by Sam Sisavath
Great. There goes my one advantage.
Keo stuck the submachine gun over the railing, exposing just his hands, and squeezed the trigger. He moved the MP5SD side to side, then front and back to send as many rounds down and in as many directions as possible. He fully expected to have wasted an entire magazine, but it wasn’t about hitting a target (though that would have been a bonus), and instead about letting them know that he had the potential to.
The pfft-pfft-pfft! of his gunshots were overwhelmed by the whirring of the submachine’s metal parts and the clink-clink-clink! of empty brass casings pelting the landing around his boots. Some bounced and disappeared below, but whatever sounds they made down there were lost in the echoing ping-ping! of his rounds slamming into the confined space.
He jerked back when they responded, a couple of bullets ping-pinging! off the grease-smeared metal railing in front of him. Sparks lit up the stairwell for a split second before dying off.
Then, as the last ping! faded into nothingness, there was just the sound of Keo’s breathing…and silence from below him.
Mission accomplished, because although he might have just wasted half an entire magazine, he had stopped them in their tracks.
At least for now.
Keo took a couple of steps back toward the wall and reloaded, pocketing the empty magazine in his back pocket. You never knew when you’d need an empty spare. The good thing about the German gun was that it could be easily loaded with 9mm rounds, which were plentiful these days if you knew where to look, like that pawn shop in some no-name town Keo had passed yesterday morning. The fresh thirty rounds and the box of ammo in the pack were from that abandoned store.
He slowed down his breathing and moved slightly to his left so he could keep the rooftop access door above within sight at all times. Not that he expected anyone to be coming down from that end. He had checked, and there were no ladders or catwalks to reach the rooftop from outside, but you could never be too sure—especially when your life was on the line.
Just in case…
That was, unfortunately, another good news and bad news situation. Unless one of his attackers could scale walls, they weren’t going to be flanking him from the rooftop. But it also meant he had no way down from up there, either. Too bad he hadn’t learned to fly in the thirty-plus years he’d been alive. Or grown wings.
Still, it was an option, and Keo liked having options even if they were very poor ones. Like two nights ago, when he had left Gaby and the others at Axton. It still nagged at him that he didn’t know if they had made it back to Black Tide.
God, I hope it worked. I hope you’re still out there, Gaby. I hope you’re back on Black Tide Island. I hope you’re with Lara right now.
Gaby. Lara. They were always on his mind, each one for different reasons.
But especially Lara…
“What should I tell Lara?” Gaby had asked him after that firefight at the barn. “She’ll ask.”
“Tell her I said hey,” he had answered. It was a dumb thing to say, but then he always was a little tongue-tied when it came to her.
“It would be better if you did it in person.”
“Maybe one day.”
Maybe one day, he thought again now as he listened to the slightly labored breathing coming from below him.
Glad to see I’m not the only one, Keo thought even as he continued to get control of his increased heartbeat. Jesus. What was he, new at this? He’d been in firefights before. Probably too many to get all aflutter with this one.
Oh, to be a virgin again.
The people below him had stopped moving entirely and were now somewhere between the second and third floor. Maybe they had even managed to reach the third before he halted their progress.
Bottom line: He needed information. There was a very good quote about some guy named Sun-something that had to do with knowing your enemy. How did it go again?
“Know your enemy and…blah blah blah.”
Close enough.
“Hey there,” Keo said. He didn’t have to shout to be heard, not inside the stairwell.
He waited for a response, but there wasn’t one.
“I hope you guys didn’t leave too much of a mess in the lobby,” Keo continued. “Last time I checked, the janitors took off, so it’s going to be on you chaps to clean up after yourselves.”
He waited again, but there was still no response from below him.
“What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?”
Someone coughed. It was muted, like they were doing it from behind a cupped palm.
“I heard that,” Keo said. “Hope you boys aren’t allergic to bullets, ’cause I got plenty where those last thirty came from—”
He hadn’t finished the word from when he heard it—the slight tap-tap of footsteps. They were very faint, and he had almost missed them with his own voice filling up the stairwell at the same time.
He took a quick, light step forward and peeked over the railing just in time to spot a black-clad figure moving gradually up the stairs somewhere on the third floor. The man was wearing a black assault vest—
Fuck me.
The sight of the now-familiar circled M in almost the very center of the man’s chest answered all the questions Keo had been asking himself since Axton, since he realized he was being stalked in the daytime.
Better yet, fuck you, Buck.
The man froze when Keo saw him and began lifting his rifle when Keo shot him in the chest, using the M as a target. The man staggered into the wall but didn’t go down. Keo was about to shoot him again when a hand appeared and grabbed the figure by the arm and jerked him out of Keo’s line of sight.
Pfft-pfft-pfft! as three rounds sailed over Keo’s head and loosened more chunks of the concrete in the ceiling above him.
Keo pulled back and listened to someone hyperventilating, followed by someone else whispering, but the voice was too low for Keo to catch the words.
