“Yeah, that’s going to come loose real easy,” Elvis whispered, turning to one side and leaning against the wall. Bower leaned against the other wall, facing him.
“And so we wait,” he said.
Bower felt like pressing him to move sooner, but for him it must have been an ingrained military discipline to patiently await the appointed time for action. She had no doubt that when the time arose he could move with surprising speed and aggression. In the past twelve hours, he’d gone from almost an invalid to his old self. His left arm didn’t look any different from this morning, it was still like that of a child, but that didn’t seem to bother him. He had what appeared to be a normal amount of dexterity.
The alien creature waited outside the narrow hallway. Bower wondered what it was thinking. The spiny structure spanned a sphere roughly nine feet in diameter, with the swarming heart of the creature centered at chest height. By retracting its tentacles the alien could squeeze into the hallway, but its motion was restricted.
Elvis took out the revolver and laid it on the ground beside them. In the darkness, Bower could just make out the grainy outline of the silver cylinder along with the elongated barrel of the gun but not the grip, as that seemed to fade into the indistinct darkness.
Elvis was doing something with some small stones. She could hear them falling softly to the ground but she couldn’t see them. It took a few seconds before she realized he was amusing himself, tossing the stones beside his boot as part of some boredom-reducing game.
They sat there listening for any sounds beyond the door but the night was quiet. The concrete floor was hard. Her bum was sore. She had to keep moving from one cheek to another every few minutes. Elvis must have thought she had ants in her pants.
A cool breeze slipped beneath the door and Bower felt upbeat, but then she didn’t have to worry about stealing a truck. She was content to think it would be easy for Elvis.
Every half-hour or so, Elvis would get up and check the angle of the moon shine through one of the cracks in the steel shutters out on the floor. Finally, he came back and said the two words she’d been waiting to hear, “It’s time.”
Stella spoke from the darkness.
“Understand.”
Chapter 13: Rush
Quietly, Elvis tapped at the hinges, removing them and putting them neatly to one side.
Whispering, he said, “There are a couple of danger points here, points at which our escape could be compromised. The first is when I remove this door.”
Bower had become so acclimatized to the darkness that her eyes easily picked out the soft gleam of polished steel as Elvis slipped the gun behind his back again.
“I’m going to remove the door, but once I do it’s important that you stay put. I need to assess the situation on the other side of the door. If there are any guards immediately outside, things are going to go hot very quickly. I won’t fire on them unless I’m forced to. I’ll use the knife to incapacitate them.”
“With a butter-knife?” Bower asked.
“You’d be surprised how effective any length of metal is when used with sufficient force in a vulnerable spot.”
Bower didn’t say anything, but she figured incapacitate was another military euphemism. The army had such clinical terms for killing people. And as for the butter knife, he was right. She’d seen people impaled in accidents on some of the most unlikely of objects: loose fencing, upturned chair legs, screwdrivers. During her time in the accident and emergency ward at the St Albans hospital in London, she’d had a dad turn up with a child’s toy airplane embedded in his abdomen. Soft tissue punctures were surprisingly nasty.
Elvis went on, saying, “At this point, stealth is our greatest ally: being dead has its advantages. But if bullets start flying, even just one shot, then the gig is up, it would be like hitting a wasp’s nest with a baseball bat.”
Elvis rested his hand on Bower’s shoulder. All she could see was the outline of his head in silhouette.
“If that happens, run, do you understand me?”
Bower nodded, not that he would have known.
“You run. You don’t look back. You don’t wait for me. You don’t stop and hide. You run as fast and as far as your legs will carry you. Do you understand? This is extremely important. Whatever happens, you treat that first shot like the starter’s gun at the Olympics. You don’t wait for any kind of confirmation from me. When that gun fires, you’re running a goddamn marathon. You bolt.
“Moving targets are bloody hard to hit, especially at night. You need to run like the hounds of hell are snapping at your heels. The further you run, the better.”
Bower breathed deeply, steeling her mind.
“In the initial rush of adrenalin you’ll find you’re good to sprint out to about a hundred yards, then your lungs will start to burn and your legs will feel like they’re dragging lead weights. Back things off and pace yourself, but don’t stop. Keep running. Don’t stop running. If these bastards catch you they’ll kill you. The only thing you can do is to outdistance them.”
He removed his hand from her shoulder, saying, “The sun rises in the east. Government troops hold the western side of the city, so you want to head away from the rising sun.”
Elvis paused before adding, “With any luck, I’ll be running alongside you, OK?”
“OK.”
“Are you ready?”
“Yes,” Bower replied, feeling the adrenalin already pulsating through her veins.
“OK. I need you to help me with the door.”
Elvis used the knife to slowly jimmy the door out of the metal doorframe. Pale moonlight seeped in through the cracks widening around the frame. Bower found herself holding her breath as she braced her hands against the door, helping Elvis move it slowly. She could see him positioning himself beside the hinged side of the frame, peering out into the backstreet. He was looking through the slowly widening gap.
Elvis lifted the door, pulling it back while turning sideways and squeezing through the narrow gap.
Bower took the weight of the door, stopping it from falling inward. She could see the revolver in his right hand, held high against the inside of the door. Once the gap was wide enough, Elvis stepped through, the gun leading the way. She went to follow, moving along the door to the gap only to see him holding his hand up, signaling for her to wait where she was.
“There’s a crate to the left, hiding us from view, but it’s also obscuring my view. Wait here while I check out the street.”
Elvis crept forward in the shadows.
Bower peered through the gap. She could see down the street to the right. The surrounding buildings lacked windows. There were roller doors. They were in some kind of commercial area, which was no surprise.
In that instant, Bower suddenly realized her arms were the only thing holding the metal door. She’d stepped back and the door had started to fall inward, its weight seemed to grow as its center of gravity shifted. Bower braced herself, spreading her legs and pushing hard against the weight of the door, pushing it back until it was vertical again.
Sweat dripped from her brow.
A steel door crashing to the ground would have attracted as much attention as a gunshot, and she found herself shaking in panic. Bower pushed the door past vertical, allowing it to lean up against the doorframe. Her fingers felt cold and clammy.
Elvis crept back and spoke to her from the other side of the door.
“We’re clear. There’s a light at the far end of the alley beside us, but nothing at either end of this back street. I can see down the alley beside the factory, there are a couple of guards down by the tankers, but they’re pretty lax.”