Island Refuge EMP Box Set | Books 1-3
Page 74
A second charge went off a fraction of a second later. Elna heard the shriek of metal, even as another wave of agony swept through her body. She bit her arm so hard she tasted blood. When the shock of the second explosion passed, she dared to lift her head and saw tooth marks on her forearm. One of her canine teeth had manage to split the skin, and a bright bead of blood welled up and ran down her arm.
“Is everyone okay?” Prig asked. “Speak to me, people?”
Various people gave mumbled replies throughout the room. Elna looked in the direction of the door, but the air was so choked with dust and smoke that she could barely see anything but a hazy, flickering light. She looked up at the ceiling and saw that at least one of the big, metal ceiling panels had buckled. It was bowed in the middle, hanging down but still stuck somehow in the framework. Through a gap on one side, she saw dirt and rocks trying to bulge through like guts from an eviscerated animal.
They’re going to bring this whole bunker down on top of us, she thought, and that’ll be the end of it.
She’d already experienced being buried alive once that day. She knew what a horrible, anxiety-filled experience it was. Being shot seemed like a much better way to die. However, she realized her gun was no longer in her hand. Casting about, she found it at the floor beside her father, and she picked it up.
“Is it over?” he asked.
He felt so small against her, just bones and clothes. When he tried to get up, she held him gently in place.
“Stay still, Pop,” she said. “Keep your head down.”
When she turned back to the door, she saw Malin, Norman, and Cat re-forming the line, raising their weapons. Cat had her free hand pressed against the bandage on her hip, and Elna thought she saw blood seeping through. She’d torn her wound open.
The dust and smoke settled just enough that she could make out the door, and she felt a surge of near-panic. The locker had been tossed against the side of the console, and the door itself had been bent out of shape. Somehow, the combination of the lock and perhaps Pop’s wine push-down tool had kept the door from being blown wide open. However, the top half of the door was pushed inward, creating a gap about six inches wide along the edge.
She aimed her gun at the gap. Was it better to fire first or try to keep quiet? She wasn’t sure, but her damned shaking hand made her distrust her aim. She was just as likely to hit the door and have a bullet ricochet.
“Everyone just stay low,” Prig said, speaking barely above a whisper. “The second they try to come through that door, open fire, but don’t hit each other, please.”
After a tense moment, Elna heard movement in the hall again. Suddenly, she saw something in the six-inch gap, though it was still so smoky she couldn’t tell what it was or what they were doing. Still, it startled her enough that she suddenly fired at the gap. The explosive sound was deafening in the small room, making her ears ring. She had no idea whether she hit anything. The bullet just seemed to get absorbed by the smoke.
Her shot set off a chain reaction. Malin opened fire, then Norman, and finally Cat, each firing multiple shots at the gap in the door. Elna saw sparks on the wall as at least one of the shots ricocheted. This caused Prig to begin frantically waving his hands to try to get them to stop. Malin fired a final shot, which ricocheted off the bent door and slammed into the panel door on the opposite side of the room. The panel door rattled against its latch but held shut. Golf ducked down against his keyboard.
“Well, they certainly know we’re in here now,” Prig muttered. “Can you civvies wait until they try to come through the door? And Cat? I expect better from you.”
“Something was moving out there, sir,” she said.
Just then, something shifted in the gap again. Elna thought it was a gloved hand. It reached up, slipped through the gap. She raised her pistol again, taking aim. The hand seemed to be clutching something, and the fingers opened suddenly. A black cylinder dropped into the room as the hand slipped back out of the door. Even as the cylinder was falling, Prig cried out, “Grenade! Get down!”
Following his own advice, he turned, tipped Golf’s chair over, then dove under the console. Elna hesitated a fraction of a second longer, watching the black cylinder as it fell, spinning, and hit the floor with a clank. Elna turned and flung herself on top of her father, wrapping her arms around him. She felt Malin doing the same to her.
Is this it? Is this when we die?
