by James Hunt
The smoke from the stairwell made its way into the room and triggered the sprinkler system there, casting water over the desks, computers, carpet, and whatever other furniture was on the floor. With the carpet dampening, Sarah jumped over the makeshift wall of desks and skidded to a stop between Bryce and Mack. She placed her hand on Mack’s shoulder. “Now, before you get mad about all the water damage, I want you to take a deep breath and think about all the new furniture we could get once the insurance money clears.”
Hot shells hit the mushy carpet beneath them as Mack fired over the desk, killing two more men trying to advance on them. With the amount of adrenaline that was no doubt coursing through Mack’s body, Sarah found it hard to determine whether the red-faced rage was because of her or the fact that people were trying to kill them.
Each bullet sent into the metal and composite desks they used for cover created a lump, turning the top of the desk into an oddly shaped piece of braille. Sarah rolled over Bryce, who moaned from the weight. “What? I’m not that heavy.”
There were more than thirty support agents positioned behind desks, and more and more henchmen piled out from the elevator shaft. “Jesus, you think there’s like a factory for these guys? Like a cloning machine where they just pop out, one after another?”
“The hangar!” Mack said. “Now!”
“Geez, all right. No need to get loud enough to where they can hear. Where’s our guy?”
Bryce picked up a magazine, but his fingers were so shaky, he fumbled it to the ground. “What guy?”
Sarah’s face went taut, any line of expression completely faded from it. “The guy I brought in. The one who had the radio tube transmitter that told his cronies exactly where he was. The one who knows where my brother and Global Power are hiding.”
The gunfire between both parties thickened, with the invading entity starting to gain momentum. Even with the bullets thumping right next to his head, the sight of Sarah’s eyes boring into Bryce’s skull was more frightening than the flying pieces of deadly lead. “Um, I don’t know.”
“Dammit, Bryce!” Sarah jumped to her feet, bringing the crosshairs of the rifle over one, two, three individuals, her finger moving as a blur over the trigger as each of the men dropped to the ground. She dashed behind the desks, jumping over the bodies of the support agents on the ground, kicking up splashes of water from the soaked carpet.
The door to the conference room was cracked open, but with the blinds still drawn, Sarah couldn’t tell if he was still inside. Without breaking stride, she slammed into the room, and the rifle aimed at the empty chair where the captive had been tied up. Nothing but the untied pieces of rope was left. With him gone, Sarah felt a piece of her slip away. The small raft that she’d let herself hold onto had disappeared with that man. He was the link to her brother, and with HQ being overrun, the chances of her finding him grew smaller and smaller.
Sarah dropped the rifle and pulled her pistols from their holsters. Water droplets flung off the Colt’s barrels as she spun back out into the firefight. Flashes from rifle barrels and the smell of damp metal filled her senses. Her fingertips slipped slightly on the pistols’ triggers, but it didn’t matter—any piece of body that came into view was met with a .45 caliber chunk of metal that sent its target flying backward on its ass. Despite Bryce, Johnny, and the remaining support agents screaming at her to run, she took her time. Each arm moved independently, sometimes her eyes not even following the line of fire that her hands positioned themselves in. But regardless of where the end of the barrel went, the bullet always found its mark.
With her knees and thighs now covered behind the metal plates of the desk, Sarah remained standing until a jerk against her left ankle brought her down behind the safety of the office supply barrier. She shoved the hands groping her shoulder off her and tried standing up again but was shoved back down. She found the wrist of the arm trying to hold her back, and she twisted it hard, forcing the hand to release its grip on her.
“Agh! Sarah, stop!”
Sarah turned around and saw the twisted pain on Bryce’s face. She let go of his wrist, and he rubbed it profusely. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” she asked. “You know better than to get in my way when I get in ‘go time’ mode.”
“Sarah, we need to get out of here, now.”
