by Ryan Schow
All this gunfire, concussion bursts, screaming and crying and dying had turned an otherwise peaceful day into World War III.
Another small bomb dropped on a nearby building.
Pollutants from the explosions and the damage that followed clogged what were once blue skies and breathable air with billowing clouds of smoke, dust and debris.
With drones laying waste to the crowds from all directions, there really was no place left to hide. He couldn’t stop though. There’s no way he could just stand there. Another 767 went down on the other side of the bridge, gigantic columns of smoke rising on the horizon.
Over head, the police helicopter was hit, either by a drone, or the shooter…he didn’t know. He couldn’t be sure. The craft tried to bank away from the downtown sprawl, but this only sent it spiraling out of control. Swirling smoke twisted up into the air as it spun tail-first into the side of one of the buildings and exploded. Below, people scattered, but the raining chunks of debris crushed and killed several people. One guy was sheared right down the center, his body frayed open from a long tear of sheet metal.
Everywhere they ran, Rock and Maisie were dodging people, drones, burning or exploding cars, falling glass and debris, obstructions scattered haphazardly across the sidewalks and asphalt. There was no easy way out of there. No simple line to follow.
Smoke was the pillow slowly settling over them; it relaxed around them like a heavy mist, but dry and choking. Rock stopped next to a dead woman shot by drones. He fell to his knees before her and started ripping off her shoes.
He threw the first shoe to Maisie, who put it on as fast as she could, and then he threw her the second. By the time she was in both shoes, Rock had taken the dead woman’s socks for later.
They took immediate refuge under an awning at Specialty’s Café and Bakery, a ground floor bakery nestled under the high-rise tower. Someone in a black, out-of-control Audi was plowing through people all along the sidewalk, a drone on its six. The German automobile ran out of open space and slammed into the driver’s side door of a car that was obviously stuck in traffic. No one was in it, but the Audi’s airbag exploded and the guy’s head disappeared behind the pillowy cushion.
Everywhere he looked, he saw routes they couldn’t take. Every direction was chaos, death, dying. His brain was freezing up, eliminating options. There were no options.
“We’re in the eye of this storm,” he said, agitated.
Maisie was next to him, her short dark hair soaked with sweat, her makeup running. Half an eyelash was hanging off her eye. She ripped one off, then the other, throwing both strips away. She bent down and tied a loose shoelace, then stood and reached down into her bra. Just as he was about to ask what she was doing, she pulled out her gel inserts and tossed them like Frisbees out into the field of pandemonium. She cupped her breasts and inhaled deeply, then looked at Rock like she was one more tragedy away from going into a full-fledged coma.
“Feel better?” he asked, motioning down to her chest.
She stared at him, expressionless and panting, unable to find the words. Above them, the drones moved off into the distance. More moved in, all of them looking loaded for bear and going after anything that stirred.
“My God,” Maisie said, looking over the killing field.
He simply shook his head, unable to comprehend the loss of life, the destruction, the sheer bedlam.
It was about to get worse…
A pair of drones hit the already weakened base of the Morton’s restaurant with four more missiles which finally got the entire building with all of its twenty-five or thirty floors crumbling and collapsing into Capitol Mall.
This was one of those things you couldn’t look away from, you couldn’t unsee. The building fell right on the Lamborghini and about fifty more cars, burying half of Capitol Mall in rubble.
If they were going to go, Rock knew it had to be soon. The dust was coming. All he could think of were two things: the sixty-eight different cancers that cropped up in one way or another in the first responders in the World Trade Center collapse due to all the “dust” inhalation, and that they had to move.
The dust storm was coming.
His eyes fell on the two police cars that had cordoned off 5th Street, the light bars flashing. Both cars had been hit. One was engulfed in flames, the other peppered with gunfire. Behind the cars, four cops were laid out dead, one still burning, the others turned into human wiffle balls.
Ignoring the gore, Rock broke into a sprint. From the nearest officers, he grabbed a Glock 17 and a more compact Glock 26, both 9mm variants. When he was fishing the spare mags off of them, he saw the drone blow through the rolling cloud of debris.
Right then he knew he’d screwed up, been too bold.
Wasting no time, he dropped down and rolled under the cop car, praying for his life as the car was pelted with lead. It was over in fractions of a second. When the drone was gone, he rolled back out, grabbed the contraband and ran to Maisie, handing her the smaller Glock 26 and the fresh mag.
She took her eyes off the incoming cloud, the one she was quickly backing away from, then looked at Rock and said, “What am I supposed to do with this?”
“We may need it,” he said running down a side street, hoping the dust cloud would roll straight and fill the side streets slowly, allowing for an escape.
“I’m not exactly that great with a gun,” she admitted, her voice weary and weak as she tried to keep up with him.
He couldn’t hardly believe what he was hearing. This was one of Hollyweird’s up-and-coming action stars!
“Are you kidding me right now?” he shouted over his shoulder.
“What, because of the movies?” she said, not an ounce of anger in her. Her voice was straight fear—a sharp and crippling fear.
