Suddenly a shot rang out and the front left tire of the Jeep exploded. The car lurched violently to the left, hopping the curb and crashing into a tree, killing the engine. Abby snatched her pistol and her hat and shoved herself out of the car, taking cover behind the engine block. She poked her head up and looked in the direction that the shot had come from, the smaller campus. Her eyes focused on a tall bell tower between two buildings, and Abby figured that that was where the shooter must be.
“We see you there!” A loud voice cried from the tower. “Sit tight for a minute, and don’t try any funny business! My friends would like to talk to you!”
“Just to talk, my ass,” Abby whispered. She was in a really bad spot: pinned down by a shooter with potential bad guys coming for her. They would certainly do more than talk to her. And when they realized she was a girl…
Abby shuddered at the thought. She had her pistol, but she only had five rounds in this magazine and one other magazine of seven. Her third was in her ruck, which was in the car. Maybe she could crawl back into the driver’s seat, snatch her ruck, and run. She started to make a move, but the shooter in the tower noticed it. There was another sharp snap of an incoming round and the side mirror of the Jeep was blown right off.
“That’s your last warning!” the voice from the tower called.
Abby started to panic. What should she do? If she tried to shoot whoever came for her, the man in the tower would kill her, probably before she even got one round off. If she tried to run, he would still kill her. If she stayed where she was and gave up, they might kill her. As bleak as it was, it seemed like that last option was Abby’s best hope of survival. What else could she do?
Abby slid her pistol into its holster and clasped her hands together as she waited for whomever was coming for her. After only a few moments, she began to hear what sounded like some men talking, and their voices were getting louder. Abby wanted to look over the car’s hood and see how many people she was facing, but was afraid that the shooter was still watching and would take that as a hostile action. So she sat motionless with her back against the cold body of the ruined Jeep.
Finally, Abby’s ambushers came walking around both sides of her, surrounding her. Abby looked up and counted four men, all of whom looked to be in their forties, except for one who looked much younger than the others. They all wore thick hunting jackets, and two of them had hoodies underneath those. Two of the men carried hunting rifles, one had a pistol on his hip, and the youngest man carried a long hunting shotgun.
“Mighty strange to see a little girl out here all alone,” said the man with the pistol, his voice deep and gravelly. He appeared to be the oldest of the group, judging by his thick, black and grey beard. The hair on his head likely shared the same symptom of aging that was in his beard, but his baseball hat made that impossible to know. Abby looked up into his icy blue eyes but said nothing.
“Hm, I see how it is,” the man said after waiting for Abby to reply. “This is how it’s gonna go down. You’re gonna give us everything you got in that car, and then you’re gonna go away. Easy day, and no one has to get hurt neither.”
“I barely have anything at all,” Abby said.
“I didn’t ask how much you had. I said you’re gonna give what you have to us,” the bearded man replied.
“I can’t survive out there with nothing.”
“Tough shit,” one of the other men said.
“We got our own people to worry about, and we need everything we can find,” the bearded man said as he took a step towards Abby. “Now hand your weapons over and let’s get through this painlessly, ya hear?”
A part of Abby wanted to fight back, but another part of her was stopping her. If she tried to fight back, they’d kill her. If she gave them her stuff, she’d probably die in a few days, but maybe not. The latter seemed to be the only sensible option if Abby wanted to live to see another sunrise.
Because she was not moving or speaking, the bearded man knelt down in front of Abby and pulled her pistol out of its holster himself. He then grabbed her knife and took that, too. He patted down her pockets, finding her spare magazine and a lighter while the other men quickly searched the Jeep, finding only Abby’s ruck. The man dropped Abby’s weapons into her ruck as one of the other men threw it on his shoulders.
“Your hat, too,” the bearded man said.
“You have a hat,” Abby protested.
“The hat, girl. Now,” the man replied in a stern voice.
Abby reached a shaky hand up and slowly pulled her hat off. Zach had given it to her, and she didn’t want to lose it, but she didn’t seem to have a choice. She handed it to the man, who looked at it as if he was surprised. He locked eyes with Abby and flashed her a quick half-smile, a mocking ‘thank you’, and then stuffed the hat in the ruck.
Abby knew why he took the hat. It was a power move. He had wanted to assert complete dominance over Abby for no other reason than because he could. This made her angry but she still could not find the nerve to do anything about it.
“Now stand up,” the man said, and Abby did as she was told. The man looked her up and down, presumably to make sure that he had left her with nothing at all. He started to turn, but he turned back to Abby as if something caught his eye. He reached his hand out and plucked Zach’s old dog tags out of Abby’s shirt, the ones she wore as a keepsake.
“Davidson, Z.W.,” the man said as he read the information stamped on the tags. “Friend of yours?”
Abby narrowed her eyes and glared up at the man. If Zach was here, this thief would be acting a bit more polite. But it was only Abby, and no one else.
The man chuckled and let go of the dog tags, letting them fall back against Abby’s chest. “You take care now, ya hear?” he said as he tipped his hat to Abby. He then looked up towards the bell tower and waved his arm up over his head once.
