He was an older man, wearing what I was wearing, except with jeans, and obviously his boots weren’t Uggs.He jogged to the opposite side of the men from where we were standing and aimed his shotgun at them.
Hutch went through the last of the shotguns, unloading them this time without shooting, and it was only then I knew he shot them to get attention from his neighbors.
“Rifle, May,” he said.
“Which one shot Hannibal?”I asked, not giving him his rifle, nor taking it from the men on the ground.
“Rifle, May,” Hutch bit.
“Which one?” I screamed.
“Fuck you,” Enstrom spat, his voice angry, but tight with pain.
It was then I noticed his leg was a raw, bloody mess.
In the moonlight, I even thought I saw bone.
I turned the rifle around, strode to him and slammed the butt into his forehead.
He went down, out cold.
Hutch grabbed me around my belly and yanked me away, pulling the gun from my hands.
“Looks like you boys made the mistake of bringing shotguns to a rifle fight,” Paddy remarked.
Was I going to lose it and start hysterically laughing?
“Go, have a look at Hannibal,” he commanded.“Here’s my phone.”He put it in my hand.(Seriously, where did he keep that thing?) “Call Doc Simmons on her home cell.Tell her what happened and to meet us at her clinic.”
I nodded.
“Uh, Hutch, son,” the man with us, Paddy, called.“She needs to look at your feet.You’re bleedin’.”
My eyes darted down to his feet.
They were covered in blood.
They darted to his face.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“Hutch—”
“Cut by the glass,” he explained.“Go look after our dog.”
“Baby—”
“Go,” he whispered.“I need you to check Hannibal.”
I stared in his eyes.
He needed me to check Hannibal.
And that was where I went.
THIRTY-NINE
The Universe’s Plan
