Ruby
It’s starting again. Just like every morning at seven sharp; the megaphone from the edge of the woods down the hill.
Bastards!
“Ruby can we talk?” He says, “Ruby will you please come out?”
It’s not even Ruby they’re after.
All day long the megaphone blares calling out Ruby, my darling wife. At ten AM the helicopters come, hovering over the house or above the tree line across the clearing. I can see the sniper sitting in the door gunner’s seat from my window. He scans the house through his rifle scope hoping for a shot at me.
I tell the kids to get under the bed and stay there.
“Ruby, bring the kids out and come talk to us. This is not about you,” The speaker blurts out.
Once it was not, but they made it about her. God Damn them! I look for Loudspeaker Man through the scope of my 30/06. If I could get a clean shot…
But no, it would only endanger the kids. One shot from me and the walls of the cabin would explode with all of the ordinance that the US Marshals own. They have no respect for life. I know that for a fact.
I move from room to room to room looking out the windows for intruders in the yard. I know at some point they will get tired of waiting and stage an assault. My daughters know what to do. I’ve been training them since they were able to hold a gun. They are all brave and good shots. I hear the dog bark and go to the back door. Men in military gear are carrying the lifeless body of my son away, God bless him. I watch them disappear into the pines. It is the most helpless I have felt in my entire life. I return to the living room stepping over Ruby’s body, lying almost in the same place where the sniper’s bullet took her life three days ago.
The End