Children of God

Chapter Six

I got back to the Haven an hour later than planned. I drive slowly when I’m angry, I guess, unless pushed. I got my gun out, and I just walked, slowly, not even bothering to bend down or hide myself. I walked inside, in through those doors. I could feel my heart pound faster and faster. This could be where I died.

I found N-J cowering in the hallway. He backed away from me, his face red, his eyes bloodshot.

“No! No don’t hurt me! I’m an informant, nothing more, didn’t do anything wrong, just an informant!” he whimpered. I shook my head and kept walking. I knew he had something to do with all of this, but I didn’t have the time to deal with anything like that. I walked on into the study. I opened the door, and I sighed.

Leo was sitting in Robert’s chair. Robert was dead on the ground.

“I let my sister and mother go,” Leo said, and he had never sounded so dead before, “I think they’re in town now. Shame really.”

I sighed, tears flowing again.

“Why did you do this, Leo?! Why did...why?!”

“I didn’t do it by myself. I was helping a friend. I was...helping a friend. Please help me. You’re my friend.”

He looked at me, and his eyes shone. So I did just that. I helped him. Just like how Joe had helped himself.

And then that trapdoor opened. I didn’t expect it to. And out and up from it rose Patrick. He smiled. He was just smiling.

“It’s all mine now, Al.” He said. And he kept that smile. That smile  had started me and Joe on all of this. That was the smile of someone who had never quite been right in the head.

I raised my gun at him. He quickly, and I mean like a flash, knocked it out of my hand. We lunged at each other. He grabbed my throat and tightened his grip. I  kicked, hitting him in the stomach, and he buckled slightly. His grip loosened and I ducked out of it. I punched him in the jaw, and dived for my gun. I turned, he raised his fist, and I fired. One shot hit him in the left shoulder, then the next hit him in the forehead. I shot twice more, hitting him in the face again, but it was pointless. Patrick fell dead, next to his brother.

I saw N-J outside. I tossed him my phone.

“Call yourself an ambulance.” I growled, and got into the car. I drove, onwards, into the wilderness.

I settled down in a town about thirty hours away from the Haven. I changed my name, grew a beard, shaved my head. I dumped the car, bought a bike, got a job. I met someone. She and I, we’re going good. Things are looking up. I got a call from the cops. I told them everything. Told them I had nothing to do with the heist, told them I never fired on any of them. I struck a deal with them, got to keep my life as it was. The last I heard from N-J was that he was doing fine. He’d been arrested, of course, because of the heist. But I didn’t care. I found the graves of Joe and Marie, and of Liam and Leo. I visit them from time to time. I think Lea and Maxine were put into witness protection, cos I can’t find hide nor hair of them. I don’t  know what became of Jessica. Patrick could’ve, and probably did, kill her.

I’ll have shame for a long time. I think it’ll grow, become part of me. Shame becomes part of us all, some point or another. We can’t run from it, can’t hide and pretend we’re not at home at the moment. I learned that the hard way. I think shame has a friend, like how I had Joe. It comes with something I had all along, so I should have expected it. Shame’s Joe is paranoia. That joke keeps coming back to me now, the joke my uncle loved so much. That joke was probably masking his shame, thinking back so far. But shame isn’t bad. Shame makes you the kinda person you need to be. A protector, a peacemaker. A child of God.