Space Invaders
Xander’s iPhone chimed, waking him from a deep sleep. Natalie lay peacefully beside him. He smiled at the sight of her there in the glow of the moon and rolled over to his nightstand to keep the phone from chiming again. It lay next to the dwindled but still burning candle, and he picked it up to silence it. The clock on the backlit screen read 5:00 a.m. The notification below it read that he had a text message from an unknown number. He entered the passcode and went to the text.
Someone is in your house.
The floor next to the bed creaked as if someone had stepped into the room. Xander’s reflexes were so fast that even before his eyes could fully adjust from the brightness of the phone’s screen, he swiped his arm hard to the left, sending the pistol in the masked man’s hand flying against the bedroom wall. The gun had gone off just as he’d made contact with the intruder’s arm. A loud clanging boom filled the room and Natalie awoke in a panic to the sight of a man in a ski mask standing overtop of them in the fading light of the candle they’d made love in just hours ago. Before she could let out her first terrified scream, Xander, wearing only his boxer briefs, planted both hands flat on the mattress back behind his head. He then brought his knees to his chest and in a flash he’d catapulted himself to his feet on the bed. Seamlessly he let his momentum carry his right leg in a sweeping motion, and with a twist of his hips Xander fired a Thai-kick at the intruder. His leg whipped around his body and the sound of his foot meeting the side of the masked man’s head made a distinct popping sound, the man’s body instantly going limp as he collapsed to the floor. Finally, the scream came. Natalie’s fear-ridden and paralyzing shriek filled the room with a volume that rivaled the blast of the gunshot.
Xander turned to her, eerily calm, and took her shoulders in his hands.
“Listen to me Natalie,” he said in a smooth and even tone. She screamed again. “I need you to take a deep breath and listen to me now,” he calmed her with his soothing demeanor.
She took a long deep breath in through her nose and let it out through her mouth. The same mouth that quivered as fearful tears swelled inside her eyes. Though nothing about how calm Xander was about what just happened made sense, she took another deep breath and nodded her head.
“I need you to stay calm now. We only have a second. I need you to get up right now, go to the bathroom, and lock the door. Do not, for any reason, any reason, no matter what you hear, open that door. Do you understand?”
Natalie’s face scrunched in fear as she tried to process why they were still in danger.
“Natalie, look at me sweetheart. We don’t have time. I need you to do—”
The door to the bedroom flew off its hinges and crashed against the inside wall. Xander pushed Natalie off the bed and onto the floor, giving her a moment of cover. He somersaulted backward off the bed and as soon as his foot hit the carpet below he sprung himself high into the air. He must have covered ten feet as he spun himself and wheeled his leg around his body. At the height of the twisting jump he brought his leg down and around like an ax as he pounded the man entering the room in the neck, sending him to the floor. The now unconscious armed man was dressed the same as the first intruder, all-black tactical gear and a black ski mask that covered everything but his eyes and mouth. There was no question these were professionals. That didn’t mean they were good, but they weren’t fresh off the street either. After Xander landed the spinning jump kick he ended up on his feet in a crouched position with his back to the now open doorway to the hall. The gun he had knocked free from his back on the bed moments ago now lay there at his feet. He grabbed it and as he stood, turning toward the doorway, he heard a gunshot and felt a searing pain burn into his left shoulder. Natalie squealed from her view, peeking from just behind the mattress. She heard Xander’s words, I need you to go right now into the bathroom, ring in her head but she was too frightened to move. Somewhere inside her mind she was waiting for the director to yell, “Cut!”, but this wasn’t make-believe.
This was real.
