by Eric Vall
“I can handle this,” I said to Paige. “You go grab another house while I clean it up.”
“You sure?” Paige asked.
I nodded and pulled off my backpack.
“Alright, stay safe,” the brunette said. She gave us one last look, let out a small sigh, and left us alone.
“Hold this,” I said as I handed Bailey my flashlight. Then I popped open the medkit, grabbed a bandage, some neosporin, and some aspirin.
“You should’ve spoken up when Tara and I rolled up,” I said as I spread the cream across the wound.
“It’s really not that bad, and I didn’t want to worry anyone,” Bailey said. She winced a little as I pressed the bandage in place and secured it with medical tape.
“Still, we gotta look out after one another, especially now,” I said with a gentle smile before I handed her the aspirin. “These will help with the sting.”
“Thanks, Tav,” she said before she tossed them into her mouth and chewed them up.
“Of course,” I said as I repacked my bag.
“Can I find a spot to set up now?” the blonde asked.
“Yep,” I said with a nod. “I would suggest you just hole up here.
“You sure you don’t want this house?” Bailey asked.
“I’m okay finding another one,” I said. “I would take this time to reload your magazines and make sure you are familiar enough with this place to scurry around in the dark.”
“Alright, I’ll do that,” she said.
I grinned, tossed my backpack back on, and stood.
“Be safe out there,” Bailey said.
“Always,” I replied.
I went to leave but Bailey hopped up, grabbed my hand, and pulled me back just long enough to give me a kiss. When we pulled away the hippie had a large smile on her face and even in the buildings gloom I was pretty sure I could see a bit of red in her cheeks.
“Alright, now you can go,” she said.
“You sure?” I chuckled.
“Yeah. I wanna get ready to kill some people.” She stuck out her tongue at me, picked up her rifle, and headed upstairs.
I shook my head and made my way outside. Then I jogged down the road to the ornate door house in the center of our little path and headed inside. I made my way to the second story, picked the bedroom on the right side with a good view of the street, and set up my rifle. After that, I pulled out my empty magazines and refilled them with the ammo I had loose in my bag,
I was just finishing with my fourth magazine when I heard the distant rumble of the motorcycles.
It seemed it was time to go again.
Chapter 15
The gang stopped at the entrance to our maze. They took a second to check the area for a quick way around, but we had made sure that going through the town was the easiest solution.
I watched as a couple guys probed the streets to check for spike strips and tripwires. They of course didn’t find any since the “trap” here was forcing them through our firing lines instead. After a quick check they returned to their buddies, got on their bikes, and slowly started to make their way through the town.
Headlights and flashlights bounced across the front of the houses as the bikers moved slowly forward. After the bridge they seemed to be more cautious about this entire thing, but they still weren't smart enough to realize it was a trap.
The girls were patient as the column of bikers pushed deeper into the town. I tried to count their numbers but in the increasing darkness and chaos of lights it was hard to do. The stream of enemies under me felt almost endless, but I knew it was at least less than it had been earlier.
“I don’t like this, it feels like we are being led somewhere,” one of them said loud enough for us to hear.
“Yeah, it’s kinda strange,” a second biker muttered.
“Hey, shut up and stay alert,” a third man barked.
I ducked into the shadows of the room when someone swept my window with a flashlight. Once the light was gone, I moved back to my original position and shouldered my rifle.
The enemy was almost completely in the maze, and if the girls had spread out right, it would be next to impossible for them to fall back. If it were not dark, I knew we could have finished the bikers here, but some of them were bound to slip by in the chaos once the shooting started.
I patiently waited for the last of the bad guys to start their way down the street before I closed one eye, blew out a slow breath, and lined up my first shot. I aimed for the middle of a biker who was illuminated in the headlights of the man behind him, and my rifle belched a gout of flame as I gently squeezed the trigger and put a hole through his skull.
“It’s a trap!” someone shouted as gunshots started to echo through the streets.
For a moment there was panic as the bikers tried to retreat. They ran around like bugs trying to find a place to hide from the light. One guy took a bullet through the eye as he tried to move his bike down an alley, while another screamed out, grabbed at his shoulder, and fell off his bike. Five guys were down before any of the bikers even returned fire, and when they did all they could do was spray wildly into the surrounding houses.
I went to line up another shot when I laid eyes on their leader again. He sat on his motorcycle in the middle of the pack and shook his head as he watched his men panic.
“Hey idiots!” he shouted, “Get into those houses and flush them out!”
I adjusted my aim and put the crosshairs on his head, but just as I went to pull the trigger a group of bikers swarmed past him and obscured my shot, and when they cleared out, the leader was lost in the crowd.
“God damnit,” I muttered before I put two rounds through the chest of another goon.
Half of the gang tried to take cover behind stoops, trashcans, and whatever junk was around the street. Then they opened fire on the houses while the other half of the gang started to kick down doors and rush inside various houses.
I focused fire on the bikers who had randomly chosen one of the named houses. If one of my girls was inside, I could at least make sure that they had fewer guys to deal with.
