So far, they’d managed to knock down four biters and were working on a fifth and sixth. Although, by the way the men below them were cleaning house, Josh and Manny tended to wonder whether they should just save their ammo and watch. The armed people were mostly using handguns to fight the biters, and they worked in two-person teams. It appeared as if each person had two handguns. One person in the team would fire until they were out of ammo. Then their partner would take over while the other ejected magazines and reloaded. They seemed to work very efficiently, as if they had conducted this sort of operation before. They were really handing it to the biters clustered around the fence and the base of the tower, and they almost had their surroundings cleared.
Four floors below, Michael could hear the rate of gunfire start to decrease outside. He and Margaret took cover in the entrance to the tower’s main stairwell.
Patrick and Julia headed for the office where they took shelter behind its walls, peering out from around the frame of the office’s open entry door, guns at the ready.
Suddenly there was complete silence outside.
Michael wondered if the armed men had given up and retreated.
A second later, there was the sound of a vehicle revving its engine and the clatter of chains on the pavement outside. Then there were several indiscernible shouts. It sounded as if someone was barking instructions.
“What are they doing out there?” Margaret hissed in Michael’s ear as she peered over his shoulder from the stairwell, gun gripped tightly in her trembling hand.
“I don’t know,” Michael whispered back. “I wish I had a small window to see out of.”
“I know,” Margaret said. “I feel like we’re in a submarine or something.”
There was some banging nearby and the sound of chains rattling, closer this time.
“At least they have periscopes in submarines. We don’t even have…”
His words were cut short by a tremendous crashing sound as a large portion of their barricade over the front door was ripped free.
Light from outside poured in from around the partially exposed entrance. There were now huge gaps where the obstructions that the Blenders had worked so hard to get in place over the door had been yanked free.
Seconds later, they could see movement at the doorway and then the shadowy forms of people climbing in through the gaps in what remained of their barricade.
“Are they biters?” Margaret asked as she squeezed Michael’s arm from her position behind and slightly beside him.
“No,” he shook his head. “They’re too agile to be biters.”
“Are they friendly?” she asked.
“I don’t…”
“We’re here to help!” the first man climbing inside the tower around the remnants of the barricade announced. “Is anyone here?”
From the corner of his eye, Michael saw Patrick stand from his crouched position just inside the office door.
“Yeah! We’re here!” Patrick called to the man.
“Patrick…wait!” his father instructed.
As soon as he’d finished the words, the man, now standing just inside the tower entrance, swung a high-powered rifle that hung from a strap around his shoulder, around to bear. He aimed it toward where Patrick stood in the office doorway and let loose with a spray of bullets that tore into the office walls.
From the corner of his eye, in the faded morning light that seeped in around the destroyed barricade, Michael could see his son drop to the floor. Julia screamed from where she crouched behind where Patrick had just fallen.
The man entering behind the guy who had just fired toward the office, turned, and sent a similar spray of bullets toward where Michael and Margaret sheltered in the stairwell. Michael jumped back and out of the way, ramming right into Margaret who was hovering just behind him. He took her down with him as the two collapsed in a heap at the base of the stairs.
“Stay down!” he ordered Margaret.
He got to his feet and peeked around the corner of the stairwell. He was met with another spray of bullets that sent him jerking back instinctively. As soon as the shooting stopped, he reached his arm around, .45 in hand, and fired until his magazine was empty. He reloaded in just seconds and stuck his head back out. One of the two armed intruders was lying on the floor motionless. The other was on his knees. He was obviously injured but Michael had no idea how seriously.
He could see more people climbing in around the front door barricade.
“Patrick!” he cried. “Are you okay?”
“I’m hit!” he heard his son call back.
“Get upstairs with the others,” Michael told Margaret where she crouched behind him.
She scrambled up the steps behind him without a word in argument.
Michael took aim at the wounded guy on his knees and fired two shots, putting him down alongside his buddy on the floor. Then he fired twice more toward the men coming in the door, sending them diving for cover.
“Can you get upstairs with Julia?” he called to Patrick.
“Yeah…I think so!” Patrick responded, obviously in pain.
“Then go!” Michael fired the rest of his magazine toward two more men coming in through the front entrance, giving Patrick and Julia cover to make their retreat upstairs.
He thought he’d hit one of the men, but he couldn’t be sure. What he was sure of was that there were more men working their way inside the tower behind these two, men he wasn’t going to be able to handle on his own. Michael turned and scrambled up the tiny gap they’d left in the obstacle-filled and almost completely dark stairway to the second floor.
“Be ready!” he called as he hurled himself up and over the firing blind they’d erected at the top of the stairs where Ms. Mary and his wife were crouched, guns at the ready.
“Ugh,” he landed hard on the floor, and then took a second to gather himself. “I have to check on Patrick and Julia,” he explained as he stood in the near darkness of the windowless floor. “Hold the stairs,” he called behind him as he hurried to the other side of the tower.
There he found Julia crouched over Patrick. She was working in the dark, doing her best to tie a piece of fabric as a tourniquet around Patrick’s upper thigh.
