by MacCraw
About 10 seconds later, the remaining bandit guards returned to their posts, but almost instantly noticed that they were missing a man.
“Shit! Where’s Thomas?!” one of the anxious sentries shouted.
Up on the roof, Pack and Poet patiently watched the panicked bandits. Even though the guards’ guards were up, Poet knew how to hit their pressure points, and make precise shots; not just on their bodies with her gun, but on their minds. She took aim with her suppressed handgun, and fired a pair of shots that nailed one of the frenzied bandits. The sudden death of yet another comrade horrified the bandits even more, and with only two left, they were sitting ducks. Connor ran out of the darkness with his club, causing one of the guards to panic and unload his MP5 on his equally-frightened companion. With his original target dead in a case of friendly fire, Connor went in for the kill, and clubbed the last remaining guard to death.
“Area secure”, Kylie reported.
“No shit, idiot”, Hannah grunted, rudely pushing through Kylie as she walked up to the door.
“Can you pick the lock?” Kirkley asked.
“Yes.”
“Can you be kind to Kylie?”
“No.”
Hannah picked the lock of the door, and the misty orange lighting of the eclipse poured into the pitch-black interior of the gun shop, which resembled a ghost town from classic American Western films.
“This place gives me the shivers”, Connor remarked.
“No foolin’.”
“Flashlights on”, ordered Kirkley.
Several lights flicked on, and beams of white light shone through the vacant store. The shop was loaded up with enough weapons and ammo to survive the apocalypse; that was for sure. Wide assortments of automatic firearms were present on the racks, and in the display cases were handguns and boxes of bullets and magazines.
“By Su’s spirit…” Logan gasped.
“’Ey, Kylie, get Pack and Poet down here so we can get some fresh mags and dog tags”, said Kirkley.
In about a minute, the two rooftop sentries were down inside the gun store, and were replenishing their ammo supply alongside the others. Some had even switched weapons.
“Pass down some of those MP5 mags”, said Pack.
“What about that rifle of yours?” Kirkley asked as Pack slammed a fresh magazine into his newly-acquired MP5.
“This is becoming more of a close-ranged conflict”, Pack explained as he relieved himself of the empty magazines for his old weapon. “The clips for these weapons hold more shots, they weigh less, and they’re more compact. Why don’t you drop that clunky SPAS-15?”
“It’s the last thing I have of Samantha”, Kirkley sighed. “She carried this weapon with her, and I’m going to give it back to her.”
“Forget about her”, Hannah commented, still remembering how Kirkley’s lover had transformed into a ferocious, primal beast that had sabotaged everything that they had done in their attempt to survive the wolf apocalypse.
“…What did you say?”
“She’s gone, Kirkley, and you know it.”
“Says who?” Kirkley responded in an angry tone, provocatively getting up in Hannah’s face.
“Says me”, Hannah hissed.
“I lost somebody very important to me”, he growled, shoving Hannah. “At the very least, you could at least pretend to give a shit.”
“I can’t pretend to give a shit about somebody I didn’t give a shit about”, Hannah remarked.
“You lost somebody you loved, too; let me remind you.”
Hannah snarled in frustration. “You little cunt!”
“Let it all out”, Kirkley sighed.
Almost immediately, Hannah burst into tears. Losing all physical and emotional strength, she released her rifle, which dropped to the ground with a loud, echoing bang. Shortly after, Hannah fell to her knees, and stared at the tiled floor, which slowly began to form into a lake of plummeting tears.
“All of those… those times where I threatened him”, Hannah sobbed, “And he died thinking I hated him…”
Everybody had looks of serious remorse and hurt on their faces, and as soon as Kirkley hugged Hannah to try and comfort her, she began bawling.
“We’re going to get those fuckers”, Kirkley snarled, clenching his fist. “Every single last fucking one of them.”
…
The next hour was spent in near-silence, as Hannah cried off all of her pain. Everybody sat up against the wall with their weapon between their legs, just pondering what other casualties would occur during this indeterminable time of suffering, pain and loss.
