There’d definitely been a lot of them, judging from the sounds of the engines.
And after Jim had shot at them, and killed at least one of them, there was no chance that the bikers would retreat. They weren’t the types to cut their losses and run.
Definitely not.
They’d do everything they could to exact their revenge. They’d do everything they could to kill Jim. And that might not even be enough for them.
If they really wanted revenge, there was no telling what they might do. Maybe they’d try to shoot, not to kill, but to disable him. And then they could have their demented fun, torturing him any which way they could.
Jim couldn’t let his mind wander down to those possibilities of pain and death. A wandering mind wasn’t going to help him.
Thoughts of his wife and the others came bubbling up. Worries about their safety. About their future if he died.
He couldn’t think about that either.
His thoughts were more rapid than normal, with his pulse skyrocketing from adrenaline.
Only a few seconds had passed.
Jim had the gun in his hand. A folding knife in his pocket.
And that was it.
No spare rounds. No backup knife. No flashlight.
The reasoning didn’t matter now, but the rest of his gear was in the RV.
No point in blaming himself. Just more wasted effort.
He needed every second he had.
He’d probably die. He didn’t see how he couldn’t.
But the survival instinct was so strong that he wouldn’t fully admit it to himself. His mind was active. Active in looking for every possibility. Every possible route, no matter how unlikely, to survival.
Rationally, he knew he wanted to take out as many of the bikers as he could. Whatever was going on with Aly and the RV, Jim knew that the bikers weren’t good for their survival.
Every biker Jim took out meant Aly had that much more of a chance.
The door flew open. It opened inwards. The steel slammed against the wall.
A big man entered, his massive torso barely squeezing through the doorway.
This would have been a good use of the knife. Tight quarters. But there was no time to get it out, flick it open, and come up with an attack angle.
He’d wasted too much time thinking.
From now on, he just needed to act. He needed to let the anger and fear drive him forward. He needed to act intellectually. Primally. But with a cold and calculating mind that thought only of the best possible route of attack.
Jim wasted no time. He shoved the gun right into the man’s side.
As soon as the muzzle pressed against the fat and muscle, Jim squeezed the trigger. Twice.
By pulling the trigger twice, he wasted one more round than he should have. He had what, three left? He wasn’t sure. Too much chaos in his mind and his environment.
But he couldn’t have this man live long enough to shoot him.
It was two point-blank shots.
The man’s face turned towards Jim, contorting into a horrible expression of pain. His mouth opened in a scream that Jim couldn’t hear over the roar in his ears.
Jim didn’t wait. He didn’t go for the man’s gun or knife. That’d be a mistake. Not enough time.
He ran.
As best he could in the tight quarters.
He had to shove his way past the dying man’s falling body.
Jim stepped and half-leapt over the mop bucket, made it to the staircase.
Someone else was at the door.
Jim’s only real advantage was that he could see in the darkness somewhat and that they couldn’t.
But that would change soon enough, as their eyes adapted just like his had.
The longer it took Jim to kill them one by one, the less of a visibility advantage he’d have.
Jim turned halfway around and gave the mop bucket the strongest sideways kick that he could.
The bucket went skidding towards the collapsing, dying man.
It was just something else in the way. Maybe nothing. Or maybe it would buy Jim a couple more seconds.
Jim’s hand seized the steel staircase railing, and he vaulted up the stairs as fast as he could. He used his arm to pull himself up and forward, adding more force than his legs alone could provide.
The staircase hit a tiny, cramped landing and doubled back around. Judging by the height of those two-way mirrors, there was only one landing.
Jim seriously doubted that there’d be another exit. Once he got up there to the surveillance area, that’d be it. He’d be cornered. Trapped. He was like a rat, chased by a hunting terrier, rushing down a dead-end hole.
But sometimes that rat was able to turn around and get in a few bites itself. Bad, vicious bites, sometimes. If it was a smart rat. A fighting rat.
Jim was going to fight all the way down.
Or all the way up, in this case.
He got onto the second step of the second stairwell. Looking up it, there was just a doorway to the room beyond. No door. That wasn’t good.
He’d been counting on some kind of door.
No point in worrying about it.
He’d make a stand here at this last landing. And then he’d enter the surveillance room. Maybe there’d be something there he could use in his defense. Some computer equipment to throw, maybe, if it hadn’t been looted, and assuming that it’d been upgraded from the mirror system to digital in the first place.
Jim grabbed the knife from his pocket.
Gun in one hand. Knife in the other.
He pushed the knife blade open. One-handed, getting his thumb onto the stud and pushing. Didn’t want to flick it, since there was the slight chance he’d fumble it and drop the knife. He knew that his fine motor reflexes were degraded now, with the pumping adrenaline.
The plan was to use the advantages he had. Right now that was sight and height.
He’d slash down with the knife as the next guy came up to the landing. Going for the neck, face, and chest.
