by Sergio Gomez
They all laughed, but there was a modicum of truth in the joke. He didn’t want them to need that huge rifle the Marine was wielding—if they did that would mean they had encountered trouble. Collecting the dynamite from the naval base was supposed to be the easy part of this whole ordeal.
“Alright, let’s hit the road!” Howard said with the spirit of a Scout Leader and they all headed for the door.
8
Terrance hadn’t left the conference room in 28 hours, not since the night beasties had come into the building.
Crumbs of chips clung to his lips and on the front of his shirt. He clutched his pistol against his constantly rising and falling chest. They had come last night, so he had (as quietly as he could) pinned the breakroom table on the door to keep them from barging in. None of them had tried to get in, he heard their footsteps going down the hallway, but non stopped to open any doors.
But now every sound he heard was them returning to finish the job. The job to kill him and eat his insides.
A squirrel skittering up the gutters? A night creature trying to come in through the windows.
The naval bases’ floorboards creaking? Night creature tiptoeing about, trying to find him.
A bird perched on the window flies away suddenly? Must have spotted a group of night creatures approaching.
They wanted to kill him and eat him, and then take his snacks. But he had a full clip for their asses, damn right he did. That was one thing Toby (R.I.P. good friend) had left before his departure from this world as a token of their friendship—an extra clip for the gun.
If anything or anyone tried to get in he would shoot to kill. He was safe here, he still had half a chocolate bar, some chips, and burgers in his bag. They were beginning to spoil, but fuck it, food was food. He was going to eat them until one of them made him shit out liquid from his asshole.
A starling sitting on one of the window sills was suddenly startled by the sound of engines. It flew off the sill to a tree across the yard.
Terrance jumped up to his feet and clutched the gun tighter. He walked over to where the bird had been and looked down at the ground. The naval base only had two stories so he could see what was going on down there fine.
There were two vehicles approaching the building, alright. Both of them looked like they had been through the grinder; the truck looked to be scratched and dented all over and the windshield was cracked all across. The second vehicle’s, the SUV, bottom half was covered in at least two inches of mud and the paint job on the roof was fading, but all in all they ran. Besides the electrical scooter he had been using to get around town, these were the only vehicles he had seen in a year that still worked. It was like seeing some extinct animal that somehow had come back, a woolly mammoth or a saber tooth tiger or some shit.
He smiled.
But the smile faded when he saw the vehicles stop in front of the building. Where the window was looking out to was the back of the building, and where the vehicles stopped was at the entrance of the basement.
Four men came out of the cars. An old white guy that looked like a brokeass cowboy (he didn’t even have a hat!) and a black guy holding a rifle big enough to make his balls shrink at the sight of it came out of the SUV. Out from the truck came a Hispanic guy with hair greasy enough to rinse out and cook a meal with and an out of shape, plain looking white guy. They were an oddball gang of people, that’s for sure.
Terrance gulped when he saw they were all armed.
“Motherfuckers, fuck, fuck.”
They were going to find him, and kill him. He was sure that they would kill him if they found him.
He looked back at his book bag, which was turned on its side. Bags of chips, half on the floor and half inside the bag reminded him he was fighting for his survival. He’d have to act fast, because these four motherfuckers were going to kill him and take his food if they found him.
4 against 1.
He wished Toby (R.I.P.) was here. But he wasn’t, because he killed him.
Just like he was going to kill these four assholes. He had a full clip and the element of surprise on his side. He walked over to where the table was blocking the door and moved it so there was enough space to pull the door open. Then he made his way down to the basement.
*
The basement led to an ammunition storage room, so there was a big vault door stopping them, the kind with the heavy spinning knob. The electrical security system was down due to the lack of power in the building, and Howard had found the big brass key that opened the manual lock on their first raid through the building, so getting through the door was no problem.
On Terrance’s side, getting to the basement wouldn’t be a big deal either since there was only an electrical lock on the door leading to it from the first level. It’d be as easy as pulling the door open and going down the steps.
But he still wasn’t at the door. He was too busy pacing back and forth in the foyer, talking to himself under his breath.
“You got this champ, you got this champ.” He kept rolling his shoulders like a boxer warming up for the fight of his life. He had a vague notion in his head of what he was going to do and what he was going to say. Looks like you fellas strolled in to the wrong part of town. Then he would unload his clip on them, if his aim didn’t kill them the ricochet would. Hopefully.
A couple of yards beneath where Terrance was psyching himself up, his unwanted guests stepped through the vault door and into the storage facility.
Alejandro was a bit disappointed; he expected something like out of the movie Men in Black. White walls with crazy, futuristic weapons that people like his friend Martin said the government hid from the public’s eye, weapons that could vaporize people with lasers or send them to distant planets to suffocate on unbreathable air—that kind of stuff.
But instead he was faced with what he could only think of as bathroom stalls for weapons. There were racks on the walls separated by metal walls, almost like shelves without the bottom part because the weapons had been hung on to the racks. They were all empty except for a Tommy gun that didn’t work.
Something Alejandro had expected was in there, and that was giant metal storage units. One of them was open from the side and he could see countless sticks of dynamite.
