Running Towards The Abyss

by David Spell

  The knee was a surprise, catching him solidly in the face, sending an electrical shock through his neck, and ripping open his right cheek. The blow stunned McCain and he dropped to one knee to allow his dazed head to clear, even as blood dripped to the floor. The offensive lineman drew back and threw a looping right hand aimed at Chuck’s face. McCain lowered his jaw against his chest and the punch connected with the top of his skull. It was a vicious punch, ripping Chuck’s scalp open and sending another explosion of pain through his head.

  Don Lester gasped after landing the punch to the skull, however, grabbing his right hand with his left, feeling bones break in his hand when he connected with the kneeling man’s hard head. McCain felt the blood, now running down the side of his head from his scalp, matching what was pouring out of the cut on his cheek. Thankfully, Chuck knew what it was like to get hit in the head, grateful that he was still conscious.

  Neil just shook his head. “It’s time to end this. We need to get out of here, boys.” Dodd stated. “McCain, I’m gonna shoot this sweet young thing in the head if you don’t tell me where the girl is.”

  Chuck looked into Alicia’s eyes and saw the terror. She shook her head at McCain. He knew he really had to sell this.

  He looked up at Dodd but spoke loudly. “Please, just let Alicia go. The other girl’s hiding in my room, the one I came out of. She’s scared. She watched your people kill her friends. Then they kidnapped her and tried to rape her. Please, you’ve got me,” he pleaded. “Just let everybody else go.”

  “Hoss, Joey, Mark, go get her,” Neil commanded.

  They rushed down the hallway to the room where they’d seen Chuck exit moments ago. As they went, McCain glanced around at the faces of the other criminals. His gaze paused over a familiar looking gaunt figure with hollow eyes, standing off to the side, holding a pump-action shotgun. Greg realized that he’d been made and stepped back into the shadows.

  Gunfire and screams suddenly erupted from the direction of Chuck’s room.

  Elizabeth stood back from her partially open door, pistol in hand, listening to Chuck taunt their attackers. He’s going to get himself killed, she thought, tears streaming down her face. The sight and sounds of the brute striking the man she loved made her sick to her stomach and she wanted to rush into the hallway to try and help him as he collapsed to the floor.

  At the same time, she knew that Chuck would not want her to do that. Just wait for an opportunity, she thought. She heard Chuck raise his voice, telling the gunmen that she was hiding in his room. Oh my God! she thought. He’s sending them down here. Loud footsteps rushed her way. She pushed her door until it was only open an inch but still allowed her to see into the passageway.

  Chuck told them that I’m in his room, she reasoned. They’re not going to find me in there so they’ll shoot him and Alicia. As the pounding steps were almost to his quarters, in an instant, it became completely clear. Glancing down at the 9mm Glock she was holding, Beth suddenly understood. He’s sending those men down here for me to deal with!

  There was no time to think and no time to hesitate. Beth took a deep breath and watched the huge man pause at McCain’s door. The tall, thin one was following and the athletic looking, younger man with the mullet was behind him. They all held long guns.

  As they pushed open the door and stepped into Chuck’s room, Elizabeth quietly pulled hers open, raising the Glock, her finger tightening around the trigger.

  Jake was almost close enough to where he could start engaging the intruders. The light in the hallway was so dim, he wanted to make sure that no other residents had gotten dragged out of their rooms. He’d heard the conversation and knew they were holding Alicia as a hostage and now McCain was just in front of them, kneeling on the floor after being pounded by one of the animals. Nicholson raised his rifle, sighting in on the back of the head of the muscular one who held a large pistol to Alicia’s head.

  Gunfire suddenly exploded from the far end of the building, in the area of Elizabeth’s and Chuck’s rooms. The muzzle flashes lit the hallway as the shooter fired shot after shot. A half second later, the man holding Alicia grunted loudly in pain and jerked out of Jake’s sights.

  Everything seemed to slow down. Nicholson turned his weapon-mounted flashlight on and tried to acquire another target. All of the intruders were moving, several of them swinging their weapons towards McCain.

