by Karpa, Boris
And then Martin Schmitt fired his rifle. Once, twice, thrice, the long barrel barked, shocking Arthur's ears into submission. Fractures burst out across one of the windows on the passenger side, a single puncture appeared on the truck's roof, and then one more window sagged, with a white round hole appearing where the bullet had struck.
There was no time to spare watching. Arthur raised his rifle, holding the crosshairs directly on the chest of the man in the guard tower. At this range, with the one-and-half magnifier scope, with the weather grey and overcast, he could not make out the man's eyes – simply a dark silhouette in the shadow of the tower's roof. He pulled the trigger – and the rifle pushed gently against his shoulder. The man did not fall.
Again! Again! He did not even hear the gunshots anymore. Somewhere out in front, the man seemed to move, yanking a weapon off his shoulder.
Wrong answer. Had he dropped on the floor of that nest in the top of the tower, he would be beyond the reach of Arthur's rifle – or, at the worst, invisible to him. He might still get him through the thin walls – but now the man was still in the open. Arthur squeezed the trigger twice more, in rapid succession – and the guard fell backwards against the wall of the tower, his hands flailing meaninglessly.
He moved his scope downwards to aim at the truck. It's passenger's side door was open. A man wearing the same Serenity Bay trainers lay upon the ground motionless, his grey shirt soaked in blood, a pool of blood gathering around his head. From the other side of the vehicle, a gun flashed – someone was still firing haphazardly, without even aiming. The guard shack looked silent, the glass window behind the bars shattered by multiple shots.
Next to him, Martin reloaded his rifle. Far off, he saw the flash of Mayor Jackson’s rifle. At first, Arthur did not understand what the Mayor was shooting at – but then he saw it – more and more holes appearing on the side of the ravaged truck. Maybe it wasn't the way to get at the driver – but they would at least keep him behind the truck, Arthur realized.
He held on the very center of the cabin, between the first and the second door, and flipped the selector switch. The gun danced in his arms, pulling itself upwards, barking and roaring. Shattered glass fell from every window, and then the rifle froze in his arms, with the bolt still open. Light, grey smoke rose from the barrel and the chamber at once.
For a second, the man on the other side stopped firing – but then, they saw the flashes again – one, two, three more shots. Arthur caught a glimpse of the gun – a large, square looking black pistol. Suddenly, he felt relaxed – at this range there was no way this man would hit them with this gun, not aiming it across a car roof without even looking at his target.
Once more, Martin's long rifle barked – and a high-pitched scream of pain and desperation came ringing across the wide expanse. The driver leaped up now, adrenaline and fear propelling him into a last, hopeless burst. He ran up to the guard shack, banging his fists at the door, slamming his useless gun into it – then the Mayor's rifle spoke its last word, and the man fell down. A red stain now decorated the door where his head had just been.
Somewhere, Arthur knew, the Florentine men were running up to the fence in groups of three.
Wide, thick jackets would be thrown up over its barbed wire top. Two men would help a third man up the fence, and then they would all get across, one after the other.
- "The windows!" – Martin shouted at the top of his voice – "Get the windows!"
With shaking hands, Arthur reloaded the rifle. There was no need to save ammunition. The Florentines have given them as much as they could carry. He aimed at one of the top windows, where he had just seen what seemed like the shadow of a moving figure. A short burst – and the window shattered. It did not seem as if the man that had just moved had been hurt. Arthur waited for a brief second for the man to appear again, but of course he did not. He moved his aim, firing in long, haphazard bursts, shattering windows, keeping the defenders from moving their heads.
From inside the camp, the low thumping of shotgun fire was heard. Clearly the fight had now broken up in earnest.
Then there was the impossibly loud clatter of a machine gun.
This had been the sleeve up the Florentine's ace. The doctor, Amanda, had turned out not to be just a doctor. Even now she rose from her hiding place, a dozen yards behind them and burst forward in a run. A few seconds – and she threw herself down on the ridge between Martin and the Mayor, dropping her gun in front of her. The bipod clattered as it found its place on the sand – and the machine gun began it work once more.
