Excerpt From Speechless

The wind banged on the window like it had a grudge and was looking to kill someone. It might just do that, considering the storm behind its dusty, but blood-sticky surface. Beyond the window, there was a man stumbling around in the gale, getting the sense beaten out of him by hale and rain. Becky flicked her eyes to the door, making a silent command. Luke took up a poorly cut board up off the floor and then worked a hammer from his tool belt. The poorly cut board had a few nails peering out from it and Luke hammered them into the door and into the frame beside it. He doubled up on the nails with new ones from his belt, while Becky search for more boards to barricade the door with. They’d have to do the same to the window, which might have been bad considering that they wouldn’t be able to see strangers coming.

The man outside didn’t seem to be trying to make his way to the door that Luke was barricading. No, the man was just trying to keep his feet under him. He kept failing, falling on his backside and rolling with the violent wind. He got to his feet for a moment and caught a newspaper or a diaper or something white in the face and he hit the ground hard. He wasn’t moving for a while and Becky held hope that he had died. No Luck. He rolled on his belly and apparently realized that he’d have better luck with staying low. He crawled on his hands and knees toward the house and Becky made nervous puling sounds with pointing out the window.

Luke had the door secured and gripped Becky by the elbow, pulling her away from the dusty, bloody window and toward the stairwell. She understood what he might and started up the stairs, her feet pounding on the thin wood. Luke spun around, searching around for something to secure the window. He noted the man had made it to the porch and was soaked to the bone and was shivering painfully. Luke spotted the coffee table, made from particle boards and stained with blood and spilt milk. He lifted it to the window and put it up against the window, awkwardly driving nails through it and into the wall. The table didn’t much hold, but that was just to get it up there. Luke worked nail after nail into the table, locking the light out from the house.

The man outside had noticed the bang-bang-banging of Luke’s hammer and moaned aloud.
“No. No. Stop.” He said breathlessly, from the soaked, soggy wooden floor of the porch.