Alice bit her lower lip and nodded. She didn’t want to do any unnecessary climbing if she could help it. Any strenuous activity would rip open the stitches in her midriff and get the wound bleeding again. If the fire was, at this stage, only on the street level, it would probably take a while to spread through the building.
“We’ll stay put until these men outside leave the building,” she said to David. “After that, we get the hell out of here.”
“Okay, Mom,” David said, getting back into position behind the sofa. He was still racked with fear and anxiety but was doing his best to put on a brave face.
“Shh, they’re coming up the stairs!” Alice whispered. Her heart was pounding so violently now she thought it was going to burst through her ribcage, and she was finding it difficult to breathe. Her apartment was the one closest to the stairs, and she was certain that they would try her door first. She’d installed a solid oak door in this apartment when she’d renovated it a few years back. The solid locks and the oak would withstand a lot of kicking and shoulder barging, but if the men were determined to get in, they could shoot their way through it. One of them almost certainly had a shotgun, and judging from the fact that he had blown open the downstairs door, she figured he was using some potent ammunition. Now the men’s voices were more discernible, and Alice could hear exactly what they were saying.
“That fat bitch had plenty of gold jewelry,” one of them said as they marched up the stairs.
“No diamonds, though,” another muttered. “Maybe we’ll strike it lucky on this floor.”
“That slut and her kid we seen going into the building earlier, they had bags with ‘em, I bet they got cash.”
“That lil’ milf got somethin’ else I wouldn’t mind takin’,” one of them growled. “Mm, yeah, she had a tight lil’ ass.” The others all laughed harshly.
Alice was sure they were talking about her and David, and the things they were saying were making her heart race even faster. Fear-chilled blood oozed like ice-water through her veins. She’d been trying to mentally and emotionally prepare herself for a life-or-death encounter like this ever since they had left the bank, but now that one was almost upon her, she didn’t know if she had it in her to pull the trigger. She tried to focus on David. Regardless of what these brutes wanted to do to her, she knew that if she thought about them trying to harm David, her motherly instincts would kick in and she’d be able to fight.
“Where are they, Mom?”
“Shh!” she hissed. “They’re almost up the stairs! Don’t breathe another word, and if they break in here, you shoot, do you understand?!”
“Okay, okay, I’ll…I’ll do it if I have to.”
“Quiet now!”
Alice’s hands were shaking madly, and she could barely keep a grip on the gun. Just on the other side of the door, she heard the men stop outside her apartment. Her heart almost jumped out of her mouth when one of them bashed on the door.
“Yo, whoever the fuck is in here!” one of them roared through the door. “Open this fucking door now, or we’re blowing it down! Open up and we’ll let you live…but if you don’t, we’ll make sure you fucking die…slowly!”
13
“Now I’m wishing we brought those AR-15s with us,” Wyatt said as he watched the last of the armed men run into the building.
“Me too,” Phil murmured.
Wyatt looked at Phil. “Don’t get too mad at yourself. You couldn’t have known that things would descend into anarchy this fast.”
“I should have known that it would go downhill fast, though,” Phil said, shaking his head and curling his left hand into a fist. “Dammit! Why didn’t I see that?”
“It’s no use beating yourself up about it now. I’m as much to blame as you are but forget about that. It’s not like we’re unarmed anyway or walking into a gunfight with knives in our hands.” Wyatt drew his .45 pistol and gripped it in his left hand, dual-wielding his firearms. “If we go in after ‘em, we’re going to be in a tight, enclosed space. Handguns are a lot more maneuverable in spaces like that anyway. We are going in after those thugs, right?”
“You bet,” Phil said determinedly. The thought that his wife and son might be in there and at the mercy of these armed, dangerous predators had injected liquid fire into his veins. Now that he’d had his first taste of shooting a man, he knew that he could line up a human being in his sights and pull the trigger if he had to.
Before they could say anything else, a woman’s scream rang out from inside the building, and it was cut off a loud gunshot blast. Each man saw the sudden alarm on the other’s face.
