The Oasis

by Janette Osemwota

  There was no time to act on it, but her cheeks flamed with new heat. She smiled at him, knowing that he had captured more than her heart. She was his in more than just the physical sense.

  Then Jasper handed her a pistol and that moment of normalcy, the intimacy of standing in the same room where they had made love, dissipated. It was back to running, their lives on the line again.

  She grabbed the pistol as Jasper took her other hand, and they looked into each other’s eyes one last time before he pulled open the door.

  Fear knotted inside her when he didn’t go straight through the door. He aimed his pistol out the crack of the door and scanned the area quickly. Then he opened the door and pushed her behind him, letting her follow him through the darkened hallway. If it was one of the others then Brett would have fired immediately. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up as icy fear twisted around her heart. Did Brett know the free man, as Jasper suspected? Had he found them?

  Jasper rounded the corner slowly, looking through the scope of his rifle. She kept behind him and looked around, not really sure what she was looking for. She imagined that she must look ridiculous, her body pressed close against Jasper’s. However, she was not as skilled as he was with a weapon and so she was trying desperately to look intimidating. The man in front of her was holding a bigger gun and he knew how to use it. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that Jasper knew what he was doing; she only hoped that she wouldn’t get in the way of him doing it.

  They made their way slowly toward the stairs. Lena tried to step exactly where Jasper stepped, afraid the floor would creak. She frantically tried to remember if it had creaked the night before, and if so, where, but with all the turmoil running through her mind she could barely think enough to stay in step with Jasper.

  He walked smooth as a cat along the hallway, keeping his movements fluid. He thought he knew what he would see down the stairs; he merely needed to confirm his speculations before he acted. Being a SEAL had taught him to plan ahead and to assess any situation with escape routes in mind at all times. He rounded the corner and peered down the staircase.

  Pausing silently, Jasper saw Brett still on the couch cleaning his gun...and Eric pacing behind him. Immediately his mind began to anticipate their moves and evaluate their options.

  Jasper raised his hand and motioned for Lena to back up quietly. He put a finger to his lips. He knew that she was already panicking and he did his best to guide her in the direction he needed her to go.

  Lena was even less coordinated going backwards than she was going forwards. Jasper kept his gun pointed towards the stairs and Lena did her best to retreat back into the room they had come out of. She entered the room first, letting her legs flop as she sat on the bed.

  “What’s going on?” she asked and flinched as Jasper shushed her quickly. He was around the room before she could absorb what was going on.

  Jasper evaluated every aspect of the room and she couldn’t understand what he was doing when he started looking at the floorboards and the walls. Opening her mouth to repeat the question, she couldn’t get it out before he answered quietly. “Freeman is down there.”

  Lena’s mouth dropped open. Memories of being in that dark chamber of his came crashing down on her as panic rioted within her. Bending down to her, Jasper grasped her shoulders. He waited there until she looked into his eyes. He didn’t need to say anything; she knew that he wouldn’t let anything happen to her. She couldn’t afford to be distracted by her romantic notions. His eyes told her what she needed to know: he was doing everything in his power to get them out of there and if he needed to he would protect her with his own life. She would not go back to that nightmare.

  He released her and went into the bathroom. She stood up quickly and paced the room. Lena had no idea what Jasper was thinking now and probably wouldn’t be able to come up with any useful contributions herself, but she needed to be doing something. A warning voice in the back of her mind told her not to let her thoughts dwell on her own insecurities. Jasper was a trained SEAL; he knew what he was doing. But there were two very dangerous men downstairs.

  As she paced around the room, she reminded herself that she knew how to use a gun, albeit not that well, but they didn’t know that. As far as they knew she was a great shot and as good as Jasper, if not better.

  She picked the pistol up off the bed where it had fallen. Examining it, she wondered how it had come to this. She used to be a student. The gun looked foreign in her hands and she could barely remember how she had even acquired it.

  Jasper came out of the bathroom, breaking her concentration. He walked over to the door, locking it quietly. A tornado of emotion was brewing inside her body and she began shaking. She looked over at Jasper, whose calm exterior mirrored his inner workings. She knew Jasper was a calm person, but she had trouble understanding how at this moment he managed to stay as calm as he was. She could see that his mind was working and he was analyzing everything about the room. When she looked around all she could see was a room. Nothing about the place stood out to her, showed her that they would be able to make it out alive.

  “What the hell is going on?” she asked again, since her initial question wasn’t answered. Now that Jasper had returned, she was sure that she would get some kind of information. She deserved that. If she was going to die then at least she could find out who was going to send her to her maker.

  “Why is the free man here?” She sat heavily on the bed. Jasper didn’t acknowledge her and a warning voice whispered in her head. Something inside of her cautioned her not to ask the question that was on the tip of her tongue. “How do you know him?” She asked it anyway. Her voice rose as she spoke and she knew she was panicking.

  He walked over to her and kneeled in front of her. Tears had begun to flow down her cheeks. He wiped them away and held her close. He didn’t know if this would be their last moment together or not. All he knew was that this woman had come to mean so much to him, in such a short time, and it killed him to not be able to tell her the truth right now. He had been hiding the truth for so long that he struggled with telling her. All he could think of was getting her out of there.