A grenade in such a small room with so many people! Her whole body was wrapped in pain, but she tensed up, anticipating the explosion, the whirlwind of shrapnel, and in that fraction of a second, she felt as helpless as she’d ever been in her entire life.
The grenade went off with a deafening boom and a bright flash of light. Elna’s eyes were squeezed shut, but she saw the light through her eyelids. Then she smelled acrid smoke. She was already in so much pain that she couldn’t tell if she’d been hit or not.
“Flash bang,” someone shouted. She thought it was Prig, but she could scarcely hear now. “It was a flash bang.”
Something slammed into the door then. Once, twice, a third time. Elna extracted herself from the smothering embrace of Malin and her father and raised her gun toward the door. Just then, Pop’s wine tool bent and fell out of the door handle, and the large, metal door swung inward. The smoke was worse now, but she could see lights moving about in the hallway.
Someone opened fire in the hallway then, a rapid series of shots, the muzzle flashes dancing on the walls. Elna pressed herself flat against the floor, screaming at the fierce pain in her back, and tried to brace her Beretta against her left forearm. The door had swung all the way against the wall, but she couldn’t see the shooters. Only smoke, flashing lights, and vague movement. Still, she took aim as best she could and opened fire with the Beretta.
She couldn’t tell if she was hitting bodies in the hall or just shadows and reflections, but she continued to fire, even as gunfire in the hallway answered her. Soon, others had joined in. She saw Malin and Cat firing toward the open door. The noise was absolute skull-shaking madness, and the smoke and dust were so thick she could scarcely breathe. Suddenly, she realized she was out of bullets. In the madness of the moment, she dropped the magazine and checked to make sure. How had she fired every bullet? She couldn’t remember squeezing the trigger that many times. She set the gun aside and looked for some other weapon. There was nothing close at hand.
Malin continued to fire, but Cat stopped and took a few steps to her left, as if trying to get a better angle into the hallway. Elna could scarcely see anything beyond the door now, just shapeless light shining through a wall of smoke. Malin finally stopped firing as well.
“Is anyone hit?” Prig shouted from behind the gray veil.
“Not me, sir,” Cat replied.
“Me either,” Golf replied. “I don’t think.”
Elna didn’t think to respond. Her ears were ringing like crazy, and it felt like her skull was still shaking from all the violence. Her whole body was stiff and suffering. Another burst of gunfire came from the hallway. Though she couldn’t see them, Elna sensed people in and around the door. This was it. The final push of the mercenaries as they tried to get into the room.
They waited until we emptied our guns, she thought.
There was shouting, screaming, someone cursing at the top of his lungs. Were people being killed around her at that very moment? Elna couldn’t see anything. The smoke had closed around her like a blanket. All she could do was press herself against the floor and try to make herself as small a target as possible.
“Die. Die. Every single one of you, die!” Whose voice was that? Not the basso profundo of the mercenary commander. One of the other mercenaries, perhaps. He sounded furious, enraged, out for blood.
She couldn’t tell who was firing—if anyone—inside the room. Prig and Golf still had ammo, didn’t they? At this point, she couldn’t make sense of anything. The whole world had disappeared in the smoke and noise.
At
some point, she realized Malin had found her in the smoke. She grabbed his hand as he sidled up next to her, and then he put his arm around her.
We’ll die together, then, she thought, as she buried her face against his shoulder.
And then the shooting stopped. She heard a final string of profanities, shouted by a voice that was quickly going hoarse, that ended in a strange, wet gurgle. Someone dying, but she couldn’t tell who it was. After this, silence returned, a silence so profound that it seemed to settle in the walls and floor. Nobody moved, nobody spoke. Elna didn’t even hear breathing around her.
Maybe they’re all dead. A fleeting thought, but for a second she was convinced.
When she finally pulled away from Malin, she realized the smoke had settled again. She looked back and saw her father still huddled against the wall, but he didn’t appear to be injured. She looked the other way and saw Prig curled up beneath the console. The door was still wide open, a single light wobbling against the walls in the corridor beyond.