“…Does anybody want to reflect on what they loved about Riley?” Kirkley reluctantly asked. “To get it off of their chests, and out of their system?”
“Yeah”, Pack sighed. “That kid was never in a bad mood, and he never harbored feelings of hatred or resentment.”
“No argument there”, said Kirkley. “Logan?”
“He was one funny little fucker”, Logan smiled. “I mean, even in the face of danger, even on death’s doorstep, he made me smile and raised my morale. Remember how he was sitting upstairs, and he said, ‘When things hit the fan, I’m diving out the window’? Professional comedy, right there. I was focused on shooting those furry fuckers, but I was laughing. How cowardly and comically he acted sometimes just made this apocalypse kind of fun to be in.”
“Poet, what about-“
The wheels of several vehicles were heard, and they sounded very close. There was absolutely no way they could be a coincidental arrival; no way, no how.
“No…” Kirkley moaned.
“I knew it!” Hannah raged, pressing the barrel of her gun to Kylie’s forehead, “She’s a traitor! None of us are going to make it out of here alive.”
“Get down!” Kirkley shouted, as gunfire tore apart the windows of the store. Everybody dove to prone as the gunshots suppressed them and forbade them to stand up. The bullets and buckshot pellets flew at them in a vicious cyclone, but it abruptly stopped. After recovering from their initial shock, Kirkley and his allies slowly grabbed their rifles and prepared to return fire with a determined counterattack, but the enemies began firing again. Except the bullets were not flying towards them.
Men screaming and wolf men snarling prompted Kirkley to peer over the cover, and he was transfixed with the skirmish taking place out front of the gun store.
The wolf pack was attacking the bandits, who, despite being in a large force, were getting torn to shreds. Though the bandits were heavily armed, and dumping ammo into the incredibly durable dog soldiers, the wolves were persistent and enduring, and relentlessly charged towards their prey, going in for the kill.
“We’ve got to get out of here, or we’re next!” Kirkley urged. “Logan, search for a way out back! The rest of us will keep firing!”
Hannah had her teeth clenched and her eyes locked in a ferocious glare as she sent pulsing bursts of buzzing and ringing bullets into her foes, but when she saw the only thing worse than the wolves, shooting at the wolves with a pair of handguns, she snapped. Hannah slung her L85 and rushed out the front door towards Gordon, with tears of hurt and rage streaming down her cheeks as she roared at him.
As his men dwindled down at an alarming pace, Gordon decided to make a run for it, more concerned about saving his own skin than those of his men. He didn’t realize that Hannah was in smoldering, rage-filled pursuit of him, however; as soon as he made the turn into a nearby alley, Hannah pounced on him, like a superhero tackling a villain. Gordon attempted to shoot her with one of his pistols, but the bullet only grazed her shoulder, and before he could fire off a follow-up shot, she had pinned him to the ground and knocked his guns out of his hands. Gordon attempted to lean over to his left and retrieve one of his guns, but Hannah rolled over and placed all of her weight on his arm. With his right hand, he threw an angry punch, striking Hannah in the chest, causing her to moan in agony. Hannah kneed him in the groin, and as he recoiled in pain, she sna
tched the sidearm and rapidly spammed the trigger, firing a swift volley of 9mm bullets into Gordon’s stomach. Once she emptied her magazine, she pistol-whipped Gordon with the rather-blunt handgun, bruising and cutting him. The ball was in her court as she continued to aggressively dominate him, jabbing him with her elbow as he spat up a spray of blood. In her barbaric finishing move, Hannah picked up a concrete brick and ferociously slammed it into his face, screaming and snarling savagely as she did so. After the brutal bludgeoning, Gordon lay lifeless, and Hannah’s thirst for vengeance had been seemingly quenched.
Looking to her rear, Hannah spotted a trio of dog soldiers standing at the end of the alley between her and the gun store. Although it went two ways, and she wasn’t backed into a corner, she might as well have been. The dog soldiers outnumbered her, and severely overpowered her. Hannah was mortified to the point where she couldn’t pull up her rifle, so she was stuck with the handgun that Gordon dropped.