Slashes did plenty of damage and didn’t require the accuracy of stabbing. Jim knew he could swing his arm quickly with a lot of force behind it, but he didn’t trust himself right now to stab forward towards a specific target.
He’d initially hoped that he could reach through the railing, taking the next guy completely by surprise, before he even reached the landing, but he realized now that the way the stairs were set up wouldn’t allow his arm any real movement.
He’d have to wait until the guy was on the landing. Jim would still have the advantage of height.
And possibly surprise. Although they knew he was there.
What they didn’t know, perhaps, was that Jim didn’t hold any hope in escaping. Maybe the bikers had dispatched a few of their guys to head outside, looking to see if Jim perhaps made it down a hidden passageway or stairway and somehow made it out of the building. That’d be good for Jim. Any time the enemy split up it was good.
There were mere seconds left.
Jim had all his attention focused now on his field of vision. He couldn’t rely on his ears. The sound of approaching footsteps would have been ideal.
But life wasn’t ideal.
His mind had been running through the possibilities, clean and cold like a computer chess program, ruthlessly calculating the best attacks.
Now his body needed to be ready to fight. That primal instinct needed to take over.
No one ever won a physical fight with their mind and strategy alone.
Jim saw the men before he heard them.
Two men.
A lot worse than one.
Jim didn’t wait to see if they’d seen him.
The knife edge pointed forward, the knife blade pointed outwards away from him, he moved his left foot and leg.
He let his left leg fall, as if he was stepping down the two steps.
The steps were tall, and his body was falling, trailing his leg.
Time seemed to have slowed do
wn. It was that “in the zone” state that athletes sometimes described.
Jim’s falling body would give more force to his swinging arm, which was moving now in a high arc, the knife starting from behind his torso, and following a high arc around and over his shoulder.
Jim was so close to them he could smell them.
Jim himself stunk, as did Aly, Rob, and Jessica. There hadn’t been many opportunities to bathe.
But the bikers really stunk.
And not just the normal human odor of dried sweat, of an overgrowth of bacteria on the skin.
They stunk like some kind of chemical, vaguely reminiscent of burned rubber.
One of the men was huge. Menacing. Tall and wide. Muscular, but with a big, protruding belly.
The second, who was slightly behind the first man, as if he was trying to pass him, or hide slightly behind him, was diminutive. Scrawny and wiry.
But sometimes those skinny guys were the strongest. And fought the hardest. Sometimes they had that kind of strength that you couldn’t get in a gym, no matter what exercises you did.
Both held handguns.
Jim’s eyes met, for a moment, the eyes of the big man. They locked together. The biker’s pupils were small, almost minuscule. Strange, considering the low light. They should have been large, to take in as much light as possible.
Jim moved his eyes to the man’s neck. Right where he wanted the knife to hit.
A split second later, his knife made contact.
Jim felt it. That sickening feeling of soft flesh giving way to the knife.
Blood gushed.
Jim felt the hot blood on his face. Some got onto his eye. Some in his mouth. He tasted it. A lot of it.
A second later, Jim’s falling body collided with the big man. Jim’s shoulder was the first to hit.
It was a hard hit.
Jim fell hard into the man. But the biker was big enough that Jim’s momentum didn’t knock him back.
Jim’s vision was partially obscured by the blood. The taste in his mouth was strong. Overwhelming. Primal. Intense.
Jim felt something as hard as stone smash into his side. Probably the skinny guy had smashed him with a handgun, not wanting to accidentally shoot his buddy.
Jim had no such worries. He was desperate. He didn’t bother to aim. He just pulled the trigger, knowing that his gun was pointed more or less in the right direction.
The knife wound hadn’t been enough to down the big man. But it had been enough of a distraction. It had bought Jim enough time.
Jim heard the gun go off, despite the roaring in his ears. But for a few seconds, he didn’t know what had happened.
And then the big man started to fall.
Jim still had never really gotten his balance. He’d only not fallen down because of the weight of the big man.
Now, though, they were both falling together.
It was as confusing a fight as there could be. With blood in his eye, with the darkness, with the roaring in his ears, Jim was lucky to have half an idea of what was happening. Everything felt like chaos, and he found his body just reacting to the situation, trying to keep himself upright, trying desperately to gain some situational awareness. There might have been more men coming up the stairwell, and there might not have been.
Jim thought he’d found his footing right when something smashed into him from behind.
He fell forward, his face colliding with a concrete step. A hard hit. Blood everywhere. Pain. Maybe his nose was broken. No time to break the fall with his hands, which were at his sides. One hand was still on the gun and one was on the knife. Not an ideal situation for fighting. He’d have to let one go. But which one?
He didn’t have time to make the decision.
He felt a body fall on top of him. Judging by the weight, it was the skinny guy.
There were strong fingers around his neck. Gripping tightly. Jim reflexively gasped for air. None came to him.
He didn’t have long.
He swung with his knife arm, but it didn’t reach. Not even close, probably.
The skinny guy was strong, but Jim was a bigger guy. He had the advantage, if he knew how to use his size.
