Whatever It Takes To Survive

by Mike Staton

  “That’s a load of shit.” Grap’s words preceded his footsteps on the stairs. “And you’re only in charge because Bloku ate a bullet from someone.”

  “Knock it off and do what I say.”

  “You should be thanking her,” Grap said with a chuckle.

  Simon answered by slamming the door at the top of the stairs.

  Kat silently counted the footsteps on the stair. She waited until the footsteps became muted on the bottom landing and Grap’s light swept around the corner. He moved past her, the beam locked on the closed door ahead.

  He was a lean man, still bigger than her by at least a foot, and built like a triangle; broad shoulders that tapered down to a narrow waist attached to powerful legs. His dark hair was cut to the military standard high and tight. It made it easy for Kat to step up behind him and press the cool tip of her M9 to just behind his right ear. Grap froze.

  “Slowly. Gun and knife out of their holster and sheath and on the floor.” She kept her voice low. “Make a sound that anyone may hear or resist and I end you now.”

  Grap remained unmoving, one arm locked out in front of him with his flashlight beam tied to the door, the other draped at his side.

  “No hablo inglés?” Kat drove the barrel of the M9 into the pressure point just behind his ear. “Or do you simply not believe that I’ll scatter your brains all over this basement? I note the lack of tremor in my hand.”

  “You kill Rodney and Mark already?” Grap’s voice quavered.

  Kat couldn’t tell if the quaver was fear or anger. She added a growl to her tone. “Just gave ‘em what was due.”

  Grap’s shoulders sank slightly. It turned into a ruse as he ducked away from her pistol.

  Kat swept away from the end of his flashlight. It whizzed past her nose close enough that she felt the wind of its passing. She swept back in as he over extended himself. Her knife bit into his side twice as she jammed the pistol up under his chin.

  He stumbled backward, dazed by the blow. His hand clamped over the growing red spot initiated by her knife. His gaze focused on her.

  “You… you stabbed me.” He spat a tooth to the floor as blood dribbled out of the corner of his mouth.

  “Warned you.” Kat’s tone came out ice cold. She darted in with a speed she didn’t expect to be capable of after the treatment she’d suffered. She ducked beneath another swipe from the flashlight and jammed the knife into his inner thigh. Steaming hot blood instantly flooded over her hand as she wrenched the knife up and cut along his groin.

  Hot, wet blood splattered across the concrete. It was further proof she’d opened him up exactly where she’d wanted to.

  “Li’l… bitch.” Grap swept the flashlight at her.

  She brought her arm up and caught the blow across her forearm and shoulder. It stung, but lacked any true power as his strength fled out through the hole in his groin in hot spurts.

  Kat stepped back and watched him sink to his knees into the puddle of deep red spreading around him. He sank back onto his haunches, red from the waist down. His flashlight fell from a hand that suddenly couldn’t hold onto the metal cylinder. He raised his bloody hands to his mouth as Kat watched.

  “He—“

  Kat cut the word short by stepping forward and brutally jamming the knife through his eye and into his skull. She let the blade go as he flopped backwards. He jerked about like a fish out of water for a moment before he fell still.

  Percival’d been right. Killing folk got easier the more she did it. She didn’t try to step around the spreading red around the corpse as she bent low and relieved him of his knife. She wiped her hand off on his breast, obscuring his stenciled name.

  “How the fuck did you take out my home?” She shook her head and backpedaled to the stairs. She spun around. It wouldn’t take them long before sending more than one person down at a time. She crouched and slowly climbed the stairs. Every creak and squeak of the wood gave her pause.

  She stalked up to the basement door, slid her new knife into the sheath and pressed her ear to the door to listen.

  “Wolt’s got contacts. Multiple coming from up on us,” a high pitched male voice said. “Wants to know if she’s clear shoot.”

  * * *

  Percival dropped into a crouch by the barbed wire fence. The snow piled up near the post and made tiny dunes across the yard ahead of them. He felt painfully aware of the tracks they’d left in the field behind and that their dark clothes didn’t help them to blend into the snowy, white surroundings. The snow’d lessened in the last hour of travel and no longer reduced their field of vision to a couple hundred, dark feet.

