Five Suns Saga II

by Jim Heskett

  They waded through the discarded mail toward the stairs at the end of the hallway, since the elevators obviously wouldn’t function. Bullet holes lined the walls near the stairs.

  “I’ll go first,” Isabelle said, passing her sleeping bag and sniper rifle case to Dave to free up a hand. She drew her gun and started up the stairs, carefully climbing one at a time. Some dark red stains marked the walls and she stepped over the occasional wet patch. She listened intently as they approached the landing of the first floor. Back in the old days, ambient noises of buildings masked so many sounds. Air conditioners, radios, even the hum of refrigerators… but without all that noise now, any kind of movement or conversation pierced the quiet.

  Second floor, all clear. As they moved onto the third floor, Isabelle heard the muffled sounds of a man and a woman talking, but the voices seemed to be farther down the third-floor hallway.

  They pressed on, up each flight of stairs, slowing as they reached the floor’s landing, waiting, listening. She wasn’t sure what she expected, but sometimes people viewed trespassing as a capital offense.

  At the top floor, they didn’t find roof access in the stairwell, so they eased into the hallway. Most of the apartments on this floor didn’t have front doors, and she peered into each one as they made their way down the hall. Each one she checked appeared empty of everything except the worthless items no one would consider stealing… tables, beds, electronics.

  At the end of the hallway, they stopped in front of a door marked roof access. Isabelle tried it, but it was locked.

  Sutter holstered his gun, drew back, and threw his shoulder into the door. It budged, but did not open.

  “Do you want me to do that?” Dave asked, pointing at Sutter’s injured arm.

  Sutter shook his head, reared back, and tried it again with no better result.

  “Hey,” said someone from down the hall.

  Isabelle pivoted, pistol raised. A scrawny woman was leaning around a doorway, from one of the apartments Isabelle had thought empty.

  “What’s all this racket out here?” the woman said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Isabelle said. “It doesn’t concern you.”

  The woman took a step into the hallway. She was so thin, her clothes hung on her frame like sheets on a clothesline. “If they see you going up on the roof, or catch you in this building, they’ll kill you. Or worse.”

  “Then why are you here?” Dave said.

  The woman straightened up, chin high. “This is my home. You want to get smart, then you’ll keep quiet, don’t bother nobody, and stay out of my things.”

  The woman disappeared back into her apartment.

  Isabelle shrugged as Sutter took a few steps back, lowered his shoulder, and threw himself at the door. The hinge broke, it flew open, and Sutter tumbled into a dark stairwell.

  “You okay?” Dave said.

  Sutter stood, massaging his shoulder. “I’m fine,” he said, but Isabelle could see fresh blood spotting the makeshift sling over his forearm cut.

  They climbed the stairs to a door, then pushed it open to become enveloped by blinding sunlight. When her eyes adjusted, Isabelle stepped out onto the blacktop surface of this roof.

  Sutter waved his hand toward the ground, and they all ducked to creep along the rooftop, snaking through an array of lawn chairs and patio tables. At the edge, they met a three-foot rim and all nestled behind it.

  Isabelle opened the sniper rifle case and began assembling her weapon.

  “Shouldn’t we observe them for a bit first before we start shooting?” Dave said.

  “Did anyone bring binoculars?”

  Dave and Sutter shook their heads.

  Once she’d put it together, she rested the sniper rifle on the ledge and peered through the scope. With a better look at the courtyard below, she counted about forty of the gang members in view, but it was hard to tell for sure since many of them kept going in and out of the warehouse. They’d disappear and then come back out carrying tools to work on the bikes.

  “What do you see?” Dave said.

  “They’re fixing the bikes or something like that,” Isabelle said. “Must be maintenance day.”

  Sutter grunted. “So we don’t know if those bikes are working. They might all be junkers.”

  The sound of an engine revving cut through Sutter’s words. Isabelle pivoted the scope to the bike making the sound and focused on the guy twisting the handle.

