More chanting from the dark streets. A group had formed along the chain-link fence. They pressed and felt their way, looking for the hole they knew was there. Sam reached down, bending through the window. “Come on, Mom!” he cried. Sara reached up and Sam almost jerked her off her feet. She scrambled and fell into the building. “Mary!” Sam said, reaching down again.
A terrible scream came from the street. It echoed between the buildings, a painful sound that cut through the darkness of the night. Piercing. Angry. Animal-like in fury, it rolled through the broken window and bounced off the bare back wall. Sam cringed and looked toward the streets as the scream faded slowly. The crowd was growing larger. Some had come to watch. Others had come to kill. The thin man pressed against the chain-link fence, probing with his fingers, searching for the cut-out section. Ammon had lifted Kelly Beth below the broken window. “Got her?” he cried to Sam as he lifted the little girl.
Kelly Beth held up her arms toward the soldier. “Sam, you got me. Please don’t drop me.” Her voice was nothing but a whisper in the dark.
“HERE! HERE!” an old man screamed out to the others, finding the hole cut in the chain-link fence. He leaned down and started crawling. A gunshot rang out from the darkness. The brick beside Luke’s face shattered, sending broken pieces of baked clay into the soft skin beneath his eyes. He turned, his own gun raised, and fired toward the growing crowd, aiming low, a quick shot of white-hot sparks erupting at the crowd’s feet as the bullet ricocheted away.
“COME ON, COME ON, COME ON!” Sam cried from the broken window. He was reaching down for Azadeh now, bending so far through the window that it looked like he might fall. She jumped, grabbed his hands, and quickly pulled herself up, her feet scrabbling against the brick.
Behind them, the first man crawled through the cut-out section of the chain-link fence. He didn’t wait for the others but ran toward the building. Sam reached through the broken window. “LUKE!” he cried. Luke jumped, gritting his teeth in pain. Ammon pushed his brother’s hips, then his feet toward the window, feeling his weight until his wounded brother finally fell onto the other side. Another gunshot from the darkness. Another explosion of shattered brick against the wall. Ammon felt the sting of fractured clay and squinted as a stream of blood began to dribble into his eyes.
Ammon was alone now. The killer was getting closer. Other men were crawling through the fence. Ammon could hear the first man panting as he ran. He glanced over his shoulder to see him coming. He cried, half in fear, half in fury, and looked up at the window. Sam had disappeared, having fallen with Luke onto the floor. Footsteps now behind him, just a few feet away. He raised the gun to fire, but it was too late. The man was too close. Too fast. He screamed as he ran, then lowered his head, making himself into a running ball of bone and speed. Ammon braced. The stranger smashed into him, hurling his weight against his chest. He fell back. His neck shot back, slamming his head into the brick wall. With a violent ooofff the air escaped him. His head spun. His chest burned. He thought he felt his ribs crack. He fell down. The man was on him. Somewhere above him, his mother cried. The assailant screamed in his ear. Pounding with rage and fury, he beat Ammon in the face. But he was weak and lifeless and there was no power in his fists. Ammon lifted his arms to protect his face, then rolled and kicked his leg up, slamming the tip of his boot into the back of the stranger’s head. The man cried in pain and anger, completely out of control. Ammon twisted and threw him off, smashing him into the wall. There was a thud, and suddenly Sam was standing at his side. He reached down, picked the man up by the collar, and threw him into the wall, slamming his head into the brick. The man started sliding downward. Ammon kicked him in the jaw as he fell. The man’s eyes rolled back and he groaned once before rolling lifelessly to the side.
“UP, UP, UP!” Sam commanded. Luke was standing at the window, reaching down to them. Behind them, other voices. Other footsteps. Sam recognized the sound of a 12-gauge shotgun chambering a shell, and the blood turned even colder in his veins. Ammon jumped. Luke pulled. Ammon fell inside. Sam stepped back, ran three steps, and leaped. He reached the splintered window sill and pulled. Ammon and Luke each grabbed an arm and yanked him through. A powerful explosion shattered the brick wall behind them. They rolled across the floor. “Stay down. Stay away from the window!” Sam screamed as he rolled.
