The four vehicles stopped so that his car was directly in front of the house and Uncle Cholo gave him a look that he knew meant, “Look after my little sister,” as he dismounted and gave hand signal orders two his two men with the shotguns, took a shotgun himself, checked and loaded it, and signaled for the four men behind Dillon to flank the house with their bats and knives, each sliding a sheath knife behind their belt like they had done this a dozen times.

Dillon pulled out the little boy and girl and pushed them down, then dragged out Lenita with surprising ease with his left hand, as she looked about nervously, especially towards her older brother and then led him back behind the parked car on the other side of the street and hissed at him, “Cholo is my only real brother, the rest are his drug brothers. If he is killed or seriously wounded you must lead me away quickly.”

“They will kill you and rape me, understand?”

With a sinking pit in his stomach he clenched his teeth and nodded “Yes” as he shoved her down in the grass and looked over the car at the action unfolding.

One of the flankers had his head removed from his shoulders by a shotgun blast from the house. Then Cholo and his men advanced in a crouch and opened up and Cholo took, one, two, three—uncountable assault rifle rounds through his torso as he staggered on his feet and returned fire shooting out the door and the bay window and causing a horrific scream inside as if a face had been half torn away.

Cholo was some tough dude, because he never saw him fall, but grabbed Lenita by the hand and ran back down the street with her as a crazed white women in a red bikini with really nice tits stepped from behind the house with an RPG and let loose a grenade that picked up the car they had been in and turned it into a flipping cinder of melting wreckage—and they ran, but only so fast as her tiny feet could take her, down the street, around the bend, and towards the left where trees he knew grew thicker, eventually forming a woods near the river that emptied into the reservoir.

The sounds of shrill screaming, blasting, shooting, children crying, the hoarse yelling of angry men and the thud of another grenade set the world on fire on the hill now above them like some hideous scene from a comic book—but without any faɡɡot heroes doing good and breaking bad.

They ran, and ran, and her shoe came off, and they had to stop and retrieve it, and, as he laced it on her feet, he saw, trailing them, limping, one of Cholo’s brawny drug brothers, limping after them with bloody bat hanging from his hand, a dark purpose in his eyes.

“Oh, Dillon, that is Rayzes, my brother Cholo beat him for looking at me once. He is a bad man.”

And they ran, her right hand in his left, his crowbar in his right, five foot eight and hundred and twenty pounds of brand new hairy balls and slightly confident fuzzy brains, hoping against hope that she would not trip again.

He looked behind and saw Reyzes limp-running and lowered their pace a little so Lenita would not fag out. Her little tan breast popped out of her tight shirt and little bra to reveal a tender pink nipple and he just wanted to turn and kill this guy, to fight for her.

So he gave her a rest, patted her lightly on the shoulder as she fixed her tits and he brought the crowbar into both hands and waited on his enemy, ready to fight for his girl—she was his girl now—and that Reyzes dude, limping heavily, his arms as thick as Dillon’s legs saw this and grinned savagely, licking his lips, his eyes lighting up like Dillon’s must have on that one Christmas morning when he got a present—the purple yoyo.

His shoulder sagged with the realization that this guy would crush him and he turned as she sobbed, “Oh, Dillon, no!” and he took her hand and they ran like crazy, up the lane where the doors and windows were barred, security signs lit up in the windows and under bushes and the occasional older, pale face, looked fearfully outside, but no door opened to offer them sanctuary.