Arthur had never seen a machine gun Before. He saw them only in the first days After. He saw heavy machine guns, with barrels over a yard long, mounted at the top of Army tanks and APCs trying to control the flow of refugees and to fight off the ghouls. There had also been medium machine guns – smaller than the heavies, but still they seemed larger than any other gun Arthur had ever seen. The gun the Doctor used seemed to be even smaller – its barrel shorter than that on Arthur's own rifle. A huge cloud of fire appeared from its barrel with every shot, and the noise it made – the roar of its muzzle and the clatter of its bolt as it rained dozens of empty shells to the right of the woman who was using it – seemed to be trampling right on Arthur's ears.
The effect on the building in front of them was even more staggering. Windows shattered and flew out. The facade became pockmarked with bullets. And yet the Doctor kept firing, and firing, and firing. Arthur slapped the side of his rifle, yet another empty magazine dropping in front of him. Reload. The machine gun stopped, empty now – and Arthur held on one of the windows and fired once more.
This time he was luckier. A man in a white shirt, whom Arthur did not even notice in the upper window when he aimed at it, appeared suddenly at the window sill. The front of the white shirt blossomed in bright red, the man grasped at the window sill and slumped down, hanging over the window sill like a rag doll. Now Martin's long rifle barked once only. Even from this far away Arthur could see blood burst from the dead man's head, and a large stain form on the wall just next to his skull.
Martin fired his rifle again at one of the windows – and a high-pitched shout of pain was his reward.
- "And now," – Martin spoke – "for the main dish. Arthur – do you have the knife I gave you?"
- "Of course," -Arthur answered – and even as he spoke he froze, starting at the advisor as he took out a small, fixed-blade knife. He'd not seen this particular knife before – it was a short white blade, with a small hole in the middle of the blade for some reason. In a single, fluid motion, Martin was attaching it under the barrel of his rifle
- "You know what to do."
He reached for the knife. It was a fixed-blade knife, a bit larger than Martin's, with a black blade. The rear edge of the blade was serrated – not that that this would matter with the blade fixed to the end of his rifle.
"Cover us!" – the advisor shouted to Amanda and the Mayor, and threw himself across the sandy ridge as like a runner throwing himself across the starting line. Arthur rose to his feet -and then followed right after. Behind them, Amanda's machine gun started roaring and clattering yet again.
Arthur ran as he'd never run in his life – not even from ghouls. Above him, the bullets screamed through the air. Amanda's machine gun barrel tilted gradually from side to side, hosing the defenseless upper stories of the administration building with dozens of bullets. The Mayor's rifle spoke only rarely – but with every shot, it seemed, someone fell Already the Mayor had taken down three of the defenders and he showed no sign of planning to stop.
Twenty seconds – and they had already passed the ravaged pickup truck. The machine gun stopped firing – just as they reached the blood-stained door of the guard shack. Martin was first at the door. He smashed at the door with the rifle stock, but it did not budge – chosen to hold up to just these sort of blows, delivered by a ghoul or two, it simply refused to move. And inside the fence, they heard more and more noises – the signs
of a vicious fight.
A shotgun blast roared overhead. Someone was shooting from the roof of the central building. The screams of an injured man told them that the shooter had found his mark – and then there was, once more, the clatter of the machine gun, and then, a brief second's respite – and once more the noise rose again from inside the fence.
- "Ferret, this is Pine Tree!" – the mayor shouted into his radio. His was slightly bulkier than Martin's, with a bit more buttons. Later Arthur learned it was an officer's version of the same device. – "Ferret, this is Pine Tree, over!"
There was no answer. The clatter inside the facility did not even pause for half a second.
- "What is this?" – the Mayor barked, kicking at the door – "How could you have not thought of the door? How has nobody thought of a way to open a the goddamn door? What is this?"
- "Neither have you." – Martin noted.