“Jesus, you weren’t kidding about how much dynamite there is.” Alejandro said, shining his lantern into the storage unit.
“I’d guess there’s at least one other container with this many somewhere in here.” Howard said.
“I don’t think we’ll need it. This looks like enough to blow up the whole damn wall.”
“Think about it, if we find another we could blow up the moon.” Howard said, snickering. Everyone else joined in too. They were all feeling it now, the nervousness and the reality of what they were doing.
“How are we getting these up there?” Alejandro asked, gesturing towards the flight of steps they had taken to get down here.
Paul came rolling a cart with the biggest roll of saran wrap Alejandro had ever seen attached to it. The wheels squeaked until Paul parked it in front of the dynamite.
“Wrap, seal, and carry it up. Not quite sophisticated, but it’ll get the job done.” Paul said, smiling.
“Works for me.”
Howard slapped his hands together. “Let’s get this done, then!”
Fifteen minutes passed. They all breathed heavy, but they had three packages of saran wrapped dynamite loaded into the truck. Each package contained at least 10lbs of dynamite, much more than they intended to use but more was always better.
They were gathered down in the basement, Alejandro and Paul loading another sheet of saran wrap with dynamite while Howard and Will halted up a fourth package to carry upstairs.
A door opened from upstairs and across the room, and they all stopped what they were doing. A patch of light spilled down from a flight of stairs, although they couldn’t see who was opening it because a protective wall prevented them from seeing upstairs. The patch of li
ght grew bigger on the basement floor as the door was opened wider.
Alejandro and Howard looked at each other. Howard mouthed the phrase, “what the fuck?”
It was too early for Los Noches...and…that meant it had to be humans.
“Shit!” Howard said in a whispered scream. He looked at Will, who shrugged. “Your go, Marine.”
He nodded, knowing full well his role was the muscle. Which was just fine by him, he had been infantry in the Marine Corps, so it’s not like this was new to him.
They put the package of dynamite down carefully and he grabbed his rifle off the wall where it was leaning.
“I’ll cover you.” Then to Alejandro and Paul he said, “You guys keep packing unless you hear our dying screams.”
It was a joke, but like a lot of the jokes these days, there were grains of truth that filled the void where there wasn’t any humor.
Howard and Will moved out, Will leading the way.
Paul and Alejandro looked at each other.
“Let’s keep our ears open until they give us an all-clear signal.” Paul said.
Alejandro could see Paul was trying to keep his composure, but the beads of sweat forming at his hairline and the uncertainty swimming in his eyes told Alejandro he wasn’t doing a good job of it.
Alejandro turned back to loading the dynamite into the saran wrap, but his focus was on his allies surviving whatever was up there. His hand was ready to draw the gun.
*
This must be what a lion feels like when he’s hunting, when he’s stalking a herd of unsuspecting buffalo in the shadows of dried Savannah grass. Terrance thought.
It was like every sense had been heightened by the shot of adrenaline coursing through his veins. Colors looked more vibrant, his thoughts swam through his head in a torrent—yet they were discernible, and every sound seemed to be more amplified. He felt like he was moving quicker, and that time had slowed down for him, it was incredible, that feeling of knowing you’re about to kill.
When he opened the door, he heard the commotion of them whispering to each other and knew—somehow felt that they had been alerted. Which was fine by him, just because they knew he was here didn’t mean they could stop him.
In his heightened state of mind he had seen everything as a weapon, and had setup a trap for whoever came up the stairs. A metal shelf on wheels was sitting in front of the door, a couple of feet back so that the angle of the staircase kept it hidden from being seen at the bottom of the staircase (he hoped, anyway). The shelf was sturdy and solid steel, and weighed over a hundred pounds. He had been a physics major in college so he knew that a heavy ass object traveling down a flight of steps would create velocity strong enough to break human bones.
So now here he was, crouching behind the wall next to the doorway, smiling at his genius and feeling like a boy on Christmas morning.
The smile went away when he heard the heavy boot stomp down on the first step. There were fifteen steps in all, and he estimated that when the first person was on the fifth step it would be too late for at least that person to get out of the way of the shelf. He had been hoping all four had come to investigate, but the sound of the steps coming his way suggested there were only two.
Oh well, he still had the pistol. The full clip.
He counted the steps of the first person coming up; 1…2…3…
That was his cue. He ran behind the metal shelf and pushed it as hard as he could. It glided across the linoleum floor. The wheels kicked up a small cloud of dust, right before it tipped over the first step and went hurtling down.
Will saw the metal shelf heading toward him, but he couldn’t move. His legs—no, his fucking brain—had locked up on him at the sight of a metal shelf coming down the staircase. When his mind finally broke out of the block, it acted on instinct and he fired the rifle.
The bullets tore through the metal, but of course that did nothing for the situation. He heard Howard shout behind him, something that was a curse but in this state of mind he couldn’t make out the word. Then he finally turned and ran.
Too late. The shelf hit him in the back and took him off his feet. He went sprawling down the last three steps, at the foot of the stairs the shelf tripped over him. The weight snapped the vertebrae on his lower back.
