Good advice -- stop talking. Brian wanted to say something more about Tim having a moralistic crusade. His brother, unwittingly, was pulled into the whole thing. It gave Brian a much more visceral reaction. Sure, he cared about the issue, but he didn't care to have his family get torn apart in it. 

"I'm sorry, we weren't thinking," Brian told Macy, perhaps lamely. He was trying to apologize for the whole thing, including the argument with Tim in her living room. She didn't deserve that sort of scene. It was something he could take up with Tim later on. He filed it away for later, considering how he'd explain the part about his fears for Johnny. Tim might sneer a bit, and that was the part that got Brian hot under the collar in the contemplation of it. It was borrowing trouble. He knew Tim was a bit of an idealistic prick, but it didn't mean that a heartfelt man-to-man conversation wouldn't work. It was easy to imagine things going worse than they actually did.

To fend off the worries, he followed instructions to get the ice and bundle it in a towel. Brian knew how to do basic first aid, but Macy seemed to have the training that made her a better hand at this stuff. He was handing it over when a scream pierced the night from a distance outside. Brian's eyes flicked over to the chains on the door and then over the rest of the house. Another cry, more unearthly and more like a roar, split the air again. He felt the adrenaline start to surge through his veins. His vision went a little gray around the edges and took on the aspect of a scene watched from a greater distance than the first person.

"Oh shit," he breathed, lowering his voice without doing so intentionally. It made sense, it was good survival instincts, "Do you have a gun?"

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