  Past the fence and snowy yard he could make out the shadowy outlines of several buildings. He’d counted four buildings. He guessed the largest off to their right was the barn that Lieutenant Adams wanted them to go to.

  Off to the left, back lit by some bright light, was a farmhouse. It was a two-story building with a couple of peaked rooftops, likely over windows, and a wraparound porch. It was the place that Lieutenant Adams had claimed for herself. He stared at it. With how it was backlit, he assumed that Kat was inside. In an otherwise dark landscape, the light drew his eye.

  He looked at Lieutenant Adams. “Plan stands?”

  She nodded. “My guess is that the enemy is holed up in the farmhouse.”

  “Shouldn’t we all hit it then? Breach from multiple angles?” Percival twisted to look at the farmhouse once more.

  “We’re not trained to do that,” Judith quietly said. “We’d run the greater chance of a crossfire and injuring each other.”

  Percival frowned at her behind his helmet. “Isn’t it dangerous to hit it solo?”

  Lieutenant Adams nodded. “Especially without knowing who’s where and what’s going on.”

  “We seem to have the element of surprise for now. We should make sure that we keep it.” Judith nocked an arrow on her string. She nodded toward the barn. “Percival, follow me.”

  Percival watched her slip off into the darkness. He glanced at Lieutenant Adams. “Stay safe. We’ll see you on the flip side.”

  Lieutenant Adams’s flight helmet swiveled toward him. “Stay frosty, Percival.”

  * * *

  Kat drew herself up. Had the others caught up to her? If they had, the enemy’s sharpshooter had eyes on them. That was bad. If she was half the shot that Kat was, the woman wouldn’t miss.

  She hadn’t recognized the voice on the other side of the door, but she did recognize the man who answered.

  “Give her the green light. We’re not done packing up yet,” Simon said. “What’s taking three grown men so long?”

  The doorknob twisted next to her ear. Kat swallowed and took a quick step backward down the stair.

  “Go on, tell her.” Simon opened the door.

  Kat’s M9 rose and she squeezed the trigger rapidly as it came up and onto target. Bullets punched through Simon’s right leg, abdomen, and chest as her aim climbed. The slide locked back in its open position.

  Simon stared dumbly down at her. He reached out and touched the two bloody holes in his chest as he worked to get sound out.

  Whatever he said was drowned out by the ringing in Kat’s ears, but his moving lips finally snapped her out of her frozen state. She ejected the magazine, pulled one from Dolphi’s jacket pocket. As Simon pitched headlong toward her, she fumbled with the magazine.

  “Shit!” Kat dropped the loaded magazine as she jumped out of the way of Simon as he tumbled down the stairs. Her hearing slowly returned as she, calmly this time, withdrew a second magazine from her pocket and pressed it into the pistol. She flicked the slide release and stalked back to the top stair.

  “Stay back!” the high pitched man shouted. His words cut through the ringing in her ears.

  She hoped she hadn’t done permanent damage to her ears with the pistol. She wished she could will the tinnitus away and clearly hear where the man was. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  “Wolt! Our captive’s lo
ose! Need backup!” the high pitched man sounded further away.

  She hoped her hearing wasn’t misrepresenting his location. She closed her eyes and steadied her breathing. She didn’t know the layout of the building they’d been keeping her in either. He could be heading for a backdoor to get away entirely. She licked her lips, tasted blood that wasn’t her own, and twisted to retch against the corner of the stairwell.

  Once her heaving fit had finished, she sucked in a cool breath and opened her eyes. She needed to stop wasting time. She stepped up out of the basement and swept her pistol around a sizable kitchen. The stone countertops had been cleared of any articles they once held, scattered to the tile floor. The gas stove looked as though it hadn’t seen a proper cleaning in this decade.