“That wasn’t Alice,” Phil said, although it was not relief that he was feeling.
“We better move. We can approach the building head-on,” Wyatt said. “They’ll be in the stairwell, which I’m guessing doesn’t have windows or look out onto this street?”
“No,” Phil answered. “The stairwell only looks out onto the alley.”
“Hmm. You know, they’ll probably have left a lookout by the door,” Wyatt said. “And since there are more of them then there are of us, we don’t want him alerting his buddies that we’re coming in.”
“If we shoot him, his friends inside will hear the gunshot and know something’s up.”
“That’s why we have to take care of him another way,” Wyatt said. “Silently. If I go around the block, can I come up that side alley from the rear?”
“Yeah, it exits onto the street parallel to this one. If you go around that sporting goods store on the corner, you can get onto that street. You’ll see the exit of the alley next to a Chinese takeout place.”
Wyatt holstered his guns. “Go to the corner by the building entrance,” he said. “Give me a minute or so to get around the block. When you see me coming up the alley, make a noise, say something, get the lookout in the doorway to come out. Keep your gun behind your back, don’t let him see you’re armed and a threat. Just get him to pop his head out of the door if you can. I’ll take him out, quick and quiet.”
Phil nodded. He extended a gloved hand to Wyatt, who gripped it, and they gave each other a quick, tight hug. “Good luck, brother,” Phil said.
Wyatt raced off toward the sporting goods store, weaving through the abandoned cars on the street. Phil, his heart thumping in his chest, crept across the street, keeping an eye both on the alley where the entrance to Alice’s building was, and the fire raging in the storefront at the bottom of the building. He could see that the fire was growing fiercer, and it would only be a matter of time before it started to consume the entire building. He could only hope that they were able to deal with the armed invaders before that happened and get Alice and David out of the building…if they even were in the building. There was so much uncertainty in the air at this moment; Phil just wanted to see his wife and son and know that they were okay. The thought that those predators were in there and could be going after them was driving him crazy, and he could hardly bear to hold himself back from simply charging in with guns blazing. He knew, however, that Wyatt was right. If the lookout alerted the others, they would have a major battle on their hands. They were outnumbered and had to use the elements of stealth and surprise to their advantage.
He crept up to the front of the building on the other side of the alley; he couldn’t go near the burning store at the bottom of the building because the flames billowing out of it were too fierce. Even by this building, he could feel the intense heat. From here, he could see a little inside the entrance to Alice’s building, and he could see the partial figure of a man holding a shotgun there—so there was indeed a lookout by the door.
He peeked his head around the corner to glance down the alley, and he saw Wyatt coming up it from the far end. He had a baseball bat in his hand, taken, presumably, from the sporting goods store. The men gave each other a quick nod of acknowledgment, and then Phil ducked back around the corner before the lookout caught sight of him. He guessed it would take Wyatt another fifteen or twenty s
econds to creep right up to the door, so he pressed himself up against the wall and took a few deep, evenly spaced breaths while counting down from twenty. When the countdown was over, he knew it was time to act. He drew in one last deep breath, and then stepped into the alley, keeping his .45 in his hand with his finger on the trigger, but tucking it behind his back, so it was hidden.
A surge of relief rushed through him when he saw Wyatt pressed up against the wall just behind the open door, ready to act.
“Hello?” Phil said, stepping up to the door. “Is anyone in there?”
“Get the fuck outta here, jerk-off,” the man in the door growled. “Go on, move it.”
“But I’m coming to see my friends who live here,” Phil protested, doing his best to sound calm even though his heart was racing.
The man stepped out of the doorway and pointed his shotgun at Phil’s chest. He was a tall, heavily-built man in his thirties or early forties. While his face was hidden by a balaclava, it was plain to see that his eyes were full of malice and cruelty. “Are you deaf or stupid or both, shithead?” he growled. “Get the fuck out of here before I put a hole in your chest. This is my building now, you stupid fuck. Move, now!”