  A little man with a long AR-15 yelled something towards Chuck, aiming his rifle at the kneeling police officer. Jake fired twice, both shots hitting Bo Harris in the back. Everyone seemed to be shooting now. The front glass shattered as Nicholson’s sentries began firing into the building at the attackers. People were yelling and screaming, crying out in both anger and in pain.

  Nicholson was looking for another target when his light picked up a gaunt, pock-marked faced man running down the corridor towards him. Jake saw the shotgun coming up and he swung his own muzzle towards this new threat. They both fired at the same time. The Marine saw the skinny man spin and fall but he felt the impact of the shotgun blast, knowing that he’d been hit as well as the floor rushed up to meet him.

  Alicia was terrified and angry. She was angry at herself for getting taken hostage. She was really mad at these nasty rednecks, but she was especially angry and hurt at Mr. McCain for telling these evil men where Miss Benton was. Why had he done that? She watched in helplessness as the three intruders rushed down the corridor to Chuck’s room.

  She cautiously eased her right hand up to feel for the knife that she always carried. It was still in the pocket of her hoodie. The smelly little dude whom she’d bitten was more concerned with feeling her boobs than checking her for weapons. This Neil guy pressing his big gun to her head wasn’t worried about a little defenseless female hurting him.

  Alicia hadn’t had much experience with guns but she admittedly grew up on the wrong side of the tracks in Lavonia and had become very familiar with knives, never leaving home without one. After she’d started working for Elizabeth and making good money, Alicia had decided to treat herself.

  She’d researched knives online and, armed with that knowledge, had marched into a local gun store asking to see their Benchmade automatic knives. She chose a nice black one with a partially serrated blade. Alicia had never imagined that she would be able to afford a knife that cost almost two hundred and fifty dollars, but being Miss Benton’s assistant paid well.

  Suddenly gunshots rang out from Miss Benton’s room, fire from the muzzle leaping out of Elizabeth’s doorway towards Mr. McCain’s room. Alicia felt the gun against her head slip away and point outwards towards Chuck. She thrust her hand into the hoodie pocket, grabbing the automatic knife. Withdrawing it, Alicia depressed the small button on the side and the three and a half inch, razor sharp blade flicked open and locked into place.

  Without hesitation, she turned slightly and plunged the knife into the outside of her captor’s right leg, shoving it in until the entire blade had disappeared into his flesh. The huge handgun fired, jumping in Dodd’s hand. Alicia saw Chuck, already scrambling towards the wall to his right, flinch in pain, grunting loudly but quickly drawing a pistol of his own. The lobby of the dorm building was suddenly filled with gunfire, people yelling, and the acrid smell of smoke.

  The man who had been holding Alicia gasped when he tried to take a step, the knife protruding out of his thigh. Dodd threw the girl to the side as if she were a rag doll, her back slamming into the wall to her left, the impact knocking the breath out of her and sending her to the floor near McCain. She glanced up, seeing her captor’s handgun moving towards her. Suddenly, he jerked backwards as blood spurted from multiple gunshot wounds low on his torso.

  Someone grabbed Alicia’s arm, pulling her along the floor and lying on top of her. Even while she was breathless from being thrown, Alicia tried to fight this new attacker off as the gun battle raged all around her.

  As soon as the shots erupted behind him, hopefully all being fired by Elizabeth, Chuck dove towa
rds the wall, reaching for his pistol at the small of his back. Neil swung the .44 Magnum Desert Eagle, the muzzle acquiring Chuck. McCain saw the blur of Alicia’s hand grabbing the knife, opening it, and then stabbing her captor. The big handgun bucked in Dodd’s hand and McCain felt the impact, along with an intense burning, low on his left side.

  Neil shoved Alicia into the wall and she collapsed to the floor, gasping for breath. McCain saw the barrel of Dodd’s pistol now moving towards Alicia as Chuck starting pulling the trigger of his Glock as fast as he could, lying on his right side, firing upward towards Dodd and into the mass of other criminals. Neil stumbled backwards as 9mm hollow points struck him in the groin and abdomen.

  Chuck kept shooting, sweeping the gun from left to right, trying to kill as many of these animals as he could before he died. Heavy shooting erupted from the front entrance, letting him know Jake’s people were in place and returning fire.

