by Justin Bell
What was he going to do once he made it to the swamps, though? He was wearing heavy ruck and as good a shape as he was in, he wasn’t accustomed to being quick and nimble with all of this gear strapped to him. In the swamps, if all ten of the soldiers followed him, he thought he could be overtaken pretty easily.
But it could be enough time for the others to be rescued. Jackson set his jaw and tightened his grip on the M4. Coiling his legs, he prepared to launch himself into a forward sprint.
He never heard the tinny clatter that he was sure the device had made as it struck the pavement and rolled toward the truck, but he definitely heard—and felt—the detonation. A muffled, dull whump slammed from just the other side of the truck, picking the front of the vehicle up off the ground for a moment and driving it sharply left. The concussion shocked Jackson for the split second before a hot rush of air drove into him, combining with the force of the moving truck to lift him off his feet and throw him backwards into the air, his flailing limbs swarmed with chunks of shattered debris. His back struck the plate glass window behind him, and he could feel it explode behind him, caving in slightly, then bursting apart, spraying ragged glass, mixing with the already flying clumps of busted concrete and asphalt, all of it tumbling backwards inside the small movie theater that had stood proudly behind him as he huddled near the truck avoiding gunfire.
Jackson struck left shoulder first, pain rocketing into his arm and through his left side as his legs carried him over into a sprawling reverse somersault, smoking remnants of the road, sidewalk, and window scattering across the carpeted floor around him. Even as his left side raged with pain, he squirmed, twisting and climbing back to his hands and knees, keeping his head ducked down as more shrapnel rained down around him. Smoke filled the lobby of the movie theater, coating the air inside in a vague slate gray haze. Wide and darkly colored, the lobby stretched out in front of him, with an “L” shaped counter in the rear left corner, one section for tickets, the other section for concessions. Three doors behind concessions led to three separate theaters, and he clawed his way toward the counter, hoping he was moving fast enough.
Feet thudded on the sidewalk outside and he knew someone was already approaching, so he snatched his Sig semi-automatic from its holster and flopped around onto his back, bringing the pistol around. The minute a figure appeared by the broken window, bracketed in an almost black smoke, he yanked the trigger three swift times. With a surprised shout, the figure stumbled backwards, enveloped by the smoke and tumbled away, disappearing. Jackson managed to pick himself up and spotted the M4 he’d been holding a couple of feet away. He altered his escape route, snagging it from the carpet, then pushed himself to his feet, running toward the rear concession counter.
Gunfire exploded from the front of the theater, and he was already throwing himself into the air, turning, skidding hip-first over the counter, his arm striking a glass popcorn machine and shattering it, sending small metal components scattering as he tumbled over the rest of the way, back behind the counter. It splintered and shredded as the rounds struck the wooden facade, a cash register taking several hits, metal denting and popping as he buried himself down onto the floor. Wood smashing and metal twanging signaled bullets crashing around him, as he rose up into a crouch, his pistol back in its holster, the tactical rifle clutched in two hands. Breaths racked his lungs, coming in hard, hoarse gasps as Jackson peered over the counter, seeing the approaching shadows of several armed men making their way slowly toward the broken front window of the theater.
He’d run out of places to go.
***
Mayor Harris came charging down Main Street from the opened door of a sedan, which had parked recklessly to allow him to disembark in haste. The car was askew in the road, swung around diagonally, and had just come to a rest when the door flung open and Harris spilled out, slamming it loud and with emphasis behind him. Across the street, outside the movie theater, a blue Ford pickup was enveloped in a column of thick, dark smoke, glass strewn across the pavement, which was cracked and ringed by smoldering shrapnel.
“What the hell is going on here?” he screamed as he strode across the street. By the old movie theater, he could see the front window completely blasted apart with one of the National Guardsmen on the ground, writhing in pain. Several others were making their way along the walls of the buildings near the theater, moving toward the old building which had, at one point, been an historical landmark for the old town.
