Dead Six

“The mess hall? I’m on it. Come on.” He disappeared into the shadows of the barracks, heading for the back door.

“Doesn’t he ever plan anything?” I grunted. There couldn’t be many of Eddie’s goons or Gordon’s men left, but the element of surprise was gone, and they would be waiting for us somewhere in that twisted labyrinth of junk and jagged wood. The four of us stood and followed Valentine into the darkness.

Chapter 29:

Dropped Call

VALENTINE

Gordon. I was so close now I could taste it. I could sense his presence. I can’t remember ever being more focused, more intense, yet so detached. The Calm had never been this overwhelming before. My survival instinct had been turned off. This was it. I only had to live long enough to kill Gordon. After that it didn’t matter.

I entered the darkened barracks, stepping over the bodies of Gordon’s men. It was a mess in there; Lorenzo’s grenade had done the trick. The rest of the building was virtually empty, with little more than old frames for bunk beds. At the far end was another door. That’s where I was going. Gordon was hiding in this camp, somewhere, and I was going to find him.

I slowed to a fast walk as I approached the far door, my rifle up and at the ready. There were no windows on the ends of the buildings, just narrow ones along the walls. Moving to the right side of the door frame, I pulled the door open and peeked out. It was about twenty feet to the next barracks building, and its door was closed. There could be shooters on the buildings across the road, so I’d have to be careful. I looked back at Lorenzo, and with hand signals told him to cover that direction. He shifted his carbine to his left shoulder and stacked behind the doorway.

I dashed across the gap between the barracks. On the other side, I pressed myself against the wall and crouched down. At the same time, Lorenzo was leaning out of the door, his weapon covering across the road.

Flipping around, I pointed the muzzle of my rifle at the door and reached for the handle. It was locked and made of metal. It looked too solid to kick down.

“Reaper!” I hissed, trying not to make too much noise. “Get up here with that room broom! I need you to bust a lock!” The kid came running out of the barracks in a crouched jog, weapon in hand. He didn’t even stop to look at the buildings across the way. He obviously had complete confidence that Lorenzo would cover him. The kid pressed himself against the wall on the left side of the door frame, opposite me.

“Use that shotgun to blow the lock on this door so we can keep moving!” Reaper pointed the stubby muzzle of his weapon at the door’s handle and flinched as he pulled the trigger. The shotgun roared, and the door handle exploded.

There was no time to pause. Reaper turned away, and I booted the door in. A man was crouched about halfway through the building. I snapped off two shots at him, then ducked back out of the doorway, crouching down in case he fired through the wall. He fired two more shots through the doorway, then it was quiet. I leaned in and saw him, slightly magnified through my rifle’s scope. One of my rounds had gone through his abdomen, and he was now slowly crawling toward the far door, leaving a thick trail of blood in his wake.

I walked up quickly and stomped down on his back. He shrieked in agony. “Where’s Gordon?”

“I don’t know who that is!” he cried, blood pouring out of the exit wound beneath my boot. I shot him in the back of the head, shattering his skull like a watermelon with a blasting cap in it.

“Clear!” I shouted. The room was suddenly quiet. The air stank of burnt powder and dust. We crossed the room and opened the door at the far end. The doorway to the next barracks was closed, and again we had to contend with the gap between the buildings.

I peeked outside and nearly lost my head. The shots were coming from the barracks building across the way. I fell back inside the doorway just in time to avoid being hit. The shooter then began to pepper the wall with rifle fire. Bullets tore through and snapped angrily overhead.

“Everybody down!” Hawk shouted. Lorenzo furiously started low-crawling toward the back of the building. I crawled forward and got as close to the door as I could.

The shooter was still firing through the wall, about one shot every second. He was focusing on our end of the building, though. Looking back, I saw Lorenzo pop up and fire off a long burst from his carbine. The suppressed weapon sounded like a rapid series of hissing pops as it fired.

Still in the prone, leaning out of the doorway, I began to fire at the building across the road. Lorenzo’s bursts of fire had shattered the windows and stitched the wall, but the shooter was nowhere to be seen. We both paused for a moment and waited. A second later, he popped up again in the exact same spot. Both Lorenzo and I lit him up. I don’t know how many rounds the shooter took, but he fell from sight and didn’t appear again.

“Keep moving,” I ordered, scrambling to my feet and heading for the next building. I took up position on one side of the door, and Lorenzo was on the other a second later. Hawk wasn’t looking so good.

“You okay?” I asked.

“I’m too old for this shit,” he answered.

“Do you have any more frags?” I asked. Lorenzo shook his head. Damn it. We were going to have to do this the hard way. I reached down and opened the door. We were answered with weapons fire, only this time there were multiple shooters. Lorenzo and I both leaned in and returned fire. Lorenzo mashed himself up against the fence that connected the buildings as one of the shooters inside returned fire through the wall. There was no way we were getting through that door without getting killed.

I decided to take a chance and flank them. I took off at a run up the right side of the building. Gunfire echoed through the camp as I made my way along the wall. I stopped about three-quarters of the way down and began to fire through the wall into the barracks. This way, my companions wouldn’t be in the line of fire and there was a chance I’d actually hit one of the bad guys. If nothing else, it’d distract them long enough for the others to make a move. I burned off the rest of my magazine as fast as I could pull the trigger.

My rifle’s bolt locked open. I began to jog back to the rear of the building, reloading as I went. A tiny bit of movement in the periphery of my vision alerted me. I spun around, seeing a man in a dirty suit, limping badly, blood pouring from wounds on his arms and legs. He raised a handgun. I turned toward him, reaching down for the revolver on my thigh. I felt a thump as a round smacked me in the chest plate. I lost my balance and fell.

The shooter aimed unsteadily, pistol wobbling in one bloody hand, just as my .44 cleared its holster. I took a bead on him and fired between my knees. His head snapped around in a pink cloud. Rolling back to my hands and knees, I scrambled ahead, heading back to the others.

The others were behind cover in the entrance of the final barracks. Lorenzo was nowhere to be seen. Rifle still slung across my chest, revolver held at the ready, I jogged down the length of the barracks, passing Reaper and Jill and stepping over dead bodies. It looked like I had managed to plug somebody through the wall after all.