Abby turned around and looked up at the tower. Her eyes caught a glint of sunlight reflecting off of a riflescope, and she could just make out what looked like a man standing up and slinging a long rifle onto his back.
The men walked past Abby, not even giving her a second look. They had broken any will to fight that she might have had… or so they thought. Abby watched them with clenched fists and hatred in her eyes. She was not going to allow them to do this to her. Zach wouldn’t let them get away like this. Zach would not be afraid to fight back.
He would not be afraid to kill.
Abby reached into the front of her pants and unsheathed her tiny, last-ditch knife, which she still kept clipped to the waistband of her underwear, and held it in her left hand. Once again, this little knife had gone undetected during a search. The man with the beard was closest to her, so she took two running steps towards him. He cast a casual glance back over his left shoulder as he heard her coming, but he was too slow.
Abby reached up and plunged the knife into the left side of the man’s throat. Bright red blood spurted out of the man’s neck, staining his shirt and beard. He fell as both life and bodily strength left him, but Abby caught him, hooked her arm under his, and leaned back, making sure to keep the man in front of her, using him as a human shield. With her right hand she drew his pistol and fired at the three other men in rapid succession. They had turned around to face Abby when they heard their friend choke on his own blood, but never got a clear shot on Abby.
As soon as the three men were down, Abby dropped the bearded man. He was still alive, looking up at Abby, and she could see in his eyes the same look Henry had moments before the end. Panicky, uncontrollable fear filled his blue eyes, making him look almost like a small boy awaking from a nightmare. People like this man, people who lusted for power and control, they all fear death. Against death, they are powerless. So when people like this man reach the end, when shadows cloud their vision and they realize that there is nothing they can do to stay alive, they know a terror unlike any other.
Abby almost felt sorry for the man, but she pushed pity aside and fired the l
ast round in the pistol, sending a bullet through the man’s skull.
But Abby had no time to reflect on all this. The man in the tower had surely heard the gunshots. He was probably setting up his rifle again and would shoot Abby at any moment. She sprinted towards one of the dropped hunting rifles, an old Mosin Nagant, scooped it up, and dove for cover behind the engine block of her Jeep just as a large bullet hissed past her head.
This guy was good, Abby realized. If she was going to win this duel, she would have to get the drop on the man. She glanced around, looking for her next piece of cover. There was a small building just ahead of her and to her left. If she could make it there, she would only need to make one more bounding run to be out of sight of the tower. Once the man lost sight of Abby, things would not be so lopsided in his favor.
Abby stayed low, wondering how much of her body the man could see, if any. No follow up shot came, so she assumed he was just waiting to see her head. She took a deep breath and pushed herself up for a moment, as if she was going to run, but let herself fall back down just as the man fired. As soon as she had heard the report of the rifle, she was back up again, sprinting as fast as she could.
She reached the safety of the small, brick building just as the man fired another round, narrowly missing. She glided along the wall with the Mosin rifle up and in her shoulder, heading towards the far corner of the building, hoping that the shooter would be looking at the wrong corner when she made her move. She popped around the corner, dropped to her knee, and raised the rifle up, firing a round at the tower as she aimed down the rifle’s iron sights.
The bell in the tower rang loudly, meaning Abby must have missed. But that was okay. All she had been wanting was to get the man’s head down to give her time to make it across one more open patch of ground. As soon as she had fired she sprinted towards the large, three-story building across from her. This time the man never got a chance to shoot.
Once she made it to the next building, Abby pulled the bolt back on the rifle, ejecting the spent shell, and chambered a new round by slamming the bolt forward. She kept moving along the outside wall of the building, looking for a back entrance, and she found one halfway down the wall. She pulled the door open and stepped inside, closing the door behind her as quietly as she could.
Abby took a moment to look around and found herself standing in what looked like a large church room, dominated by a wooden cross overlooking several rows of pews. Unfortunately for Abby, the people who once worshipped here had apparently loved windows. There were dozens of windows all over the building, including huge ones in the front, facing the bell tower. Abby had to be very careful to not expose herself as she made her way towards a stairwell in the far corner.
Doing her best to stay out of sight, Abby slowly ascended the stairs, to the third floor of the building. This floor contained a library, judging by the many book-filled shelves. Tables, and three couches were set up in front of a fireplace along the back wall. Abby got down on her belly and low crawled just like Zach had taught her, heading towards a nearby window, hoping to get the drop on the shooter in the tower.
Suddenly Abby heard a faint noise from downstairs. It sounded like the gentle click of a door being pushed back into place. She froze and listened, just making out the sound of quiet footsteps. The shooter must have feared staying in the same spot and not knowing where Abby was and had decided to hunt her down. Abby carefully pushed herself up and tip toed back towards the stairs, but then turned and crept between two bookshelves.
She got behind the bookshelf on the end, which gave her a vantage point from which she could watch the stairs while staying mostly concealed. No more than twenty feet from the opening of the stairwell in the floor and with a direct line of sight, Abby felt like she now had the upper-hand in this contest.
“And so the hunted becomes the hunter,” she thought.