He screamed in excruciating pain, screams that echoed off the walls.
*
Howard had been lucky to be a step behind Will and had just enough time to get to the foot of the steps and jump out of the way. Not so lucky though, because in jumping off the staircase to save his life he had crashed on the ground harder than his body could take, and his right hip felt like it was splintering out of the side of his body. He couldn’t get up.
In front of him Will was writhing in pain, screaming and sobbing like he never thought a grown man was capable of doing. The metal shelf had flipped over once when it hit the bottom and just missed landing on Will and squishing him like a bug. Howard wondered if that might not have been a better fate for the marine, given the agonized screams coming out of him.
He heard footsteps coming from behind him, footsteps descending the staircase. They were slow and deliberate, like the serial killer in a slasher film. Howard tried to get up, but the pain from his hip shot through him like lightning.
Instead, he just turned to face whoever was coming down the stairs. He rocked his body, feeling like an earthworm squirming out of mud, and flipped himself over. The pain in his hip flared again, and he couldn’t help but scream this time.
Howard reached for his hip where his gun was, but it was too late. The boy was already squatting over him and pointing a pistol at his face.
He couldn’t have been older than Boris, but the smile on his face said he was more hardened than Boris would ever be.
Terrance lowered the gun to Howard’s chest and said, “Wrong part of town, motherfucker.”
Howard thought he imagined the boy saying that, and those were the last thoughts he had before the bullet exploded his heart out of his chest.
*
They had been approaching Howard, who was clearly injured as a result of the fiasco with the metal shelf. Neither of them knew what had hit him or what happened to him, but they both knew he was badly hurt because he was sitting there even after the kid with the gun was visible. After the first shot, both Alejandro and Paul abandoned the idea of going to rescue him and both jumped behind two different shipping containers that shielded them from the kid’s aim.
“I know there’re two more of you!” The boy shouted loud enough to be heard over the pained sobbing coming from Will. “I got the rifle, and don’t think I can’t use this shit.”
Alejandro looked at Paul, whose expression pleaded Alejandro to take the initiative.
So that was what he was going to do. He took in a deep breath. There was no way it was going to end here, with some fucked up kid gunning him down. No, not after what he’s survived, not after they’re so close to some semblance of safety.
He scanned around and saw nothing within reach that he could use to distract the kid. Then it dawned on him, he was leaning against a storage unit inside of an ammunition facility. The answer was right there, underneath his weight. There was no way to know what was inside, but he was damn sure going to take a look.
He slid the door’s metal lock off, a rusted pin that went through a hole in an even rustier metal bar. The thing whined as loud as a harpooned whale and made his ears ring.
“Hey, what the fuck was that!” Terrance shouted.
“It’s just my friend!” Paul called back. He gave Alejandro a look of encouragement. “He’s scared and is just looking for a place to hide.”
“Tell his ass to stay put.” The boy said and his footsteps turned rapid as he came closer to them.
Paul did something Alejandro never expected the man would do, and stepped out from behind the container with his hands up in the air.
“Stop, don’t, we’re giving up.” He said to the boy. Now that he was c
onfronting him and could see him better in the minimal light in the room, he wasn’t as scared, but he could still feel his heart thumping in his chest like a beaten drum.
The boy was taken by surprise by this as well, and stopped coming forward. He sized Paul up, and after he saw no threat he said, “Tell the other guy to come out, too.”
Paul looked over where Alejandro was and said, “It’s okay, buddy, we’ll give him our weapons and he’ll let us go.”
Alejandro sensed that this was his cue. He pulled on the shipping containers door and it moved with a metallic whirring sound, but nowhere near as loud as when he pulled the lock pin. Alejandro hoped the boy didn’t hear it.
Paul faced the boy again. “He’s pissing his pants, can you give him a few seconds.”
“What the fuck do you think this is? A negotiation meeting?”
Paul felt himself losing control of the situation and so he changed his approach. “I’ll give up my gun, look.”
He crouched down, keeping his focus on his peripheral vision. Out the corner of his eye he saw Alejandro disappear into the shipping container. He put the gun on the ground. “Alright friend, I’m going to get up and kick my gun over to you, then I’ll go over to where my friend is and take his gun.”
“Naw, fuck that, man. Tell him to come out or you’re dead.”
Inside the storage unit Alejandro’s veins turned ice cold, he knew he was racing against time as the boy’s patience ran thin and Paul’s grip on the situation slipped further. The problem was it was too damn dark to see, so he had to resort to feeling.
He felt the wall, cold on his palms, and stepped further into the storage unit until he brushed against a container that was shin-high. Using both hands he felt its shape, it was a wooden squared container. He found a lid on the top of the container and took it off. Reaching inside his first thought was that he was reaching into a ball pit, the kind kids used to play in at McDonald’s or Burger King, but then he felt the ridges on the outer part of the spheres. And these weren’t exactly round like balls. These were oddly oval and got narrower towards the top. Then his finger touched the pin, and even in the dark he knew what these were. Grenades.