Sarah brought her pistol over the side of the desk and fired, ejecting and reloading the pistol in her other hand. “He’s still here, Bryce.” She felt his hand wrap around her wrist again, and she froze. The grip was firm but soft. The rain falling down on the two of them accentuated the lines of grief on his face.
“We’ll get your brother back,” Bryce said. “I promise.”
The first tear in the metal composite splintered through, almost hitting Johnny in the shoulder. Sarah nodded and jumped up from behind the desk, firing into the small army now gathered on their main floor. “Let’s move, desk jockeys!”
Boots and shoes splashed against the soggy carpet, squishing footprints that retained their shape, leaving a trail of imprinted feet to the hangar where their evacuation vehicles were located. The soggy bodies squeezed through the narrow hallway that bottlenecked the group, with Sarah and Mack providing cover. Sarah pulled another grenade from her belt and pulled the pin with her mouth, spitting the small piece of silver to the floor. “It’s great to be spending some quality time together. Huh, Mack?” She released her grip on the handle, igniting the grenade’s fuse, held it in her hand for two seconds, then chucked it into a scattering group of whatever terrorists Demps had paid to attack them.
The explosion rocked the hallway, sending a few chunks of the ceiling to the floor. Sarah checked the doorway behind her, where the rest of the crew had disappeared. “Clear!” Sarah said, and she jumped out from behind the cover of the wall’s edge, wielding her pistols as she covered Mack’s run, following close behind.
The moment Sarah was through the door, Mack slammed it shut, and it was immediately redecorated with .223 caliber bullets that thumped on the other side. The hangar was completely dark, and it took a minute for Sarah’s eyes to adjust while Mack secured the locks on the door.
“Where the hell is everyone?” Sarah asked. An engine revved to life, and a pair of headlights illuminated the darkness and blinded her. She blinked rapidly, attempting to rid herself of the black spots blocking her vision.
“Standard protocol,” Mack said, grabbing her hand and guiding her to the car’s door. “Every agent has a safe house to retreat to and wait for further instructions.”
Sarah bounced onto the back seat of the vehicle and saw Bryce at the wheel. She squished her face and cocked her head to the side. “You drive?”
Bryce, slightly offended, nodded as Mack climbed into the passenger seat. “Yes, I can drive. Why wouldn’t I be able to drive?”
“I don’t know,” Sarah answered. “I took you as more of a bus man for some reason.”
The headlights illuminated the explosion that rocked the door as the three of them ducked inside the car. The fire and smoke lit up the large hangar, and three seconds later, the first few bad guys poured inside and started blanketing the vehicle with a new paint job.
“Drive, Bryce!” Mack said.
Bryce threw the car into reverse, peeling the tires out as Sarah rolled down the passenger-side window of the back seat and emptied both magazines into the advancing enemy. With half her body still hanging outside the window, the car spun a hard one eighty, sending her gut into the doorframe and slightly knocking the wind out of her. She ducked back inside the car as the bullets plinked off the bulletproof glass of the rear windshield. “Okay, so you can drive.”
Sarah watched a smile creep over Bryce’s face in the rearview mirror as he followed the winding ramp up to the surface level. The higher they went, the more sunlight illuminated the curving road, until they sped out of a ramp and into the back lot of the Chicago Packing Company.
Chapter 5
The heads of the charred bodies t
humped against the steps as what was left of their remains were drug up the staircase. At least a dozen men were inside the server room with computers, scanning for anything that might have been left behind.
Heath left the techs to do what they could with the chunks of hard drives that remained. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and ascended the stairs, stepping around the trails of human fluids left behind from the corpses carried up the steps.
When Heath arrived at the top of the stairs, a short, portly man ran up and handed him a stack of clothes. “Here you are, sir. Cleaned and pressed.”
Heath wiped his hands and gently took the stack of fresh clothes. His shoes squished against the soggy carpet, pushing up water and air bubbles from the soaked foam underneath. He found his way to a locker room, where he showered.