A battery-powered camping lantern set at each end of the floor was all that served to light the space. In the dim glow the lights provided, Michael could see that Patrick’s pants were already saturated with blood.
“How you doing, boy?” he crouched over his son.
“Okay,” Patrick breathed. “Hurts like hell, but I think I’ll make it,” he said bravely.
“You guys need to get out of here. Think you can make it up to the third floor?”
“I think so,” Patrick nodded.
“Just let me finish tying this,” Julia cinched the tourniquet tighter. Patrick grimaced, clenching his teeth in pain as she did so.
“Try to get to the highest floor you can. No telling how high we’ll be pushed.”
Michael helped Julia get Patrick to his feet and then turned to look behind him as he heard shots being fired near where his wife Caroline and Ms. Mary were positioned. The shots were coming from downstairs.
The sounds reverberated loudly in the enclosed space, and Michael had a feeling that it was about to get a lot louder.
“Go!” he urged Patrick and Julia as he watched them begin making their way up the secondary rear office stairway that Christine and Margaret were currently guarding. Julia was doing her best to assist Patrick, his arm draped around her shoulder for extra support.
Michael could hear shouting on the main stairs behind him. He grabbed his radio. “Get to the third floor, and be ready! We’ve got armed intruders inside the building,” he instructed Josh and Manny.
“Copy,” he heard their reply just as Caroline and Ms. Mary fire several return shots.
Michael hurried over to the stairwell blind behind which the two were crouched. “Be ready to head upstairs.” As he finished the words, bullets fired fr
om the base of the stairs tore into the barrier around them. The sounds of the shots inside the largely enclosed stairwell were deafening.
Michael raised his own weapon over the blind, aiming through the small gap in the stairwell blockade, cringed in preparation for the noise, and fired off three rounds. Caroline, and then Ms. Mary followed suit, firing their own weapons.
There was a cry of pain somewhere in the darkness below. This was followed by the sound of several men shouting, and then heavy return fire. Then there were sounds of some of the debris lodged in the stairwell being pulled down as the men below began working their way up the stairs.
“Grab Christine and Margaret and go upstairs,” Michael instructed the two women, pushing them away from the stairs. “I’ll be right behind you.”
They moved from their crouched positions behind the firing blind, grabbing one of the lanterns as they went, and gathered their counterparts at the office-side stairwell.
Michael fired five more rounds down into the stairwell, his ears still ringing. He made a mental note to hand out ear plugs for the group to carry with them if he lived through this. His shots were met with a furious amount of return fire, which told him it was time to move.
He followed the others in their line of retreat up the office-side stairwell, grabbing the last lantern on the way and plunging the second floor into almost complete darkness.
Upstairs, he found the group reassembled, minus Julia and Patrick who had continued to the tower’s upper levels. Josh and Manny had made their way down from the fourth floor.
“They’re coming up the main stairs!” Michael announced.
“How many?” Josh asked.
“Don’t know,” Michael responded.
Josh and Manny joined Michael at the firing blind set about ten feet back and facing the exit of the main stairs.
“The rest of you hold the other stairwell and be ready to move higher!” Michael called to them. “Let them get up here,” Michael told Josh and Manny. “Josh, you got a semi-automatic?”
“Yeah,” Josh said. “Grabbed it on the way down.”
“Good,” Michael wiggled a finger in his ringing right ear. “Manny and I will provide light fire…just enough to let them think we don’t pack much of a punch in firepower. As soon as they make their push to take the floor, open up on them.”
“Got it!” Josh said.
Suddenly there was shooting from behind them and Christine and Caroline returned fire down the office stairway.
“Shit! They must have split up!” Michael said. “We get pinned down here and we’re screwed.”
“Guess we better not get pinned down then,” Josh said.
Just as he finished the words, a flashlight’s beam illuminated the main stairwell ahead of him. It was followed several seconds later by three men who brazenly darted out of the stairwell and into the third floor, guns blazing.
The intensity of their fire pinned Michael and the others behind their firing blind. But Michael worried stray bullets might pass across the tower’s open floor plan and strike the women holding the other stairwell. He realized that something had to be done, and done fast.
Bits of shrapnel were flying around their protected position that suddenly didn’t seem that protected at all. Michael tried yelling instructions to the others, but nothing was audible over the sounds of the gunfire. Bullets were pounding into the tower’s walls and floor all around them, crashing through the glass display cases that skirted the walls, and threatening to ricochet into the Blenders taking shelter in the space.
Josh took it upon himself to make a move. He began firing from around their barrier with short bursts from his semi-automatic rifle. He managed to hit one of their attackers, dropping him. And he slowed the fire coming from the other two men as they were forced to duck back into the cover of the stairwell behind them.
But just as Michael thought the Blenders were gaining the upper hand in the situation, two more intruders joined the fight from below, pushing their way out into the tower’s open third floor. Josh’s initiative however, gave Michael and Manny the opportunity they needed to get better reads on the newly arrived combatants. Their gunfire hit one and drove the other one back with his sheltering counterparts.
