The gunfire started a split second later.
Oh, don’t worry. You don’t need to tell
what’s going on. You don’t need to tell
who was in our system claiming to be Georgia Mason, or why the Seattle CDC is on CNN, in flames, or whether you’re all still alive.
likes sitting around with his thumb up his ass, waiting to find out whether he’s got a bunch of funerals to not attend, since he’s still under house arrest with the paranoid mad scientist brigade.
Assholes.
—From
Upon reflection, I must note that I have, in fact, had better days.
—From
GEORGIA: Twenty-nine
None of this made any sense, and none of Shaun’s explanations had done anything to help the situation. Not that it mattered. As soon as people started shooting, I stopped needing to understand and started needing to react. I ducked, grabbing Maggie’s hand—she was the one with the least field experience, at least as far as I remembered—and dragging her around the corner into the living room. They’d need to shoot through more walls to get to us here.
“Shaun!” I shouted, hoping I’d be heard over the gunfire. “Get the hell out of there!”
“The wall’s holding for now!” Shaun shouted back. Mahir rounded the corner, taking up a position on the other side of Maggie. He flashed me a wan smile.
My hand went to my waist, habit telling me that when I was dressed, I was also armed. There was nothing there but my belt. “Dammit, Shaun! If you don’t have a secret escape plan, you need to make the crazy people give us guns!”
The woman they called the Cat shouted, “We don’t let strangers go armed in this house!”
“Sort of a special circumstance, don’t you think?” I demanded.
There was an answering burst of gunfire from the hall, followed by the sound of the door slamming. Someone who actually
“Yes, Monkey, please?” asked Shaun. He backed into view, not joining our cluster against the wall, but getting farther away from the door to the garage. “We promise not to shoot up any more of your shit than is strictly necessary.”
“Fascinating as diplomacy is, perhaps
Shaun gave him a startled look. “Dude, chill. We’re fine until they shoot through the door.”
“Then we’re fine for another ninety seconds,” said the Monkey. “Foxy, give them guns.”
“Yay!” The redhead ran to the other side of the living room. She opened what I’d taken for a coat closet, exposing enough weaponry to outfit a good-sized tabloid. Shaun whistled.
“Okay, I’m in love,” he said.
“Fickle, fickle heart.” I started for the open closet, the others following. This whole situation seemed faintly unreal. We were trapped in a decrepit-looking private home while a small army tried to shoot their way in. The fact that they hadn’t already succeeded told me this place had some pretty good armor plating under the peeling paint. The people who lived here were concerned, but not panicked. That made it a little too easy to be casual about things, like there was no way we could get hurt.
We could get hurt. I’d already died once. That sort of thing tends to teach you that no one is invincible.
“Here!” The Fox handed me a revolver, and gave Shaun a semiautomatic handgun. She kept passing out guns, grinning like a kid on Christmas morning. “We’re going to shoot them reeeeeeal good, so it’s important everybody be ready to look their best!”
Shaun and I exchanged a look, his expression making it clear that he understood what was going on about as well as I did—which was to say, not at all. Somehow, that didn’t make me feel any better.
The Monkey and the Cat joined us at the closet, both of them taking weapons of their own. The Cat glared at us the whole time, like this was somehow our fault.
“This is what’s going to happen now.” The Fox was suddenly calm, like having a group of armed men firing on her house was what it took to bring out her saner side. “We’re going to go out the back door. We’re going to circle around the side of the house. And then we’re going to shoot those fuckers until they stop squirming. Any questions? No? Good. Follow me.”
“I’m not sure which is worse,” muttered Shaun. “The fact that we’re following the crazy girl, or the fact that she sounds so damn happy about it.”
“I’m going to go with ‘the fact that we don’t have a choice,’ ” said Becks. “Maggie, you’re in the middle.”
“Yes, I am,” said Maggie, putting herself behind Becks and Shaun, and in front of me and Mahir. We followed the Fox, with the Cat and the Monkey bringing up the rear. I had the distinct feeling we were being used as human shields. Not that it mattered. There were men with guns outside, and as long as the Cat and the Monkey weren’t shooting us in the back, I didn’t care where they walked. I already knew we couldn’t count on them.
We reached the Fox as she was prying the last sheets of plywood off the back door. Shaun stepped in and helped her finish, revealing a pre-Rising sliding glass door that had been boarded over for good reason.
“This place was a death trap,” I muttered.
Mahir shot me a half-amused glance. “Was?” he asked.
It felt odd to be laughing during a firefight. Then again, if you can’t laugh when you’re about to die, when can you? The sound of gunfire covered any noises we might make, at least until we left the house.
The back porch had been reinforced at some point, more structural improvement concealed by a veil of cosmetic decay. The seemingly rotten wooden steps had no give to them at all. The Fox slunk through the knee- high grass as quietly as her namesake. I tried to emulate her, failing utterly as the gravel beneath the grass bit into my already injured feet. The best I could manage was not making any more noise than was absolutely necessary as I followed the rest of the group to the corner.
Once we were there, the Fox turned, smiled at the rest of us, sketched a curtsey clumsy enough to seem entirely sincere, and bolted back the way we’d come.
The Monkey realized what she was doing before the rest of us did—he knew her better than anyone, except for maybe the Cat, who had already locked her free hand around his elbow. He tried to run after the Fox as she pelted up the porch steps and back into the house. The Cat held him back.
“No,” she hissed. “Do that, and this was for nothing.”
He turned to look at her, a cold anger burning in her eyes. “Don’t think I’ll forgive you.”
The Cat didn’t say anything.
The sound of gunshots from the front of the house suddenly took on a new, more frantic timbre, accompanied by the distant but recognizable sound of the Fox’s laughter. At least someone was having a good day. Shaun looked back to me.
“There’s no plan B,” he said.
I nodded. “I know.”
There was no one left for us to run to, and nowhere to run except the van. That meant we had to take the