  McCain pushed himself forward towards Alicia as he continued to fire the pistol. She was just in front of him and he grabbed her arm, pulling her towards himself. The stunned woman began fighting him.

  “Alicia, it’s me, Chuck!” he yelled into her ear over the explosions all around them.

  She finally stopped thrashing and he covered her with his battered body, shielding her from the flying lead.

  “Cease fire! Cease fire!” Robert Clayton yelled, dropping an empty thirty-round magazine to the ground as he smoothly reloaded with a full one.

  Everybody he could see inside the lobby of the dorm was down. Clayton shone his weapon light through the broken windows. A few wounded people were writhing in pain, moaning softly, while others weren’t moving at all, but no one seemed to want to fight any more.

  “Maria and Danny, on me,” Robert commanded. “Gina, keep watch behind us. I don’t know if these guys have any friends with them or not. Jessica and Tyrone, go secure those three that we shot earlier. We can use our lights now, just be careful that they aren’t playing possum.”

  Running footsteps came up behind them from across the parking lot. Six rifles and shotguns spun towards the new threat.

  “Stop! We will shoot you!” Robert challenged.

  The runner stopped. An out-of-breath voice called, “It’s me, Tina Miles. I just came from the roadblock. Todd’s dead and Bradley’s missing.”

  “Thank God you’re here, Officer Miles,” Clayton said, relieved, illuminating the police officer with his flashlight as she got closer. “We were just getting ready to go inside and check for our people. None of the intruders got away, at least not out this door. Jake went in through the side entrance,” pointing in the direction he had gone.

  Tina carried a a rifle and was trying to recover from her mad dash, clearly not used to running across campus.

  Robert let her catch her breath. “It looks like everybody’s down inside the lobby entrance here. You want to go in with us?”

  Tina nodded, wondering where Jake was. Robert, Tina, Danny, Maria entered the dorm, shining their lights on the bloody carnage. Six intruders were lying in growing pools of blood in the lobby. The security team kicked the attackers’ guns away, covering them with their weapons.

  Just inside the hallway to the left, they found a battered McCain rolling off of a dazed Alicia. Footsteps came running down the hall.

  “Chuck? Alicia? Are you guys OK?” Elizabeth called out, a fearful tremor in her voice.

  Beth’s flashlight beam lit up her bloody but alive boyfriend and she threw herself onto him.

  Loud voices came from the other end of the corridor indicating that they had found an unconscious Jake and a wounded intruder. McCain gently pushed Beth away, motioning with his head at Alicia, weeping at his side. Elizabeth reached for her assistant, wrapping her arms around the young woman.

  “Beth, are those three guys down?” McCain asked.

  For a moment, Benton didn’t respond but then nodded, continuing to hold her sobbing friend.

  Chuck looked down at the Glock he was still holding, the slide locked open, the gun now empty. He laid it on the floor and picked up a flashlight one of the attackers had dropped. Someone needed to take charge and it sounded like Jake was hurt. This might not be over, McCain thought. His left hip throbbed but he needed to get to his feet. A young Hispanic man wearing a green Northeast Georgia Technical College sweatshirt and holding a shotgun stood nearby, looking shocked at the carnage all around them.

  “What’s your name?” Chuck asked.

  He looked down at McCain, his eyes getting big as he took in Chuck’s bloody face, scalp, and side. The young man swallowed. “Danny Romero, sir.”

  “Nice to meet you, Danny. Can you help me stand up?”

  Danny reached down and with some difficulty, was able to help the wounded warrior to his feet.

  “Thanks,” Chuck nodded, feeling the blood pouring down his left leg, but walking towards the sprawled bodies in the lobby of the dorm.

  Residents were now coming out of their rooms, many of them crying. Chuck heard a couple of people say that bullets had come flying into their rooms. There was a shout for someone to find Karen or an EMT. Someone had been struck by a stray bullet. Another resident called out from the stairwell saying they had someone wounded there, as well.

  It was quickly turning into agony for McCain to walk, as the pain shot from his hip into his leg and the rest of his body. He didn’t know how badly he’d been hit but it really hurt. Chuck shone the Maglite on the six men who had just tried to kill him, all dead or dying from multiple gunshot wounds. He’s not here. I hope he didn’t get away, McCain thought.

