by AR Shaw
Austin still frozen in terror, Bishop knew this was too much for the kid. “Austin, quickly. I’m trying to keep you alive.”
Austin pointed to the door from which the guard had just come.
“All right, come on. Whatever happens, stay right behind me. If you’re not there, I can’t help you. Understand?”
He nodded.
“Let’s go.”
“I’m scared,” Austin quickly uttered.
Turning to the boy, Bishop whispered, “The only way out is through. Say it.”
“The…only way out is through,” Austin repeated.
“Say it over and over in your mind. The only way out is through. Let’s go now.”
The younger man’s breath slowed a bit, and Bishop knew Austin was doing as he had as a young man in war, repeating that same mantra over and over in his mind. The only way out is through. The only way out is through. The only way out is through.
39
A few hours later, Maeve dozed while the children slept as they waited for Bishop. A sudden sound of gushing water woke her, and when she jerked her head around to see where it was coming from, the smell hit her too. Standing at the side end of the storage unit, Jake had just let go of his water. Horse urine had a distinctive smell, and Louna popped her head out from the covers, staring at her with her nose pinched.
There was nothing she could do about the situation. They were trapped inside with Jake. She should have known something like this was going to happen because for the past hour Jake had seemed agitated. He’d probably had needed to go for a while but didn’t want to do it in his own space but finally had no choice. Large puddles of yellow liquid began to pool and seep toward the unit door with the slight slope of the concrete.
“Ah, Mom!” Ben said.
“Shh! We can’t make any noise or those people might come back.”
Ben nodded his head then covered his nose with the blanket.
How much longer can we live this way? she thought. As long as it takes was her sudden reply to herself.
“At least it’s draining away,” she whispered to the children.
Ben only nodded.
For the first time in her life, she found herself wondering at what temperature a horse’s urine would freeze. There’s got to be a lot of salt in that, I guess?
Crunch…crunch…crunch.
Maeve crouched low and held her hand out to the children, motioning them to keep quiet. Whoever had come before was back again. And then, bwaa, bwaa, bwaa…bwaa, bwaa, bwaa…A tremendously loud alarm sounded in the distance.
The footsteps stopped as the alarm continued, and then they pounded on quickly, this time stopping right outside the storage unit. Bam, bam, bam.
Her breaths coming in a rapid staccato, Maeve held her rifle out in front of her.
“I know you’re in there. Open the damn door!”
Out of the corner of her vision, she saw her son stand. She turned to him and shook her head. Tears coming down her face, she kept her aim on the invisible man on the other side of the metal door. He pounded again and again. “Open this door!” he growled.
The muzzle of the Glock shook in her hands. If he comes inside, I’ll shoot.
The scratch of metal on metal began as he pulled up on the door. Slivers of light flashed inside. The door jerked up and down.
If he comes inside, I’ll shoot…
40
Running through the hallway with emergency lights as the only illumination, Bishop and Austin made it halfway down when suddenly the alarm system went off. Now the dim lights flashed as well. They could hear running footsteps down the other side of the hall. Black suits flashed by without any heed to them coming toward them.
They must have found the bodies in the basement.
Chaos was good. Bishop would use it to his advantage. When one of the black suits saw them from down the hallway, his eyes first shifted to Bishop’s rifle, and then he made eye contact with Bishop while lifting his weapon. Bishop stopped and kicked open one of the hotel room doors, flinging the kid inside from behind while he aimed and fired at the guy. Bishop watched as he hit the ground but the commotion attracted others, he followed Austin into the darkened hotel room and used the doorway as cover as he stitched the next guard across the chest with three shots.
He could see the elevator at the end of the hall from his position, and they only needed to make it there to get to the floors above.
“Come on,” Bishop said and had to pull Austin by his arm to the hallway. When they passed the downed guard, Bishop stopped and picked up his gun.
“You’ll need his badge to the get to the top floor,” Austin said, and there tethered to the front of the guard’s jacket was the badge Austin mentioned. He reached down and snapped it off. They stopped again at the end of the hallway. The downed guard was the last to cross, and in the corridor the alarm squalled to the point that Bishop wanted to cover his ears. Austin pressed the elevator door’s button to go up, and they waited. Another hallway attached here that went the opposite direction, and Austin’s eyes darted from one to the other. They had no idea if anyone else was coming. When the elevator’s floor indicator light neared their level, Bishop pulled Austin behind him and aimed at the opening elevator car. The doors opened, and thankfully, they found the space empty.
Inside, Austin took the card from Bishop and flashed it at the unit on the control panel, then pressed the button for the penthouse suite where Roman stayed. Before the elevator door closed, though, Bishop raised his rifle once again as he saw two figures enter the hallway. The elderly man and his wife’s shocked expressions were all he saw in the split second before the door closed. There were innocent people here, and he would do everything he could to avoid harming them in the process of getting rid of the plague known as Roman.
Keeping to the side of the car with Austin positioned behind him, the elevator rose and then stopped with a ding. The doors opened slightly and then all at once to an opulent room filled with warmth and fur rugs strewn across white stone floors approaching a desk flanked by leather couches. Heat emanated from a fireplace much like the one in the lobby but much smaller.