- "Shut! Up!" – the Mayor kicked at the door. It did not even shake in its hinges and he kicked again. – "What is this? How can we be stuck in here?"
For a brief moment they all stood there, staring at the door – Martin, Arthur, the Mayor of the Florentine Republic, and Amanda, the machine gunner-physician. The woman shrugged and shifted the gun on its sling. "Think we can open it with this one?"
The Mayor shrugged. – "Might work."
At this precise second, the shooting in the camp grew so loud that they could not even hear themselves talk. The whip-like cracking of the attackers' rifle, the pounding of the defenders' shotguns and the barks of automatic pistols became a ruthless howl of hatred and death, and were cut short with a single, low boom.
- "What is that?" – the Mayor cried out. – "Was this a grenade? Where do they have grenades from?"
Martin looked over the Mayor's shoulder. "I have an idea."
- "What?"
- "The truck."
- "What?" – before the Mayor could even ask his question, Martin sat down in the driver seat. He ignored the fact the dashboard, seat, steering – even the windshield – were covered with blood. Instead of minding these details, the advisor raised a thumbs-up and winked at Arthur.
- "How- what is he planning on?" – the Mayor sputtered.
- "It's a Hilux." – Arthur grinned – "They're the sturdiest truck in the world. The engine is probably even still on."
The truck turned, backing off the road and onto the sand. Its engine roared as Martin handled the transmission. "Cover me!" – he shouted – "Stand back!"
- "Stand back!" – Arthur joined in, yanking the Mayor away from the vehicle gate. Amanda did not need to be yanked away – she moved swiftly out of the way, raising her gun.
The truck accelerated down the light slope and towards the road, like a projectile. Gunfire rang overhead – one of the defenders realized only too late what was happening. Doctor Amanda Cook hopped out of the shadow of the white fence, her gun blazing fire as soon as she swung it upward, gleaming shells raining on the ground like generously thrown gold.
For all of his life, Arthur was quite certain things like this only happened in cinema. The half-ruined truck rocketed across the road. Like a jack-in-the-box, Martin pushed himself out of the driver's door, rolling across the pavement – and the car rushed into the vehicle gate.
In the world Before, Serenity Bay staff were never worried about attacks by armed men. the vehicle gate was never intended to stop ramming vehicles – it was not, after all, a maximum-security prison. In the world After, the gate was reinforced somewhat to stop ghouls – but a Toyota Hilux, even at twenty miles per hour, was far beyond that.
The gate danced on its rail, and then broke inward, twisting itself out of its fixture with a terrible scream of dying metal. It bounced slightly on the ground as it fell, and then the broken, mutilated truck ran over it and slammed itself into the front wall of the Serenity Bay building.
Now it was the Mayor's move.
"Follow me!" – he shouted, raising his rifle – "Follow me!"
The Mayor and the doctor were first in. Behind them, Arthur fired a long burst from his rifle at the third-floor windows. There was no reply – perhaps the jailers were distracted by the battle that raged on the other sides of the building. It certainly sounded quite distracting.
Martin growled as he lifted himself off the asphalt. The main entrance of Serenity Bay was simply a set of white double doors, made of wood – no steel doors here. They crouched next to the door – Martin and Arthur to one side, Amanda and the Mayor to the other. They knew the rules. Stand in front of the door, get shot through the door.
"Your turn." – Martin said, and the Mayor nodded. Once more, the doctor was moving. It was not fair to say that she 'started' moving – she was simply motionless one moment, and then in full motion the next, rushing out, her gun hanging on it sling. She moved it like a hose, the door splintering and shattering as if it had been pounded by five jackhammers at once. The left half sagged helplessly, one of its hinges broken, the right half swung open, the lock that held it in place knocked loose by multiple rounds.
A few swift kicks – and the door went down. "Go!" – the Mayor kicked the remains of the left side in, and then they were inside. For a brief, brilliant moment, Arthur thought they were victorious, that their fight was almost over. And then the moment became even more brilliant – literally, with Arthur's entire world filling with fire and smoke, his eardrums smashing him with a burst of pain. The world rang and buzzed around him, his eyes seared with sudden light. He spun on the smooth floor and fell on his back. The gunfire overhead was nearly inaudible to him.
