by Kyle Andrews
Tracy turned to look at the people in the tunnel as she said, “He didn't answer, but I get it now.”
“They're through the fence!” a man yelled from down the tunnel.
Rose looked in the direction of the voice and then back to the rubble that she had been digging through.
“Do we keep digging?” Tracy asked.
Rose thought about the question for a few moments. She could picture the people inside of the Garden, desperate to get out. She imagined those people who cut through the layers of fencing and barbed wire, moving closer and closer to the hospital as all of those desperate citizens rushed into the fresh air. She could see it all so clearly in her head now, and she couldn't believe that she had overlooked it earlier.
All of those people would be standing in one wide-open area. Garden members and Freedom sympathizers from all over the city. On one side, they would have a building that was burning and falling apart. On the other, a fence with an opening cut into it. Enough to get people out in an orderly fashion, but if everyone tried to run out at once?
“It's a trap,” Rose said to herself before looking at Tracy. “Son of a bitch, it's a trap!”
Before she even finished yelling those words, she was racing through the tunnel. Two or three other people were close on her heels, but to the others she ordered, “Keep digging! Get them out!”
She ran through the tunnels at full speed, through the doorway and through the sewer, but by the time she reached the ladder that would lead back to the street, another blast shook the entire area. She lost her balance and fell over as another explosion went off. Then there were guns firing in the distance.
Tracy grabbed Rose's hand and helped her up. She said, “We can't go out there.”
“We have to,” Rose replied.
“We don't have weapons. We'll be lining up to be slaughtered.”
Rose reached behind her back and grabbed her gun. She looked it over and said, “I have a weapon.”
“One handgun against an army of machine guns?”
“One distraction. Possibly enough to buy some time. If I can get one person back to safety... Look, I'm going. You guys need to keep digging. Get them out and lead them through the sewer. Get as far away from here as possible.”
Tracy opened her mouth to respond, but no words came out. Finally, she nodded in agreement and turned around. She and the two men who had followed Rose through the tunnels went back the way they came.
Rose turned toward the ladder. Now there were faint screams mixed in with the gunfire. The sound felt like a hand tightening around Rose's heart, squeezing tightly, and she couldn't help but imagine the faces of the people she knew, torn apart by HAND weapons.
She climbed the ladder and carefully poked her head through the manhole. The hospital was blocks away. HAND wasn't watching the area where she was coming up. The time for attacking the whole neighborhood was over. They found their sweet spot and they had Freedom members pouring out of the hospital like ants out of a hill.
After pulling herself up onto the street, Rose pushed the manhole cover back in place, so HAND wouldn't think to send their men looking down below. She then ducked low and moved to the side of the street, keeping close to the buildings as she moved ever closer to the hospital. The closer she got, the louder the screams were. They dug their way into her, so deep that she would be having nightmares about those sounds for years to come. But if she played her cards right, she might be able to give a HAND officer or two some nightmares of their own, and that thought pushed her forward.
When she was only one block away, Rose stopped moving and peeked around the corner of the building that she was pressed against. She held her breath as she saw the side of a HAND truck, with officers scattered around either side. There were dozens of them, all with guns, firing on the people that Rose cared about. That pissed her off. A lot.
She had nothing but empty space behind her. She could run for her life. She could save herself and leave all of those people on their own, but despite this, Rose felt the same as the night of the riot when she was attacked in a dark alley. Pinned to the ground. The hot, stinky breath of her enemy on her neck. No option but to pull that gun and make every shot count. No matter what, the bad guy could not have this day without a scar to show for it.
She gripped her gun tightly and took a deep breath, wishing that she had had more time to practice shooting it, or more ammunition with which to reload. But things were what they were and a little detail like not knowing how to use her barely-loaded weapon was not going to stop her from facing down that army.
She stepped into the open just as one of those HAND officers happened to look her way. He opened his mouth to alert the others and she opened fire.
Her bullet ricocheted off of the HAND truck and it seemed like every officer in the area turned around and saw her at the same time. For a second or two, their guns stopped firing and she prayed that those seconds counted for something.
Then she turned and ran like hell, because those officers started to point their weapons at her. She could hear the firing resume and more than one of those shots fired struck the wall of a building across the street from where she had been standing.
When Rose reached the nearest alley, she ducked into it. She didn't want to slow down, but she had to assess her situation, so she looked from side to side and eventually spotted an open window that led into the basement of one of the buildings. She hurried to the window and climbed inside, closing the window behind her.
Through the dirty glass she could see HAND officers chasing after her. There were five of them, which was nothing compared the number of officers down the street.
If they knew where she was, they could be in that basement within seconds. Her instincts told her to turn and run. She could either find a place to hide in the building, or she could wait until they had passed and then sneak out through the front door.
But she ignored her instincts.
There were five of them.