Gunfire ripped through my barricade, so I threw a hand up in front of my face to shield my eyes. Splinters stung my palm, so I fell back deeper into the room, grabbed my backpack off the bed, ran across the hall, and set up in the other window.
Three bikers spread out across the street were still shooting at where I had just been. I put half a dozen rounds in their direction before they had a chance to react. The first guy took a bullet in the side of the face, and the second took two in the chest, but I only grazed the third across the stomach. The second guy clutched his stomach, gurgled, and fell dead while the first tried to stop the bleeding from the hole in his cheek. The third guy tried to scramble off down the street but he fell hard as I put two rounds through his back.
I emptied the last few rounds of my magazine into the two men I left wounded and then ducked back into full cover to reload. I shoved the empty magazine into my vest, pulled out a fresh one, slammed it in, and chambered the first round of a new magazine. When I leaned out of cover and looked through the window again, there were not a lot of guys left on the street. A couple small groups of bikers watched the windows and returned fire every time they heard a gunshot.
It seemed that many of the bikers had gone inside the houses to try to clear them out. So far there was no indication that any of the girls were in trouble though, so I held my position and took shots at the dozen guys left in my line of sight.
A minute later five guys came running from one of the empty houses cheering and yelling. Then there was a small explosion in the building behind them and fire erupted from the front windows. It seemed they planned to burn us out.
I was just about to start shooting again when a scream cut through the air.
One of the girls was in trouble.
“Fuck,” I growled before I picked up my stuff and headed for the stairs. It would be easier to use my pistol on the street,
especially since it did not have the increased zoom optics that the rifle did, so I pulled the handgun and let the rifle hang from its sling. Once I reached the front door I pulled it open just a crack and checked the street. There was no one close by, so I figured that most of the gang had pushed a little further in to the trap.
I slipped outside and onto the street. It was littered with dead bikers, trashed motorcycles, and spent casings. The air was thick with the smell of gunsmoke and fire.
Down the street a second house went up in flames and four more bikers came running out into the street. I crouched down behind a mailbox and watched as they laughed and cheered. Then they ran next door and kicked down the door to a familiar large blue house.
The same house I had left Bailey in before this all started.
I ran off down the street towards the house, raised my pistol, and fired into the men who wanted to get inside. One went down from a shot to the neck, and another took one in the back and stumbled into the house.
Several bikers on the street turned and leveled their guns at me as I ran, and bullets tore up the ground at my feet and impacted on the houses behind me, but I was lucky that none of them took the time to aim properly.
The bikers in the blue house used the doorway as cover and leaned out to fire at me. I forced them into hiding as I returned fire and bought myself enough time to slide behind a set of concrete stairs.
Six bikers started to close in on my location while a seventh biker sprayed bullets in my direction with automatic gunfire from a defensive spot behind two motorcycles. His constant gunfire chipped at my cover and kept me pinned down.
The boom of a shotgun cut through the other gunfire, and the assault on my cover lessened.
“I got you, Tav!” I heard Paige shout from one of the houses before the boom of her shotgun rang out again.
I peeked out just in time to watch one of the guys on the street fall to the ground with a large hole in his chest. The gunner in the back by the bikers was clutching what was left of his right arm. I jumped from cover and ran down the street towards the blue house. The guys inside leaned out to fire at me with their rifles, but never got the chance.
Bullets ripped through their chest as Bailey unloaded into them from the top of the stairs. “Get in here!”
I rushed into the house and slammed the door behind me.
“Thanks for distracting those guys,” Bailey said.
“Of course,” I said. “Do you know who screamed?”
“No, but it wasn’t me,” she said.
“Alright, get back to a window,” I said.
“What are you going to do?” Bailey asked.
“I’m going to find the others,” I said. “Think you can cover me?”
“It would be my pleasure,” Bailey said with a small smile before she disappeared into a room upstairs.
“Once I find everyone, be ready to fall back,” I shouted up to her.
“Got it!” the hippie replied.
A moment later I heard the sharp sound of her rifle firing above me, and I looked outside to see two guys go down with several holes in their chests. Every single one of Bailey’s shots looked to find their target.
Once the immediate area was clear, I stepped back into the street. I took cover behind one of the enemies’ motorcycles and watched the battle play out in front of me. My eyes darted from house to house as I looked for signs of my team in the buildings.
It had been several minutes since I had heard the first and only scream. My heart pounded as I tried to pinpoint my girls. There were only a couple reasons to only hear a single scream and many of them weren’t good. I shook my head and pushed the thoughts aside. I couldn’t let my fears get the best of me, not right now.
A flash of light from an upper window in a brown building down the street caught my eye. I holstered my pistol, readied my rifle, and moved from cover to cover as I headed for the building.
The few bikers left in this section of the street turned their attention to me as I advanced.
“Get him,” a particularly muscular biker shouted as he pointed in my direction.