Then she noticed the big puddle of blood on the floor, quickly spreading and filling the cracks between the floor panels. The source of the blood was a body lying facedown in the middle of the room. Her arms were above her head, a pistol still clutched in her hand. Elna pushed past Malin and crawled toward her.
“Cat,” she whispered.
She’d been hit more than once. Elna could see two bullet holes in the back of her shirt, but most of the blood seemed to be coming from the side of her head, just above her right ear. Elna had just started to reach for her when a sound caused her to freeze, her hand poised in the air above Cat’s right shoulder.
A footstep in the hall. A heavy boot against the metal floor. A shadow appeared at the edge of the open door. Prig raised his gun and took aim.
“Do it, scumbag,” he muttered. “Show your face.”
The light shifted, moving from the hallway past the doorframe into the room.
“Don’t shoot,” a voice shouted. “Boss, it’s me. It’s Spence!”
As if to prove it, the flashlight beam rose and revealed the face. A muscly young man with a pockmarked face, deep set eyes, his lip curled as if he were exerting himself.
“Spence!”
The impact of those in the room was electric. Norman and Malin hopped to their feet, and Golf clapped. Daniel, who had been quiet, resumed crying loudly as his dad hugged him. Dr. Ruzka turned on a flashlight of her own and shined it toward the door.
“Help me out here, guys,” Spence said, as he stepped through the door.
An AK-47 hung from his right hand, and he set it on the ground as he entered the room. His right arm was around Mac, the young man limping along beside him, a pained looked on his face. A strip of cloth had been hastily tied around the young man’s leg just above the right knee, dark stains running down the front of the pant leg all the way to his boot.
Dr. Ruzka, like a moth drawn to a flame, immediately rushed toward the injured Marine. Norman joined her, and together they managed to help him across the room.
“He got me good right after we came through the bunker door,” Mac said. “The big guy. I didn’t think he saw us coming.”
Prig seemed to notice Cat then and he cried out, a wordless, sad sound, as he dropped by her side and rolled her onto her back. Her face was a mask of blood, her eyes half-lidded and lifeless. As he dragged her into the corner beside Ant, he made a sound like might have been a sob. Hearing such a sound from such a big, strapping guy struck Elna hard, and her vision went blurry.
“Tell me you got them,” Prig said tightly, speaking through clenched teeth. “Spence, Mac, tell me you got every last one of them.”
“The mercenaries are all dead,” Spence said. “The last three are lying out there in the hallway, including the commander. Be careful. The floor is slick and messy. The commander doesn’t have much of a head left.”
“Good,” Prig said, bent over Cat, his hand resting on her belly. “It’s what they deserved.”
“Sorry, sir,” Spence said. “I tried to draw them away from the control room door, but they didn’t take the bait. They weren’t leaving the area for nothing.”
“You did your job, Marines,” Prig said. “So did Archer, Fish, and Cat.”
Just then the console gave a soft beep. Elna saw a line of text appear on the green screen, though she couldn’t read it through the haze. Golf picked himself off the floor, righted his chair, and sat down in front of the console. He typed something on the keyboard, read another line of text, then gave a huge sigh of relief.
“Help is on the way, sir,” he said. “They’re sending a whole company to the island. En route right now.”
“Oh, thank God,” Prig said. “Thank God.”
Elna had reached her limit. She couldn’t even enjoy the victory. The pain and exhaustion had finally pushed her to a breaking point. She flopped down onto the floor on her back, waves and waves of bone-deep weariness washing over her. Folding her hands on her stomach, she stared at the bent panel on the ceiling overhead and struggled to stay awake.
I could sleep for a month, she thought. It’s all I really want right now.
Malin lay down beside her, folding his hands on his stomach just like her.
“Shame about Cat,” he said, softly. “She was a great Marine…a great person.”
Elna couldn’t even bring herself to reply.