Only five.
Using the butt of her gun, Rose shattered the glass of the window. The sound was loud and unavoidable. They had to know that she was there. As quickly as she could, she moved away from the window, to the other side of the basement and took shelter behind an old water heater, hoping that the gas line had been shut off, because one bullet could have been the end of the entire building otherwise. Then she waited.
Just as Rose was starting to wonder whether or not the HAND officers would respond to the noise, she saw a shadow around the edge of the window. Someone was definitely out there, but they weren't coming after her—at least, they weren't coming through the window.
One man guarding the window, she thought to herself. The others were probably blocking her path to the front door. There was no way out for her, except to fight and win against a group of highly trained soldiers with superior firepower. How hard could that be?
As she listened to their footsteps getting closer and closer, Rose began to doubt her plan. In the fog of anger maybe she failed to think logically. Her strategy was to take each officer out, one by one, as they made their way into the basement. If they'd come through the window, that might have actually worked, but now she was cornered with nothing more than one handgun that she barely knew how to use.
This was the moment where Rose could have chosen to panic. She could have begun to shut down, accepting her fate and hoping that she had caused enough of a distraction to save at least one life. She could have walked into death and it could have all been over.
But instead of that, Rose chose to see the other side of the situation. She had little to lose. There was nothing to fear by charging into battle that she wouldn't equally face by sitting still. If death were to fall on her that day, she wasn't going empty-handed. She was going to drag those bastards down with her and show the rest of their kind that attacking Freedom comes at a price.
There was an old lullaby that parents sang to their children in the Garden. Rose didn't know where it came from, but the words
of that song ran through her head as she stood there, preparing to fight. The voice in her head wasn't her own. It was the voice of a little girl from the Garden that she'd once heard softly singing to a baby:
'Oh say can you see, by the dawn's early light...'
At the time she heard the little girl, she thought it was cute. Standing in the basement, about to face her maker (if such a maker existed), Rose couldn't help but think that the memory was strangely eerie.
The basement door opened. It creaked as light from upstairs slowly inched its way across the wall and the outline of an officer soon took form in that light.
There were more footsteps, nowhere near the basement door and not moving any closer. The officers weren't taking it for granted that the target was staying in the basement. They were searching the building.
A footstep on the top stair told Rose that the officer at the door was moving closer. The second step. The third.
In her mind, Rose was picturing the five officers that she had counted, keeping in mind that the number could have easily changed. For all she knew, the house was swarming with officers. Except, she only heard a few.
As soon as she took one out, they would all come running. They had no way of knowing that she was alone, so they would have to be careful. That might buy her a second or two, but eventually they would all be on top of her.
She should have counted her bullets.
She should have gotten more bullets.
She should have brought more people with more guns and more bullets.
But she was alone and that would have to suffice.
Above her, she heard more footsteps. It sounded like they were moving to an upper level. That could buy her another second or two.
She saw an officer's feet on the stairs now, moving down slowly, as though he were expecting her to jump out and open fire. She could have too, but what would she gain from shooting him in the shin?
If she could see him, he would be able to see her once he was far enough down, so Rose pulled her head behind the water heater. If anyone looked through the window, they would be able to see her easily, but she had to deal with the more pressing matter of the officer who was only feet away.
He stepped onto the floor, but Rose heard someone else behind him, following him down. Assuming two in the basement, two moving upstairs and one at the window, all five of her pursuers were accounted for.
The lullaby was still echoing through her memory as she struggled to keep track of all five of the officers to the best of her ability. She wished that it would go away, but it wouldn't. She was also suddenly very aware of her shoes and how cold her feet were.
Officer One—as she called him in her mind—was in the center of the basement, with Officer Two now on the ground just behind him.
Aside from the water heater, there were a few boxes that Rose could have hidden behind, but nothing that would keep them distracted for long.
If she popped out from behind the heater, she would be shot. Undoubtedly, they were watching for her. But what about the other side? The side that they would have considered all-clear, since they could see it from the stairs?
The space between the water heater and the wall was narrow, but Rose was small by most standards. If she straightened her back and sucked in her gut, she might be able to fit... Assuming that she didn't make a sound and draw attention, and assuming that she timed her move perfectly, so that she could avoid being seen by either of the officers. It was a long shot, but everything about her life was a long shot at that point. None of the options were good, so she chose the ones that felt right in the moment.
She couldn't see either of the officers. She could hear them, but that didn't help her nearly as much as she would have liked. So, she closed her eyes and waited, listening to each footstep in the room.
“Looks clear,” one of the officers said, but the other didn't respond. Did that mean that the other officer knew where she was?
'Now!' she thought to herself, for no reason in particular. It just suddenly felt like the right moment to make her move, so that was what she did.
