A Broken World (Book 3): Fractured Memories

by Lauck, Andrew

  I knelt next to the dog and pet him, hoping he got the message.

  “When I die, I want you to take him back with you and make sure he has a nice retirement.” I stopped petting Sampson and looked at Calvin, wanting to deny the inevitable tragedy but being unable to lie. Instead, I nodded.

  “I promise.”

  “They’re on the floor under us. What do you want to do?” Jessica called from the edge of the stairs.

  “Sampson, find a place to hide.” The canine unit immediately returned to the other room, crawling under a table. “Eric, Jessica, it’s really great knowing there are people like you two still fighting to make the world better. I want you to know that I learned a lot from you.” I was about to share the sentiment, when that same voice yelled from the stairs.

  “This has gone on long enough! We know one of you is hit, we’ve been following the blood trail, so give up now and we’ll try to get them some help.” I glanced over at Calvin, who shook his head.

  “Those guys are a disgrace to the badge. They can’t be trusted.” The look of sheer determination on his face was all that I needed.

  “I have a counter offer,” I called down the stairs. “You guys leave the building and we won’t kill you on our way out.” This elicited a hearty laugh from below.

  “Have it your way, asshole.” Something jingled before a flashbang grenade bounced into the room, sliding three feet across the floor. I barely had time to close my eyes when it went off, filling my head with a ringing headache.

  I opened my eyes and surveyed the room, unable to hear anything over the concussive sound. Calvin was laying on the ground, his right hand clamped onto his rifle as he stared at the stairs, but he had his head tucked against the ground. Jessica was mouthing something to me from across the room, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying.

  “What?” I yelled, my head feeling like it was going to explode. She mouthed the words again, slower this time. “Get down?” I asked, registering what I said and throwing myself to the ground. She raised her M16 and fired a burst over my head, aiming at the stairs.

  The ringing in my ears was finally beginning to calm, allowing me to hear footsteps just around the corner of the door frame. I drew my Sig and snapped my hand around the wood, letting off two rounds and hearing a cry of pain as I drew my hand back. Knowing I had pissed someone off, I dragged Calvin toward the nearest cover, an office desk, and pulled my legs in. Seconds later, the barrel of an AR-15 appeared and erased the flooring where I had been ducking.

  Jessica returned suppressive fire, sending two-round bursts toward the stairs, but these guys were smart enough to not give us a target. I worked my way back to Jessica, dragging Calvin with me by his shirt, and put several pockets of cover between us and the raiders. Calvin raised his rifle in one arm and, leaning the under barrel on a desk, started firing while Jessica reloaded.

  I was about to ask where the missing machine gunner was when the M249 poked its barrel around the frame and began blasting away the furniture in the room, making quick work of potential cover points. Speak of the devil…I poked my head up, trying to get a bead on our priority threat, but he must have noticed the movement, shifting his lane of fire. Unable to aim, I reached my hand around the side of the desk and blind-fired the rest of my clip in his direction, giving us a brief pause as he took cover.

  A grenade pin was pulled and a fragmentation grenade landed four feet to my right, leaving it close enough to kill us but far enough out that we’d have to expose ourselves to gunfire to do anything. I was about to react when Calvin shoved me back against the desk and threw himself onto the grenade, a hail of bullets tearing into him as soon as he left cover. The young officer was dead by the time his body landed on the grenade, but it gave me and Jessica the opportunity to make a run for it.

  We both jumped out to the opposite side of the desk, opening fire and forcing our attackers to retreat once again. Not only were we heading for the stairs, but we were also luring them away from Sampson, who was staying where he was commanded. Behind us, the grenade exploded and burst Calvin’s body into a red mist, but I didn’t stop to look as we hit the stairs.

  “Where the fuck did they get grenades? That’s not standard issue!” Jessica vented as we hurried to the tenth floor. There was no time to stop, though, because we could hear them coming up after us. Well, three of them. The guy with the missing toes wasn’t moving so fast.

  “We’ll be okay. We just need to think for a second.”

