“Is everyone okay?” Prig asked. “Speak to me, people?”
Various people gave mumbled replies throughout the room. Elna looked in the direction of the door, but the air was so choked with dust and smoke that she could barely see anything but a hazy, flickering light. She looked up at the ceiling and saw that at least one of the big, metal ceiling panels had buckled. It was bowed in the middle, hanging down but still stuck somehow in the framework. Through a gap on one side, she saw dirt and rocks trying to bulge through like guts from an eviscerated animal.
They’re going to bring this whole bunker down on top of us, she thought, and that’ll be the end of it.
She’d already experienced being buried alive once that day. She knew what a horrible, anxiety-filled experience it was. Being shot seemed like a much better way to die. However, she realized her gun was no longer in her hand. Casting about, she found it at the floor beside her father, and she picked it up.
“Is it over?” he asked.
He felt so small against her, just bones and clothes. When he tried to get up, she held him gently in place.
“Stay still, Pop,” she said. “Keep your head down.”
When she turned back to the door, she saw Malin, Norman, and Cat re-forming the line, raising their weapons. Cat had her free hand pressed against the bandage on her hip, and Elna thought she saw blood seeping through. She’d torn her wound open.
The dust and smoke settled just enough that she could make out the door, and she felt a surge of near-panic. The locker had been tossed against the side of the console, and the door itself had been bent out of shape. Somehow, the combination of the lock and perhaps Pop’s wine push-down tool had kept the door from being blown wide open. However, the top half of the door was pushed inward, creating a gap about six inches wide along the edge.
She aimed her gun at the gap. Was it better to fire first or try to keep quiet? She wasn’t sure, but her damned shaking hand made her distrust her aim. She was just as likely to hit the door and have a bullet ricochet.
“Everyone just stay low,” Prig said, speaking barely above a whisper. “The second they try to come through that door, open fire, but don’t hit each other, please.”
After a tense moment, Elna heard movement in the hall again. Suddenly, she saw something in the six-inch gap, though it was still so smoky she couldn’t tell what it was or what they were doing. Still, it startled her enough that she suddenly fired at the gap. The explosive sound was deafening in the small room, making her ears ring. She had no idea whether she hit anything. The bullet just seemed to get absorbed by the smoke.
Her shot set off a chain reaction. Malin opened fire, then Norman, and finally Cat, each firing multiple shots at the gap in the door. Elna saw sparks on the wall as at least one of the shots ricocheted. This caused Prig to begin frantically waving his hands to try to get them to stop. Malin fired a final shot, which ricocheted off the bent door and slammed into the panel door on the opposite side of the room. The panel door rattled against its latch but held shut. Golf ducked down against his keyboard.
“Well, they certainly know we’re in here now,” Prig muttered. “Can you civvies wait until they try to come through the door? And Cat? I expect better from you.”
“Something was moving out there, sir,” she said.
Just then, something shifted in the gap again. Elna thought it was a gloved hand. It reached up, slipped through the gap. She raised her pistol again, taking aim. The hand seemed to be clutching something, and the fingers opened suddenly. A black cylinder dropped into the room as the hand slipped back out of the door. Even as the cylinder was falling, Prig cried out, “Grenade! Get down!”
Following his own advice, he turned, tipped Golf’s chair over, then dove under the console. Elna hesitated a fraction of a second longer, watching the black cylinder as it fell, spinning, and hit the floor with a clank. Elna turned and flung herself on top of her father, wrapping her arms around him. She felt Malin doing the same to her.
Is this it? Is this when we die?
A grenade in such a small room with so many people! Her whole body was wrapped in pain, but she tensed up, anticipating the explosion, the whirlwind of shrapnel, and in that fraction of a second, she felt as helpless as she’d ever been in her entire life.
The grenade went off with a deafening boom and a bright flash of light. Elna’s eyes were squeezed shut, but she saw the light through her eyelids. Then she smelled acrid smoke. She was already in so much pain that she couldn’t tell if she’d been hit or not.
“Flash bang,” someone shouted. She thought it was Prig, but she could scarcely hear now. “It was a flash bang.”
Something slammed into the door then. Once, twice, a third time. Elna extracted herself from the smothering embrace of Malin and her father and raised her gun toward the door. Just then, Pop’s wine tool bent and fell out of the door handle, and the large, metal door swung inward. The smoke was worse now, but she could see lights moving about in the