The leading dog soldier approached her, and Hannah began firing at him with the other pistol, which happened to be the same Browning Hi-Power that Gordon had used to execute his own man with several hours before. Of course, the bullets couldn’t kill the damned thing no more than they could make her fly. After loud, banging gunshots, the slide of the pistol flew and locked backwards, and no more shots fired.
“Fuck!” Hannah snarled, throwing her empty firearm at the menacing brown wolf soldier, who merely batted it out of its way as it took more steps towards its prey.
Before the beast could go in for the kill, Connor leapt down from above, his club raised high above his head, and tackled the wolf. Hannah fell back as Connor battled the dog soldier. The beast hissed as it threw light swings towards the agile man, who swiftly ducked and evaded his attacker’s strikes. Connor delivered his blows in a swift and blunt manner, striking the intimidating brute in the face and chest. Each smack with the club caused fractures and flesh wounds, and Connor dished them out in rapid succession, causing tremendous damage to his opponent.
“Get down!” Kirkley shouted from the opposite end of the alleyway. Connor leapt down to the ground, as Kirkley and the team unleashed a hellish storm of bullets downrange. Blood sprayed off of the muscular, hairy chest of the wolf that Connor had been attacking, and the dog soldier couldn’t muster the strength to push forward, for its stamina was being rapidly depleted with every shot that connected.
“We gotta bounce!” screamed Hannah. “Shit hit the fan, we’ve gotta dive out some window!”
“Down the alley! Go!”
Everybody ran in full retreat as Kirkley’s SPAS-15 pounded, thumped and clanked, and Pack’s MP5 buzzed and pulsed loudly; both noisy weapons providing an effective combination of suppressing fire. Despite the low caliber rounds that the fast-striking submachine gun fired, they still had an extremely high velocity of 800 rounds per minute, and painfully stung the wolves that they hit. The buckshot pellets were like grains of salt in the wounds that the 9mm bullets produced, and this potent combination of ammunition types shielded the humans from their canine assailants. As the crew made their escape, Connor felt kind of useless. He couldn’t use his club or his machete from range, and he wouldn’t dare step in front of the gunfire in an attempt to outdo his friends. His morals and traditions prohibited him from using a firearm, and he wasn’t about to desert that part of his personality.
“Up ahead! Climb the dumpster and through the window!” Kylie announced.
Connor took the lead, leaping up into the air and crashing down onto the dumpster before bouncing back up and grabbing the window frame. Connor hauled himself in before turning around to help his comrades up into the building. Poet tossed her gun up to Connor, who rapidly dumped it onto the floor like a fool panicking over a hot potato, before focusing on the frenzied situation at hand and helping to raise up Poet before Poet filled in and raised up Hannah.
Kylie had been behind Hannah, and Hannah felt hesitant to help somebody that she didn’t like to safety, but her loyalty to her friends was more important to her than her disgust of Kylie. When Hannah reached to pull up Kylie, she gasped in pain, her arms bulging.
“Did you swallow an anvil, you fucking cow?” Hannah snidely and sarcastically asked. Kylie had no answer, and just sadly looked down at her stomach. Kylie still refused to let hurt feelings prevent her from aiding her new friends. In a burst of might that showcased how strong Kylie was despite her tubby form, Kylie lifted up the mighty Logan, who was nothing but muscle and might; and a metric tonne of it.
Once Logan had been brought up into the safehouse, Poet and Hannah provided covering fire for Pack and Kirkley. The remaining two men quickly scrambled up the dumpster and through the window.
“Get your backpacks back on your backs!” Kirkley hollered, “And your satchels on your sideburns!”
Everyone put their packs with their food and medical supplies back on, since they had taken them off to make it easier to climb up into the window. From the base of the window frame, a large, muscular hand with several fingers tipped in inch-long bloodstained claws grabbed onto the bottom of the window, and Hannah began furiously stomping its fingers until the pain was too much for the dog soldier to bear, and it released its grip, crashing down onto the dumpster and rolling off.