Creeping out of the elevator, Bishop practically dragged Austin behind him. He let go of the boy’s shirtsleeve when a door slammed. Suddenly the alarm stopped, but his ears continued to ring. Bishop scanned the room and looked down the hallway where he’d heard the noise. He motioned his head toward the hall with a questioning look, and Austin nodded that he had the right idea.
He tapped Austin on the chest and pointed to a tall white reception desk. The boy was more of a hindrance than a help, and he needed to stash him in a safe place out of the way.
Austin nodded, only too thankful to comply. He scurried behind the high white desk and hid down low.
Bishop waited until the young man was out of sight before he continued onward. Sudden dim light filled the hallway to the left, and when Bishop looked he found that the left side of the hallway was opened to windows that were letting what light there was seep through. He was utterly exposed there at fifteen floors up, and when he looked out the windows, he saw men in black running around in all directions on the ground below. They were looking high and low for them outside in the frozen landscape, but not high enough.
They assumed he and Austin had fled outside, and why not? They’d never expected someone to head toward danger.
A distinctive clicking sound, one Bishop was all too familiar with, came from the other side of the door, commanding his attention from the scene outside the windows. Whoever was on the other side of that door knew there was danger near.
Hurrying to the edge of the heavy closed door, Bishop waited and listened. As a shadow blocked the sliver of light from coming underneath the doorway, Bishop watched as the silver door handle began to twist.
41
Metal snapped, something heavy clanged to the ground, and the door whipped upward, all at once flashing light inside. Maeve was blinded. Her first instinct was t
o shield her eyes with her left hand. She caught herself as a man stepped inside. He held a rifle pointed at her and the children behind her and yelled roughly, “Put it down.”
For a second, she had no idea what he was talking about and then remembered she was holding him at gunpoint. With a menacing look, he glanced behind her at the children and then to the side, at the horse. After a moment, he sniffed the air. “You piss your pants?” he yelled at the children.
No one answered him, and he didn’t seem to expect an answer as his eyes were too busy plundering the boxes behind the children. Whatever was in those boxes, he wanted to know.
“I found your tracks outside. Whoever tried to hide them thought he was clever. Stand up and put your damn gun down now, or I’ll shoot you. I don’t give a damn about kids either.”
She believed him and silently screamed at herself as she found she was lowering her own weapon in defeat. There was no way she could endanger the children. Knowing Bishop would be disappointed, she did as he warned against. You’re making a mistake, she screamed to herself. Shoot him!
“Geez, you’re a pretty thing. You’ll fetch a nice price.”
Boom!
Maeve ducked, and the tremendous noise came from behind her. Her hands were in the air when she turned to her children to protect them from the unknown shooter. Then she saw her son standing there.
A small swirl of smoke whirled up from the muzzle end of his rifle. Her son Ben stood there, his eyes locked on the downed man in front of them, his mouth slightly agape.
“Ben!”
She went to comfort her son when the man on the ground began to move. Twisting, Maeve launched herself to her Ruger and raised the weapon just in time to pull the trigger before the assailant wrapped his hand around the grip of his own.
This time, she knew for certain he was done for. Half of the man’s head sprayed across the concrete ground and into the snow, the crimson and gray in bright contrast to the bright white snowflakes coming down.
42
Now, slowly, with a creak of its hinges, the heavy wooden door moved. It crept open, exposing the muzzle end of an AR-15; then, with the sound of friction of metal against the edge of wood, more of the weapon appeared.
Stiff-lipped, Bishop leaned against the wall, slid his hand into his holster, and pulled out the handgun without a sound. Then he pulled his right leg upward and kicked at the door all at once.
A shot fired from the rifle, shattering the hallway of windows. Subzero wind flooded the interior; white, billowy curtains flapped out in the sudden breeze. The owner of the rifle attempted to pull the muzzle free by yanking it inside, but Bishop had it trapped.
He fired once through the wood of the door at chest height. Wood fragments blasted all over. The rifle slackened, and the barrel end bent downward. For a brief second, Bishop thought that was the end…thought he’d killed the guy on the other side, but he was mistaken.
A body slammed into the door. The force of it knocked Bishop’s leg away, and the knob slammed into his gut. The Desert Eagle in his right hand was trapped in the corner, disabling him from bringing it upward. The door opened again, only to knock into him once more with full force. This time, there were hands gripping the edge of the heavy door. The rifle had fallen to the ground.
Bishop shoved his boot outward to stop the door from nailing him a third time, reached around with his left arm, and grabbed the assailant by the waist.
When he finally laid eyes on the man, he had no doubt in the brief nanosecond their eyes met that it was Roman. Tall guy, dark hair, but most of all, a menacing grin. He was enjoying this.
Shattered glass and air gusted inside as the two men struggled. The floor-to-ceiling windows were practically gone as Bishop wrangled the man into the precarious hallway that had suddenly become a fifteen-story cliff.
The rifle Roman dropped to the ground among the glass shifted on the floor as they struggled. Roman reached for the gun, but Bishop kicked it away just in time and out into the opened chasm of shattered glass. Briefly in midair, the rifle sailed downward and out of sight.
