We made our way forward and the first of them barreled through the rest like a drunken frat boy, wailing and whining and clawing wildly at the rain.  What was left of his shirt was a torn, knotted wreck, his tie twisted around his neck like a noose, the remains of a sweater hanging loosely in the wind; from the look of him, he’d been in his fair share of scrapes that night, and ended up on the losing team more than once.  A vein of lightning pulsed across the sky, and I caught a glimpse of his face, wracked with pain and fury and a grimace that came straight out of a scary movie…he came at us as if there was nothing left in him but the will to maul anybody that stood in front of him.  He came at us like a madman, hell bent and blind and raging, stumbling over his feet as he staggered toward us flailing his arms.  I raised my pistol, took aim, squeezed, and sent a hot one flying right at that mean mug of his.

The thunder exploded overhead, and I didn’t even hear the bang of the gun…all I saw was the guy go down like a bag of bricks, crumpled and still on the pavement.  I can’t tell you how that felt; I can’t even begin to describe it…it was a fucking awful feeling, but my will to keep us safe trumped everything else.  Sally clutched my hand and arm and we inched our way closer and closer to the bar.  It was like the OK Corral out there at that point, as I emptied the clip at the whole pack of the bastards.  One by one, I hit them with lead, and some of them kept at us, and some slumped into the puddles with a splash, kicking water up like a black geyser.  I shot a red path right through the group, and we slid right between them as fast as we could;  they lay on the ground in a quivering pile, dark shadows squirming feverishly in the night.  We skirted right past them and their screams were deafening, even through the storm, and we finally hit the door of the bar and took a glance back at the carnage.  To our surprise, a few of the guys that I’d plugged dead on were dusting off and getting a second wind.  A second fucking wind?  How the hell was that possible?  Were they wearing some sort of body armor or something?