Behind them, the women were holding their own, having shot one of the people attempting to storm the rear office stairwell and pinning the other two in place.
But seconds later, more flashlight beams were suddenly visible coming up the main stairwell. Then, all hell broke loose. Apparently one of the fresh attackers facing Michael, Manny, and Josh had arrived on the scene with a far heavier caliber of weapon. And he unleashed this additional firepower on the men sheltering behind their office-furniture-created firing blind.
Bullets tore into the overturned desk, ripping massive holes in it. They riddled file cabinets like a pencil punching through paper, sending bits of hot, jagged metal spraying around the men.
“Ahhh! Jesus!” Manny swore, ducking down lower behind what was left of their protective barrier that was quickly being torn to shreds.
Bits of wood, metal, and concrete were flying everywhere. Dust and gunpowder were getting into eyes, ears, noses, throats. It stung, burned, and left the men coughing, gagging, and gasping for breath.
Suddenly there was a thunderous boom, followed almost instantly by another, and then another, and finally another, ceasing their assailants’ fire.
As the firing stopped, Michael poked his head slowly from behind the now ravaged blind. He could hear shouts from downstairs as their enemy coordinated their retreat. Through the dim and dust-filled lantern light, he saw the last of the attackers turning to flee into the stairwell. But another booming explosion blasted this last man back against the exterior tower wall comprising a portion of the stairwell’s exit.
It was then that he saw a dark figure hobbling out of the stairwell.
It was Michael’s wounded son, Patrick, shotgun in hand.
Michael couldn’t have been prouder if his boy had told him he’d just been elected president of the United States. But there wasn’t time for accolades to be lavished or congratulatory well wishes.
“Come on,” Michael said to Josh and Manny.
Below them, they could hear the screams of the wounded and continued shouts of frantic coordination by their attackers. By the time the Blenders cleared the second floor, ensuring none of their enemy were left alive, and made it down to the tower’s ground level, the remnants of their attackers were already pulling away in their vehicles.
Michael stood for several seconds at their now exposed front entrance, his trembling hands on hips, catching his breath and trying to calm himself. He and the others looked around at the chaos that had been wrought during the fray.
Their blockaded front entrance now had huge gaps in it. The office and lower level was riddled with the signs of bullet impacts. But at the moment, this was the least of their concerns.
“Manny, will you stand guard here for a minute while I run upstairs with Josh and check on the others?” Michael asked.
“Yeah…make sure Margaret is okay and call me on the radio,” he said.
“Will do,” Michael turned with Josh and headed back upstairs.
“These fucking stairs,” Michael swore. “I’ll live through armed militants and hoards of biters only to have a heart attack going up and down these goddamn things,” he told Josh.
“No shit,” Josh snorted his agreement.
Back on the third floor, it was a scene of organized chaos. Caroline and Ms. Mary were working on Patrick who lay on his back on the floor. Christine and Margaret were bent over Julia who lay on the floor beside Patrick.
Josh rushed to her.
“She’s okay,” Christine explained to the concerned husband. “Just took some light shrapnel to her arm, neck and face,” she said. “Luckily, her winter gear stopped most of it.
Josh plopped down beside his injured wife and took her hand in his. Her face and visible portions of her neck
were spotted with small cuts, scratches, and red marks where her lovely skin had born the brunt of some flying debris during the attack.
Michael moved to where Patrick lay; his left pant leg cut away from the upper thigh, down.
“Good work back there,” he smiled, kneeling beside his boy. “How you holding up?”
“Hurts pretty bad,” Patrick said, and then sucked through his teeth as Ms. Mary dabbed at the injury to his leg.
“Looks like the bullet grazed the side of his thigh. It’s a pretty nasty looking wound, but as long as we get it cleaned up and bandaged, he should be fine,” Ms. Mary said as she worked. “The wound is deep, though, so it’s going to take a little while to heal, and we’ll have to keep a good eye on it to make sure it doesn’t get infected.”
“All right,” Michael nodded. “Everyone else okay?” he called to the rest of the group in general.
There were muted confirmations from around the floor.
“Okay, I’m going to check back on Manny downstairs.”
“I’ll come with you,” Josh said, now confident that his wife’s wounds were relatively minor and that she would be fine. “We have to get that barricade back up to make sure no biters get in.”
The two walked downstairs to find Manny working to replace some of their disheveled entry barricade.
“Margaret’s fine,” Michael explained, giving Manny a hand with a large piece of wood he was struggling to get back in place over the door.
“Good,” Manny sighed, obviously relieved. “Everyone else okay?”
“Patrick took the worst of it…bullet to the side of his left thigh, but he’ll be all right.”
“Good to hear,” Manny nodded.
In the light filtering in around the tower doorway, Michael could see several blotchy spots of red on the back of Manny’s winter coat that surrounded what appeared to be rips in the fabric.
“Looks like you took some nasty shrapnel from that file cabinet,” Michael said to him. “Why don’t you head upstairs and get yourself checked out. We’ll keep working down here.”
The Last Bastion [Book 2] Page 19