Another gunshot. Another explosion through the window. The sound of voices, all of them closing in now.
“He’s got a shotgun!” Sam shouted. He rolled to his knees and halfway stood, keeping his head down; then he started running toward a dark outline of a shadow against the back wall. “Come on, come on!” he cried, motioning toward the door.
The others followed. An empty hallway. Layers of garbage across the floor. A stairway on their right side.
“This way,” Sam cried.
* * * * * * *
High ground. Cover. Line of fire. Sam’s mind raced with the tactical considerations as he moved up the dank and malodorous stairway. Everything was filthy and he wished he was wearing combat gloves. Running, he looked around desperately. Where to go? How to protect the others? What was the best way out? If he had been by himself, it would have been so easy to shoot his way out of this mess. But there were his mother, the other women, and Luke, who was still not even close to being well.
He heard the thud of heavy footsteps below them now, then the sound of angry voices and shrill laughter emitting from the hallway on the first floor. Breaking glass. A thunderous BANG! as the front door was shot off its hinges. More voices on the street. A building surge of panic. Who were these people? Where had they come from? Why did they want to kill them?
Nothing made any sense.
The evil all around him thickened. He could feel them. He could feel him. He felt like throwing up. The darkness was so real, so oppressive, it sucked the life right out of his soul. Depressing and despairing, the evil gathered nearer. He could almost hear the voices of the spirits that were watching them from the empty halls.
Sam shivered, stopping on the stairwell, unsure of what to do or where to go. His mother moved beside him, her eyes barely visible in the dark. She leaned into him and whispered in his ear, “Do you feel that, Sam?” He sensed the tears of fear that wet her eyes.
He tried to speak but couldn’t answer, so he slowly moved his head. Then, despite the utter darkness, a thought sprang into his head. Something from the Bible? He wasn’t sure, but the words came with clarity to his mind. “For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and power, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places.”
He shivered once again.
This was Lucifer’s day of glory, his night of splendor, and the last days of his pride.
The rulers of the darkness. Sam forced himself not to cry.
So that was what they were up against. But at least he finally knew.
Turning, he raised his fist and raged back at the darkness. “You do not own me or my family. We are your enemies. We are your weakness. And this is not our time. Do what you will with your mortal servants, but you will not move us from this place!”
He waited, half expecting to hear an answer, then turned suddenly toward his mother.
“Do you feel that?” she asked him. Ammon and Luke had gathered beside them on the creaking stairs.
Sam put his arm around her shoulders. “It’s going to be OK,” he said. He didn’t waver. He didn’t hesitate. His voice was hard and firm. He felt cold despite the beads of sweat that ran down his face to sting his eyes. Looking at his younger brothers, he saw the courage and—what was it?—the light that emitted from their faces. It was then it finally hit him, the confusion lifting as he stared into their eyes.
The battle was in motion. The same battle from long ago. The battle for the souls of men, for the soul of their country, for their own family. Eons of waiting and preparing. And now the final days were here.
But he was ready. Th
ey all were ready. Lucifer had not defeated them—and he wouldn’t defeat them now.
Turning, he raced up three more flights of stairs to the final landing. Stopping at a locked door, he pulled out his pistol and shot the rusted lock. He pushed the door open and they ran onto the roof.
Ammon quickly looked around, then raced toward the low wall that ran around the rooftop. They were four stories above the streets. Huge fires were burning now below them and a raging crowd had gathered, filling the shadows of the night. “Well, at least we got the high ground,” Ammon said as they moved across the tar-and-pebble roof.
Sam angrily shook his head. “This isn’t Gettysburg,” he answered. He looked around desperately. The nearest building was at least forty yards away, across the street. “We don’t have an escape route.” He ran to the west wall. The rail yard was empty. It was a long way down. “Why did I come up here? It was stupid. This is the last place we should be.”
Ammon grabbed his shoulders. “Dude, it doesn’t matter. We’re not leaving this place anyway.”
Mary was standing by the door. “They’re coming up the stairs!” she cried. Ammon and Luke ran toward her. It sounded like an army on the other side of the door.
