds, shattering his front teeth and knocking him backwards across the threshold. The man’s pistol clattered to the entryway tile just as the back of his head came to rest on the middle of Gus’ new welcome mat between the letters “L” and “O”.