  Several exits to the kitchen presented themselves to her, the foremost being an open screen door that led onto a porch with some shadowy building in the distance. A couple other doors led to other destinations within the farmhouse.

  She twisted around and moved toward the door opposite the screen door and crouched next to it. The ringing in her ears subsided and she paused long enough to listen for sounds of movement on the other side of the door.

  She didn’t have the element of surprise anymore and she didn’t know how many people remained as opposition. She closed her eyes and fought the urge to just disappear out the back.

  “The others’re in danger from their sharpshooter. They could be in her crosshairs right now.” Kat told herself. She could’ve just disappear out the back. No one would know.

  But then she’d be leaving who knew how many people to rape the countryside. And there was still Hall to make pay for what he’d done to her.

  She nodded to herself and reached for the knob to take her deeper into the house. Her would be saviors needed her help, even if they didn’t know it.

  She hadn’t been in a position to help Prosperity Wells against these assholes, and she wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to help now.

  She twisted the knob and kicked the door open. She flinched away from the frame as bullets tore through the opening door and doorframe near her head.

  Kat dropped into a low crouch as the automatic weapon fire tore apart the entry way she’d been about to use. The moment she heard the click of the receiver locking back and the hail of bullets ceased, she flopped to the side, into the doorway. She brought her pistol up. A skin and bones man stood with M16 partially reloaded. Kat brought her pistol up from her prone position and snapped off shots with a rapid pull of the trigger.

  The pistol kicked in her hands and flung lethal lead at the man standing next to a stairwell. Bright red spots bloomed on his chest and climbed upward. A bullet slammed through his chin, demolishing his clean-shaven jaw half a moment before her last bullet crunched into his helmet with a solid thud. He flipped onto his back and lay still where he fell.

  Kat’s arms suddenly felt as though they weighed thousand pounds as she climbed shakily to her feet. Her right arm throbbed as she lowered her weapon. Her ears rang and it took her longer than she was proud of to notice the hot pain radiating from her arm. She dropped her gaze from the front door, and the living room where she’d shot the man, to a ragged hole in her right sleeve.

  That’d explain the pain. She touched the hole and brought back fingers that were bright red with her blood. She shook her head with disbelief. How had she not felt the impact? She slithered her fingers into the hole and felt for what she expected to be a ragged hole in her arm.

  The front door crashed open. Hall stood, backlit by the Humvee’s headlights, with an M16 leveled at her. His head twisted from her to the dead man at his feet. “What th’fuck?”

  She snapped her pistol up, despite the lightning hot pain in her arm, and squeezed the trigger. A bullet destroyed the frame next to his head, the second took a chunk out of his ear.

  The slide snapped back into the locked position.

  “Fuck…” Kat ducked back into the kitchen as Hall’s rifle spit hot death at her. As the world exploded in plaster and wood, she fumbled a magazine from her holster. The magazine slipped from her blood slicked fingers and hit the floor, bouncing into the doorway. “God damn it.”

  Kat squeezed her eyes closed as the world silenced and Hall set to reloading. She pulled her final remaining magazine from her holster and swapped it with the expended one in her pistol.

  “If you ain’t dead, you’ve gotta world of hurt comin’.” Hall’s deep baritone was punctuated by his M16’s receiver snapping forward.

  Kat forced her breathing back to somewhere in the comfortable range. She tried to force the tinnitus to flee from her ears faster so she could track Hall’s footsteps. He had the jump on her here and she’d not help anyone by dying under a hail of his gunfire.

  She pressed her back against the wall and dropped into a low squat before edging around the edge of the partially destroyed doorway. She was met by another burst of gunfire from a significantly closer Hall.

  “Oh good. You’re still livin’.”

  Kat swept her pistol around the side and quickly squeezed the trigger, firing blindly. She was shooting down a hallway, but what she wanted more than anything was to drive the man to the ground. She broke from her cover the moment she’d finished firing and sprinted at the backdoor.