Unfazed by the grazing bullet wound and knowing more shots were on the way, Xander kicked his legs out in front of him. Two more shots rang out and they would have landed if Xander hadn’t changed his level so quickly. Two bullets whizzed over his head, and as he was on his way to his ass hitting the floor, he fired two shots himself and both landed to the chest of the third and oncoming masked man. Xander’s hit the floor and he immediately rolled out of the view of the doorway toward the bed. He could tell by the weight of the enemy’s nine-millimeter pistol that it was a fifteen-round clip. Three shots had been fired so he knew he had twelve to go before he needed to get to one of his many precisely placed weapons he had stashed around his bedroom and the rest of the house. Xander had known this day would come and he had been preparing for it since the first day he moved in. His preparation, however, was always for his survival alone. He yelled to Natalie once again to get to the bathroom. This time she didn’t hesitate, but before he could even get the last word out, another man entered the room. Xander shot him in the head, but before death registered, the man squeezed the trigger on his fully-automatic AK-47 and as Natalie was racing for the bathroom, bullets went flying her way. They pierced the mattress first, then, as the dead man dropped to his back on the floor, sprayed in a line up the wall and through the ceiling.
Natalie hit the floor.
Xander checked the doorway.
Eleven bullets left.
The doorway was clear and he bolted over to Natalie and helped her to her feet. “Are you okay? Were you hit?”
“Xander! What the hell is happening? Who are these people? How do you know how to—”
He put his index finger to her lips, quieting her, as a faint humming sound reached their ears. She obliged, choking back sobs, and they stood in silence for a moment as the humming grew louder—closer. Out of nowhere a bright light shined through the two windows that overlooked the back of the house and two more masked men crashed through them as they swung from a helicopter’s rope into the bedroom. Xander had been standing in front of one of the windows and was knocked to the floor as the man crashed through. This also kicked the gun out of his hand and sent it flying to the far wall. As his back hit the floor and the glass fell like rain all around him, he used the momentum to go directly into a back summersault and slide to a crouched position. He leaped forward, tackling the man in front of him. Xander wrapped his arms around the man’s legs and drove forward while he simultaneously pulled the intruder’s pistol from its hip holster. As they both landed on the ground Xander rolled over from on top of the man and shot the pistol out of the outstretched hand of the second intruder just before the man squeezed the trigger and shot Natalie in the head. While Natalie was suspended in shock and the man who’d tried to shoot her recoiled his arm from the bullet hitting his gun, Xander brought the same elbow that held his gun straight back and drove it through the nose of the man he lay on top of. Blood spattered onto Xander as he shattered the man’s nose, and before the intruder that tried to shoot Natalie could recover Xander shot him right through the temple. Blood spurted through the air like a geyser and landed on Natalie’s face before she could turn away from the action. Xander spun into the man he was resting on and jammed the barrel of the gun into his mouth.
“Who are you!”
Xander removed the gun from the intruder’s mouth and ripped the black ski mask from his face. It revealed a Middle Eastern man. He had a large nose—now busted—a beige skin tone, and thick dark eyebrows and hair.
“Who sent you? Answer me!” he screamed as he pressed the gun into the frightened man’s forehead, just above his now obliterated nose.
A thumping crash from somewhere downstairs kept the man from answering.
“How many more are coming?” Xander asked him.
“Fuck you,” the man answered in a thick Middle Eastern accent.
Xander put the gun back in his mouth and blew his brains all over the wall behind him. Natal
ie squealed and took a step back in fear of Xander. He stood and turned toward Natalie, his body plastered in blood. Some his, some from the intruders, a look of madness in his eyes. It would be an image that Natalie—no matter how much time passed—would never forget.
“It’s gonna be okay. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. I promise,” he tried to comfort her. After a brief hesitation she stepped back in and put her arms around him. He could feel her shaking. He squeezed her and as he let her go he handed her the nine-millimeter. “Have you used a gun before?”
She hesitated, her face blank. “Y-yeah, I was trained to use a Glock on the set of Runaway. But they were just blanks.”
“Perfect, this will feel exactly the same. Stay behind me. I have no idea how many of them may be down there. You won’t need the gun unless we get separated. Just keep your cool and relax your hands when you squeeze the trigger.”
She nodded. Fear had stolen her ability for words. The sun was beginning to rise and the first signs of light illuminated the now glassless windows of the master bedroom. The helicopter had either left or landed and shut down its rotors. The bedroom looked like a war zone, littered with bodies, bullet holes, and tiny shards of window glass. The cool air filtered in through the broken windows and caused Natalie’s mostly naked body to shiver.