Jim wanted to slash at the man’s hands and wrists and arms. But he knew that risk was too great. Without being able to see, he was just as likely to slice open his own neck.
Jim let go of the knife and gun. He didn’t hear them clatter to the concrete. It was still just the roar in his ears.
His whole body was screaming out for air. His neck was nothing but pain, an intense burning sensation.
Jim got his hands against the concrete underneath him and he pushed hard, as if he were doing a push-up.
The skinny guy may have been strong, strong enough to keep his hands around Jim’s neck. But he hardly weighed anything.
Not that it wasn’t a struggle to get himself upright with the guy on his back. It took every ounce of strength that Jim had. He felt like he might lose consciousness at any moment. And that’d be the last time he lost consciousness. He had to fight his own instinct to grab at the hands around his throat. He knew intuitively that he wouldn’t be able to get those hands off. They were too strong.
Upright, with the man hanging off his back, Jim drove himself backwards as hard as he could. He didn’t know if he was headed down the stairwell or into the landing wall. And it didn’t really matter.
It turned out to be the wall.
The small biker hit first, lessening the impact slightly for Jim.
It was a hard hit. Jim felt the hands loosen around his neck just as the back of his own head smashed into the concrete. It probably wasn’t as bad of a hit as it could have been. But it was still bad. His vision blacked out for a full second, which felt like a long time.
It came back, all fuzzy, and Jim had collapsed to the floor, his hands on the concrete, barely holding himself up. He felt the urge to vomit from the pain, and he started retching uncontrollably. Hardly anything came up, except some off-color liquid.
A fist collided with his head.
Still retching uncontrollably, Jim spotted the knife on the floor. Not far from him. He brought his hand out as fast as he could, reaching for it. He lost his balance as he reached, falling with his chest and face against the concrete again. Blood mixed with the liquid vomit in his mouth. But he got the knife. His fingers wrapped around it.
Another fist.
Somehow, he stopped retching. The reflex was gone.
Jim got to his feet. Spun around.
The skinny guy was barely standing. He was half-doubled over. He looked like a sick animal, heaving and panting. Blood gushed down the side of his skull.
Jim wasted no time. He brought the knife up and across with all the speed and strength he had. A straight, neat line right across the man’s throat.
Blood gushed.
Jim didn’t wait. And he didn’t go for the gun. The concrete landing was covered in blood and vomit. No telling where the gun had gone.
The roaring dying down slightly in his ears, Jim thought he heard footsteps behind him, down that first stairwell.
Jim almost fell as he made it up that second staircase, his one hand on the railing barely managing to keep himself steady and upright.
But he made it to the top. And through the doorframe that had no door into the little surveillance room.
No one followed him.
The skinny man and the big man were dead.
The space wasn’t large. There was a desk made of metal and a cheap swivel chair. A couple notes taped up to the wall. And not much else.
As Jim had predicted, from the little room, you could see down into the entire store.
Jim spat blood as he wiped more blood away from his eyes. He didn’t remember if it was his own blood or another’s.
Taking a quick look, Jim didn’t see any activity down below. But it was hard to tell if he could trust his eyes since the two-way mirrors made everything look even darker than it already was.
/> As Jim turned around, ready to face an onslaught of more attackers, he suddenly felt too weak to even stand up. Maybe it was the head injury. Maybe it was something else. Maybe it had just been too much for his already weakened system to handle.
He collapsed to the floor for what felt like one too many times in the last few minutes.
This time, he managed to catch himself with his hands.
The concrete was cold to the touch. Almost freezing.
The roaring in his ears had died down somewhat. But there were no footsteps that he could hear.
Ideally, Jim would have pushed the desk and chair into the doorway. Maybe he could push them down the stairs against an attacker.
But he knew he didn’t have the strength. The weakness that had come over him was like nothing he’d ever felt before. It was terrifying. He was used to his body working a certain way. He was used to a certain threshold of fatigue. He was used to being able to tolerate certain stresses. But he’d pushed himself farther, apparently, than his body or nervous system could handle.
While Jim had known he’d been probably heading to his death, cornered, alone, without much of a chance, he still hadn’t imagined it like this. He’d had something more in mind of a heroic last stand.
But the reality was nothing like that.
He was too weak to stand up.
Too weak to really defend himself.
The best he could do was to crawl under the desk and pull the swivel chair towards him, partially hiding himself, even though it was only too obvious that he was there.
He felt like a coward. Definitely not a hero.
He could barely keep himself from falling completely to the floor. His arms were shaking with exertion as he tried to hold himself just slightly up.
The knife, his last remaining weapon, had somehow fallen again to the floor.
And he was too weak to get it.
Because of the roaring, he wasn’t sure if he could hear or not.
His mouth tasted of blood and vomit.
His vision was slightly blurry. Blood ran freely from his nose. And probably from other places too.
His whole body felt cold, as if he were currently submerged in ice-cold water.
Final Dread: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Thriller (Surviving Book 3) Page 4