33
Elna shook two ibuprofens out of the bottle, popped them in her mouth, and downed them with a cup of water. Though the chairs on the veranda were painted metal, somehow she found sitting in them as comfortable, as familiar, as an old recliner. She leaned back, propping her feet on the bottom railing of the handrail, as she gazed across the parking lot at the familiar trees, the slope down to the western shore.
She would have preferred the couch in the lobby of course. It had always been the most comfortable place to stretch out on a lazy afternoon, especially when dealing with aches and pains. When she glanced over her shoulder and saw the jagged remnants of the lobby windows and the charred walls beyond, she felt a deep sadness. About half of the guesthouse had been damaged in the fire, and the rest of the rooms had absorbed the smoke. Everything reeked of ashes.
“It’s a shame about the house,” Pop said, resting in the chair across from her.
It was just the two of them at the moment. Malin had insisted Elna take a break while the other able-bodied islanders moved their stuff over to the winery. They were going to have to live in there for the time being. An employee break room had been portioned into bedrooms, and there were a couple of small offices as well. They would make it work.
“We’ll rebuild it all somehow,” Elna replied. “It won’t be the same, but since we could’ve lost the entire island, not to mention our lives, I think things turned out okay.”
She heard someone approaching from the direction of the vineyard, and she turned in her seat. Her back and shoulders still hurt like hell, even two days after the battle. If anything, raw pain was gradually giving way to unbearable stiffness. Still, with some effort, she managed to turn and look southward, where she saw Selene and Dr. Ruzka approaching. The doctor had a big backpack hanging from her shoulders, her long blonde hair tied back in a kerchief. Selene had her herb bag, practically overflowing with herbal treatments of one kind or another. They seemed to be deep in conversation, but when they drew near, Selene looked up.
“Well, they don’t need our help any longer,” she said. “There’s like a hundred Marines swarming over the old military base down there. They’ve got equipment, machines, all sorts of stuff. It’s quite an operation.”
“They’ve also got their own medics,” Dr. Ruzka said. “We offered our services, but we were politely declined. I guess we’ll go check on our own people.”
“Sniffy wouldn’t come with me,” Selene noted. “He doesn’t want to go within a hundred yards of those Marines. Poor little guy had his fill of guns and soldiers and explosions. He may never be the same.”
Dr. Ruzka and Selene walked past the veranda and headed to the winery beyond. Elna took another swig of water. The desalination process was working great. At least their water supply hadn’t been damaged or destroyed in the fighting. After a few minutes, she heard laughter and squealing, and she saw Daniel and Chloe running with Sniffy on the far side of the parking lot.
“When are you supposed to meet with the captain?” Pop asked.
“Prig said they’d head up here when they found a chance to get away,” Elna replied. “I guess they’re digging out, repairing, and reinforcing the bunker.”
“Wouldn’t you like to lie down and take a nap before meeting with them, Principessa?” he said, furiously scratching his bushy, white beard. “You might need to be well rested so you can negotiate. Don’t let them bully you. Make your demands and stick with them.”
“I won’t be able to sleep until it’s done,” she said.
She leaned back in her chair and tucked her hands behind her head. She was tired, but she’d slept enough and there was too much to do. At least, that was her thinking. Her body had other ideas.
Suddenly, she found herself waking up to the sound of heavy footfalls on the veranda steps, and she opened her eyes to discover that her cheek was resting in the crook of her arm on the tabletop. She sat up, rubbing her eyes, and realized her father was no longer on the other side of the table. He’d apparently left her to sleep. She had an imprint of the table’s metal design on her forehead. She felt it as she rubbed her eyes.
Two men approached. One of them, a broad-shouldered young man with short, very blond hair she recognized. He was in his field uniform, but he was also wearing a pair of workman’s gloves. The other man was much shorter, with a round, clean-shaven face. He wore a similar uniform, but she noted the shiny silver bars on the collar of his shirt. He had a manila folder tucked under his right arm, and he tossed it onto the table as he pulled back a chair.