  Screw the O.A.S.I.S. Jasper allowed his mind to dwell momentarily on saving her, on getting the hell out of that house and running away together. Away from the O.A.S.I.S., away from Eric and his army. A part of him knew what he needed to do. As long as Eric and Brett and others like them were alive they would never be safe. There would always be questions that were left unanswered.

  “Jasper!” Lena’s shrill voice broke through his thoughts and he shushed her more aggressively than he wanted to. To lessen the sting, he kissed her forehead as he stood again and began thinking like a SEAL once more.

  Lena noticed the change in him instantly and knew she was losing him. “No!” She pulled him back to her. She grabbed his hand and pressed her face to it. “Please,” she whispered. “I don’t want to die not knowing what I am dying for.”

  He looked down at her, imagining how she felt. Her heart was open to him and he could see how strong she was. He saw her jaw clench as she held in a sob. He couldn’t imagine how scared she must be, after everything she had gone through. He was asking her to fight his war and she didn’t even know what they were fighting for, how important it was. He knew she deserved an answer.

  “We need to get the fuck out of here, then I promise you I will explain everything.”

  He leaned down and kissed her. He let his lips linger on hers longer than he had planned, but he loved how much she was like him. A strong-willed person who wouldn’t take no for an answer, even at gunpoint.

  Setting the rifle down onto the bed, he stood up. Going over to the door, he re-checked the lock. He knew that Brett and Eric were very cautious in their actions, otherwise they would have come up right away and not hesitated to kill them. Their waiting tactic wouldn’t work on Jasper, of course, but he could see Lena becoming more fearful as the seconds ticked by.

  He kneeled
down between her legs. If he was going to tell her the truth, he would rather she be prepared for the worst. She was not going to be killed without trying to defend herself first. He pulled the gun up and showed her the sight on the top. “Aim through here,” he whispered. “And stay calm. You’ll have a better shot.”

  She nodded, understanding what he was telling her. The truth was going to get her killed, but it didn’t matter. She needed to know.

  Jasper grabbed her arm and pulled her towards the bathroom. Suddenly, they heard the men downstairs.

  “Don’t get any funny ideas, Anderson,” Eric yelled from below. He fired a shot up through the ceiling and Lena screamed, dropping to the floor and covering her head as the bullets tore through the floorboards. Everything ran through her mind at once, and she admitted to herself that she had no idea how they were going to get out of this.

  Jasper seemed unfazed by the shots through the floor. He knew Eric was toying with them. Lena was a wild card to them and certainly someone they would enjoy playing with. They knew that she could be a hindrance keeping Jasper from a smooth escape.

  What they didn’t know was that Jasper wasn’t going to let that happen. He was taking Lena with him if he had to drag her.

  “We’ve got the place surrounded!” Eric shouted again.

  Jasper doubted that.

  He walked slowly to the window, knowing that just below him two men with guns stood waiting for him to do just that. He pressed his back against the side of the window, edged open the window shades and looked out at the street below. There were a few men under the window and more by the front door. All the men surrounding the house seemed to be others. Jasper was awestruck by how well Eric had maintained control over them. He must have reached their minds somehow, but Jasper could not think how. Behind the others, an apparently normal man stood in the shadows with a gun in his hands. Jasper quickly closed the shades when he saw the gun pointed directly at the window he was looking through.

  He dropped to the ground as the SEAL outside opened fire.

  “Fuck!” Jasper cursed over the firing. He was glad that Lena was still low to the ground. He quickly crawled over to her and covered her until the firing stopped, using his body to protect her. He knew the moment to act was now.

  As the silence crept up around them, he strained to hear Eric and Brett laughing downstairs again. This game of cat and mouse had to end. Jasper took a deep breath and grabbed Lena, pulling her across the room as silently as he could. She held on to him, trying to follow his steps, matching them with her own. He raised his hand to his lips, shushing her. Even in that anxious moment she couldn’t help but let her eyes linger over his mouth, but nodded to show she understood.

  “Listen carefully,” he whispered to her, leaning in to stroke his lips against her cheek. She reminded herself that he knew exactly what he was doing. Though the situation was terrifying, Lena felt comforted by him, by his voice, by his breath. “I need you to trust me and do exactly what I tell you.” He brushed away a stray hair that lay across her cheek. She looked up at him, letting her eyes fall on his neck. His pulse was so steady and she was calmed by the fact that he wasn’t as completely petrified as she was.

  “If they catch us, they will kill me,” he said evenly and looked deep into her eyes. “You will be taken back to that hellhole. They will make you wish for death and I do not want that for you.”

  She shook her head, knowing she would never willingly go back to that place. “That is why I need you to trust me.” He held her face between his hands.

  Trying not to let her fear take over, Lena nodded her head slowly. She wasn’t really sure if she would be able to do exactly what he asked, but she knew that right now her life and even his own relied on her being able to stay calm.

