Watts opens up on the last wall, shooting the breeze blocks, hoping to see the structure collapse. The gun stops its assault, but dismally, the structure is still standing.
“Shoot up the sides,” Alice offers.
A grin crosses Watts’ face as he adjusts his aim and does just that. He peppers bullets up the side of the wall, which starts to shudder. The middle goes first, caving inwards, closely followed by the top and bottom of the wall, which is pulled down by the middle. There is no cloud of dust to speak of, the soaking rain extinguishing it. Still the roof stands, however, held up by the two other walls that refuse to collapse. Their refusal is short-lived, Alders has to hover around, but a short burst from the 50-cal takes the other side wall down. It collapses down into the stairwell and almost perfectly brings the back wall down with it, the roof helping to pull it into the stairwell. A pile of breeze block rubble now fills the stairwell with the roof almost entirely covering the top. That danger is blocked.
“Why didn’t you do that at the fucking start!” Dixon jokes at Watts’ expense.
“Because you didn’t ask me to,” he retorts.
“Good job, now get that gun clearing the roof,” Dixon orders.
Gradually, the roof is cleared of moving Rabids; the 50-cal does the majority of the killing, but the whole team gets their fair share. No grenades are used, as they aren’t needed. Alders moves the Lynx around as directed until every one of the Rabids is dealt with.
The slaughter complete, the roof is littered with bodies. Rabids still move, crawling or flailing around, stranded in position where they fell. They pose little threat if the team is careful to avoid them. Josh, understandably, is eager to get down onto the roof and presses Dixon.
“Okay, take us down,” Dixon finally instructs Alders. “Watts, cover us, stay on that gun. We are going to take it nice and easy down there. Watch your footing; just because these fuckers are down doesn’t mean they are dead, we don’t want anyone else bitten.”
Alders manoeuvres the Lynx back into its original position. He hovers off the north side of the building, lowering to allow them to disembark.
Josh ignores Dixon’s instructions about taking it steadily. As soon as the Lynx is low enough, he plunges off the side of the helicopter. Landing on the roof with a splash, he doesn’t wait for back-up, he is off and running. Swerving the carnage spread across the rooftop, he takes the shortest route possible to get to the hole.
“Bloody hellfire!” Alice hears Dixon moan as Josh sets off; she doesn’t take any notice though as she jumps down and sets off after him.
Dixon and Downey are down on the ground soon enough, but they are more cautious, stalking behind their rifles looking for threats, covering the two overzealous younger members of the team. Nothing attacks; the clean-up has been comprehensive, Dixon made sure of that. He foresaw Josh bolting to his father, and he doesn’t blame him for it, not one bit.
All that remains on the rooftop are dead Rabids and Rabids with catastrophic injuries, rendering them little or no threat. That doesn’t stop these two men going through their processes, scanning, checking blind spots, methodically moving, drawing on their training.
Reaching the hole, Josh’s stomach lurches horribly as he looks down into Sir Malcolm’s office. Two bodies lie on the floor in the dim office, neither of them moving. Is one of them his dad? The room is too dark to make out if it is or not, Josh trembles as he kneels, straining to see.
“I don’t think either is him,” Alice says as she stoops next to Josh.
“I can’t tell, it’s too dark, so I’m going down.”
“Hold on,” Alice says as she cracks three glow sticks one after the other and throws them down.
“It looks like you’re right, so where the hell is, he?” Josh questions as the orange glow is revitalised from the new sticks. “I’m going in, cover me.”
Without waiting for an answer, Josh starts to climb down into the building. Dixon and Downey arrive on the scene just as Josh starts to disappear.
“You two cover,” Dixon orders Downey and Alice as he goes to follow Josh down.
Josh stands on the floor next to the two bodies. One of them is face-up, a Rabid, its eyes fixed open, dead. The other is face down and Josh is almost afraid to turn it over. The body clearly isn’t his Dad, but he is afraid nevertheless; what if he has got it wrong somehow and his mind is playing tricks on him?
Josh forces himself to bend down and turn the body, so he can be sure.
Two dead Rabids are good, but where is his dad? There is no one else in the office and no other bodies. The office door is shut with a desk pushed up against it so he couldn’t have gone out there, if he had, the desk would have been moved.
“Where is he?” Dixon asks as he gets down, looking around the room in confusion.
“There is only one place he can be, in the bathroom,” Josh answers, looking over to the bathroom door.
Dixon grabs Josh’s arm as he goes to move towards the door. “Let’s do this right, Josh, we don’t know what is behind that door, understood?” He looks Josh straight in the eye.
“Yes Sir,” Josh replies.
“Good lad. Get your rifle light fixed,” Dixon tells Josh as he goes to get his mounted.
Both men approach the door, their rifles aiming out in front. Even with the two lights shining onto the door, it looks dark and ominous, the dark wood appearing to soak up the majority of the light.
“On my mark,” Dixon tells Josh as Josh goes forward, his hand reaching for the door handle.
Dixon steadies himself, pulling the butt of his rifle snugly into his shoulder, aiming, ready to tackle whatever surprises are about to
