by Sam Sisavath
Ambush!
Gaby dropped to a crouch and turned slightly toward the insurance building. When she’d looked a second earlier it had a glass door, and it still did. But while the door itself was there, the glass was sprinkled all over the sidewalk, leaving behind an empty frame—
A dark figure on the other side was pointing a rifle at her!
Gaby was just slipping her forefinger into the trigger guard when she realized it was too late. She was too slow, and although the man (He was a Mercerian. She knew that even though she couldn’t make out his face; there was no missing that almost-glowing white circled M in front of his chest.) had missed her with his first shot (Barely!), that was only because he had fired through glass and that impact had thrown the bullet’s trajectory off just enough. And now the man was going to finish what he started because there was no longer anything between his second bullet and her, and there was no way she was going to be able to shoot him first—
A burst of gunfire from her left as Becker fired, stitching what remained of the door with bullets until the jagged line finally reached the Mercerian within the frame and sent him scrambling for cover.
Becker stopped firing and shouted, “Go go go!”
Gaby got back up on her feet and raced forward, knowing it was the only direction to go. It didn’t matter if there were Mercerians on the other side, because they were in no man’s land and retreating would only expose them to more fire. Of course knowing and acting on it were two different things, and every instinct in her was shouting, The other way, you idiot! Run the other way, not toward the bad guys!
But she forced herself to go forward anyway, all the while watching the building next to the ice cream parlor—
The parlor’s front door opened, and figures flooded out. Three shadowy forms, each holding a rifle, and they were lifting their weapons when Gaby flicked the fire selector on her M4 to full auto, and even as the thought, I wonder what they were doing in there? Maybe looking for ice cream? flickered across her mind, she pulled the trigger.
Springer’s rifle bucked in her hands, and the bodies fell. She didn’t take her finger off the trigger until all three forms were on the sidewalk. One was slumped and unmoving, but two were still rolling around.
“Changing!” she shouted, even as she ejected the magazine and snapped in a replacement and worked the charging handle.
Becker was walking calmly up the street, shooting at the two men still moving on the sidewalk outside the ice cream parlor. Without missing a beat, he swung his rifle to the right and fired again, and Gaby looked over as the man who had dodged Becker’s shots earlier fell through the doorframe in the building next door.
He’s good, thank God, Gaby thought as she glanced back to check on Angie and Diane.
The two women were crouched in the street behind her, Angie with her gun while Diane had her hands folded over her head.
“Come on!” Gaby shouted and started running. She assumed the two women had heard and were behind her, but she didn’t look back to make sure.
The sidewalk on the other side came rushing up and Gaby was stepping up onto the edge when something flashed in the corner of her right eye. It came from somewhere down the street and was moving in an almost jagged line through the air.
Her mind registered what she was seeing (A rocket. That’s a goddamn rocket!) a split second before it struck the ice cream parlor in front and slightly to the right of her, and Gaby’s world was reduced to soot and smoke and pulverized brick and mortar and glass.
Six
She remembered Becker looking back at her and saying rockets when they’d heard the explosions earlier.
Angie had responded with, “Ours or theirs?”
At the time, Gaby had thought there was a good chance Black Tiders were launching the rockets. After all, they had carried LAWs with them to Darby Bay. It was half and half, really, because Gaby knew from firsthand experience that Buck’s people had shoulder-mounted launchers at their disposal as well. She’d seen them shoot down a helicopter with one not too long ago.
She didn’t know for sure what the person who had just sent a rocket in her direction had been using, because all she’d seen was the flash of the rocket out the corner of one eye. Not that it really mattered what weapon had sent the missile, just that it had nearly taken her head off and gotten the ice cream parlor in front of her instead.
The constant eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee noise was back, ringing in her eardrums as she attempted to push herself up from the cold street pavement.
Wait. Why am I on the street? Wasn’t I already on the sidewalk?
It was the concussive force of the missile’s impact. It must have thrown her backward and into the road. That was the only explanation. Not that the reasons why she wasn’t where she was supposed to be did anything to help her get rid of the irritating buzz in her ears.
For some reason, breathing had become very difficult. Of course, the smoke and soot and layers of pulverized concrete draped over her body and head might have contributed to that. Her chest heaved, her heartbeat sledgehammering out of control, and she simultaneously struggled against the eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee and tried to get up, get up, because if she didn’t, she was going to die.
The rifle—Springer’s M4—was nowhere to be found. It could have been lost among the large chunks of the wall around her that had come undone from the missile impact. Her palms scraped against jagged pieces of brick and glass as she finally—finally!—managed to fight her way onto her knees.
She was coughing—or she thought she was, anyway. She couldn’t be sure. The eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee was too much, making it impossible to hear anything happening outside her pounding skull. She might have been bleeding, but her sense of feel had gone haywire. When she held up her left hand, there was a piece of glass sticking out of the palm. She absently pulled it out and didn’t feel any pain as a small amount of blood spurted through the pinprick hole. She wiped the wound on her white pants.
Wait. Why were her pants white?