  Releasing her face, he turned over the plan in his head. It was not exactly what he would call stellar, but he didn’t have much of an option. The men he could see out the window were others. Except the shooter, he noted. He knew he could outwit and ultimately beat the others, but the shooter was a SEAL. He calculated exactly what he needed to do. He did the math in his head, but no amount of statistics was going to save them. It was really just going to come down to either a hell of a lot of luck or an act of God. His training in the SEALs had prepared him to never surrender and it didn’t matter to him who he had to go through to get free. He was going to get Lena out of here.

  Grabbing her hand, he pulled her towards the bathroom. Most of the men outside looked like they weren’t the highly aggressive type. Those kinds of men were extremely unpredictable—much more so than the others currently surrounding the house. In fact, right now the only thing Jasper had going for him was their predictability. He closed his eyes. There was no way to know if anyone else was in the house, if they did surround the house. He also was hoping that Eric and Brett wouldn’t start using their brains. Jasper had lasted as long as he had because he had a sense of direction. He knew he needed to survive so he could get to the O.A.S.I.S. For men like Brett and Eric, they had become animal trainers, not leaders of men. Their goal was leading them down the path of destruction. He hoped that they were blinded by that destruction the same way that Jasper was enlightened by his sense of duty.

  Looking down at Lena, he realized what separated them. He and Lena still had a passion for living. Lena’s passion for life and his passion to live were what separated them from men like Brett and Eric.

  Jasper pulled her into the bathroom, looking around quickly. They couldn’t climb out the window and their chances of getting past Brett and Eric on the stairs weren’t likely either.

  “Please trust that I know what I am doing,” Jasper said, and smiled as he saw Lena swallow hard. He knew he was asking a lot, but right now there wasn’t much time for reassurance. Pulling a semi-automatic weapon from his pack, he smiled again as Lena blinked rapidly at him. It was probably her first time seeing such a weapon. He never really used them much, to be honest. It was loud and wasted a lot of bullets, something he couldn’t afford in normal situations. This clearly was something different.

  Looking at the gun, Lena wasn’t sure what Jasper was thinking. As he shut the door to the bathroom, she realized she knew even less of what was happening. At first she had thought that they would huddle themselves into the bathroom and wait for the others to come to them, but it didn’t seem that was what was going on. Nodding to her, he readied the semi-automatic for himself.

  “Do you remember where the back door is?”

  Lena’s mind scrambled for the information. She remembered there being a back door, but in her fear and confusion she wasn’t sure where it was exactly.

  “Past the kitchen, baby,” Jasper prompted gently, and she swooned a little at the silkiness of his words. He showed neither impatience nor anger that she was scared. Pointing the gun at the tiled floor, he continued. “I need you to get up as fast as you can and run for the door.” He hesitated for only a second. “Kill anyone who gets in the way.”

  Grabbing her around the waist, he pulled her to his body.

  “Wait,” she cried out. Jasper leaned down and covered her mouth with his own.

  Releasing her, he blasted away at the floor. Turning her around, he fired in a circle around them. The floor exploded beneath their feet.

  Lena’s heart was racing and she wasn’t sure how close to death she was, but she knew she was in the safest place she could be: Jasper’s arms.

  “I’ll always love you,” Jasper whispered into her ear, knowing she probably couldn’t hear him through the firing. Right now his only hope was that the floor would give out before their enemies reached them, and that he didn’t run out of bullets. The floor started cracking under their weight and finally broke free. Lena and Jasper fell through to the ground floor. Finally, Lena let out the scream she had been holding in.

  The fall was anything but gentle. The cracking from the floorboards had splintered sharp boards all around them. Bullets ricocheted off the floor and bounced around the ro
om. Lena felt her body falling through the second floor to the first. She was terrified, unsure if they would survive. As they fell, she held on to Jasper and her mind went wild in anxiety. What if Jasper didn’t make it through the fall okay? If he was hurt, would she be able to make herself leave him?

  A silence filled her mind and the world seemed to hold still as they fell.

  Brett and Eric ran up the stairs, unsure of what the ruckus was. Jasper knew they hadn’t come up before because they were playing with them. However, the heavy firing meant either that Jasper was attacking or, and Jasper hated to think it would ever come to that, they were committing suicide.

  As they fell, Jasper held Lena tightly, hoping to help break her fall as much as he could. There wasn’t much they could do to brace for impact. Just as he had anticipated, they fell into the kitchen, landing just in front of the kitchen sink, which was directly below the sink in the upstairs bathroom. Between the linoleum on the ground floor and the broken floorboards raining down with them, the landing was anything but soft.

  One of the shattered boards pierced Jasper’s arm, punching abruptly through the skin. The pain was intense and blood suddenly seemed to be everywhere. He groaned loudly as the board was jerked out of his arm as they hit the floor. Lena tumbled on top of him, splinters falling into her hair and scratching up her face and body, but otherwise she was unharmed. Jasper’s blood flowed freely over them both, but he ignored it.

  With blinding speed, he stood up among the rubble and grabbed at her arm. Nursing his other arm, he dropped his weapon and pulled her towards the exit. Lena couldn’t believe that Jasper’s plan had worked.

  They heard the other SEALs upstairs. They didn’t have much time. Lena tried to move as quickly as Jasper, but stumbled over the rubble on the ground.

  By now she could see Eric through the hole in the ceiling.