He slowed down; she caught up. From where they were, the cloud of dust pushed through, much of it heading down Capitol Mall, but some of it headed their way, too.
“Pull back the slide, chamber a round,” he said. “Like this.”
She did that, then looked up at him.
Another gigantic boom echoed through the streets as the gunman sent another round flying. Rock didn’t know what the gunman was shooting at, be he hoped it was the drones.
“The safety’s in the trigger,” he said, looking around, trying to pinpoint the sound of the rifle’s report. “You’ve got a ten round mag, so this isn’t like the movies where every ten round mag allows you to shoot forty-seven times before reloading.”
“So I just…”
“Point and shoot. If you have time, aim using the sights on top of the slide.” He showed her, then looked up and said, “Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Good, let’s go.”
They trotted down 5th right about the time the two towers on either side of them began taking scores of missiles. The shattering, exploding, screeching of wholesale destruction had them sprinting once more. How far could they run before they gassed out for good? Tons of glass rained down on the sidewalks, which had them moving as quickly as they could through the stopped, destroyed cars in the middle of the road.
There truly was nowhere to hide. He turned and saw Maisie slowing down, not for lack of effort. Would they shoot her first? If they did, could he leave her? Would he risk his life for hers knowing Jill wanted him back?
God, he didn’t know how he’d feel about that. He’d hate it. Probably blame himself for her even being there.
He slowed even more, allowing her to catch up. Then he saw more drones racing down the road not twenty feet off the ground, orange blooms of death signaling the attack headed their way. To his right, the California Bureau of Equalization stood before them. People were pouring out the front of it, but it was the only building not currently under assault.
“Follow me!” he said, grabbing her hand.
Another gunshot went off and a mid-sized drone dropped from the sky, plowing into a rush of people. It was like bowling, but the pins in this case wer
e human beings. The screaming alone was enough to haunt a person for the rest of their life.
And now he wanted to hide in a building? His mind was fraught with the fresh memories of the Morton’s restaurant and how—just a few minutes ago—he’d feared the building above it was going to come down upon them. So really, what choice did they have?
He and Maisie charged right into the frantic, departing crowds. The bumping, shoving, hitting throng of nine-to-fivers cursed them, drove into them, pushed right through them. Together they managed to get inside and pull out of the pressing mob. A security guard was looking at them, his face white as a sheet.
“You okay?” Rock asked, even though he was more worried about them than him.
The guard shook his head, slowly. His name badge said Will Crabtree.
“Are you going to just stay here?” Maisie asked.
“Yeah,” he replied, hesitant, his eyes all but trembling.
“You don’t want to go out there,” Rock said.
“Why?” a nearby woman asked. She had blood spatter on her face. “Other than the obvious.”
“It’s a kill box. Your chances of surviving are next to none.”
“It’s worse in here,” she said, her eyes starting to water. “There’s a shooter on the fifth floor. The cops came in to stop it, but the…the side…the whole wall blew out, killing all of them.”
“The shooter, too?” Crabtree asked.
“I don’t know, Will,” she answered, wiping a bit of blood off her face. “I think so. I mean, I don’t know. But thank you for asking.”
“So you didn’t see if the shooter survived?” Crabtree asked.
“I already said I don’t know. We all just started running, but then…everyone started running.”
“We’re caught in a trap,” Maisie said. She looked the woman right in the face and said, “I wouldn’t go out there if I were you.”
“I have an idea,” Rock turned and said to Maisie. “Do you trust me?”
She nodded her head, then said, “No.”
“Too bad, let’s go.”
They ran straight for the stairs and headed up them as fast as they could for being out of breath, exhausted, running on no sleep and whatever flush of adrenaline was left inside them.
“Where are we going?” Maisie asked.
“We’re going to see about that shooter,” he said. He felt her grip on his hand tighten, jerking him to a stop halfway up the third floor.
He turned and glared at her.
“What?!”
“You’re insane!” she all but snarled. “Everyone is running away from the shooter, and you want to run toward him?”
The last vestiges of hope charged up through the doubt and uncertainty, the fog of fear, the bottomless well of insecurity.
“Come with me or stay here!” he growled. “I’m going after him one way or another!”
“Why?”
“Because he has a big ass gun, Maisie!”
He hadn’t suffered that kind of panic since he killed his brother. He hadn’t been so helpless since he watched Isadoro walk into that burning house with two of Rock’s bullets in his back. He had looked down at his father, into those lifeless eyes, the last stores of blood draining out of him all over the concrete. Right now, it felt like that.
Maybe worse.
“Fine, I’m coming,” she said. “I’m just scared and you’re not making any sense.”
“Trust me,” he said, pulling at her again. “Even if you won’t, just do it.”
They got to the fifth floor, went through the door and saw the SWAT team stew, the massive hole in the hallway’s walls, the pond of red saturating the carpet. Rock held the Glock against his side, the barrel tilted down, elbow pulled in rather than bowed out.
He tiptoed between the body parts, the wet squishing sounds causing blood to pool up around his white Converse. In the office, a gigantic boom! startled them both. He eased up to the edge of the gaping hole in the office wall.