  “That one’s good,” she said. “There have to be others. We just need to keep track of whatever ones they start up. Problem is, I can’t see any gasoline from here. It’s got to be in that warehouse.”

  “We may not need it,” Dave said. “We’re only about an hour or so away from Red Bank. Any gas at all in those tanks would probably be enough to get us there.”

  “Still,” she said, “it would be nice to have. We need to have reserves for our escape plan afterward.”

  They studied the movements of the people below as the sun set to the west. The crowd below started to thin out, and the remaining ones started rolling the bikes back inside the warehouse.

  “Should we go down there now?” Dave said.

  Isabelle thought about it. “If they’re packing them up, they’ll take the keys and stash them somewhere. I’d rather not have to have a gunfight with them inside their warehouse while we try to find both the gas and the motorcycle keys.”

  “I thought we were in a hurry,” Dave said.

  “Yeah, but she’s right,” Sutter said. “If those guys are putting them back inside at night, then taking the bikes when they’re in the courtyard will be easier.”

  “But,” Dave said, “what if we’re not alone?”

  Isabelle cocked her head. “What do you mean?”

  “Those teenagers tried to break in before, so we’ve got to think that other people might be interested in stealing those motorcycles too.”

  “We can’t do anything about that,” Sutter said.

  They bedded down for the night on the rooftop, keeping their sleeping bags close to each other for warmth. They lucked out with clear skies that night, so they didn’t wake up soaking wet.

  At first light, Isabelle took up her position behind the sniper rifle as Red Streets were rolling the bikes back out into the courtyard. Dave and Sutter stretched and put away their sleeping bags.

  Dave patted Isabelle on the shoulder. “Babe, check this out.”

  She took her eye off the sniper scope to follow Dave’s arm, which was pointed at the rooftop of the next building over. At five guys perched on the roof of that building, also looking down into the courtyard. That building was a story shorter, so there was a good chance the group gathered there hadn’t noticed Isabelle and her companions yet.

  “They got here early. Looks like Dave was right,” Sutter said.

  Isabelle pivoted the scope to get a better look at these other spies. Four of them had binoculars, looking down into the courtyard. The fifth was scribbling in a notebook.

  She adjusted the sights to bring them better into view. One of them, wearing a t-shirt, had burn marks up and down his arms.

  “How about that?” she said. “We found ourselves an Infinity raiding party.”

  ***

  Sutter dug into his backpack and unrolled a sleeve of a half dozen hunting knives. He jabbed two through his belt loop and then held out the others to Dave and Isabelle.

  “Wait a second,” Dave said. “We should think about this. If we go over to that building and attack them, what if the gang bangers down there hear it?”

  “We creep up behind,” Sutter said, “and use these knives. Silent. We kill all of them except for one, and that one tells us exactly where the house is in Red Bank.”

  Dave ran a hand through his hair. “But there’s more of them than us. If one of them pulls a trigger, the whole city block will hear it. Or what if the one we leave alive refuses to tell us where the Infinity headquarters is?”

  “So do you have
some kind of alternative?” Sutter said.

  Dave raised a hand to shield his eyes from the sun, rising over the building to the east. “We wait it out and let them do the hard work for us. Wait for those Infinity guys to steal the motorcycles and let them leave. Then we kill three of them, take the bikes, and tail the others all the way to Red Bank. Keep the Red Streets out of it altogether.”

  Isabelle shook her head. “Except, what if they’re not here to steal the bikes? What if they’re here to burn it all down and kill everyone, with no plans to go home after? That seems like the kind of bat-shit logic they’d use.”

  “Damn it,” Sutter said. “There’s no good way out of this.”

  Isabelle lifted the cap off the sniper rifle scope, and at that moment, the angle of the sun bounced off the exposed glass. A reflection hit one of the Infinity in the eye. He jerked his head, then focused, looking right at Isabelle.

  The cult member shouted at his companions, who all drew guns.