Struggling to point the gleaming Desert Eagle, Roman held Bishop’s arm upward, and strength against strength, they wrestled. The man had more than five inches on Bishop in height. And not knowing exactly how it happened, they were on the shattered glass–strewn floor. Bishop’s back pressed against the sharp fragments. Roman slammed Bishop’s right arm again and again against the ground, but even though pain shot through his injured shoulder, he wasn’t giving up the weapon in his grasp no matter what Roman tried to do.
Then Roman seemed to have a new tactic. He looked out the shattered window and began sliding Bishop’s body with furious tugs toward the abyss. Bishop’s boots soon were in free space and dangling fifteen stories above the ground. He would soon have to make a choice: to loosen his grip on Roman and grab onto something or he was done for.
Finally, Bishop threw his own forehead upward, slamming into Roman’s head and stunning him briefly. Just enough for him to loosen his grip on Bishop’s arm. With just enough time to raise the handgun, Bishop fired into the man’s chest once, but Roman twisted at the last second and only shrapnel from the floor shot everywhere. He let go of Roman’s arm with his left hand and punched the bigger man in the jaw, but Roman wasn’t done yet.
Knowing he had only one bullet left in the gun, he continued to fight. Roman clawed for Bishop and shoved him even further over the edge. With his ass halfway over the ledge, Bishop raised the gun once more and sent the last round right into Roman’s chest, but at a price. Bishop dropped the spent gun and dangled dangerously over the edge with Roman’s body over his chest and began to lose his fight with gravity as he tried to scramble back over, only to catch shards of glass with his hands. About to panic in the inevitable freefall to his own death, another hand reached out and grabbed him by his jacket and hauled him back to safety.
Breathing hard, with blood mixed with the glass impaled in his hands, Bishop looked up to see Austin and said with heaving breaths of air, “Thanks, man. Just…in…time.”
43
Tentatively, Maeve took steps toward the torn menace of the man crumpled in front of her.
“Careful, Mom!” Ben warned from behind her.
“Stay where you are,” she said to her son. With her eyes, she saw only blood, bone, and brain. And before she could kick at his body and close the door, her stomach dry heaved against her will. She knelt over to the side, involuntarily lurching. Not even looking, all she saw in her mind was the gray matter mixed with blood. Blood she spilled to save her son. The overwhelming nausea seemed like it would never subside, but finally it did. She wiped the thick saliva from her lips and stood once again.
The little girl was crying great sobs with her head buried in the blankets. Her son stood in shock, still holding on to his rifle in his hands.
A noxious mixture of strong urine, iron, and bile made her decide. She found herself leading Jake out of the storage unit just ten feet into the snow-covered alleyway. His gentle eyes looked at her as if nothing terrible had happened. She tied his lead to another unit’s door lock and then came to the dead man in her way.
She avoided looking at the mangled part of him and kept her vision to his feet. She kicked away his gun in the snow and then straightened his legs out in front of him. Pulling his legs to the side, she dragged the man five feet with all the strength she had. Dropping his feet finally into the snow, she returned to the unit and looked for a shovel.
Needing to remove the rest of him that remained, Maeve looked along the walls until she spotted a long-handled shovel among the other tools. She didn’t want to look at the bits of him that were still out there out of fear she’d have to vomit again.
After taking a couple of deep breaths, Maeve took another look at the kids. Louna still sobbing, her son patted the girl on the back but still clutched his rifle. With resolve, she turned and slid the blade of the shovel under the largest bloody chunks and walked a few pace
s with the offensive load and dumped it on the guy’s chest. Returning for another load, she scraped the ice on the pavement outside the unit for as long as she could manage and dumped that load on its owner too as if to say, “Here you go. This belongs to you.”
Then she shoveled snow over the man until he was a mound against a berm. She packed more snow over the last scattering marks of blood in the snow near the entrance to their unit. The whole time, the plummeting temperatures continued to seep through her and steal her inner heat. She was shaking before long. Her hands trembled as she carried the shovel and what dim light there was began to darken.
“Where is Bishop?” she wondered out loud and stared blankly toward where the alarms had been coming from before.
“Mom?”
Maeve turned to her son. “We should bring Jake back inside and close the door.”
Nodding to herself, she first brought in a few shovelfuls of clean snow, dumped them at the high point of where Jake left his mess, and scooted the snow in a downward motion toward the end of the concrete, shoveling some of the urine out with it.
Then she retrieved Jake and put him back in his spot. Looking at the trampled snow, she used the back of the shovel to try and level the evidence of them being there and to mask the steps, but eventually she could see it was no use. Anyone coming this way would know there was someone there. Before she closed the door, she gazed at the mound with the dead man beneath. The first person she’d ever killed, the one who nearly killed them. Quietly she lowered the metal door the rest of the way, hoping no one could hear them, and she wondered if Bishop’s life had also ceased with the end of the alarms from earlier.
44
“He nearly shoved you out,” Austin said, his eyes round.
“Yeah, he did at that.” Bishop pointed at the body. “Was that Roman?”
