I breathe shallowly, both from fear and because I can’t get a full breath in. My hands are propped under his boot, but I don’t have the leverage I need. I consider the gun still holstered, pinned between my arm and my ribs, but I can’t bring myself to reach for it.

I start to hear noises above the panicked pounding of my heartbeat, something above my head and out of my line of sight. He’s still facing that way, eyes squinting into the rising sun. He doesn’t even seem to be aware of me anymore as he fingers the trigger and raises his shotgun to his shoulder.

After struggling with his stance for a few unsteady seconds, he backs up a step, taking his foot off of me to line up a shot. I immediately sit up and back a few feet away, back toward the sidewalk. The loud crack of the gun echoes through the empty street.

“We need to go,” I say quietly, still sitting on the ground. My throat feels dry. He glances at me briefly, his gaze cold and uninterested. Without a word he looks away. I slowly shift to my feet and stand up, not even glancing toward his target as he ejects the spent cartridge and starts lining up another shot. I clear my throat and try again. “We need to go,” I insist louder this time.

“Then go!” he shouts, flinging an arm toward the house as he turns toward me. He glares at me. It seems like slow-motion as he brings the shotgun to his shoulder again, aiming right at me. I suck in a breath. It gets stuck somewhere between my mouth and my chest and I nearly choke on it. My heart thuds erratically, pulsing loudly in my ears. “Run away, back inside. Back to safety,” he says in a low, menacing voice. I should run, but I can’t move. My muscles are stone, weighing me down, holding me immobile. He looks like he’ll really do it, but I can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t hear anything but the thudding of my heart.

But when he jerks his head to the left, I realize that’s not just my heart pounding. It’s footsteps– fast ones. I see someone approaching seconds before he collides with my uncle. There’s another deafening boom. I lurch to the side, but a searing pain radiates up my right leg. My shoulder hits the pavement. I roll to absorb some of the force, but it still hurts. I quickly push myself up onto my knees.

I freeze when I see my uncle on the ground and the stranger who tackled him. My hand flies to my gun before I even have time to think, but I stop before pulling it out. My brain and body are in conflict. Strangers mean danger, now more than ever. But family does too today, I think.

I watch the two of them wrestle for the shotgun, frozen in place. Suddenly my uncle is on top of the stranger, pushing the shotgun with both hands toward the other man’s neck. There’s a rifle pinned under them, I realize, and with a quick movement of the stranger’s leg, he rolls my uncle off, ripping the strap. Both keep their grip on the gun, the stranger now trying to twist it away as he straddles my uncle’s chest, and I see his glance at the other gun lying in the road now.

I try to push myself to my feet. But all I manage is to plop back on my butt when my arms shake and my legs crumple. My eyes feel wet and a sharp pain lances up my right leg. I clench my jaw and blink rapidly to clear my eyes. I wipe a forearm across my face and look down. There are several spots of blood on my jeans. I can’t do anything about that right now. I have to help, I finally decide.

I look back to my uncle, but it’s already over. The stranger picks up my uncle’s shotgun, checks the safety, and slings the strap over his shoulder. He grabs up his own weapon, too, and I look past him to see my uncle lying limp in the street, blood leaking from a cut on his forehead. I gasp in a breath.

The man steps into my line of sight, filling my vision with his dark green and blue plaid shirt. Far too late I scramble to my feet — trying to ignore the pain in my leg— and back away, but my left foot lands on something sharp and I pitch backward. He lurches forward and I stumble further backward, only to catch my foot on the curb. With a quick step, he catches my arms just above the elbows while I’m off-balanced and lowers me to the ground. He hovers over me, one knee resting on the curb, his grip still firm on my arms.

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I look up when his grip on my arms tenses, but his gaze is averted, focused intently on something else down the street. Now would be a perfect time to get away. My shaking arms aren’t listening though, and I just stare dumbly for a moment, still reeling from the sudden change of events.

He’s younger than I thought, I think incongruously. Older than me maybe, but nowhere near my uncle’s age. His jaw tightens and he shakes his head slightly before muttering something I don’t catch.

I should back up or reach for my gun. I don’t know this person. He just attacked my uncle, knocked him unconscious— or maybe even killed him. I lean to the side– if he even still breathing? The boy’s arms move with mine, though, bringing his sharp gaze back to me before I can tell.

“How bad is that?” he asks. I stare at him, leaning back slightly. He lets go finally of my arms, but his hands immediately go to my right leg. I jerk back at the bright shot of pain. Looking down, I suck in a sharp breath. The spots of blood on my jeans have grown. The searing pain spreads in time with my pulse.

“It’s glass,” the stranger says firmly. His hands are on either side of the largest-spread stain of blood, right above my knee. He pulls at the edges of the tear in my jeans. After a quick glance up at me, he pulls a jagged piece of glass from the bloody gash. He peers at it, for a moment, then turns slightly and tosses it slightly behind him, where it clinks against the road. “The bottle,” he mumbles. I look past his shoulder and see the remains of the whiskey bottle and the pitted asphalt where the buckshot hit. My mind feels sluggish, slowly putting the facts together.

“Anna,” the guy calls. I jerk my attention back to him, confused, but he isn’t talking to me. He’s looking to my right again, and this time I look too. Approaching quickly from up the street are two more strangers — another boy and a girl who must be Anna.

Panic surges through me again. One stranger I could maybe get away from, but three is pushing it. I need to move now, before they get any closer. I use my hands to pull myself backwards, further onto the curb.

“Wait!” He hisses. He slings an arm around my waist before I’m even fully upright, but I jerk away and land painfully back on the ground. I allow myself a second to tamp down the pain, then finally reach for my gun, but he’s quicker than me. He grabs my wrists tightly.

“You’re bleeding,” he growls. I strain against his grip, but it only tightens further. The other two strangers reach us. I twist my wrists, getting one free, but his grip is like iron and he quickly recaptures my hand.

“Whoa,” the girl says, hands up in front of her in a placating gesture. “We’re not going to hurt you.” She takes a step closer. My muscles tense even more tightly. I can feel his fingers digging into my wrists. “Drew,” the girl snaps, addressing the one restraining me, “Let go.”

“If I let go, she’ll run,” he replies sternly. The girl glares at him for a moment, then glances nervously around us.

“They’re already moving in,” the other guy says softly. He has the first boy’s rifle in his hands, the broken strap wrapped around one hand and his finger resting on the trigger guard. He looks pretty young too, but he’s no less intimidating, especially from the ground. He makes eye contact with the older one and nods in the same direction the girl is still looking. I can hear the growls and shuffling feet now, the random thumps of bodies colliding with each other and the cars still parked along the street.

The older boy, Drew, slowly lets go of my wrists and stands. “You wanna run,” he says, looking directly in my eyes, “that’s what you’re running into.” He gestures to the oncoming threat.

I look at my uncle lying in the road. “We won’t hurt you,” the girl promises. I see her move closer in my peripheral vision, stepping in front of the younger man. He shifts slightly, pointing his rifle away from her. “We just want to help,” she insists. I feel my cheeks heat, realizing only now how this whole thing would look to an outsider.

“It’s up to you,” Drew says. A sharp growl comes from the street and he shifts his weight. They’ve seen us, or maybe smelled blood. I look down at my leg, feeling the throbbing pain all the way to the bottom of my foot. Could I even make it back inside quick enough? “But we’re out of time,” he continues, backing up a step in the direction they came from.