No, not white, but a grayish tint. It was easy to tell with so much light around them. Not just the artificial LEDs along the lampposts but also the way-too-generous moonlight.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
There was smoke around her, cascading from the sky. They looked very much like tangible sheets of rain that she could reach out and grab a hold of. She tried exactly that, but the rain turned to powder as soon as it touched her skin, and she—
Something—no, someone—was dragging her up from the pavement.
Who?
A rifle appeared to her right, the muzzle flashing wildly even as the barrel moved up and down with every shot.
Someone’s not exercising proper rifle-firing technique! Gaby thought amusingly. I wonder who taught him how to shoot?
There was a hand hooked around her armpit. Becker. He was behind her, and having lifted her up from the ground, was dragging her backward with one hand while his right held onto his M4 as it spat fire to cover their retreat. Becker was a big man, and she wasn’t all that surprised he could drag her with one hand while shooting with the other.
Becker’s rifle was so close to her ear that she should have heard every shot like thunderclaps. Or hell, she should have been deaf from the close proximity by now, except she only saw the muzzle flashes and heard the familiar eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee echoing between her eardrums.
I guess I should be grateful for the noise this time!
Gaby wasn’t sure what he was shooting at, because she couldn’t see much of anything except clouds of falling gray concrete in front of her. But Becker apparently could see better, because he was swinging his rifle left and right even as he dragged her backward.
Dragging me like I’m some helpless woman. Well, this is embarrassing.
She tried to help him out by fighting to get her boots underneath her. For some reason, the ground kept moving and when she looked down, discovered why. There was a generous layer of brick and mortar and glass down there, and they wer
e refusing to stay still so she could find purchase.
Hold on. Hold on…
Now!
Gaby gritted her teeth and slammed the heels of her boots down while simultaneously pushing herself up and out of Becker’s grasp. He tried to grab her but she struggled free until she was on her feet—at least for a second.
She lost her balance and fell back down, but managed to lower one knee first to stop her fall. With a grunt (or, at least, she assumed she had let out a grunt, because all she could really hear was that goddamn eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee bouncing around her skull), she sprang back up to her feet—
And was about to fall sideways when a hand grabbed her right arm in a viselike grip and kept her upright. She didn’t fight it, because who else would be back there but Becker? She let him guide her backward—one step, two, three—before spinning around.
Becker instantly understood that she had regained control and released her. He used his suddenly free hand to reach for a magazine in one of his pouches. He was pulling back the charging handle when he shouted at her, but all she could see was his mouth moving and could not hear a single word.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
Unlike last time, when they’d almost died from the grenade ambush, the noise screeching its way round and round inside her head wasn’t going anywhere or dying down anytime soon. She guessed a rocket impact had more juice than a grenade.
Good to know, good to know.
When it became clear to him that she couldn’t hear anything he was saying, Becker shoved her in the shoulder, directing her where he wanted her to go.
North. Or was that east? West?
Or south, maybe?
She had lost all sense of direction. Instead of fighting Becker’s shoves, Gaby stabbed down to her hip and found the Glock she’d recovered from one of the dead Mercerians and drew it. Thank God it was still there. Thank God her holster had a Velcro strap that went over the gun’s handle to secure it. Thank God—
Becker was moving next to her while shooting down the street at the same time. She wondered what he was shooting at. She still couldn’t see anything—
Oh.
The smoke was starting to thin out, enough that she could glimpse dark figures moving around farther down the street. Two of them were using the destroyed Jeep she had spotted earlier as cover while more were across the road hiding behind the mouth of an alley about a hundred (Closer?) meters from their position.
And they were shooting back at them, if the flashes she was seeing were any indication. But what were they shooting at? Because she couldn’t—
Oh.
Something—multiple somethings, actually—were kicking at the pavement in front of her, destroying chunks of brick that had come loose from the ice cream parlor. And though she couldn’t see or hear them, she could feel bullets zipping! past her head, their heat signatures there and gone a split second later.
Becker was returning fire, but he was stuck having to deal with two sets of shooters—the ones at the Jeep and the group hiding in the alley. She could see sparks flicking off the parked vehicle, then small mists coming loose from the alley wall when Becker turned his fire in that direction.
Damn, he’s good. Thank God he’s good.
Gaby lifted the Glock and started shooting at the Jeep. She didn’t think she was going to hit anything from this distance—especially not with a handgun—but there wasn’t much else she could do. Becker began focusing his fire on the Mercerians in the alley. Or, at least, she assumed they were Mercerians. She couldn’t see them well enough, never mind anything that looked like gas masks or circled M’s on their vests. Or if they were even wearing vests at all.
But they were shooting at her and Becker, and that was all the evidence she needed to confirm them as hostiles.
So shoot at the hostiles!
Gaby didn’t know how many times she pulled the trigger on the Glock, but soon the gun stopped bucking in her hands.
Already?
She ejected the magazine and reached into her pocket for the spare and snapped it in. She wasn’t done reloading when one of the attackers at the Jeep broke out from cover and raced up the sidewalk toward them, firing as he ran. But she had learned long ago that shooting and running didn’t mix—at least if you wanted to hit what you were aiming at.