  Down the hall, one of the sentries leaned over someone on the floor, jabbing him angrily with the muzzle of his rifle. “Who are you? Why’d you come here? Answer me!”

  The prone man only groaned in response. He uttered a few unintelligible phrases and was quiet again.

  Chuck staggered painfully down the corridor to where the intruder was lying next to the left wall. A few feet away, Tina knelt beside a barely conscious Jake, who was seated with his back against the opposite wall, holding his head with both hands. McCain got even with the sentry and recognized him as Robert, the IT professor Nicholson had identified as helping him train the sentries.

  Chuck’s light illuminated the hollow eyes and pock-mocked face of Greg Davis. He had been shot high on the right side of his chest, blood oozing out of the wound below his shoulder. Maybe fatal or maybe not. It doesn’t really matter, McCain thought, stumbling over to where Nicholson was. I must’ve lost a lot of blood, Chuck realized. I’m starting to get a little dizzy.

  “You OK, Jake?” he asked.

  “Oh, yeah, peachy.” The Marine looked up at his friend. “I took a shotgun blast to the leg and tore it up pretty bad. Thankfully, I’ve got a spare in my room. I knocked myself out when I fell, though. And I think I chipped a tooth. How about you?”

  McCain managed to smile when he realized that Nicholson was talking about his prosthetic leg being shot. Things were computing slowly tonight for some reason.

  “I got shot, too. Maybe in the ass. I’ll check it in a minute. Have you got a knife I can borrow?”

  Jake pulled the Marine issue Ka-Bar from its sheath and handed it to Tina, who held it out to Chuck. These just feel good, McCain thought, hefting the knife. This has to be what Glock modeled their knives after, he surmised.

  McCain turned and limped the few steps to where Greg lay. “I’ve got this, Robert, if you want to go check on the others. There are three more bad guys down the hall near mine or Elizabeth’s room. She shot them but I don’t know if they’re dead or not.”

  Robert hesitated as Chuck slowly slumped to his knees beside the wounded man, holding a big knife. At this point, though, he realized he didn’t care what Mr. McCain did to this piece of human waste.

  Clayton shrugged and climbed to his feet, “I’ll go check them.”

  “Hi, Greg, remember me?” Chuck lightly jabbed him under the chin with the point of the blade. />
  McCain could hear the drug addict struggling to breathe, but his eyes fluttered open. Chuck shone the light on his own face so Greg could see who was talking to him, the fear of recognition coming into the drug addict’s eyes.

  “What did you do with the baby, Greg?”

  The wounded man groaned but didn’t answer, shaking his head. Chuck stabbed him in the left shoulder, eliciting a scream of pain and then another as he wiggled the blade around. Tina saw what was happening and started to intervene, but Jake grabbed her arm, pulling her back, shaking his head at her. He had heard the story about Greg and figured he was about to get what he deserved.

  “What did you do with the baby, Greg?” Chuck repeated slowly, pulling the knife free, waving it in front of the meth-addict’s face, blood dripping onto his nose. “You want me to stick you again? Next time, I’m going to stick you lower, someplace really sensitive. Answer my question.”

  McCain lightly tapped the knife against Greg’s groin.

  “Chuck, I told you that wasn’t my baby,” he groaned. “What was I supposed to do, man? I couldn’t take him with me. He’s fine. I’m sure some people found him and are taking good care of him.”

  “You left a little baby, what was his name? Jeremy. Did you leave Jeremy by himself in that abandoned house?”

  Greg closed his eyes and didn’t say anything. The tip of the Ka-Bar started digging into his testicles.

  “I’m sorry, Chuck,” he pleaded, his voice getting high. “What else could I have done? I didn’t have a car. You took my gun. I didn’t have a choice; I had to leave him behind. It was your fault. If you hadn’t killed Tonya, he would’ve still had his momma to take care of him. It was your fault, Chuck.”

  “I understand,” McCain said, the room starting spin. He raised the knife over his head and plunged it into Greg’s chest. That exertion did him in, though, and everything went black for Chuck McCain.