  Her tactic seemed to have worked as she smashed through the screen door and hit the porch. She immediately angled away from the door to prevent him from getting a good shot, and catapulted herself over the railing. She hit the snowy lawn, dropped through a roll, and came up running. She pumped her less injured arm as she sprinted the distance to the next building, a large dark barn.

  The wood next to her head exploded into splinters that scattered painfully against the side of her head as Hall opened fire behind her. Kat fell through the doorway.

  * * *

  Percival crept after Judith, slinking through the darkness toward the compound.

  The explosive snaps and pops of small arms fire erupted from somewhere ahead of them. Judith dropped down in the snow and Percival followed her example. He slammed himself down on the frozen ground and wet, cold snow. He stared at the compound, wondering where and who was shooting. The explosive burst of shots had come from somewhere ahead of him, but he couldn’t tell where. Hell, given he’d not seen any puffs in the snow around them, he couldn’t tell where the shots were going either.

  But they’d been rapid and quick and silence now pervaded the situation. He let several tense moments pass before he painfully slowly moved forward in an army crawl that kept him barely above the snow’s edge that he compacted as he moved forward. He stopped next to Judith.

  “See anything?” he whispered without looking away from the space between the barn and farmhouse. He flipped his visor up to have a clearer view of the situation.

  “Same as you, I expect. Dark buildings with a light somewhere an—“ A rapid burst of tiny explosions cut her sentence short. The firefight came to a brief lull, and the sharp pops of a pistol resonated through the night and lit the windows on the backside of the farmhouse before silence crashed into fill the void as the gunshots ended.

  “Infighting?”

  “Kat must be free.” Percival shook his head.

  The sharp reports of an automatic rifle shattered the silence followed by a staccato return from the pistol that flashed the windows of the farmhouse’s rear once more. A moment of silence followed before a small figure crashed through the backdoor.

  They vaulted the railing of the porch and hit the ground running. Without pause to look anywhere else, they made straight for the barn. The figure crashed into the door as some mountain of a man appeared from the farmhouse.

  Percival brought his M16 up, though at this distance he doubted he’d hit. He wasn’t the sharpshooter that Kat was. The man raised a rifle and fire spat from its dangerous end. The smaller figure at the barn toppled through a dark doorway.

  The large man stalked across the yard.

  “Come on.
” Percival inched forward without waiting for Judith to answer. The small figure might’ve been Kat or Lieutenant Adams. Even if it were one of the military assholes and they’d split to infighting, he wanted to get the drop on one or both of them.

  * * *

  Kat crashed to the straw strewn ground inside the dark barn. Her M9 popped out of her hand and clattered away into the darkness. She scampered away from the doorway. She let out a soft whimper of pain as she plucked splinters out of the side of her face. Her arm and ribs throbbed as she crawled toward a stack of hay bales. She couldn’t stay put. Without her gun and lack of the element of surprise, she didn’t want to remain where she’d be easily found.

  She crawled around the far edge of the hay bale as the door to the barn crashed open once more and someone stepped through. Kat pressed her back to the hay bale and flexed her fingers of her injured arm. They still worked, and while she continued to bleed, she hadn’t been disabled.

  “Going to fuck you good.” Hall’s light illuminated the barn, casting deep shadows. It didn’t make the location of her pistol immediately recognizable. “Break out of my base. Kill my friends…”

  “Fuck you, Hall. You’ve got no room to talk!” Kat shouted back and moved away from where she’d been. He’d participated in who knew how many tortures, murders, and rapes of this country since the outbreak, and he lectured her on her killing her captors? Killing the people who’d attacked her home? Sieged a group of civilians? She bit her tongue before she shouted away her position again.

  Hall growled and stomped after her. She heard him crash around the corner of the hay bale she’d taken cover behind and drew her knife. She switched it to her offhand, not trusting her blood slicked right hand.

  “Where are you scampering away to, little rat?” Hall’s light swept over the hay bale as he stomped toward her.

  Kat steeled herself. She bent her legs into tight little springs under her. The barrel of Hall’s M16 preceded him around the corner. She waited for the first bit of flesh to pass the hay bale and sprung.