THE WAVE: A John Decker Thriller Read Free

him when he slipped on the icy pavement to the ground. A fight ensued. Ironically, it wasn’t even Hudson who responded to the assault. It was his fellow teammates. They streamed out of the bus and tore into Burns and his friends. The mêlée was brief but brutal. Several of the youths were badly injured, on both sides of the altercation. Then, just as it seemed to be winding down, Ed McNally pulled up outside the schoolyard in his battered gold Ford pickup.
    McNally had come to pick up his daughter from the game. When he saw what was happening in the parking lot, saw his daughter Sarah in the midst of the thrashing arms and kicks and punches being thrown around her, he jumped out of his truck with a tire iron he kept under the front seat, and weighed into the crowd of teenagers.
    It was just bad luck the coach from the rival team, a tall ex-Marine named Aaron Turner, happened to be black. He was in the midst of trying to pull the fighting boys apart when McNally struck him from behind. Turner went down, rolled, and then sprang back to his feet. He tried to reason with McNally but the man seemed absolutely deaf to his entreaties. So he had struck the farmer with a right cross that shook McNally to the core. If Turner had followed up right then, if he had taken the advantage, perhaps it would have ended at that moment. But the coach had simply raised his hands and said, “I don’t want to hurt you, mister. Just take it easy.”
    The words only seemed to make McNally angrier. He side-stepped to the right, threw a jab and swung the tire iron at Coach Turner’s head. Turner stepped back but he wasn’t quite fast enough. The end of the tire iron caught him on the mouth and drove his head back with a loud thwack . Blood spurted from his face. Two teeth went flying. He raised his hands in self-defense but McNally swung the tire iron once again and brought it down on Turner’s collarbone. It snapped like a Popsicle stick. Turner screamed as he collapsed. McNally kicked him in the face, and kept on kicking him until the combined weight of the boys from the rival high school finally managed to drag him from the bleeding man. McNally backed away. He shouted at his daughter Sarah to get back into the truck. Then he swung the tire iron threateningly at the crowd and laughed. “Fucking coons,” he said. “You ain’t worth my sweat.” With that he turned and walked away. Everyone was in a state of shock. A few of the boys knelt down to help Coach Turner. The rest simply stared dumbfounded as McNally started up his pickup truck and drove nonchalantly out of the parking lot. He never even turned around.
    The following day, at approximately 8:30 AM, two local New Liberty policemen – Sergeant Jim Crowley and Officer Alvin Cox – drove out to the McNally farm. They were there to serve McNally a warrant for assault but Mary McNally refused to let them in the farmhouse. Her husband and brother were not in, she claimed. They were in Moline, at a meeting. They wouldn’t be home until late. Rather than force the issue, the local policemen decided to wait.
    Eventually, about forty minutes later, McNally and Sampson were spotted driving along the country road back toward the farmhouse in McNally’s battered gold Ford pickup. They slowed down when they saw the police cruiser outside the farm’s main gate. But instead of pulling over when Sergeant Crowley tried to flag them down, they picked up speed and swung around a tractor lane, entering the property from the side. Then they jumped out and ran into the farmhouse, carrying what were later described as “suspicious-looking objects under their arms, possibly automatic weapons, wrapped loosely in plaid blankets.”
    Once again, the police approached the house, this time with their guns drawn. When they had come to within a hundred feet of the front porch, McNally appeared at the door with a shotgun in his arms. He asked them what they wanted, and they told him they were there to serve