Chapter Two
Abby did not move or make a sound. She hardly even breathed, but she still could only just hear the occasional footfall of the man who was stalking her through the building.
Despite the cold temperature, Abby began to sweat. She wiped the palm of her right hand against her jeans and then put it right back around the trigger. She tried to control her breathing, but the frantic beating of her heart made that difficult.
A light tap, the sound of a booted foot contacting a wooden surface. The man was coming up the stairs.
Abby brought her head down to the rifle, pressing her cheek against the old wooden stock. She stared down the length of the weapon, lining up the iron sights with the top of the stairwell.
The top of the man’s head appeared, but Abby waited for a better shot. The man seemed to hesitate, then he popped up suddenly, brandishing a sawed-off shotgun in Abby’s direction. Just as the man locked eyes with Abby, she squeezed the trigger. The bullet would have gone directly through the man’s skull, but he had the presence of mind to duck as soon as he noticed Abby behind the shelf.
“Shit!” Abby exclaimed. The man popped up again and fired just as Abby ducked back behind the end of the bookshelf. The lead pellets hissed past Abby as she chambered another round in her rifle. The man climbed the last stair and stood at the opposite end of the shelf Abby was hiding behind, waiting for her to make a move either left or right.
Abby took a quick step to her right, exposing herself for an instant, but immediately dashed off to her left. The man reacted to her first step, and stepped into the aisle Abby had stepped toward, expecting to blow her away at close range, but she was not there. By the time he looked in the opposite direction, Abby had run a few yards down and was hiding between shelves.
The man thought for a second. Tiring of this game of cat-and-mouse, he jogged over to the first bookshelf and gave it a tremendous shove. It fell back, crashing into the shelf behind it, starting a domino effect.
Abby heard the shelves falling and knew that in another second or two she was going to be trapped. She pushed herself up and sprinted towards the wall on the far side of the room, hoping that the man would be expecting her to go towards the nearest wall. Abby dashed across the open floor of the library and dove over the back of one of the couches in front of the fireplace just as the man fired at her, but he missed again. He racked the shotgun back and then forwards, then fired at the couch, but Abby had crawled a few feet over.
As soon as he fired, Abby popped up and shot back at the man, this time hitting him in the right shoulder. He staggered back a step and clutched his wound, barely able to hold onto the shotgun. He looked back to the couches but Abby was gone.
Unbeknownst to him, her rifle was out of ammo, so Abby had run through a door just behind her and next to the fireplace. In what appeared to be a conference room with a long table surrounded by chairs, she was hiding and trying to figure out what to do.
The man slowly brought the shotgun up to his shoulder, his left hand doing most of the work of holding it up. He skulked towards the far corner of the room, shifting his gaze between the door next to the fireplace and the bookshelves to his left. Once he had passed all the shelves and confirmed that the girl was not there, he paused a few yards away from the open door.
Realizing he was at a severe disadvantage by not knowing where in the room the girl was, he decided to improve his odds a bit by removing at least one possible hiding spot. He aimed just to the right of the door and fired a blast through the wall.
No cries of pain or the thud of a body hitting the floor. At least now the man knew the girl would not be right next to the door waiting to pounce. She was tenacious and clever, and the man was done underestimating her. He approached the door and popped inside, aiming towards the far corner, an unfortunate choice for him.
There was a blur of motion in his peripheral vision and, before the man could react, a metal folding chair crashed into him. Abby had been just a few feet down from the door, waiting with a chair in her hands. She had been watching the door and the man’s faint shadow, ready to throw the chair at the very mo
ment he crossed the threshold into the room.
The chair hit him right where he had been shot, causing him to drop his shotgun and cry out in pain. Abby made a break for the shotgun, but the man was one step ahead of Abby. He kicked the weapon away towards the wall as he cocked his left hand back and threw a heavy punch at Abby. She saw this coming just in time and managed to cover up, her arm and shoulder taking the blow. He threw another left hook, but Abby blocked this one and countered with a knee to the groin.
The man doubled over, and Abby took this opportunity to toss him to the ground behind her, but he managed to grab Abby’s belt with his left hand and he pulled her down with him. Abby tumbled and fell on top of the man. She tried to get up, but the man had his left arm wrapped around her, holding her against him while his right hand reached for his boot.
As Abby struggled to get out of his hold, she suddenly cried out in pain. The man had fished a folding knife out of his boot and stabbed Abby in the side. He pulled the knife out and tried to thrust it up into Abby’s neck, but she grabbed his wrist and shoved his arm down. Fortunately for her, the man’s arm was still barely useable because of the gunshot wound, otherwise he might have overpowered her.
Abby kept his right hand pinned to the floor as she finally managed to disentangle herself from the man’s strong left arm long enough to punch him hard in his throat. He made a horrible, guttural gasp as his jaw dropped open and his eyes bugged out at the sudden, intense pain.
She wrenched herself away from the man, got up to her feet, and rolled across the table. She wanted a moment’s respite with an obstacle between her and the man, who had already gotten to his feet, still holding his knife.
His Name Was Zach (Book 2): Her Name Was Abby Page 2