“Oops, that didn’t work!” Keo said, and injected a chuckle for effect.
His pursuers stayed mum.
Keo said anyway, “Your moms ever tell you it’s rude to ignore someone when they’re talking to you? Because it is, you know. Really, really rude.”
Nothing. Even the guy who had been hyperventilating earlier had stopped. Did that mean he was dead? Only if he wasn’t wearing Kevlar underneath his vest, and the way the man had moved after being shot, he likely was.
Suppressed weapons and body armor? Cheating bastards.
But Keo had definitely caught the circled M on the front of the man’s chest, which confirmed they were from Fenton. He’d always assumed that was the case, so finding out he’d been right all along didn’t quite come with the satisfaction he was expecting.
Still, now he knew with absolute certainty that they had been chasing him since that night in Axton. Maybe they had even been there at the same time as the ghouls. It would certainly fit the pattern.
“Fenton and the blue-eyed ghoul,” he had said to Gaby. “They were at all three places at about the same time. Four, now, counting Axton. That’s a hell of a coincidence, don’t you think?”
Something’s going on in Fenton. Something rotten.
“I saw that, you know,” Keo said. “The circled M. You boys from Fenton, huh? Did Buck send you?”
The same irritating silence from below.
“My old pal Buckaroo?”
Nothing.
“Yooohooo.”
A pair of boots shuffled slightly, then went silent.
“Okay, I’m starting to feel insulted here. I’m Keo, by the way, but you boys probably already know that.”
A sharp, metallic click! that could have been anything.
“Buckies. Buckers. Buckets of mud. Nothing?”
Nothing.
Disciplined bunch of assholes, Keo thought with a smirk. He wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or annoyed with them.
He slid down to the surprisingly cold stair landing and crawled forward,
toward the railing. He didn’t peer down—chances were good they were waiting for him to do exactly that to take another shot at him—but he was hoping that being lower to the floor would allow him to hear what they were saying—if anything—better. He was wrong, because however many of them were below him, they were being incredibly quiet.
He glanced back at the door into the fifth floor. Horse was still in there waiting for him. The thoroughbred was probably getting a little antsy by now. The animal had some incredible survival instincts, but even it would know that the only way out of the building was through that door behind Keo.
He looked back and wished he had a grenade. Just one. A perfectly tossed frag could clear out the stairwell in one fell swoop.
While you’re at it, why not wish for a bazooka?
He sighed and was about to get back up when there was a bang! from somewhere outside. It hadn’t come from in front of the lobby like last time, but much farther down the street. But it was so quiet out there and in the stairwell that Keo could hear it just fine. And so could the men below him, if the sudden shuffling of (anxious?) boots were any evidence.
Bang-bang-bang!
Three more shots from a handgun, just as loud as the first one.
Keo pushed up to his knees but remained in a slight crouch next to the railing, the MP5SD in front of him, and listened as a male voice said, “James, come in. James.”
One second.
James? Who you be, James?
Five seconds…
“James,” the same voice said again. “Come in.”
Looks like James’s gone MIA, boys, Keo thought when footsteps echoed and he prepared himself for an assault, but quickly realized that instead of coming toward him, the boots were headed away.
Back down.
But Keo didn’t let down his guard and remained poised, ready to shoot anything that popped up on the steps in front of him. The heavy footsteps continued, getting farther and farther away, until a door creaked open then slammed shut a few seconds later.
It’s a trick. It’s gotta be a trick.
But if it were a trick, his pursuers were doing yeomen’s work to sell it because there wasn’t a single sound—or a peep of any kind—from below him for the next ten, twenty, then a full thirty seconds.
It’s a trick. Don’t fall for it.
He remained where he was, with the only sounds reaching his ears coming from inside his chest. His breathing was slow and measured, but he could still hear every heartbeat because it was so deathly quiet inside the stairwell.
He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, waiting for something—anything—to happen. But if the Buckies were somewhere on the floors below him, they were being even more quiet now than they had been before. Impossibly quiet for human beings that had to breathe.
A minute passed.
Two…
Five? Had it been five minutes already?
He sighed and thought, Oh, to hell with it.
Keo got up, turned, and pushed the door open and slipped back into the fifth floor.
Horse was there to greet him, letting out a loud whinny that might have either been a “Welcome back” or possibly a “Where the hell have you been? You nearly gave me a heart attack!”
Keo shoved the heavy oak desk back in front of the stairwell door, then grabbed the two computer monitors from the floor and stacked them on top of it, when the sudden rattle of automatic rifle fire—pop-pop-pop!—broke through the morning calm.
He glanced across the floor and thought, And the fun just keeps coming!
“Stay here,” Keo said to Horse before hurrying toward the windows, keeping the solid wall in front of him, with the perforated glass curtain walls to his left at all times just in case Mr. Smiley Face was still out there waiting for him to show himself again.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…
He didn’t know why he bothered telling the thoroughbred to stay put. The animal had outlived The Purge and everything that came along with it, and it wasn’t nearly dumb enough to stroll into the line of fire if it didn’t have to.