“Kind of wish we had that lock now,” Ammon said as they pushed against the door.
“Doesn’t matter. One blast with that shotgun is all it’s going to take,” Sam replied.
Ammon pulled out his weapon. “So we shoot them as they come through the door.”
He heard his mother gasp. “You can’t do that, Ammon!” she cried.
He turned to her. “Mom, what are we going to do, then?”
“I don’t know. But you can’t just shoot them. I don’t care who or what they are. You can’t shoot them, Ammon.” She turned. “You hear me, Sam? That is not who we are.”
“I’ll tell you who we are, Mom,” Sam said very evenly. “We’re dead if we don’t stop them. They are coming, they want to kill us, and they’ve got lots of guns.”
“Sam, we can’t—”
“No, Mom,” Sam shot back. “We will protect ourselves.” He turned to Ammon. “We cannot let them on the rooftop. If they come through that door, we shoot them. You understand me, dude?”
Ammon’s hands were shaking. Sara let out a cry. Mary moved to her and put her arm around her shoulders. “I’ve got my baby here,” she whispered, hoping that Sara would understand. Azadeh hesitated, then moved forward. “Do they want me?” she wondered weakly. “If they do, then I’ll go down there. I will talk to them—”
“No,” Ammon told her. “This has nothing at all to do with you.”
The noise was getting louder, swearing, cursing and shouting from the stairs behind the door. Someone threw a rock onto the rooftop. Another shotgun blast echoed from below. The night was completely dark now, the stars hidden behind a wall of clouds. The cold wind seemed to gust with fury, as if it could blow them from the roof. Pounding on the stairwell. Heavy footsteps. The foulest cursing. Heavy fists upon the door. Words they didn’t understand. A cold chill upon the air. Ammon fell back and aimed his weapon. Sam moved to his side and crouched. Luke pushed his mother and the other women toward the farthest corner of the roof. Kelly Beth was crying now, grasping at him, and he had to tear her from his arm. He huddled the women together. “Stay here,” he commanded before he turned.
Then silence. Deadly silence.
Luke ran back toward his brothers.
“Stay away from the door!” Sam screamed to him. “Get into position—”
The shotgun blast shattered the wood frame around the door, sending splinters, dust and pieces of broken metal exploding through the air. Luke fell back and scrambled across the tar-and-pebble rooftop. Ammon raised his gun and fired.
“NO, NO, NO!” Sam screamed. “Don’t waste your ammo, man!”
Another second of ugly silence.
Another shotgun blast.
The door twisted on its hinges, then fell back.
The thin man with the crooked smile stood there. His eyes were yellow, his teeth exposed, his lips pulled back in wild fury. “It’s time to shine,” he whispered in a dark voice that seemed to emit from somewhere in his chest. He raised the shotgun and stepped forward. Ammon aimed at his chest and was about to fire when something caught his ear. Something in the wind. Loud. Powerful. A dull whopwhop of spinning rotors.
The helicopter swooped in from the north, the sound of its turbine engines and massive rotors swallowed up in the wind. Getting closer, it turned on its spotlight and aimed it at the roof. The helicopter was flying so fast it almost overshot the rooftop before coming to a hover at the corner where the women and little girl were crouching. The spotlight was blinding and Sam raised his hands to shield his eyes. The helicopter was all black. Army markings. Sam almost cried in relief.
A loudspeaker under the nose of the helicopter shattered the dark night. “You there, with the shotgun! Drop your weapon and turn around!” Sam could see the door gunner now, his Gatling gun M134 moving on its floor-mounted hinges to turn his way. At 5,000 rounds a minute, the Gatling could cut a man in two. “DO IT NOW!” the speaker sounded. “DROP YOUR WEAPON OR DIE!”
The man with the shotgun backed up, waited, sneered, then raised his shotgun and aimed it at the women who were huddled at the corner of the building. He didn’t have time to fire. Sam’s bullet hit him in the head, almost directly in the ear.
The chopper settled to a lower position. “GO GO!” the loudspeaker blared.