  “Too late,” Isabelle said.

  13

  Isabelle focused, took a deep breath, and squeezed the trigger. Her sniper rifle’s bullet tore through the air, hit one of the cultists right between the eyes, and knocked him into one of the other members.

  The Infinity started shooting, so Dave, Isabelle, and Sutter all ducked behind the roof’s ledge barrier. Whatever plans they were making before this meant less than zero now. Survival had moved to the front of the line.

  Sutter raised a hand and pointed his pistol in that direction, squeezing off a few shots. That had been a waste of ammo, a resource they had to keep precious.

  Within only a few seconds, the gunshots from the ground below began. The Red Streets were involved. Pistol pops and barks echoed so fast and frantic that Isabelle couldn’t tell where they were coming from anymore. The scene turned into a crackling fireworks display.

  Their position was worthless now. She knew it. She crawled to her possessions, swinging open the sniper rifle case.

  An explosion rocked the building, jostling her briefly.

  “What was that?” Dave shouted.

  Isabelle poked her head up over the ledge and looked down into the courtyard. One of the gang members below was holding an automatic rifle with an attached grenade launcher. Smoke wafted from the wide mouth of its barrel.

  “Grenade launcher,” she said. “We have to get off this roof, now.”

  On hands and knees, they all scrambled to collect their things, leaving the sleeping bags behind. Isabelle looked at the sniper rifle. She didn’t have time to break it down and store it properly. Couldn’t carry it with her, but the scope, she needed that. She unscrewed it and popped it in her back pocket. Then she said a little mental goodbye to her rifle, which had been with her for years. There might never be a chance to acquire another one.

  “Okay,” Sutter said, “we pop up and fire a few at the Infinity, then we spread out and run like hell. Got it?”

  Dave and Isabelle both nodded, then Sutter held up three fingers for a countdown.

  Three, two, one.

  They jumped to their feet and each fired at the cult members. A bullet whizzed right past the space between Isabelle’s arm and her side, then Sutter blasted one of them in the chest. Three Infinity members left, plus an unknown number of Red Streets thugs down below.

  As they dashed toward the door back into the apartment building, another explosion landed nearby. Sutter flew through the air, crashing on top of a patio table, which wobbled but stayed upright. Dave stopped to help him to his feet while Isabelle ran ahead to get the door open.

  “You okay?” she shouted at Sutter as he limped along.

  “I think so,” he said with a labored grunt, now breaking out into a run.

  She threw open the door and waved Dave and Sutter inside before following. The deafening rattle of bullets and explosions filled Isabelle’s ears.

  At the bottom of the stairs, they burst into the apartment hallway. From inside, the muffled quality of the gunfight cut a warble through the eerie quiet of the building.

  “Grenade launcher?” Dave said. “What the hell are they doing?”

  Before Isabelle could respond, she looked up to see the same waif-thin woman from before, standing in the hallway, brandishing a knife.

  “What did you do?” the woman said. “You’ve ruined everything.”

  Sutter raised a pistol and pointed it at her. His lips pursed. “Ma’am, go back inside your apartment.”

  “No,” she said. “Don’t you see what’s happening here? They’re going to kill us all now.”

  “Then get out of here,” Dave said. “Run away.”

  She shook her head, dropped the knife, and retreated into the apartment.

  Isabelle grabbed Dave by the hand and they took off down the hall. Into the stairwell. Scrambled down several flights of steps to the first floor, and that’s when the pop pop pop of gunshots rattled close by.

  They rushed out into the discarded mail-soaked lobby, and she saw the source of the gunfire. The Red Streets and the Infinity were squared off in the street out front, both of them hiding behind different sets of parked cars on opposite sides. The Infinity on the far side of the street, and four of the Red Streets on the same side as Isabelle, facing in the other direction. The gang bangers hadn’t seen them.

  A gang member popped up and squeezed off a shot. He hit one of the Infinity members in the chest, who fell out into the street.