“Mayor Harris,” barked a man, breaking away from the approaching horde and walking hastily toward him. “We believe we have an enemy insurgent trapped in the movie theater!”
“An enemy what?” Harris replied in disgust. “What did you call him? Insurgent? This is Connecticut, Corporal Leeds, not Kabul, we don’t have insurgents here.”
“He was opening fire on us. We believe he helped the girl evade capture!”
Harris lifted a palm toward the other group of soldiers, who held their positions, just outside the theater, not advancing.
“Who is this man?” Harris asked, turning back toward the corporal. “What do you know about him?”
Leeds shrugged. “As of now? Not much. We believe he killed one of our men and stole his gear, and has now holed up in the theater. Previously we saw someone helping the young girl slip from building to building. We’d believed he’d led her to escape out of town so we broadened the search perimeter. When we came back, we saw him walking across Main Street, only now he didn’t have the girl with him.”
Harris narrowed his glare at the man. “So where is the girl now?”
“We don’t know, sir.”
Harris lowered his head for a moment, drawing a breath to collect himself. “So you march in here and start blowing holes in Main Street, trying to kill this man you don’t know, and you still can’t even tell me where the girl is?”
“Our hope is to take this man alive, and get that information for you, sir.”
“Take him alive?”
“Yes, sir?”
“And a grenade was going to help take him alive?”
Corporal Leeds’s eyes shifted somewhat, fluttering over to the squad of fresh faced Guardsmen who were huddled on the sidewalk waiting for their commands.
“Someone was a little overzealous, sir. I think it’s safe to remind you that not all of these men are actual trained soldiers, sir. We raided the Guard barracks and—”
“Oh, yes, by all means, let’s choose this time to remind me how incompetent you all really are.”
“That was not my intention.”
Something occurred to Harris, and he looked back over at the men on the sidewalk, counting them in his mind, tracing each one’s presence, then he looked back toward the Town Hall.
“Corporel Leeds… if all of these men are out here, then who is guarding the prisoners?”
Leeds swiveled toward the Town Hall, then looked back at the Mayor with a look of confusion and uncertainty.
Harris clenched both fists. “Split the squad. Send four men into the theater after the target. Take the other four and get back into the holding cells and make sure those prisoners are still there! Now, Corporal!”
“Yes, sir!” Corporal Leeds moved toward the group and began relaying the orders.
***
Melinda pushed the canvas bag toward the cell on the left, where Broderick and Clark were held, Broderick immediately dropping down and starting to comb through the weapons inside.
“I never thought I’d be so happy to see Army issue Sig semi-automatics,” he whispered.
“A soldier who doesn’t like his guns?” Clark asked. “Will wonders never cease?”
Broderick smiled slightly. “I was always a scientist first, Mr. Bradley. The weapons have been just another tool, along with my microscope and PGM sequencer. Only typically when I use the other tools, someone isn’t dying.”
Rifling through the bag, Broderick pulled out a revolver, he believed it was the one that Jackson had stolen from the
crew in the woods what seemed like an entire lifetime ago. Swinging out the chamber, he verified that rounds were still loaded, then clacked the chamber home.
“Where did you find this bag, kiddo?” asked Clark.
“Closet downstairs,” Mel replied.
“They didn’t even unload the weapons,” Broderick said, shaking his head. “Amateurs.”
“This is what happens when a small-town mayor is suddenly in charge of saving humanity, I guess,” said Lisa from across the room. She cocked her head slightly. “I don’t hear any more gunshots outside.” Her face then shifted slightly, twisting into a look of grave concern. “Do you think that means they got him? There was that explosion—”
“Lisa, don’t think about that,” said Clark. “Please. You don’t know what’s going on out there, no reason to get all twisted up about it. Let’s focus on getting out of here first, okay?”
“Yeah, we’ll get out of here, then figure out what’s going on,” continued Javier, putting a reassuring hand on Lisa’s shoulder. She nodded softly.