  “About what, Eric? We’re trapped a hundred feet in the air, being shot at by guys using grade-A military equipment.”

  “That’s about the gist of it, yeah.”

  “Sarcasm isn’t helping the situation.” She gave me the look, but I ignored it. The situation was shit, I knew that, but maybe the answer was in the problem.

  “Jessica, do you trust me?” The question caught her off-guard, but she quickly recovered.

  “I think we’re way past the whole, ‘with my life’ moment, but yes, of course. Why?” I opened my mouth to explain, but the sound of a new drum magazine being slapped into a light machinegun made me shut it.

  “Then trust me. Go to that side of the room,” I said, pointing at the far wall. She hurried over while I stayed toward the center of the room. Footsteps slowed near the door frame and stopped just outside of view.

  “We’re sorry about your friend, but we did warn you,” the voice called out, the lack of remorse in his tone sending ice through my veins.

  “He was a good cop, unlike you sons of bitches,” I replied, trying to goad them. “I guess you knew you’d lose in a real firefight, so you took the cheap option.”

  “We’ve got you outgunned and outnumbered, dumbass!”

  “Whatever. I’m giving you one last chance, but if you throw another grenade in my direction, you’d better pray.” Jessica was looking at me like I was crazy, but I knew what I was doing. If that light machine gun opened fire, it would tear this room apart, including me and Jessica. The voice laughed, followed by the sound of another pin being pulled.

  “It’s been a while since I’ve been to church, but here you go,” another voice said, tossing a fragmentation grenade that landed two feet away. I planted my right side against the floor and swung my M4 like a golf club in reverse, slapping the grenade as the men shot the metal of my rifle.

  The grenade rolled across the floor, bouncing between two stands, before coming to a stop against the back wall. Jessica’s eyes went wide as she realized my plan, reaching for the fire emergency box on the wall above her. I could hear the men enter the room, sending a silent prayer of my own.

  The grenade went off and blew out a large section of the wall, shaking the foundations of the building we were in. For a moment, everything seemed to stop and I thought I had made a grave error, hearing glass crunch on the other side of the desk I hid behind.

  Then the building collapsed and everything blurred into motion.

  Chapter 41

  It was almost slow-motion, finding myself suspended in mid-air as the upper stories crashed down around us. The explosion had caused the building to shift, the barely-there pillars and rebar that held it up crumbling under the vibrations and lack of support. Luckily, the grenade hitting the rear wall had forced the building to crumble sideways, gathering momentum before the top stories smashed into the twelfth floor of the next-door building. Concrete collided in explosive fashion as the two buildings merged, putting us on a terrifying rollercoaster until everything suddenly stopped and I slammed into the ground.

  Only, as I finally stirred and moved my hand, I realized it wasn’t ground that I was on. With so many upper floors still intact, I had ended up sprawled on glass pane. A large crack nearby splintered outward, creating a spider web effect. One wrong move and I’d fall through, which, looking through the glass, would not be a good idea. I might survive the fall, but I didn’t want to find out, since I saw at least five floors above my field of vision.

  “You stupi
d son of a bitch,” the shot caller coughed out, having been tossed to the other side of the room with his M249. I couldn’t see Jessica from where I lay, but I hadn’t stood yet for fear of breaking the glass. From where I was, though, I could see one of the men below, his body twisted and broken on the pavement. The shot caller must have seen him, too, because he was shaking his head.

  “What can I say? I’m full of surprises,” I mused, carefully trying to slide myself toward the nearest wall. Each movement hurt, which meant I had probably broken something from being thrown around like a ragdoll in the destruction, but it had to be done. “Just give me a minute and I’ll show you another.”

  “Adams! Pierson! Answer me, dammit!” the shot caller yelled, stepping toward me. He stopped at the edge of the ceiling, just before his feet met glass, and let out a sinister chuckle. I looked at the pavement below, at the slope of glass descending into the other building, and grunted, knowing this was going to hurt. I also spotted one of the other attackers, lying unconscious on the glass further down.