It took a dozen precious seconds for him to recover – he was not unconscious only stunned by the noise and flash. By the time he could prop himself up on one elbow and look around him, a terrifying image revealed itself to his eyes. He was in a place he'd already remembered – the first floor of the main Serenity Bay building. It was set up as a single long hallway, with doors on either side leading to rooms and offices. A stairway to the upper floors and basement would be on the other end of the hallway. He glanced in that direction.
Down the hall, what was only minutes ago a man lay slumped against a wall. His head was nearly torn off at his neck, the front of his shirt was soaked in blood, his leg was bent at an unnatural angle, with a puddle of blood spreading from the remains of his knee. A double-barreled hunting shotgun lay next to his outstretched hand.
Arthur clambered up to his hands and knees. Leaning on one of the walls was Martin. The advisor's jaw was fixed and his eyes gleamed with anger. On the other side stood the Mayor – and his face was a mask of unlimited rage. His eyes bulging out, his lips pulling back like the lips of an angry hound, his fingers clenching tight around his rifle – looking at something laying in the door.
The doctor was dying. There was no helping her here – her entire torso had been wrecked with buckshot. Blood pooled around her body, and her legs twitched like the legs of a dying insect. Pink blood bubbled up from her lips, and her fingers curled up in final agony. She opened her eyes briefly, looking up at the three men standing around her, and tried to smile. Her teeth were red with blood.
In a final effort, the doctor moved herself up to rest on her elbows – and then fell back and moved no longer. There was no dignity in her death. She just lay there, her mouth open, and blood poured from it. A terrible, disgusting smell rose from her body – something in her stomach had been holed with the shot, Arthur guessed.
Without a word, Martin pulled out his derringer pistol. The Mayor looked the advisor in the eyes and shook his head – and Martin simply reholstered the tiny gun. Instead, the Mayor approached the dead woman.
- "We need to keep going, Archie! Go!" – Martin barked. And Arthur went – forward, towards nearest open door. Behind him, there was a lone gunshot. The Mayor had to do it himself, he knew. That would be reasonable. These things always are, he thought – but he could not think of that too long. He thought of the people who had done that – who turned the doctor who
rubbed his face with a cotton swab and actually cared if he had scars left or not, into a smashed-up mess of blood and flesh – and they hadn't paid nearly enough.
The first room was empty – simply a storage room, filled with cardboard boxes. He did not care what was in them. He went room after room. To the other side of the hall, Martin checked other rooms – storage rooms, offices, and so forth. Nobody actually lived on the first floor, Arthur realized – not in the age of ghouls. The enforcers and leaders would be on the upper floors. The inmates – in wooden barrack-rooms around the building, the better to be observed. Those punished – in the basement below.
In one of the rooms they found another of their own – a Florentine fighter, lying on his back in the middle of the room, a grisly wound on his stomach. At first they took the creature in the grey shirt sitting on the man's chest for a drillmaster – but when it raised its face towards them, they knew their mistake.
The ghoul leaped towards them. Excited by the smell of fresh blood and the taste of flesh that it had just consumed, it was faster than a human being could be. For a brief second, Arthur felt its disgusting smell – and pulled the trigger. His rifle fired – next to his ear, two more guns spoke too. The ghoul was flung backwards, its fingers grasping at the air as it attempted to right itself, and fell. Smoke and dust filled the room as the creature fell, struggled to right itself, and fell again.
- "Well." – Arthur said, pushing the magazine release button. The empty magazine fell on the floor with a clanking sound – "That..."
The Mayor's pistol barked again. The dead Florentine twitched slightly – simply the effect of the bullet hitting his body, not the onset of undeath. – "Everybody needs to be put to rest properly." – the Mayor said.
- "Everybody," – echoed Martin.
The Mayor's radio beeped insistently.