Using this diversion, everybody was able to get into another room and slam the door before locking the door and placing a chair in a position that would prevent the door from being opened. Pack fired a long, uncontrolled burst through the door in an attempt to ward off anything that might be directly behind the door. After firing, his magazine was out, so he hit the release and smacked in a new one.
Everybody kept hustling through the building, as the threat of the wolf pack loomed dangerously close to them. The howling and snarling and grunting of the dog soldiers loudly echoed throughout the building that the survivors were fleeing through, and it freaked them out to the point where they forced themselves to blindfire behind them, in case something was trailing right behind them. Through a door to the right of Hannah, a wolf smashed its massive, muscular arm through the door, very nearly slashing Hannah’s eye out of its socket. It would have possibly decapitated her had Kylie not plunged forward and knocked Hannah down to the ground, out of harm’s way.
“Get the fuck off of me, you American cow!” Hannah snarled, shoving Kylie off of her.
“How about ‘Thanks, glad you’re here to save my life’?” Kylie remarked as Hannah crawled forward and jumped back up on her feet to run through the hallways with the rest of her teammates as Kirkley fired his shotgun point-blank into the chest of the wolf, who recoiled in pain from the blasts of buckshot and sabot.
The survivor squad continued maneuvering through the building for an additional 10 minutes before locking themselves in a room where they felt momentarily secure.
“Alright, check your rounds”, Kirkley said, pointing around the room before unloading his shotgun drum and loading in the very few spare shells he had in his satchel. Kirkley turned to Kylie, who looked defeated in a different way.
“Hey, kid, you alright?” Kirkley asked, kneeling down next to Kylie.
“…No”, she sighed.
“What’s troubling you, mate?”
“Hannah”, Kylie said. “She’s been nothing but cruel to me since we first met.”
“That’s just the way she is, you know?” Kirkley attempted to explain.
“No, but she isn’t just defensive, she’s offensive”, Kylie replied. “She just belittles me, treats me like filth, makes fun of my figure and where I came from, and screams at me every time I try to help her get out of sticky situations.”
“I’ll keep an eye on you”, Kirkley smiled. “She does or says anything to you; I’ll try and put a stop to it. I promise.”
“Thanks, dude”, Kylie nodded, speaking in an Americanized phrase that Kirkley didn’t immediately understand.
“Alright, what’s our total?” asked Kirkley.
“4 full magazines for my gun”, Pack sai
d, waving a pair of clipped banana magazines in each hand.
Poet flipped held up all of her fingers save for her thumbs. “Poet’s good to go”, said Kirkley. “Hannah?”
“I’ve got 8 mags for my L85”, Hannah reported.
“Alright, set ‘em down on the table”, said Kirkley. “Logan?”
“Nah, man, I’m alright”, Logan calmly explained.
“Kylie, what about your ’85? Does that have any ammo left?”
“I’ve got two, and I need some more”, she reported.
“Alright. Hannah, hand off your STANAGs to Kylie.”
“Fuck that, you, and her”, Hannah scoffed.
Kirkley angrily slammed his SPAS-15 onto the table. “Goddamnit, Hannah; give them off to somebody who needs them and can use them, instead of hogging them for yourself.”
“Hey, I don’t have to follow your orders”, Hannah hissed. “You don’t tell me what to do. We work as a team, where it’s all for one and one for all.”
“You see where you just said ‘all for one and one for all’?” Kirkley asked, stepping up in Hannah’s face. “You’re transfixed on ‘all for one’. We need you, Hannah, but we don’t need your attitude. Give Kylie some of your magazines.”
Hannah huffed in frustration, and angrily flung her magazines towards Kylie.
“There”, Pack chuckled, clapping his hands, “Was that really that difficult?”
“Go fuck yourself, soldier boy.”
“Okay”, Connor said, trying to prevent an all-out brawl, “Let’s get some food down our neck slots.”
“Damn fine idea!” Logan laughed, rapidly opening up a pack of ramen noodles and a soft drink.
The team hadn’t properly settled down and eaten for at least an entire day, and their hungry stomachs growled as loud as the wolves themselves. Everybody but Hannah ravenously scarfed down food; Hannah sat in the corner in silence.