“Okay, everyone, this could get loud,” said Broderick, holding the revolver in two hands and pressing the barrel close to the jail cell lock. Tensing his arms, he gestured to Clark to back away, and he did, trying to get as far away in case of a ricochet. Broderick yanked the trigger and the pistol fired, a rocketing, deafening blast in the small confines of the holding area, and a tinkling of metal followed it, spraying small chunks of padlock shrapnel across the smooth surface of the floor between the two cells. Shoving with his shoulder, Broderick opened the cell and moved out into the lobby area, his eyes roaming around the room. It didn’t take long for him to see the pegboard tacked to the wall behind a small desk and chair near the front entrance. Keeping his pistol clenched in two hands, he moved quickly, striding toward the desk and snapping the keys off the board, then whirling around to head back to the second cell.
Outside a flurry of footfalls echoed on the wooden stairs approaching the holding area.
“Heads up, Brody!” screamed Clark. “Someone’s coming! A lot of someones!”
Broderick was already ducking and lunging forward as two men in military uniforms burst through the entrance door, M4 automatics in hand.
“What are you doing out?” bellowed one of them, tracing Broderick’s movements.
“Take him down!” screamed a second.
They hadn’t even looked in Clark’s direction. The ex-Marine pushed his way out of the cell, the freshly freed Scorpion tactical rifle in his hand. He fired swiftly, finger pumping the trigger on the semi-automatic and put three rounds center mass on the first man who had come through the door. The soldier grunted and spun to the right, slamming down on the old, wooden desk by the pegboard, smashing through and crushing it to spraying splinters, his booted feet cartwheeling up into the air.
The second soldier turned toward Clark, bringing his own M4 around, but Broderick was on one knee, stabilizing his gun arm and he jerked it up to torso height, then fired the revolver twice, catching the man high in the chest. The second soldier made a similar noise and plunged backwards, back out the door, a series of muffled thumps signaling his backwards somersaults down the stairs he had just entered up, with a single, final, slam at the end punctuating his arrival on the wooden floor by the double door entrance.
Melinda screeched as a third man burst in, already opening fire, and she ducked her head, scrambling toward the open cell door where Clark stood. He moved aside, letting her push through as sparks burst along the metal surface of the prison cell bars, narrowly missing him. Broderick returned fire, shooting three more times before his revolver clacked empty, but he missed with all three shots, the closest he got sending splinters snapping from the wooden door about six inches to the gunman’s left.
Clark fired again with the Scorpion, but again, bullets pounded against the wooden door and didn’t strike their target. He adjusted aim and squeezed the trigger again, but the Scorpion only responded with a dry click of an empty magazine.
“I’m out!” screamed Broderick and Clark was already nodding, dropping down to fish through the canvas bag. His fingers clasped around the narrow, rectangular barrel of the Sig pistol that Broderick was complaining about, and he pulled it free. Reaching out of the cell for a moment he slid the pistol diagonally across the floor, and it skidded all the way toward where Broderick crouched in the corner, barely blocked by a row of lockers pressed up against a far wall. As Broderick snagged one pistol, Clark pulled free a second one, a semi-automatic Glock 17. It was a weapon he hadn’t even remembered them finding, but the past several days had been a bit of a whirlwind, so that didn’t necessarily surprise him.
Automatic fire bellowed from the doorway and Clark threw himself back as the wooden floor chewed up with bullet impacts, knocking jagged holes in the floor and spitting up chunks of darkened wood. He let go of the pistol in his haste to scramble away and it clattered across the floor where he couldn’t reach it.
Scooping up the Sig, Broderick dropped onto his right shoulder, hitting the ground as a fourth gunman burst in, aiming at the far wall where the Team Ten soldier had been hiding. A swift burst of automatic fire screamed just over him as he hit the ground, and he pushed his arms out straight, fingers intertwined, looking only for a moment from his horizontal position, then he fired again and again and again, keeping the Sig tightly grouped as it threatened to jump out of his tight grasp.