Gaby stood her ground and was glad for the—
Pek-pek-pek! coming from her left as the attacker’s rounds hit the side of the restaurant—or what was left of the Denny’s. Most of it was gone, blown away by the same rocket that had taken out the parlor earlier—
Wait. She had heard that. The sounds of bullets hitting the wall.
She could hear again!
Along with that realization came the pop-pop-pop of Becker’s rifle firing to her right and those of the Mercerians down the street returning fire. Most of all, she focused on the sounds of the lone Mercerian running toward her, shooting as he neared. In the background, Gaby saw the second attacker also abandoning the Jeep to join his comrade’s charge.
Gaby took aim and fired back, but if the running Mercerian was missing with every shot, hers didn’t even come close to hitting him. It didn’t help that she was having trouble focusing, and Gaby swore she was bleeding from somewhere because she felt lightheaded. The dizziness had always been there, but she was only noticing it now because there wasn’t a buzzing noise bouncing its way through her brain anymore.
I’m bleeding. I’m—
Later. Worry about that later!
The Mercerian was still coming, charging up the sidewalk like a maniac. Gaby found the sight of the man’s muzzle flashes almost hypnotic as his bullets zipped! past her head, others striking the wall to her left. She had stepped back up onto the sidewalk without realizing it, loose brick and mortar under her boots making her footing precarious. Now that the attacker was closer—Thirty meters? Twenty?—she saw that he wasn’t wearing his gas mask; instead, it was bouncing behind him as he rushed forward.
Gaby took careful aim, but the iron sights of her weapon were moving around too much. Why was it moving so damn—
The Mercerian suddenly flipped forward as if he’d run into some invisible wire that snagged his legs. He landed face-first on the pavement while his rifle clattered away from his outstretched arms. He wasn’t dead and was still moving, but Gaby quickly forgot about him and focused on the second Mercerian.
The man had stopped running when he saw his partner go down, and Gaby thought she could almost make out his suddenly confused face. Like the first one, this Mercerian had his mask swinging behind him, and he was starting to turn around to retreat when something struck him from behind and he collapsed to the sidewalk. Unlike the first one, who was still moving, the second Mercerian lay perfectly still underneath the moonlight.
What the hell just happened?
The first Mercerian had picked himself up and was now on his knees, and was fumbling with his sidearm to get it out of its holster. There was blood on his face as he stared up the sidewalk at Gaby—
Pop-pop! from her right as Becker fired and the wounded man keeled over backward and froze in place.
“Come on!” Becker shouted.
He grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the Denny’s. She allowed Becker to drag her up the sidewalk even as the remains of the restaurant came apart alongside them as the Mercerians down the street began concentrating their fire. Becker seemed to know where he was going, which was more than she could say for herself. She was still having a difficult time figuring out north from south, east from west—
They reached the mouth of a nearby alley and all but lunged sideways into the darkness within. Becker let her go, and Gaby scrambled to find a wall— There! She grabbed it with one hand and pressed her back against the jagged bricks.
Becker was bent over at the waist in front of her, his breath coming out of him in waves. Sweat poured down his face and took away some of the thin layer of gray soot and dust that had fallen over him while they were in the streets. S
he wondered if her own face looked equally ghostlike.
“Angie,” Gaby said, the name coming through her cracked lips as almost a desperate gasp. “What happened to Angie?”
Becker looked up and shook his head.
“Did you see it?” she asked.
He nodded. “She’s gone. The Darby woman, too.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you sure, Becker?”
He straightened up but didn’t answer right away. He also didn’t turn away or try to avoid her glare.
“Becker...” she pressed.
“Yeah,” he finally said. “I’m sure. I saw them both go down.”
“Did you make sure they were dead?”
“I didn’t have time. I had to make a choice.”
She stared back at him, trying to understand what he meant by not having time and having to make a choice.
The answer came easily and quickly:
Me. He means me.
“They’re gone,” Becker said. “They’re gone…”
He glanced back toward the alley, but there was still too much smoke to see very much beyond a few feet onto the sidewalk. There was still the pop-pop-pop of gunfire in the air, but they were coming from different parts of the city. More souls like them, dodging Mercerian gunfire…
Becker rushed back to the corner and leaned out before turning and walking back to her a few seconds later. “They’re not coming.”
“Why not?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe they’re not as stupid as they look.” Then, looking at her, “You’re bleeding.”
“What?”
“You’re bleeding.”
She reached up and grimaced when her fingers touched the gash along the side of her head. She couldn’t tell how big the wound was, but Becker was right: she was bleeding.
“Bad?” she asked.
“Not too bad,” Becker said.
He took out a small packet from a first-aid kit and slathered ointment over the cut before putting an adhesive bandage over it. She gritted her teeth at the sting but didn’t make a sound. After what had happened to Angie and Diane and Goldman, she didn’t think she had any right to whimper about a little bleeding.