---

To celebrate the upcoming release of Anthony Neil Smith‘s – Murderapolis, UPP are releasing the first chapter for free! The E-book will be available from Kindle this coming Friday the 4th April and the paper back will be released on Sunday the 6th April.

For those of you who can’t wait that long please scroll down and see for yourself what has had us oinking with excitement!

---

FIFTY-FOUR SHOTS

To Roble’s ears, a pack of rabid pitbulls, barking all crazy.

Facedown on the carpet of his living room, scratchy and stained by Cokes, dirt from his son’s sneakers, too many late-night snacks. Bullets exploded through his windows, walls, and front door.

Later, the police would recover forty-eight automatic shells—three different calibers, fired from five different guns—plus six shotgun shells from the parking lot outside.

The barking ceased. Roble pushed himself up, trembling. He coughed hard and stumbled to the door. Glass shards, drywall, couch stuffing, splinters bigger than his fingers catching on his socks, stabbing his soles. The deadbolt had been blown clean off. The door wide-open, hanging off the top hinges.

Were the shooters still out there, waiting?  

No more gunfire. Car alarms. Distant sirens. Way distant. This was North Minneapolis, gang warfare hot zone. Who wanted to get in the middle of that shit?

Roble worked at the high school nearby and this apartment was the best place they could afford, for now. He’d grown up in the suburbs, a Somali orphan adopted by a white couple. After college, he struggled to find a teaching job, except here in the city. Low pay, the school old and falling apart, but he had to start somewhere.  

Look what it had gotten him. His apartment wrecked. The TV in pieces. Walls cratered. His wife and child –

He scrambled to the kitchen. “Fadumo! Michael!”

He found them under the table, Fadumo huddled over their young son, one hand covering her swollen stomach, their next child. Michael punched and kicked beneath her, crying. She held on.

“Are you okay?”

Fadumo blinked. “Are you?”

Outside, the screams began. Roble made his way to the front door, feet protesting, his limbs were pins and needles. He almost fell down the front steps.

Unarmed. Of course.

The shooters weren’t coming back. They were cowards who showed up, sprayed unholy amounts of death, then got the hell out of there.

A couple of doors down, one of their neighbors, LaDonna, shouted, “My baby! My baby!”

A shattered car, caught between the shooters and the apartment building. A small voice cried for help.

Roble ran as best he could on prickly, socked feet to the car.  Bullet holes all across the hood, front panels. Windshield like it had been hit with a wrecking ball. A toddler in the backseat held her arm as if it was hurt.

The driver was Ms. Diana, LaDonna’s grandmother, slumped over the steering wheel. Roble couldn’t tell if she was alive or dead. He tried to open the door. Locked. He motioned to the toddler inside. “Can you hit the button? Unlock it?”

She shook her head.

“It’s okay. Unlock the doors, okay?”

The girl shook her head again. Her mom and grandma had taught her about strangers. Even though Roble saw her every day among the other children from the complex, he’d never bothered to learn her name.

The sirens didn’t sound any closer.

“Mamma? Mamma?” The toddler pressed herself against the window.

Roble turned. LaDonna, barely twenty, in tight jean shorts and mid-cut t-shirt, barefoot, hair natural. She held out a key fob, arm shaking bad, and the car beeped.

The toddler opened the door and ran to her mother. Latched on.

Then LaDonna stared at the car. “Granma?”

Roble opened the door, ready to perform CPR, like he’d been trained but never had to use.

He wouldn’t get a chance today, either.

Ms. Diana fell from the driver’s seat, her face and throat covered in blood, exit wounds from her chin to her stomach.

LaDonna screamed, let go of her daughter, and ran to the car. She pushed Roble away and threw herself on the body.

Neighbors poured out into the parking lot, all their cries echoing, the sirens finally making progress.

All this goddamned death.

The media would report it as a “gang shootout.” Some sort of turf war.

But he knew better.

Those bullets had been meant for him.

---

And there you have it folks! Put those dates in your diary, treat yourself this weekend and don’t forget those reviews!

---