One of the women yelped, “Derek!”
Gunshots came from behind them. The guards hiding in the staircase ambushed them. Bryant fired back at the guards, taking one down.
“No!” the woman yelled.
Should have kept her mouth shut, and the two of them could have been free. Ryder was pissed off.
There was no place for them to hide; they were out in the open. Shots were exchanged and when Kelvin was shot in the arm, he screamed in pain. The guards had too many guns, but her group had more weapons.
“Cover me!” Ryder yelled.
Ryder slammed her spear on the ground, and the sharp metal blades flew out. She ran at one of the guards and dropped, sliding across the bloody floor on her knees. She stabbed the general before he had a chance to fire at her, and pulled the spear out of him as he dropped down to his knees.
Then Ryder rolled her spear to the side, took her ankle knives, and threw them at two other guards. They landed in their necks.
More generals fell to the floor as the group killed them. There were only a few generals left, who ran back and hid behind the staircase.
“Don’t shoot,” one of them begged.
The woman from earlier shouted, “He said don’t shoot!”
“Helena, hush,” Another woman said to the loud-mouthed woman.
Ryder was getting really pissed off with the women on this level. They’d better shut up, or they’d end up like their husbands. “Will you be quiet?” Ryder yelled at Helena, then to the generals, “Drop your guns and slide them across to us.”
Ryder could hear the generals speaking. It sounded like they were actually going to do it.
“Hand my gun to a woman? As if.” One of the generals pointed his gun at Ryder.
Ryder threw her spear at him as she ducked the bullet. The spear went through the general’s head, and the bullet bounced off the glass wall. Ryder retrieved her spear after his body crashed to the floor.
The Merry Men took care of the other generals. A few of the women climbed over the barricades and ran to their husbands’ bodies.
Helena had a wild look in her eyes. “You killed them. You killed all of them!” she yelled at them.
This one really doesn’t listen, thought Ryder.
“You’re free now, and you can leave the bunker,” Ryder told all the women. They didn’t move. “I said, you’re free.”
Still nothing.
Helena looked at Ryder with disgust. “We don’t want to leave. This is our home.”
Helena had clearly been brainwashed by their captors. The generals’ wives had a very different life to the women on Level Six; an almost normal life. Ryder knew she wouldn’t get the same response on Level Six, where the women were no more than commodities to be handed out as favors to those who pleased Afana.
Ryder shrugged and turned to the others. “Whatever. Come on, let’s get those out who want to be free.”
Helena got in Ryder’s face, waving a finger. “How dare you come in here and kill our men and ruin our home! How dare you! Afana!” she screamed.
Vicky pursed her lips at the outburst. “Will someone shut that nagging bitch up before the fucking vampire hears her?”
Everyone looked down through the glass floor at Level Four where they’d last seen Afana, but they could no longer see his giant figure. He could be down any one of the tunnels or on one of the other levels.
Ryder quickly turned to the other women and kids behind the barricade. They weren’t moving or saying a thing. Helena was the only mouthy one, and they needed to shut her up.
She needed a bandage. Ryder unwrapped the one she’d used after donating blood to Massimo, then the other one from the fight with Sergei.
“Turn her around,” Ryder told Carter. He did as she requested, and Ryder tied the bandage around Helena’s wrists. Then she turned her around. “This will shut you up,” Ryder said as she gagged the woman, whose eyes were wild. “When we’re gone, go over to the others and get them to untie you. I don’t want you to be defenseless with the Mad around.”
Helena rolled her eyes.
Bitch.
Ryder and the others retrieved their weapons. “I’m over this ungrateful level. Let’s bounce.”
Carter whooped. “Fucking yeah.”
When they all got to the stairs, the lights flickered. Everyone looked at one another.
Ryder stopped in her tracks. “What the fuck is going on? The lights never go on and off.” She waited to see if it happened again, but it didn’t. She shrugged. “I guess today isn’t a normal day since the bunker is under attack from all sides.” Ryder looked up at Level One. The advisors were out of the lab, and their wives were there with them. Ryder had thought they would have just run outside, but they’d gone straight to their husbands and freed them. Ryder had underestimated the women’s bonds with their husbands.
Advisor Robert was looking down at Ryder with a devilish grin on his face, but the cameras and audio were off so he couldn’t warn Afana.
But he could do one thing to help him.
He wiggled his fingers at Ryder and flicked a switch which plunged them into darkness.
Level Six was inky-black.
The children screamed in fear of the dark.
The kids weren’t the only ones who were afraid. “What’s going on?” Terrier demanded. “What happened to the lights?”
Mama Lou’s voice trembled in the dark. “I don’t know. This has never happened. The question is, how we are going to separate the bitten if we can’t see anyone?”
“We have to try,” Terrier answered.
“Those who have been bitten, we need to get you into the rooms so you can rest,” Mama Lou said, as if she were thinking the same thing as Terrier. “Can you make your way over carefully so we can get you into a bed and looked after?”
Terrier and the others headed in the direction of the bitten,