  Rolling onto my back and bringing up my feet, I let my body slide down the glass, feeling it crack as I went and urging my body to fall faster. I had lost my M4 in the collapse, the sling torn on a piece of exposed rebar that had also cut into my leg, so the only other thing that might get caught on something was my backpack. Hoping the zipper of a pack wouldn’t be my undoing after everything I had survived, I angled my slide to the left, trying to reach safety one way or another before the glass shattered underneath me.

  Shifting rubble and tension filled the air, but they were suddenly joined by a gunshot that pierced the air. I couldn’t afford to turn and look, knowing it might slow my descent when I needed all the speed I could pick up, but the sound of crashing glass behind me told all. Looking below me, I saw the cop waking up, coughing out dust before he realized his predicament. The disbelief on his face crossed with a look of betrayal when he noticed who had fired the bullet, but it wouldn’t matter in five seconds.

  I could feel the weight of the glass I was on shift, which meant I was moments from meeting my fate, when Jessica appeared ahead, sticking her head out behind a pile of what had once been a desk. Looking like I felt, she nodded at me and I angled myself toward her. Of course, the cop below also saw her and, knowing his impending doom, decided to try and take me out with him, bringing his rifle up.

  Curling my body into a ball, I waited until the last second, when the glass below me collapsed, and shot my upper body to the side. For the second time in one minute, time seemed to stop as I hung weightless in mid-air, before Jessica’s hand slapped against my arm and I fell through the empty space to swing underneath the fallen building. Momentum carried me into the exterior wall, slamming my body against the concrete and bringing attention to whatever was broken, but I didn’t put out my arm to brace myself, choosing instead to unclip the holster of my sidearm. I took the full impact of the swing, which hurt like hell, but I only had one chance to get this right and every second counted.

  With my Sig drawn, I swung back and fired three rounds at the glass ahead of me, at least one catching the panes directly below the cop. With a Hans Gruber look of terror, he attempted to pull the trigger, his round going wild, before falling through the hole. As soon as the third bullet left my handgun, though, I twisted in Jessica’s grip despite protests of pain from my shoulder and fired at the glass further up the slope. Something blocked the first shot, and the second, but I needed to take out the shot caller.

  Since his machine gun was already leveled, he was firing back and a round caught me in my dangling left leg even as the rounds from my emptied clip found a home. His body jerked several times, so I’m not sure where I hit him, but the last round cleared my barrel and he toppled forward through empty space. The long, uncontrolled drop ended with a sickening smack that sent a spray of blood across the snow, but my arm was burning by this point, not to mention how Jessica’s must have felt by now.

  Swinging my legs up, I wrapped my knees around a piece of window frame that was still intact. The thin bracket held the weight, easing the pull on Jessica’s arm, but I doubted it would hold if I attempted more.

  “I’m going to put my feet on the frame and try to walk myself toward you, okay?”

  “Yeah, but please do it fast,” Jessica answered, sounding exhausted as sweat dripped down her forehead to mix with blood coming from a gash.

  I slid my calves up the frame, pulling my legs up until my feet rested on the bar. Jessica sat up with her legs underneath her, using her upper body to bring my arms higher. As I stepped one foot tentatively across the bar, testing the strength of the frame, Jessica began to stand. Over her shoulder, though, I saw the fourth cop charging at her, looking to push us both to our deaths.

  “Jessica!” I yelled, but there was no time. I pushed off with my feet, snapping the frame and propelling me toward her. It was enough distance to throw her to the side, out of harm’s way, but it left me in a bad spot. I was able to catch myself on the edge of the roof, my fingertips pressing into the concrete support, but my lower body swung back toward the underside of the building.

  The cop either didn’t have time to alter his course or lost his balance, or maybe Jessica tripped him in an attempt to stop him, but all I know is that when I swung back I was met by the cop dropping straight through an empty frame. He grabbed wildly at me, slapping my arms and face, until finding a hold on my injured leg. His dead weight hit and my hands jerked backward, holding for a moment before my fingertips felt like they broke off.