I let off a shot and dropped a greasy haired man with a sawed-off shotgun. He hit the ground hard with a new hole though his heart, his weapon clattered across the concrete, and his buddies opened fire.
I darted behind the corner of one of the houses as the siding was torn apart by a rain of lead. Then the torrent of bullets lessened as the crack of a rifle sounded from where I had just come from.
I grinned and looked around the corner to see only three guys still standing. Two of them shifted their attention to the houses as they desperately tried to find where they were getting shot from. The third was in the middle of loading a fresh thirty-round magazine into his AR-15, but then he fumbled under the pressure, dropped it, and I put two rounds through his neck when he moved to pick it up.
One of the two remaining bikers cried out as a bullet tore through the back of his shoulder and sprayed the road with wet chunks. A second bullet hit him from the front in the chest, and he dropped.
The last biker’s eyes went wide as he looked at the surrounding carnage. He turned to run farther down the road towards the sound of more intense fighting. He never made it back to his gang.
I stepped out onto the street, looked to the building Bailey was in, gave her a thumbs up, then motioned for her to follow me.
A moment later the thin wisp of a woman came running from the front of the house with all of her gear. She pulled her rifle into her shoulder the moment she got free of the house and slowed her pace to check the area as she approached me.
“Nice shooting,” I said when she got close.
“Thanks, it wasn’t all me though,” she said with a small grin.
“I know,” I said. “One of the girls is up there,” I said as I pointed to the brown house. “It sounds like most of the fighting has moved to the end of our little trap, so my plan is to gather the others as we head that way.”
“Just lead the way,” the blonde hippie said.
I nodded, readied my rifle once more, and headed towards the sound of gunfire. As I approached the bend that led to the most intense fighting I slowed. I didn’t know how many guys were still alive and running around the corner would just get me killed, so I slowly worked my way around the corner and onto the last stretch of street.
I poked my head around the side of a house to assess the situation and found a biker waiting for me with a knife. He let out a savage yell and charged forward.
I tried to take a shot, but he was too close, and he knocked my weapon aside and thrust at my chest.
I dropped my gun, staggered back, and yanked my knife free.
The crazed tattooed man tossed his knife to the other hand and slashed out at my throat.
I brought up my own knife to deflect the attack. There was a high pitched metallic screech as his blade skipped along mine, missed my throat, and caught my forearm. A searing pain shot up my arm as his blade traced a path along my outer arm towards my elbow. Warm blood started to spill from the fresh surface wound as I kicked him in the knee and drove him back.
“Tav!” Bailey shouted as she came around the corner behind me.
“Go and get the others,” I grunted. “Fall back.”
“Are you s--”
“Go!” I yelled.
The biker came in for another thrust, but this time I was ready. I sidestepped the clumsy attack, grabbed his wrist, stepped in, and drove my knife up under his armpit.
The man gasped and dropped his knife as his eyes went wide.
Blood arced from the wound as I pulled my blade free, and I could see what remained of his gang behind him.
Just under twenty guys were crammed into the last section of the neighborhood. They had set up a small defensive blockade using extra motorcycles while they tried to remove the spike strip from the hill. Every time someone would try though bullets would rain down from the houses and push them back.
I picked up
my rifle and took cover behind the edge of a house as five of the roughly fourteen guys remaining noticed me. They opened fire shredding the wall of the house.
“You’ve got no place to go!” one of the bikers taunted. “Might as well come out now and die like a man.”
“Some of us aren’t men!” Bailey shouted.
I looked across the street to see her in the brown house. I gave her an inquisitive look, and she tossed me a toothy smile and a thumbs up.
“Well in that case come on out, and we might just let some of you live,” another one of the bikers wheezed.
“Yeah, we could think of plenty of better things to d--” the man’s words were cut off as a round tore through his mouth and exploded out of the back of his neck.
The enemies taunts were replaced by a fresh series of insults as two more of them were filled with holes. All but two of them turned their attention back to the houses around them.
“Fucking shit! Get that fucking spikestrip moved!” someone yelled out over the chaos and gunfire.
Bailey sprinted across the street to join me behind the house. Bullets tore up the ground around her as a couple guys noticed her running and made her their target.
“That was either really brave or really stupid,” I said as she dove into cover beside me. “I haven't decided which yet.”
“Well I had to get over here,” she said. “Anna’s up there.” She pointed to the house she had just come from. “She’s okay and knows where the others are.”
“Did you tell her we are getting out of here?” I asked.
“Yeah, she said if we can cover her she can grab Paige and Tara and slip off into the woods,” Bailey said.
“Alright,” I said with a nod. “Here’s what we are going to do. I am going to suppress them while you run back across the street. Once you are in cover again, I want you to empty your magazine towards the enemy so I can join you.”
“I can do that,” she said.
“Good, we’ll distract them so that the rest of the team can get clear,” I said.
“Alright,” Bailey said.
“Wait for my signal, then run like hell,” I said before I peeked out around the corner. A few shots hit the house, but the enemy had taken up a more defensive position as they worked to clear the way.