A group of shadows scurried from the doorway of the building. Two or three men ran through. A half-second burst of gunfire streamed from the Gatlin gun, fire spouting from the barrels, smoke and white-hot tracers shooting through the darkness. The doorway shattered into a thousand pieces. Almost three hundred bullets impacted within a few feet of the center of the door. Another burst of gunfire, this one longer. The men were cut in pieces, blood and bone scattering through the air.
Ammon stared, too amazed and sick to even move.
Sam shook his head, grabbed his brother’s shoulder, and started running. Two Army Rangers jumped out of the hovering helicopter and ran toward them.
TWENTY-FOUR
Offutt Air Force Base, Headquarters, U.S. Strategic Command, Eight Miles South of Omaha, Nebraska
Sara was terrified and angry. The metal door was locked, there were no windows, and she was cold. The small room was dim and quiet, and though she could hear occasional footsteps in the hall, she felt lonely, as if she were the last person in the world.
Sometime before, they had allowed her to eat and shower—clean! the most wonderful feeling she could imagine—then immediately brought her back and locked her in the room. Alone again, she’d thought back on the helicopter ride through the long night. Not a word had been spoken to them, not a hint of explanation or justification for what they’d done, no indication of who the rescuers were, how they knew about them, or what they intended to do with them now. Before the helicopter had landed at their destination, just as the sun was coming up, hoods had been placed briskly over their heads, their hands secured behind their backs, Sam’s and Ammon’s weapons confiscated. Touching down, the helicopter’s turbine engines still screaming, they’d been pulled from the helicopter one person at a time, all of them resisting except Sam. Separated, they were driven away in different cars. Now she didn’t know where her family was, how long she’d been there, or even where she was.
She lay on the small bunk in the corner and looked up at the security camera that stared down at her. She blinked. It didn’t. She rolled over on the bed. A dim light burned in the deeply recessed, wire-covered socket on the ceiling, but if there was a light switch to control it, she didn’t know where it was. She was tired, cold and wanted to scream. Getting up, she paced until her feet hurt, then lay down once again. But she couldn’t sleep and sat up on the bed. Was it day? Was it night? She didn’t know what to think.
The door finally opened. A man she’d never seen before was standing t
here. Blue shirt, dark suit pants, gray tie. A military haircut. Stern. Not overtly threatening, but serious. “Mrs. Brighton,” he said, “will you please come with me?”
Sara stared at him. “Who are you?” she asked in a fearful, angry voice.
He stepped into the room. “Please, ma’am.” He held the door back.
“Who are you?” she demanded, not moving from the bed.
“Ma’am,” his voice was firm.
“Show me some ID. I want to know who you are with.”
The man held the door back a little further and she glanced into the hall, catching a glimpse of a passing military uniform. Her heart skipped, the familiar sight an uncertain comfort. It wasn’t like she suddenly trusted the military more than any others—she didn’t trust anyone right now—but it was enough to give a hint of where she was.
“You don’t need to know who I am,” the man said as he held the door ajar. “It doesn’t matter and it doesn’t help you anyway. But if you’ll come with me, I think you’ll have your questions answered.”
“I doubt it,” she answered suspiciously.
The stranger cleared his throat, growing impatient. Let him, Sara thought. Let’s see how he reacts; that’ll tell me more than anything what he’s really about. “Where are the others?” she commanded, her voice rising. “Where are my sons, the black woman, the girls?”
He looked at her blankly. “Ma’am, I understand your fears and skepticism, but the truth is, I don’t who or what you’re talking about—and even if I did, I’m sure I couldn’t tell you. Not right now. Not yet. I’m not the one you want to talk to. There are others who will explain.”
She looked at him as if for the first time. He looked familiar. Yes, she was certain. She had seen him before. Sometime recently. “Did you know my husband?” she asked, the sudden hope in her voice betraying her utter weakness.
“Your husband?” he answered slowly, looking past her.
Sara saw the flicker of recognition in his eyes even though his face remained passionless, his thick arms hanging at his side. “You knew him. Were you with him when—”
(Wrath-08)-Evil In The Darkness (2013) Page 12