  “Eric!” Jessica cried out from above, but I was too far from her outstretched hand. Instead, I turned my attention to the cop who was trying to wrestle me in freefall. Fighting in mid-air looks really cool in movies, but damn does it suck in reality. Everything felt slower, heavier, almost like we were underwater.

  I grabbed a fistful of his shirt and pulled him up, but he sent a hook into my ribs that rattled whatever was broken. Yelling a curse, I jabbed his throat and smashed my head into his, throwing us a few feet off-course. I was about to follow that up with another attack, but I saw the ground speeding toward us over his shoulder. He must have seen it, too, because he tried to roll me under him, but I caught him with another jab and maintained my grip on his shirt.

  All of the movement had caused us to start spinning, something I hadn’t realized until I saw the building, and Jessica’s wide eyes, above. Straining, I forced the cop underneath me just as we impacted the snow and my world went white.

  **********

  “Mother…fucker…” I groaned, my vision blurry as my brain tried consciousness. Before my eyes could focus, though, I was immediately aware of a few things. My ribs were definitely cracked or broken, though the damage and number was unknown to me. At this point, pain was pain, because whether the rebar had just caught my leg as I had originally thought and the fall had made it worse, or the rebar had torn my leg up, the limb ached in several places and I could see red in my peripheral vision.

  Trying to move my neck was a mistake, sending a sharp pain through my spine, so I set my head back down. Something jingled and I blinked away my blurriness enough to see a badge, along with slight movement. A hand was lifting to my right as the cop woke up, something that probably surprised us both. As his hand moved slowly toward his hip, so did mine, as I willed my body to remain conscious for a little longer. With all of our adrenaline and energy spent, plus the inevitable concussions, we probably looked like two old men trying to summon the strength to fight.

  I don’t know if having to fight through that exhaustion before gave me an advantage, but the fingers of my right hand felt cold steel and I thanked my lucky stars that the Sig hadn’t flown from my grip. Now I just had to lift the weapon. While the weight would ordinarily have been nothing for me, it felt like a boulder as I slid the metal up my leg. I could see the cop drawing his sidearm, creating a strangely tense situation. I let my left elbow fall off my leg, causing my wrist to turn up, and squeezed the trigger
.

  The sad click of an empty magazine may as well have been the laughter of Death himself, leaving me sighing in exasperation. Unfortunately, for the cop to capitalize on the moment, he had to bring his Glock up for a line of sight on me. I say unfortunately, because that gave me time to eject my magazine.

  “Come on,” I breathed, urging my hand to move faster as I fumbled at the Velcro seal on my thigh, a convenient pocket for stashing extra magazines. I had just pressed the fresh clip home when the hint of a Glock barrel peeked over the cop’s leg, so it was now or never. Letting the grip of the sidearm fall against my leg, I basically slapped my hand onto the weapon and pulled the trigger.

  The handgun jerked and a round went into the cop’s thigh, causing him to cry out. His Glock cleared his leg and his finger twitched, but I concentrated on shifting my aim higher. He fired a bullet, grazing my thigh and burning flesh, but I let the pain aid my efforts. My next shot hit him in the gut, the trajectory sending the bullet higher. The cop’s barrel was turned toward my groin, though, so I forced my fingers to curl again, making the cop jerk multiple times, until his head lolled to one side and smacked against the snow for the last time.

  His Glock fell to the side with his arm and I collapsed on top of him, having the wherewithal to keep my handgun facing away from me, before blacking out again. I could hear the faint sound of feet running toward me, and screaming, but I just didn’t have the energy to open my eyes again.

  Chapter 42

  Now For Something Completely Different

  “Eric!” I shouted, trying to stretch my arm far enough to grab him as he fell. Blinking away sweat and blood that were trickling into my eyes, I pushed myself up and ran down the slope to the adjacent building, putting aside the emotional anxiety threatening to cripple me as I feared the worst. Locating the stairwell, I threw open the door and took the stairs three at a time. Three stories down, my lungs were on fire, but I refused to slow down as a gunshot rang out in the street below, the sound reverberating through the decimated structure.