“All right, we gotta move. I can’t leave you here, they might come back through the window,” Xander told her.
She nodded her head with a terrified look on her face as she grabbed his arm with her free hand and extended the gun out in front of her with the other.
“Step around the glass, and…try not to shoot me.”
Blood continued to trickle from the grazing wound in his shoulder. He bent down and picked up the only fully loaded gun in the room. He stepped over the first body and found one of the few spots on the floor that wasn’t covered in broken glass. He pointed it out to Natalie and she followed him to the doorway. Xander stopped at the doorway and closed his eyes. Natalie watched as Xander focused on any clue as to where the others might be, and how many there were. There was a constant calculation running in the mind of a navy SEAL. Probabilities, position, exit strategies, you name it, it was being tallied. He heard a familiar creaking sound and knew someone was on the ninth step on their way upstairs. He counted and exactly 1.3 seconds later they made the eleventh step creak. This meant they would be stepping on the fifteenth and final step in exactly 2.6 seconds.
“Stay on my hip,” he whispered to Natalie as he placed her free hand there. He stepped out into the hallway and in a near sprint he moved forward toward the top of the stairs.
2.6 seconds.
He raised his gun head high and shot a man in the temple as he took his first step into the hallway. Xander took one step forward and shot another man in the middle of the stairs, then put two bullets in the chest of a man at the foot of the stairs, then two more in a man at the middle of the foyer.
Out of nowhere, Xander felt a pounding blow to his forearms and his gun toppled over the banister down to the hardwood floor some twenty feet below. Natalie fell backward into the hallway in fear, and Xander felt two massive hands wrap around his neck. One man had previously made it upstairs, but Xander had somehow missed him during the commotion in the bedroom.
That is, if you could call this a man.
He turned Xander toward him and with his neck being relentlessly squeezed, he saw what was at least a six-eight, 275-pound monster standing in front of him. Xander grabbed at his arms to free himself and what he felt seemed more like tree trunks. Bursts of pain shot through his neck as the man’s grip tightened around him like an anaconda. Air wasn’t coming to him now and he felt a sting of panic. This feeling was the very thing he needed to focus. Xander steadied his mind and let his body go limp, becoming dead weight. At first the man’s arms lowered as he took on Xander’s full weight. Much to the horror of Natalie, however, they then began to rise back up and dangled Xander’s 215-pound frame half a foot above the ground. His deep brown eyes held Xander’s struggling gaze. Natalie raised her gun but couldn’t get a clear shot. She was afraid she would hit Xander.
The man’s strength surprised Xander.
But he didn’t panic.
He brought his left knee up to his chest then kicked straight down on the massive man’s knee. The man buckled momentarily but then recovered, not dropping Xander.
Weakness.
Xander raised his knee back to his chest and from deep inside himself he conjured a little more strength and used it to drive his foot down through the man’s groin. The big man buckled again, momentarily dropping Xander, but he never let go. Instead, he lifted him right back up and walked him over to the banister. Natalie screamed and shot the gun, but missed. She went to shoot again but a man who had entered the upstairs through one of the open bedroom windows came up behind her and knocked the gun out of her hand. Xander, now with his ass sitting on the banister, about to be thrown over, saw this out of the corner of his eye and began punching down on the big man’s arms as hard as he could.