Bullets splintered the door frame to the right of the fourth man, but then he caught a round in the right cheek, shouting and thrusting backwards, a light crimson mist bracketing the chunks of wood and plaster. Soldier three pushed his way further into the room, getting an angle on Clark who was pushing backwards in the cell, not close enough to the canvas bag to retrieve any more weapons, completely defenseless. He thought he saw an angry sneer on the soldier’s face as he sighted in on him and prepared to unleash a barrage of 5.56-millimeter, but three sudden pops of single shot fire echoed first, the soldier grimacing as he lunged forward, slamming his face into the prison bars, before slumping to the left.
As he fell to the ground out of Clark’s view he saw the figure behind him, Lisa, holding the Glock that had fallen from his hands. She gripped it with a calm and collected pose that told him she’d fired weapons before, though the look on her face told him that she probably hadn’t used one against another human.
The holding area was suddenly quiet, the echoes of gunfire and pungent stink of spent cordite hanging in the air, but there were no more shouts, no more thumping footfalls, and no more active gunfire.
“We clear?” screamed Broderick from the rear of the room, getting up on one knee with his pistol lifted.
“I think we’re clear!” called Clark, scrambling toward the bag, reaching in to pull out another weapon.
“I don’t see anyone coming up the stairs,” called Lisa from across the room, who had a clear view through the front door and out into the approaching hallway.
Pulling out an AR-15, Clark moved out from his cell out into the open area between the two holding cells, keeping his semi-automatic trained on the opened entry door. Behind him, Broderick moved from his kneeling position, his Sig aimed over Clark’s left shoulder, moving slowly and angularly toward the second cell, fishing the keys from his pocket that he’d snagged from the peg board. As Clark covered the door, Broderick used the keys and unlatched the second cell, easing the door opened and letting Lisa and Javier out. Melinda immediately pushed past Clark and ran to Javier, throwing her arms around his waist and holding tightly. Javier stumbled slightly with the force of the unexpected embrace, but he recovered quickly, smiled and returned the affection.
“Not to interrupt,” Broderick said, “but we’ve got to get moving. We all know there are more than four of these guys in town, more could be on their way.”
Lisa held up a hand. “Hold up,” she whispered. Outside, on Main Street, they could hear the faint recurring chatter of automatic gunfire.
Cha
pter 10
For a few moments, Jackson allowed himself to believe that maybe the soldiers had moved on. Maybe they believed him dead, or maybe they had bigger problems to deal with, but whatever the reason, he grasped one tiny shred of hope that they wouldn’t storm the theater and fire upon him until he was dead. It had been silent for a few minutes, beyond a shouting conversation that he could not make out the full extent of out in Main Street. Only lasting a moment, the conversation died down and as he heard a group of feet pounding away from the outside wall of the theater, his hopes lifted, slightly.
His knees ached as he crouched behind the counter, his shoulder pinned to the metal frame. Muscle pain racked his entire body, especially his shoulder, down through his ribs and into his legs, and he could feel himself stiffening up the more he crouched. The stink of stale smoke mixed with week old popcorn butter churned his stomach, and he struggled to keep his lips clamped closed, trying not to think about retching.
Was this what combat was like? The action of the firefight was one thing, but it was the calm between storms that seemed impossibly worse, the short period of inactivity between battles where you wondered what was still to come and if you were safe or not. His back hurt, his knees twisted in agony, and a dull, stabbing ache permeated his entire skull. Gunfire pelted in the distance. Somewhere nearby, he heard weapons exchanging fire, and his heart seized. Was it at the Town Hall? Where he’d sent Melinda? Suddenly the realization of what might be happening struck him like a fist. While he was here, being thankful for the fact that he was no longer under attack, soldiers had broken off and headed back to the holding cells, back to take care of the prisoners, and he’d been sitting here, letting it happen.