Maisie crept up behind him, her stolen shoes soaking into the blood as well. He turned and looked at her, saw she was looking down at the meat and bones, the torsos, the decapitated heads of a team the shooter could have only subjugated with a grenade, or some kind of rigged explosive.
Rock peeked around the side of the wall. There he saw the shooter hunched over the desk and tracking targets, a wounded arm draped over the gun to steady it. Gun at his side and ready, Rock quietly slipped inside the office and all its scattered debris. He raised his own weapon about the same time the shooter grabbed the pistol off the desk and rolled out of a tight three shots from Rock.
Rock ducked as five or six shots ripped past him, digging into the wall. He thought he heard Maisie squeak, but he couldn’t be sure. What he was sure of was that the shooter was out of ammo. The pistol’s sled shot back. No more rounds.
The shooter grinned, his teeth blood stained, his body obviously shot.
“Get it over with, pretty-boy,” the shooter said.
“What’s your name?”
“Jareth.”
“Just Jareth?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, crawling to his feet. “Pull the trigger already.”
“How many rounds have you got left in that thing?”
“Plenty,” Jareth said.
“Were you shooting at the drones or at people?” Rock asked.
“First people, then drones,” he grumbled, standing up, his body giving up the fight because he looked like he knew it was over.
“Why?”
“Because some people just have to die.”
He moved toward the front of the desk, reached out and slowly pushed the barrel of what looked like the M82 aside.
Rock had his weapon trained on him.
Then it occurred to him that he hadn’t heard from Maisie beyond the squeak. Oh, God. What if she was—?
No…
“Maisie?” he called out. He couldn’t look behind him because this bloody clown was climbing on the desk. Looking at Jareth, he hissed, “What are you doing?”
“When was the last time you examined your life?” the shooter said.
“Shut up,” he growled. Then: “Maisie?”
“Yeah,” she said.
He only looked over his shoulder at her for a moment, long enough to see her face and the hand holding it, the hand that was red with blood.
“None of us really ever lived an impressive life,” the shooter said. He was standing with his back to the window, ready to fall backwards out of it to his death. He looked content. Like he was pleased to go this way. “Not me, not you, probably not that red faced beauty you have—”
Rock pumped three rounds into the man’s chest, knocking him out the window where he fell five stories to his death.
Good riddance.
He hurried over to Maisie, who looked alert. “Have you been shot?” he asked. “Let me see your face. Move your hand.”
She did.
That’s when he saw the huge triangle of metal buried into her cheek like some kind of a handmade Chinese star.
“On the plus side, at least it’s not a bullet. On the down side, you’re probably going to have a scar. If you live long enough to heal, that is.”
One of the shooter’s rounds had blown through the walls, shearing off a shard of metal. It wasn’t pretty, and he wasn’t sure how he’d get her patched up, but there had to be a First Aid kit around there somewhere. Just not now. Right now, if he could get behind that big ass donkey puncher and take out the more imposing drones, he might be able to save the building from certain destruction.
“Can you at least take it out of my face?” she asked.
“Find me a clean cloth and maybe a box of Band-Aids and yes, I can take it out.”
“I think it’ll require more than a Band-Aid,” she said.
“Yeah, well if I don’t stop those drones from hitting this building, a small chunk of metal in your face will be the least of our problems.”
&nb
sp; She turned and disappeared; he went for the fifty.
Rock set the Glock on the desk, confirmed the weapon was a Beretta M82 sniper rifle, then ejected the mag. He found the loose rounds on a nearby desk chair, began feeding them into the near-empty mag.
When he was done, he reloaded then pulled three spare mags close. His eyes wouldn’t stop seeing all the black dots outside. The second wave of drones was wreaking havoc on the city below. In many ways it was worse seeing it five stories up.
Behind him, he heard Maisie dry heaving.
He turned and saw her hand to her mouth, her body convulsing, her legs threatening to give out. She had a box of Band-Aids, and her face was a wash of red, but she’d had a chance to really think about all those dead bodies.
Yet, through it all, she somehow managed to keep her stomach down.
Standing up straight, catching her breath, she wiped her eyes, then blew her nose in her hand and wiped it on a nearby wall.
Impressive, he thought to himself.
Most seasoned guys, you walk them through a horror show like that and you could count on seeing what everyone ate the meal before. But Maisie Sullivan…not so much.
Maybe she wasn’t just a Hollyweird hack after all.
Turning, moving as quickly as he could, he lifted her chin, looked at the triangle of metal in her face, the said, “On the count of three.”
She steadied herself.
“One—” he said, and then he pulled it out. “Band-Aid please.”
She handed him the box. Reeling, a bit squirmy, she held her breath as blood leaked out of her cut. He bandaged it up, gave it a pat and looked at her with a smile.
“Practically all healed,” he said.
She looked over at the sniper rifle. “Do you even know how to shoot that thing?” she asked, her face a little sickly-looking. The Band-Aid looked like it was staunching most of the flow of the weeping wound.
“Yes,” he said, putting on the earmuffs. “If you’re going to be in here, you need to protect your ears. This thing’s an arm cannon.”