Definitely smarter than some people I know…
He slid up against the wall and inched his way toward the closest window, even as the gunfire continued unabated outside. Automatic rifle fire, so different from the singular gunshots he’d heard earlier. Someone—or someones, more than likely—was really pouring it on. The question was, at whom? And why?
He counted down to five, and thought with every number, The sniper’s going to take your head off as soon as you expose yourself, you know that, right?
You only live once! he thought when he got to five and stuck his head out into the open and looked out.
Whoa.
There was a figure wearing black clothing hanging from one of the sidewalk lampposts about fifty meters down the street. The dead man hadn’t been there the last time Keo looked, but it was unmissable now.
Pop-pop-pop!
More gunfire, and this time Keo was able to track the muzzle flashes to people hiding behind the windows of buildings on both sides of the streets. They were shooting in his direction, but not at him. The shooters were concentrating their fire on the lobby of the building underneath him. Keo could make out chunks of brick and glass breaking off as someone (Buckies) returned fire on the attackers’ positions, but of course Buck’s people were using suppressed weapons and he couldn’t hear a thing.
It was a full-blown firefight, and not a single soul was shooting at him.
“Daebak,” Keo said, and grinned.
Four
What was that other old saying he was also very fond of?
“The guys trying to shoot the guys trying to shoot me is all right in my book.”
That probably wasn’t it, but Keo wasn’t going to quibble with semantics, especially now that Buck’s men had something else on their mind other than rushing him. For all he knew, the Buckies might have even taken casualties after running back into the lobby to find out what had happened to “James,” who may or may not also be Mr. Smiley Face.
The figure hanging off the lamppost was clad in black from head to toe, but Keo couldn’t make out if he had a circled M somewhere on his person. Of course, he could have remedied that by making a dash for the binoculars on the floor where he had left them, but it was a good twenty feet away and out in the open.
Keo didn’t go for the glasses. He was in a prime spot to watch what was happening without drawing attention to himself. Once he lost that, who knew if the people shooting at the Buckies would also set their sights on him. Keo had met too many people since The Purge to blindly accept that these new ones were potential friendlies.
Where did they come from? Why are they attacking?
Who cares? The better question is, how am I going to get out of here without getting shot?
He remained where he was, safely behind cover, and watched as two men appeared out from an alley about five buildings down and charged up the sidewalk. They were both wearing civilian clothes—one in jeans, the other in cargo pants—and had what looked like balaclavas over their faces. They were clutching weapons—one had an AR and the other a shotgun—and had gotten a pretty good jump before the Buckies below Keo noticed them, too.
Keo never heard the gunshots from the lobby, but he didn’t have to. All he had to do was watch the two figures racing toward his position when they both suddenly fell, slamming down to the pavement as if they had run right into an invisible wall. One remained still on the sidewalk, but the one holding the shotgun attempted to get back up when a pinkish cloud appeared around his head and he slumped back down, and stayed there this time.
Nice shot. Really nice shot.
Of course, it probably helped the shooter (or shooters) that the two (dead) idiots hadn’t bothered to island hop between cover and had chosen instead to run right at the building. That was their first and biggest mistake. Their second was getting killed.
I hate it when that happens.
As s
oon as the two men fell, their comrades unleashed a torrent of gunfire up the street. A few stray rounds pek-pek! off the wall underneath Keo’s floor, but most went to where they were aimed: the lobby. The sounds of glass falling and the pek-pek-pek! of bullets digging holes into the office building’s front structure went on for a good thirty seconds.
Keo took the opportunity to get a better look at the shooters.
About a half dozen of them had wisely chosen the second or third floor windows of the buildings flanking the streets, while others had climbed onto rooftops. He saw them peeking their heads above the edges now, squeezing off a burst, then ducking back down. Another dozen or so remained on street level, leaning out from alleys or behind parked cars to fire off a quick round or two (or a dozen). There could have been more—and probably were—that he couldn’t see from his angle.
One thing was for sure: the newcomers clearly outnumbered the Buckies. Or at least, the six that he had seen this morning. Or five, if James was the dead man hanging off the lamppost down the street.
Is that good or bad for me?
I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
Of the attackers, Keo could see more than just their heads; he glimpsed more cargo and denim pants, long-sleeve shirts, sweaters, and jackets. More than a few sported balaclavas, and some wore backpacks weighed down with supplies. He thought about moving to a new spot to get an even better look but decided this was good enough. And right now “good enough” was where no one could see him.
It’s always better when the guys with guns can’t see you.
The attacking force looked somewhat coordinated, and there were hints that whoever was calling the shots knew what they were doing. Or, at least, they knew something about attacking a fixed position using interlocking fire—that is, a crossfire pattern. They were shooting from both sides of the streets, firing bursts toward the lobby while people attempted to slowly make their way up the road toward their ultimate objective.