The other intruder grabbed Natalie by the hair and stood her up. Xander’s pounding on the man’s arms was useless. The man pushed him out a little more and almost all of Xander’s body dangled beyond the banister, hovering over the ground far below. Xander began to rock his hips wildly from left to right. Natalie now had a gun pressed against her head. Her body quivered in fear. Xander let out a grunt of frustration as he noticed her there, only in her underwear, trembling as she was held at gunpoint. With one more grunt, Xander into his Brazilian jujitsu black-belt skills and swung his left leg over the big man’s face. All in one fluid motion he trapped the man’s left arm in between his legs with the man’s elbow at his groin. Using that as a hinge, Xander used both arms to pull back the man’s arm at the wrist toward his own chest. Acting as a lever, he thrust his hips upward as he continued to pull the arm toward his chest. The big man was forced to fall to his back, and when he did Xander forced his hips upward again, breaking the man’s arm in half. The crack echoed in the hallway and out into the open foyer. The massive man shrieked in pain and the man holding Natalie began to scream and point his gun at Xander. Underneath Xander’s leg, which was pressed against the black leather jacket of the monstrous man, he could feel a pistol bulging into his calf. Xander let go of the man’s broken arm and put his hands in the air as if to surrender. The man below him writhed in pain, but he held him in place with his legs.
Xander looked into the eyes of the man holding Natalie. “Don’t shoot…Don’t shoot. You got me.”
Natalie let out a cry of fear as she thought now they would surely die. “Xander, help! Help me!”
The man put the gun back to Natalie’s head. For three inaudible sentences now, on every fifth word the gunman took his eye off Xander and looked at Natalie. Xander figured he was saying in Arabic that he was going to shoot the girl. As the gunman started the fourth sentence Xander dug his bare foot down inside the man’s leather jacket and hooked the trigger loop of the pistol with his long second toe, and clamped down with his big toe. When the gunman said the fifth word of the sentence, and on cue looked at Natalie, Xander used his foothold to flip the gun up out of the man’s jacket, back through the air into his hands, and he shot the gunman in the neck before he ever had a chance to look back at Xander. The gunman stood suspended for a moment, then collapsed straight to his back. Natalie dropped to her knees and started to sob hysterically.
The big man finally sat up from underneath Xander, and Xander turned the gun around in his hand and smashed it against the middle of the black ski mask he wore. There was a distinctive pop upon impact and Xander had shattered his second nose of the night. The man’s deep voice raised as he growled in pain. Natalie wasn’t sure if she sobbed more out of fear or more out of the shock of not knowing who this man in front of her was that she had been falling so hard for. How could he know how to fight like this? There must be some logical explanation that such a great guy could be mix
ed up in what seemed to be an all-out war.
Xander rose to his feet as the big man grasped at his nose with his one good arm and squirmed around in pain. Xander pressed his foot down on the exact spot where he broke the arm in half and pointed the gun down at the man’s head. The man screamed in agony as Xander pressed, and so too did Natalie just a few feet away at the top of the stairs.
“Who sent you? Tell me now or I will blow your brains out the back of your head.” Again, Xander was eerily calm.
The man didn’t answer. All he could manage were more moans of pain. A car door shut outside at the front of the house. Xander stomped the man in the head, knocking him unconscious, then wheeled around and held the gun directly at the already open front door. Natalie squealed at the thought of more men coming in to try to kill them, and she scooted back into the hallway. Her head went back and forth from the bedroom to the top of the stairway as she held the gun out in front of her.
“Xander!” a shout came from outside the house. “Xander! You okay?”
Kyle.
He shouted again from outside, then came running in. Xander lowered his gun.
“Kyle.” The name rolled out of Xander’s mouth in a breath of relief.
“Xander? What the hell? Are you okay?”
“Annie!” Natalie shouted. “Annie, are you there?”
Xander walked over to Natalie as he spoke to Kyle.
“Yeah, we’re okay. Hey, don’t let Annie see any of this, all right?”
“Yeah, no problem. She’s waiting in the car. Who the hell were these guys? Are they all dead?”
“Two are unconscious, nine are dead. Call Sam and let her know. She’ll know what to do.”
“Will do. You sure you don’t need anything? You’re bleeding.”
“I’m good, but can you bring Natalie’s bag up from the spare bedroom and a bottle of water?”
“Of course, be right back.”
Xander bent down to Natalie’s level, tucked her hair behind her ear, and wiped her tears. Her mascara had bled down the left side of her cheek, but aside from that, she looked no worse for the wear.
Whiskey & Roses (The Xander King Series Book 1) Page 12