Once he’d rid himself of the filth that came with the field assignment, he carefully picked up his clothes, putting on his pants, socks, shoes, shirt, belt, and tie in that order. He reached for his jacket, and when he put his arms through the sleeves, the cuffs of the jacket ended up being three inches short of making it to his wrists. He ripped it off in a fit of anger and threw it on the ground. His nostrils flared from the annoyance, and he closed his eyes, breathed in slowly through his nose and out slowly through his mouth.
When Heath opened his eyes, he saw a name printed on a small strip of paper over the locker. He looked to his right, where another name was also printed on another locker door. He followed the trail of names, his eyes flitting back and forth quickly until they landed on the one name he was looking for: Sarah Hill.
It took him less than thirty seconds to pick the lock. Inside were a few stained and sweaty T-shirts, a half-eaten box of Snickers candy bars, a fully loaded revolver, and crumpled-up chewing gum wrappers. Two pictures were taped on the inside of the door. He grabbed hold of one, the adhesive peeling off slowly from the metal in stringy lines until it finally gave way.
The picture was faded, the original color no longer decipherable. A young man and woman were in the mountains on a trail somewhere. In the picture with them were two children—a small baby and a toddler. All of them were smiling, even the baby, no doubt giggling about some nonsense the mother had whispered to her earlier.
Heath sat down on the bench behind him and neatly peeled off the remaining bits of tape, carefully, ensuring that the rest of the picture wasn’t damaged. Once all the tape had been removed, he was placing it gently in his pocket when his phone rang. He looked at the number and answered immediately.
“We’re almost finished up here, Mr. Demps.”
“Good. What have you found on their hard drives?”
“Nothing yet, sir, but I’m having our technicians take them back to the lab. They’ll have a better opportunity to reconstruct the data there.”
“We need them gone, Heath. They know a lot about us, and I want to make sure we know as much about them as we can. Understand?”
“Yes, sir, but I was wondering about our contact. Perhaps he—”
“No. We’ll be handling this ourselves.”
“Yes, sir.”
The phone call ended, and Heath pocketed his cell. He grabbed the edge of Sarah’s locker door and pinched it between his fingers then ran his fingertip over the faces of the people in the second picture: Ben, Becca, Matt, Ella, and finally Sarah. When he made it to her face, he dug his nail into her forehead and scraped out her head. Heath slammed the locker door shut and went back out onto the floor to ensure the men they were using didn’t miss any important details in the office.
***
The outline of the Chicago skyline was firmly behind them as Bryce pulled the car into a small suburban community south of the city. Traffic was bad until they made it out of the downtown area. Once that happened, there wasn’t anyone on the road, mostly due to no fuel shipments arriving for the past few days.
They’d seen a few wrecks on the way out here, but it seemed the chaos and crime had been restricted to the streets of Chicago. Out past the city limits, there wasn’t anything but a few candles in the windows of the houses they passed. Everyone was as quiet as church mice.
“Right up here, Bryce,” Mack said, gesturing to the house at the end of the street. Bryce pulled into the driveway, and Sarah checked the magazines around her belt—only two left. But the two C-4 explosives made her feel a little better about the situation.
“What’s the weapons detail like inside?” Sarah asked.
“Assault rifles, rocket launchers, pistols, grenades, heavy ordnance,” Mack said.
“Nothing but the best,” Sarah replied. “How long till we’re back up and running with the sat link?”
“Depends,” Bryce answered.
“On what?”
“On how fast we can get Global Power offline.”
“Great.” Sarah shoved the back door open, making an effort to conceal the pistols underneath her jacket. She did a quick perimeter check and then followed Mack inside, where each of them was scanned before entering.
The front door opened up to the living room, and Bryce flicked a light on. Sarah checked the rooms, clearing each one until she found the armory. Rows and rows of rifles, shotguns, pistols, grenades, explosives, and ammo lined the walls. It was like walking into an all-you-can-eat buffet, but instead of food there were guns, and instead of silverware there were bullets. “Come to momma.”