That was when Wyatt moved. He darted out from behind the door and brought the baseball bat down in a woodchopping blow like an ax on the back of the man’s skull. The man grunted and staggered forward, but he wasn’t out yet. Phil lunged forward and yanked the shotgun out of the thug’s hands, and before the stunned goon could react, Wyatt smashed the baseball bat into his head a second time. This time the man’s body went limp, and he flopped to the ground like a clubbed fish.
“Nice work,” Phil said.
Wyatt nodded and tossed the baseball bat aside and then drew his .357 and .45 again. Phil quickly checked the shotgun over; it was a combat shotgun, and it was fully loaded, except for the one round that had been fired to blow open the door lock.
“I’d use that in the building if I were you,” Wyatt said.
“I’m going to.” Phil tucked his .45 into his belt and gripped the combat shotgun in both hands. “Let’s do this.”
Wyatt nodded. “These assholes aren’t playing games. Shoot first, ask questions later.”
“Roger that,” Phil said. “Let’s go.”
They moved into the building, and they could hear the men talking in loud, harsh voices in the stairwell. They jogged up the stairs, moving as quickly as they could. But keeping their footfalls light and silent. Each man had his gun aimed out ahead of him; everything he saw was through the sights of his scope.
From upstairs came the sound of one of the men bashing on a door. They heard him viciously threatening whoever was inside the apartment, who clearly didn’t want to let them in.
Driven on by a sense of urgency, both men hurried up the stairs at a faster pace, their hearts hammering. If these criminals were at Alice’s door, Phil thought he’d open fire without a second thought and keep squeezing the trigger until every last one of them was dead.
When they got to the last set of stairs before Alice’s floor, one of them yelled out, “That’s it bitch, you’re fucking dead!” A booming blast from a shotgun firing echoed down the stairs.
This spurred fresh urgency through Phil’s veins. He raced up the last few stairs and burst out of the stairwell into the hallway. He saw that the men had just shot open Alice’s door. There were four of them, all waiting to charge into her apartment.
“Hey!” he roared, possessed by righteous fury.
The men spun around, and the one who’d just shot open the door swung his shotgun in Phil’s direction, but it was Phil’s gun that thundered first. He fired two shots into the man’s chest, and the force of the shots flung the man off his feet. As the others raised their firearms, Wyatt charged out from behind Phil, both guns blazing. With his left hand, he pumped a couple .45 bullets into the closest man’s torso, while one well-aimed shot from the .357 blew another’s skull wide open.
The farthest man, a tall, powerfully built man with tattoos covering his muscular arms and neck, opened fire wildly with his 9mm pistol, and Wyatt grabbed the back of Phil’s shirt and yanked him down the stairs while the criminal sprayed the hallway with bullets. The thug emptied his whole magazine, and when Phil and Wyatt heard the empty clicking of the trigger, they raced out into the hallway again, only to see the back of the man as he dived down the staircase at the far end of the hallway.
Phil started to dash after him, his blood on fire with battle fury, but Wyatt lunged forward and grabbed his shirt again. “Let him go, man. It’s over,” he said, breathing hard.
Phil was panting, and his hands were shaking. He looked down at the three dead men in the hallway. Their blood was sprayed against the walls, and their bodies were limp. He’d killed them, and the whole thing felt like some surreal, terrible nightmare. He could hardly believe any of this was real and almost knelt down to touch one of the corpses to make sure that this was actually happening.
Before he could do that, though, he heard a voice that sent intense emotion surging through him.
“Phil,” Alice gasped. “Oh my God, it is you, Phil. It really is you!” She threw down her gun, and with tears streaming down her cheeks, she rushed out of the apartment, the door of which had been blasted open, and flung her arms around her husband. Phil pulled his smoke mask off and embraced her tightly, with tears welling up in his own eyes and a lump rising in his throat.
“I’ve got you, Alice. You’re safe now,” he said hoarsely as they embraced. “Where’s David? Is he okay?”
