The guy standing next to him looks at his comrade and shouts something as he watches the body crumple to the ground. In a blind rage, he then takes a few steps forward into the bar, fanning his bullets left and right wildly.
Clara looks at me as she reloads and I can see the concern creeping across her face. We’re both down to our last few bullets.
“C’mon, we’re leaving,” I say.
I stay low and fire blind as I run off to our left. She follows me, doing the same. Ducking down at the side of the bar, I point at the door just behind it and count down from three on my left hand…
Three…
Two…
One…
We both run, barging through the door and slamming it shut behind us. It won’t be long before the gunmen follow us. Probably just a few seconds.
There’s a fire exit ahead of us to the left and the entrance to a cellar on the right, halfway down the corridor.
“There’s gotta be a way in and out through that cellar,” says Clara. “That’s where they unload the barrels from the delivery trucks out back.”
It’s sound logic, and I think she’s right.
“Okay, you take the cellar, I’ll go out back. If we can split them up, we stand more chance of surviving this thing. Meet back at my motel room, okay?”
“Okay,” she says. “Be careful, Adrian.”
I smile. “You too.”
She opens up the cellar doors and descends into the darkness below as I cover the door we just came through. Once she’s inside, I shut them behind her just as our attackers burst into the narrow corridor. I fire at them, aiming awkwardly behind me as I run for the fire exit up ahead, forcing them to duck back inside the main bar area and buying me a few more valuable seconds. I push through the fire exit shoulder first and come out in a small parking lot at the back.
“Freeze!” someone shouts.
I skid to a halt and look to my right. There are three police cars, each with two officers standing behind their open doors, aiming their guns at me.
You’ve got to be kidding me…
15
Thinking quickly, I hold my arms out to the side, so I don’t appear threatening — despite the fact I’m holding my gun in my right hand.
Time slows down and every second that ticks by feels like an hour.
“Drop your weapon, now!” another officer yells.
I frown, feeling my jaw muscles tense as I try to subdue the frustration.
“Guys, you’ve caught me at a really bad time here,” I say.
Before anyone can reply, bullets explode into the door behind me, interrupting the standoff. Without thinking, I duck down and dive away to my left, taking cover in a small alcove. I look over and see the police are doing much the same thing — ducking down and resting their guns in between their open doors and the body of the cruiser. They’ve got their guns trained on the fire exit.
One officer shouts over to me. “Stay where you are!”
“Don’t worry about me,” I shout back. “Worry about what’s coming through that door!”
There’s another burst of gunfire and the fire exit door swings open, falling from the frame onto the floor.
Two of the gunmen step out, holding their assault rifles in front of them, and stand ceremoniously in front of the police. They’re using AK-47s, which makes sense, given Dark Rain's run by a former Russian soldier.
A moment later and Natalia steps out and walks over to them, standing in between her comrades. She’s got two Heckler and Koch MP7 submachine guns, one in each hand. Officially classed as Personal Defense Weapons, mostly used out in Afghanistan; they’re some serious pieces of hardware.
Natalia’s dressed completely in black, similar to Clara when I first saw her. But her outfit looks slightly different. It’s more of a cat suit, and there’s visible padding over vital organs and limbs. I figure she’ll survive a stray bullet at the very least, which doesn’t bode well.
They must know I’m here, but I’m assuming the six armed police officers are more of a concern to them than I am right now.
I watch the scene unfold, keeping quiet and behind the wall of the alcove as much as possible.
Natalia steps forward. She’s got bright, flame-colored red hair and dark eye make-up. She glances over at me, confirming they know I’m here. She has the brightest blue eyes I’ve ever seen. The excessive eyeliner accentuates them even more, so they look like searchlights. I stare back at her. There’s something in her eyes… a void where normal human emotion should be.
For a split second, I’m forced to re-live the dark moments from my past, when I’d find myself staring at my reflection in the mirror, with the exact same look, contemplating putting the barrel of my gun in my mouth and pulling the trigger…
This woman has some serious, unaddressed anger management issues and that could become a problem.
She looks back at the police officers, who haven’t said anything since Dark Rain emerged through the fire exit. They’re exchanging hesitant and frightened glances.
With no warning, Natalia and the gunmen level their guns at the small squadron of cops.
They wouldn’t…
She screams something loud in Russian that I don’t understand, and all three of them open fire, emptying their clips at the police.
“No!” I shout, unable to suppress my anger and surprise.
The loud clunking noise of bullets hitting metal fills the air and the officers scatter, not even bothering to return fire. The three cars are about thirty feet in front of the Dark Rain assault team, and it doesn’t take long for the middle one to explode.
The noise is deafening and leaves me with a ringing in my ears as the heat from the blast forces me to duck completely into the alcove. I look back round at the scene — an eerie silence broken only by crackle of the flames from the destroyed cruiser. The gunmen seem unfazed by it, despite their close proximity to the blast. The force from the explosion shifted the other police cars out to the sides a good twenty feet, removing any chance of cover the cops might have had left.
Through the smoke and fire, I can’t see where the officers have run off. The firing stops and Natalia turns her attention toward me. As I see the maniacal grin on her face, I realize I’ve been standing here watching like an idiot instead of putting distance between the hit squad sent to kill me, and me. One gunman turns away and runs off to the right, presumably going after Clara…
I hope she’s managed to get a decent head start.
As the remaining gunman aims his weapon at me, I re-focus on the situation and, like a reflex, take aim, and unload three bullets, which all hit him dead center, square in the chest. He falls to the ground as my gun clicks down on an empty chamber.
I look at Natalia, who momentarily regards her fallen comrade with complete indifference before looking at me and raising her MP7s.
“Oh, shit!” I yell as I turn and run around the corner of the building, narrowly avoiding a burst of gunfire that chips away at the brick just behind me.
I turn down an alleyway that runs alongside the bar and leads back to the main street. As I emerge back out on the sidewalk, I’m genuinely shocked to see that it looks like a warzone. There’s broken glass everywhere. The Humvee is still parked outside the bar at a hurried angle; the doors are all open. The building itself looks derelict, having been almost completely destroyed in the gunfight.
The street is littered with bodies — some dead, some alive but injured. There’s constant screaming and a cacophony of sirens approaching from a distance. A crowd of onlookers has congregated a short distance away, all talking excitedly into their phones or taking pictures and videos of the scene for the internet.