  Dave gasped. “If they kill them all, we’ll lose our chance at finding out where the Red Bank house is.”

  Isabelle stepped through the lobby, beckoning her companions to follow her. Keeping low, she entered a door at the far end, into an exercise room. The treadmills and exercise bikes were haphazardly sprawled around the space, creating a maze of plastic and metal. She weaved through them to a spot where one of the floor-to-ceiling window panels was missing.

  They all dropped their gear and ducked behind a Stairmaster as Isabelle peered out through the missing glass. The sniper rifle would have been handy right now, since they were about a hundred yards from the Red Streets.

  Then she was struck by the irony that she was about to kill some gang members so some cultist freaks could survive.

  “This isn’t a great position,” Sutter said. “One shot and they’ll know where we are.”

  He was right, and she knew she should have let him make the tactical decisions. He was the ex-cop, after all.

  “What do you suggest?” she said.

  “We need to catch them in a crossfire. You stay here, and Dave and I will go back inside, up to the second floor. Find an apartment with a good view on the other side of them.”

  Sutter leaned around the Stairmaster and pointed at a window on the second floor. “That one. Third from the end on the second floor. When you see my face, start shooting.”

  Isabelle touched Dave’s arm, and he gave her something like a smile, but a poor approximation of a real one. He tapped his cheek, and she kissed him.

  “Hurry,” she said. “More of them will be coming any second.”

  ***

  Sutter led Dave back through the lobby and to the stairs. “How much ammo do you have?” Sutter said.

  Dave popped out the clip from his pistol. “Six in this clip, and I have a spare in my pocket.”

  Damn. They were seriously under-prepared for a firefight. Sutter himself didn’t have much more than that, and no idea where they were supposed to get more. “Okay,” he said, “whites of their eyes, and all that.”

  “Got it,” Dave said.

  They exited the stairwell onto the second floor. What Sutter saw on the other side defied explanation. Some horrorshow combination of blood and body parts marked the hallway. The walls were splattered red, the carpet underfoot was soaked through, and parts of several bodies covered up most of the available floorspace. Maybe ten dead, maybe fifteen. Flies buzzed through the air, the only other living things in the hallway beside Dave and Sutter.

  Dav
e heaved and leaned forward, hands on his knees. “Oh, man. That smell.”

  Sutter gagged when he tried to speak, and it took him a couple seconds to catch his breath and get the words out. “I know. But we have to keep going.”

  As they navigated the gore, Dave asked, “the Red Streets do this?”

  Sutter tried not to think about how his shoes sank into the carpet and the squelching sounds that each footfall made. “I don’t know. Possibly.”

  He stopped at the next-to-last apartment, figuring each one would have a window for each bedroom, so the third window from the end would be this one. He put a hand on the doorknob, then waited for Dave. “What’s in here may be worse.”

  Dave blinked a few times, swallowing hard.

  Sutter opened the door, prepared for more blood and guts, but what he found instead surprised him. Aside from a small pool of blood at the front entrance—which must have leaked under the door—this apartment was immaculate. Not a single thing out of place. It wasn’t a big or luxurious space, but it was the cleanest and most well-kept place Sutter had seen in over a decade, since before the world had died at the hands of some misguided politician.

  “What the hell?” Dave said.

  They stepped into the apartment, and then Sutter thought he knew the reason for the upkeep. On the living room table were scales, mirrors, straws, and stacks of some white substance, formed into bricks. Cocaine, or heroin, probably.

  Voices came from a back bedroom. Female. Two women came rushing out into the living room, one of them with a baseball bat, and the other a shotgun. They were screaming, sprinting, on a collision course with Sutter and Dave.

  Just as Sutter lifted his arm to point his gun, a couple quick shots rang out. The two women sprawled in opposite directions, both of them hitting the carpet and then tumbling to a stop. One of them went silent while the other moaned and rolled onto her back.