“I’m right here, Dad,” David said, emerging cautiously from the apartment, his eyes wide and his pistol still in his hand. He stared down at the bodies on the floor and the blood sprayed across the walls, and his eyes grew even wider.
“Thank God you’re both okay,” Phil said. “Thank the Lord that you’re both all right.”
“I hate to break up the party,” Wyatt said, “but the fire’s spreading. We need to move.” He pointed at the stairwell. Thick clouds of smoke were now billowing up it.
“I’ll grab some food,” Alice said, stepping away from her husband. “Give me ten seconds to throw as much as I can in a bag. We still have a long night to get through.”
“I’ll help,” David said, eager to get away from the nightmarish sight of the bodies in the hallway.
“Hurry,” Phil said. “We have to move fast.”
Alice and David scrambled to shove as much food from the cupboards as they could into some spare gym bags. They also tossed in some water bottles, a portable gas stove, and some camping plates and cutlery.
“The smoke’s getting thicker!” Wyatt yelled. “And I can see flames at the bottom of the stairwell! There’s no more time. Go, go, go!”
Alice and David grabbed the gym bags and the large medical kit and raced out of the apartment. Wyatt, his pistols in his hands, keeping an eye out for the last thug, led the way down the stairs while Phil brought up the rear, also watching for the criminal in case he tried to ambush them from behind.
They got down to the second floor, but they had to stop there, for the entire ground floor was now a wall of flame.
“We’re trapped,” Alice gasped. “Oh God, we’re trapped!”
14
“The fire escape!” Phil said. “Hurry, back up the stairs! And if that doesn’t work, there’s a lot of rope in the apartment.”
They turned around and began to race back up the steps, but then, at the top of the stairwell, a masked face appeared. “You can all fucking burn!” he howled. It was the surviving invader, the one who’d gotten away. He tossed a Molotov cocktail into the stairwell, and it exploded into a billowing ball of flame. He tossed two more down the stairs and then fled.
Now the group was trapped between a wall of flames above and the raging inferno below. Acrid black smoke was quickly filling the entirety of the stairwell. Phil grabbed two more masks out of his backpack and shoved them into Alice and David’s hands. “Hu
rry, put these on!”
“Onto this floor,” Wyatt said, running up the stairs to get off the stairwell and into the closest hallway. “We can break down the door of one of the empty apartments and use their fire escape.”
As he stepped out into the hallway, though, he was greeted by a hail of bullets from the far end of the hallway. He jumped back into the stairwell and lost his footing and was only saved from tumbling back down the stairs by Phil, who caught him and helped him stay upright.
“Who’s shooting?!” Phil demanded.
“I don’t know. I couldn’t see ‘em. The hallway was filled with smoke. I don’t know if it’s a frightened resident or the same asshole who’s trying to kill us,” Wyatt growled.
“Hey!” Phil yelled, hoping that it was a resident who had been shooting. “We’re not looters. We’re just trying to get out of this building! The fire is spreading, and this whole place will be up in flames in minutes! Please just let us through!”
“Yeah, and you motherfuckers can all burn with it!” came the vicious reply. They now knew that it was the invader who had shot at them. To add emphasis to his vehement hate, he fired a few more bullets in their direction. He flung another Molotov cocktail at them, which exploded with a deep whoosh near the stairwell, blocking them from entering the hallway.
“That son of a bitch,” Wyatt growled, his jaw clenched with rage. “I don’t care if I burn. I’m gonna rip his damn head off!”
He moved to charge out into the flames consuming the hallway, but Phil grabbed his arm and held him back. “Don’t throw your life away on account of that scumbag,” he said. He was as furious as Wyatt was, of course, but he forced himself to think rationally about their situation.
“Phil, what are we gonna do?” Alice demanded, almost overcome by hysteria. The flames were creeping up the stairway and seemed to have completely consumed the ground floor. The smoke in the stairwell was so thick now it was difficult to see, let alone breathe.
EMP Survival In A Powerless World | Book 19 | EMP Ranch Page 7