Bill didn’t bother to check how many rounds he had left but just replaced the magazine and charged up the stairs. The sound of a gunfight higher up the building filtered down. Just before he could turn the corner to follow the fleeing men, the carpeted surface was torn and the concrete beneath chipped as half a dozen rounds ripped into the floor ahead of him. Bill threw himself back against the wall, glad he hadn’t turned the corner.
A swathe of fire continued to splatter the small landing, flakes of concrete and masonry ricocheting around the walls and Bill, causing him to bend his head and duck. A sudden racket of shots and crashing footsteps on the stairs could be heard higher up. The firing stopped. Bill took the opportunity to sprint around the corner, firing wild round after wild round into the melee above him, the intruders now trapped between Bill’s men at the bottom of the stairway and the counter-attack falling on them from above. Terry came alongside Bill, the shotgun kicking in his shoulder as he fired the first then the second barrel in the direction of the screaming men above.
“Stop, stop!” yelled a voice from the top of the stairs.
“We give in!” screamed another, the sound of weapons clattering to the floor.
“Hold your fire, hold your fire!” bellowed Bill, his ears throbbing from the earlier cacophony of sound and the shotgun cracking in his ear. He had to stop the wild-eyed Terry from continuing, a hand placed on the man’s wrist. The people from Bill’s group, further up inside the block, must have heard Bill’s call as they too ceased firing down into the men below them. Keeping the assault rifle aimed upstairs, Bill flicked on his torch and shone it over the carnage that it exposed. A mass of bloody bodies and limbs, glistening with blood and viscera along with faeces and urine from the evacuated bowels and bladders of the men who had just died.
“Make sure you’ve dropped all of your weapons and move down the steps one at a time,” Bill called to the group. “You, nearest me. Come down first.”
Bill looked back around the corner to instruct Aleck to provide additional cover, but the beam of his torch lit up the man’s crumpled body draped head first down the stairs.
The survivors of the group that had attacked Bill’s tower, Bill’s home, came sluggishly down the stairs one at a time, heads lowered, ensuring they didn’t have to make eye contact with the men who had just routed them. Ordered to sit on the steps, at least two steps between each man, and instructed not to talk, with Terry watching them from the bottom, Bill called to his group higher up. Robbie, Bill’s number two, was the first to appear, his blackened face and wide eyes witness to the ferocity of the fight they had been through.
“Thank God it’s you, Bill. I thought we were for the chop there. But we gotta move now.”
Bill suddenly smelt something: an acrid smell coming from higher up in the building.
“The bloody place is on fire. These idiots set fire to a door to get into floor seven, and it’s caught. The furniture in there is adding to it.” Just as Robbie had said that, a cloud of grey smoke drifted down the stairs, stirred up as his people started to evacuate the building. Trevor joined them as Sally, Owen, Mathew, Kelly and others started to make their way down the now smoke-filled stairway.
“Get them to pick up food and water, as much as they can carry,” Bill called after Owen,
“OK,” Owen called back.
Bill started to cough, the smoke and fumes getting thicker.
“Trevor, take Terry with you, and get these bloody prisoners out of the way. But watch the devious bastards.”
“Don’t you worry. The first one that makes a move will get a bullet.”
Terry and Trevor started to usher the prisoners down the stairs while Bill ascended, giving encouragement to the people evacuating, telling them to pick up as much food, water and supplies as they could on the way down. On the way up, he met a spluttering Simon, the last one to leave the upper floors, pushing the last of the occupants in front of him.
“God, am I glad to see you, Bill.”
Both shook hands but quickly got to the point.
“How bad‘s the fire?”
“It’s spreading, and quickly.”
“Will we be able to put it out?”
“Not a chance, mate. The entire room is aflame, and it’s starting to move upwards. Can you feel the draught?”
Bill felt a sucking breeze pulling at his trousers. “Yes.”
“Well, that’s feeding it.”
“That does it then. In less than an hour, the entire upper levels will be ablaze. We need to evacuate, and fast.”
“There’s no one behind me.”
“Let’s go then.”
CHAPTER 28
Alan ordered Baxter and Ellis to fire a couple of rounds above the heads of a stream of people entering and leaving the concrete bunker. The ones leaving were clutching the spoils they had managed to acquire, such as blankets, food, water, and even crockery was considered valuable enough to steal. The half-dozen shots fired over their heads caused some to scatter, but a group of thirty to forty who were about to enter, or even re-enter, decided to take on the soldiers. They gathered in a semi-circle, slowly edging round, trying to join up the edges, encircle the men that were going to interfere with their pillaging. The crowd slowly swelled, more coming from the feeding centre, the town and the camp. Once news spread that the defences of the Regional Government Centre had been breached and there were no soldiers, only a few lightly armed policemen, the CPSs choosing cowardice in preference to confrontation to protect it, the mobs moved in.
“Stop where you are!” shouted Alan. “I will personally shoot the next person that moves towards me or my men, or the bunker. You are achieving nothing by continuing this behaviour.”
“What you mean is bloody slavery,” called a woman from the back of the crowd. Those at the rear pushed those at the front forward, the line edging closer to Alan and his two men, the ones closest to the soldiers’ guns spreading their arms to try and hold them back, conscious that they were the ones that risked injury or death.
“All we want is food, not the miserable rations you give us while you live like kings,” yelled another.
“You’re worse than the bloody commies who bombed us,” shouted someone else.
“You know we have to make this food last. If it runs out before we have crops and vegetables ready and proper accommodation for us all with fuel for heating, we will die.”
“We’re dying now.”
“If control is lost now, I promise you, we will all die.”
The crowd seemed to relax slightly, and Alan felt he was making progress until an empty glass bottle flew over the heads of the mob and struck one of his soldiers. The soldier was unhurt, but it was a trigger for others to throw objects, deemed worth losing, at his small force. The crowd started to surge forward again, and Alan genuinely feared for his and his men’s lives.
“Ready!” he ordered.
The soldiers levelled their SA80s, the barrels pointing at the crowd. This time, Alan felt sure his men would open fire. Their blood was up, and adrenalin was still pumping. What made the soldiers angrier was the fact that they had put their lives at risk defending the food and supplies for the very people that now saw them as the enemy. One of their comrades had been badly wounded and needed urgent attention, and their lives were under threat, so they were in no mood for what they deemed an ungrateful population.
“Don’t make us open fire. I will give the order.” Alan now wished he’d brought more men with him, but he had not anticipated this. He hadn’t imagined that the very people he and his soldiers were putting their lives on the line for had would have turned on them. But he’d had to leave the bulk of his force with CSM Saunders to protect the warehouse. They’d won the first bout, but until he and his men could ensure that the enemy had been well and truly been routed and weren’t preparing for another assault, it was his only option.