Bryce had his laptop out and was busy on his keyboard while Mack checked the blinds out front. When Sarah stepped out, she was loaded down with every piece of hardware she could carry. Both Bryce and Mack gave her a look up and down. “What?” she asked.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Mack asked.
“To get our HQ back,” Sarah answered. “I’m not letting those bastards steal my chair. Do you know how long it took me to get one with the right butt grooves? That thing was just starting to feel comfortable.”
“HQ is compromised, the satellite link is down, and all our operatives are in blackout mode until they receive orders from their support agents,” Mack said.
“So let’s boot up the backup servers and go kick some ass!” Sarah said, gesturing to the two of them with thumbs up but not receiving the same level of enthusiasm back. “C’mon, guys, work with me here.”
“The backup servers are connected to the main power grid,” Bryce said. “If we turn them on, then Global Power will see the influx of energy used on the grid, and we’ll be right back to where we started.”
Sarah looked over at Mack, who was still gazing out the window, oblivious to everything they were talking about. “Mack.” He quickly withdrew the blinds and looked over at the two of them sitting over the kitchen table. “What are we supposed to do?” Sarah asked. “Just sit here until Demps decides to turn the power back on?”
Mack shook his head, shaking out whatever thoughts had entered it. He took a few steps with his head down, rubbing his forehead, mumbling something to himself. Sarah elbowed Bryce in the shoulder, and he flinched. “He’s doing his ‘something big is about to happen’ walk.”
“I don’t think that’s an actual thing,” Bryce said, rubbing his shoulder.
“There is another satellite server location,” Mack said. “It’s completely off the grid. No one knows its location except for me.”
Sarah gave Bryce a playful shove, and Bryce raised his eyebrow. “Son of a bitch, that is a real thing,” he said.
“Where are the servers?” Sarah asked.
“Alaska.”
“You couldn’t have picked someplace a little closer?” Bryce asked.
“Road trip!” Sarah exclaimed, jumping between the two of them. “I call shotgun.”
***
The cuts and bruises along Ben’s face hadn’t healed. The lack of medical attention, food, and sleep made sure of that. Not that he could see or feel anything anymore anyway. He’d lost himself within the dark recesses of the room, where no light or hope could enter. He’d slipped into the icy-cold hands
of despair. He’d accepted the fact that he’d never see his family again, never hear his kids’ voices, and never hold his wife in his arms. The only thing left for him here was pain.
The metal door to his cell squealed open as his face was greeted with the artificial light of the hallway outside. Ben was only able to make out the dark silhouette of a man towering over him. He curled further into himself as two pairs of hands grabbed him roughly and picked him up then placed him on a stretcher.
Ben’s face glazed over at the ceiling above him as he was carried down a hallway. The cuts along his face had grown infected, oozing yellowish liquid. Pieces of decayed, dead flesh hung from the wounds, infecting the surrounding skin. His lips were cracked, dried, dehydrated. He moved his mouth fruitlessly, trying to form words that his voice wouldn’t let him utter and the guards carrying him wouldn’t care to hear anyway. Some type of new torture awaited him at the end of this journey. Some new form of disfigurement. His children’s faces flashed in his memory. What little water he had left leaked from the corners of his eyes and created a single stream down the side of his face, quickly soaking through his skin like water on a dry riverbed.
The ceiling finally stopped moving, and Ben felt himself being lifted from the cot and transferred to the cold steel of another surface. A shadow slowly encroached over him, blocking out the light above. He couldn’t see the features on the person’s face, but he could feel something on the side of his own, picking away at his skin. His head jerked slightly from the pressure on his cheek. He wasn’t sure how long he lay there, letting hands and whatever pieces of metal that were attached to them touch him, but after they were done, they flipped him over, addressing the wounds on his back, arms, and legs. They showered him and put him in a fresh set of clothes. All the while, he lay motionless, letting the foreign bodies and hands puppeteer him into whatever position they wanted. They moved him, and he obeyed without objection.