She slipped behind the water heater, hoping that her shoes wouldn't make a sound on the floor or her belt wouldn't tap against the metal water heater as she went.
After she managed to make it through to the other side in one piece, she exhaled. No shots were fired. It seemed like she made it.
“I guess,” the other officer finally replied. “Let's check on the others.”
Rose realized that she could have sucked it in and slipped back to the other side of the water heater, staying hidden until the officers were gone. She could have survived and stayed hidden in that basement without anyone ever being the wiser, and nobody would have questioned her decision to do so. But the sound of gunfire in the distance could still be heard, and even though she hadn't glimpsed the area in front of the hospital, she knew that it was littered with the bodies of good people. Some of those people had been sent out there directly by her. Those deaths were on her shoulders. The least she could do was take out five of the bastards who took part in those murders.
Gripping her gun tightly in her hand, Rose watched the basement and waited. The memory of that lullaby repeated once again in her head, and she had to wonder if the little girl that she'd heard singing it was still alive.
Asking herself that question caused her blood to boil, so when she saw Officer Two step into her line of sight, Rose didn't waste any time in leveling her gun and firing off a shot. In the movies people always went flying backward when they were shot, but this officer didn't do that. His hand went to his neck and blood poured through his fingers.
Before that officer even fell to the ground, Rose was slipping behind the water heater once again. When she emerged on the other side, she found herself standing behind Officer One, who was desperately looking for the shooter and never thought to look back to the spot that he'd seen empty only a second before.
Rose shot him in the head, and as he fell to the ground, the officer by the window was dropping to the ground and poking his head through the window to see what was happening.
She didn't have a clear shot, so Rose ducked behind the water heater and counted to three. She could hear footsteps from above, racing toward the basement. They would be down there within seconds, so she needed to move quickly.
When she counted to three, Rose emerged from behind the water heater and saw the officer in the window, trying to get a better look at the stairs. He was on his belly, with his gun aimed in the wrong direction.
Without even thinking about it, Rose fired a shot which took a chunk out of the wall near the window. The officer flinched and started to move out of the way, but Rose fired again and this time she hit her target.
The other two officers were at the top of the stairs now, preparing to move downward. Rose ducked behind the water heater once again, since it had worked so well for her in the past.
“Orange Five-One-Five,” said one of the officers at the top of the stairs. Rose assumed that it was some sort of code, and that they were hoping for one of the other officers to give the proper response in order to assure their buddies that they were all-good.
There was silence. Rose didn't think that the officers at the top of the stairs were going to simply shrug off the gunfire and go back to whatever they were doing before, so the longer the silence lasted, the tighter the knot in her stomach became.
Then, a klink.
Something hit the floor and rolled across it for a moment before a loud pop and a hiss. Smoke started to fill the room, burning Rose's eyes as soon as it came near her and causing them to water.
She squatted as low as she could go, hoping that the smoke would rise to the ceiling or leave through the window, but she couldn't see anything.
As soon as she saw the smoke, Rose had taken a deep breath and held it without even realizing. Once the canister of smoke was empty, silence filled the room once again and Rose slowly released that breath.
She could
hear footsteps, far softer than those that the other officers had used when searching the basement. She couldn't pinpoint exactly where they were, but she hoped that her inability to see them meant that they couldn't see her either. If she was listening, they were listening.
Rose grabbed an old rag off of the floor beside her and threw it across the basement. When it hit a box it didn't make a loud noise. It was just loud enough to sound like someone moving, and so the officers in the room charged toward that sound.
The smoke was starting to clear. Rose could make out vague shapes now, but her eyes were still watering and everything was distorted.
When she saw a shadow move past her, toward the spot where she had thrown the rag, Rose lifted her gun and fired. She heard a groan and the officer fell to the floor. Only one was left, but she quickly realized that she'd made a horrible mistake. She had no idea where the final officer was, but they knew where she was.
She ducked behind the water heater just as a bullet flew by and struck the wall behind her, where her head would have been a fraction of a second earlier. Another struck the water heater. Rose thought for a moment that the water heater and wall had caught all of the bullets that were fired, but she hadn't counted shots and she didn't realize that another shot had been fired until she felt the sting of the bullet in her arm. The pain surged through her entire arm with each beat of her heart, but she couldn't slow down. She had to keep fighting. She'd taken down four HAND officers thus far, so if she died while trying to take out the last of them, she would consider that a good day.
She moved behind the water heater, to the other side, but she didn't get far before another shot nearly took off her head and the bullet was buried in the wall behind her.
“Son of a f—” she said under her breath.
“One woman takes out four HAND officers,” said the male voice of the only officer left in the room with her. “Where did you train?”
“Old video games. You?”
“You know you're not getting out of this.”
“I'm okay with that,” Rose replied, trying not to let the pain in her arm show in her voice. “Can you say the same?”
