Surge (21 page)

The footsteps are getting increasing louder by the second, when Olivia makes a pulling motion with her arm. Taking my cue, I pull out my hunting knife, and hack the rope to the fridge in half with one strong swing; leaving a six inch gash in the wall. Putting the larger blade back on my holster, I hear the whirring noise of the rope rapidly being pulled from the loop attached to the ceiling, quickly followed by a sickening crash of metal and the crunch of breaking bones.

“What the fuck!” A raider exclaims, but he’s drowned out by the sound of running steps, that are treading the last flight of stairs with pounding feet. Obviously, they no longer caring about the amount of noise that they’re making. The door whips open a few seconds later to reveal a masked man in fatigues, that’s holding a flare, and followed by several similarly dressed raiders with flashlights. We let the first wave inside to give them a false sense of security, before attacking.

The stocking caps are pulled over their faces, hiding their features, but they don’t conceal the shocked eyes that pop out when an arrow spears the first man’s chest. He drops with his flare, along with two of the others from gunshots to the head or chest. The dropped flare casts a red glow around the room, and the flashlights the ones still standing are holding in their hands have effectively lit the narrow hallway up like individual Christmas trees. Their lights also highlight them as targets for us to strike, kind of like neon signs screaming,
‘Hit here!’
Olivia attacks from behind, silently slitting throats and spearing her machete through their backs, which then resurfaces on the other side, dripping life blood on the floor; all before they even know what hit them.

Five men go down, before the raiders can recover from their shock, and return fire. Two shots go over my head as I’m ducked to reload behind the coffee table. Beside me is Oscar with his assault rifle pumping holes through three bodies like Swiss cheese, while I go up on my knees with my 9mm in hand. I shoot off two consecutive rounds, which land between the eyes or in a forehead, before I drop back down to dodge the bullets being fired back in retaliation.

My ears are ringing with all of the guns going off at such close range, and echoing off of the walls in the narrow hallway; but I can still hear the grunts and shouts of pain coming from all around me. I’m hoping that none of them are friendly, but there’s no time to check. I know it’s an occupational hazard to have casualties, either fatal or superficial, but we can’t do anything to treat them right this second anyway. At least not until we win this battle for our turf.

I switch back to my crossbow and impale a guy in the stomach with the arrow. Seeing a guy sneaking up on a distracted Danny, I throw a knife with my left hand. It lands in the attacker’s uncovered eye before he drops the club that he was planning to whack Danny over the head with. Danny shoots me a disbelieving look, like he couldn’t possibly believe that I would save his ass when I despise him. It’s simple really; Sarah would kill me if I let anything happen to him. And the little piss ant may not be such a fuck up after all. I’ll reform my opinion of him later. After I get his number count, that is.

Oscar empties his assault rifle into the crowd; there are lots of hits to the torso areas, and a few misses that embed their way into the wall behind them. Olivia’s since taken cover behind the couch with Danny. She pops up, hurling her daggers with speed and deadly precision. Four daggers hit their marks, before she dives back down to recover. Danny takes up the slack while she’s busy pulling out more ammunition, emptying his clip into the two guys that were preparing to lunge over the couch.

I empty my own 9mm into the heads of the three guys coming closer to the tipped over coffee table in front of Oscar and me. Oscar has since switched to his handgun, and is now firing away, while I reload the crossbow to use my final four arrows. Since it’s a single fire weapon, I have to pause between shots to reload. It’s time consuming, but worth it when it hits the target in a red zone, like the heart, a lung or the brain. I aim for brains, but after one misses, since the guys manages to duck it, I switch to chest shots because they’re larger target zones. One of my last two arrows lodges between the dodger’s ribs, imbedding its way into his lung. As that guy falls, I see Oscar take a hit and go down.

Hurling my knife at the asshole that shot a member of my group, the fucker dies a quick death with a knife to his eye. A glance at Oscar shows him holding an arm, could be bad, but not fatal. Exhaling a breath, I grab Oscar’s uninjured arm and start dragging him back to the relative safety of the coffee table. That’s when I hear Olivia shout my name.

Turning to see what she’s shouting about, I find a big ass mother fucker diving over the table, in time to take me to the ground. Landing with bruising force, the breath expels from my lungs in one fell swoop, but I’m not going out without a fight. Fighting through the burn in my lungs, I break the choke hold that the guy was attempting to do, with an upward sweep of my arms. Wrapping my right leg around the bastard’s calf, I slam my left shoulder into his chest, and use his heavy weight against him, to flip us into the reversed position. As I come up on top, I have my hunting knife in hand, and am about to stab him in the heart, but that’s when I feel a forearm wrap around my neck in a successful choke hold. What the fuck is with these guys and choking? It’s so unoriginal.

I calmly grip the guy’s wrist and twist, hearing a satisfying crack, before I land an elbow in his gut. Using my final throwing knife, I end the whimpering coward who was holding his poor abused wrist. An injured Oscar is now rolling around with some unarmed dude, but he looks like he can handle it; so I look for the big mother fucker that I didn’t get the pleasure of finishing. Spotting his big ass trying to sneak up on Olivia, which is laughable because not only is the guy as inconspicuous as a clown in the Supreme Court; but no one, and I mean
no one
sneaks up, on the ninja which is Olivia.

The big bastard currently has his arms reaching out from behind her. Lunging forward, he wraps them around Olivia in a bear hug; and lifts her off of her feet like she’s a freaking rag doll. I’m about to go fuck him up for not only invading her personal space, but for also daring to lay his disgusting paws on her, and for breaking her no touching rule; when Olivia pulls her helmeted head forward and slams it into the guy’s face in a supersonic head-butt with all of her weight thrown into it. Olivia drops from his arms, landing in a low crouch before she turns with her machete raised, and relieves the asshole of his head.

His head literally rolls in my peripheral vision, when I make a dash for the baseball bat near Danny’s feet. Danny’s still using knives, and he’s actually pretty decent. Landing a few chest shots with only one or two misses, he could take John or Tommy in a knife throwing contest.

Raising the bat to my shoulder, I take a quick peek around to see how many are left. Since there aren’t any more gunshots popping off, there are now only a few clusters of men left, and they are all fighting in some form of hand to hand combat. Be that with fists, or with handheld weapons like clubs, bats or axes. Seeing an abandoned ax, I pick it up and pass it to Danny to use, since he’s now out of both knives and ammo; and hand to hand is not his strong suit. He immediately takes the weapon and runs into the fray.

Oscar, still favoring his right arm, is beating a guy with a club. Delivering a crushing blow, the raider ceases movement before Oscar looks around for a new target. Spotting one, he holds the club in his left hand and runs to sucker punch a guy with a haymaker from his right hand, who was attempting to come up behind a distracted Olivia with an ax. Quickly switching hands, Oscar brings the club down on the fallen guy’s head. While Oscar assists Olivia, I run over to help a struggling Danny out. He’s locked in a battle of strength over control of the ax, with a guy who’s a good four inches taller than him. Sweeping the legs out from underneath the bastard with my bat, I stomp on his throat.

“Pick someone your own size, you fucking bully,” I snarl and let Danny finish him with the ax.

Turning back to view the room, it’s complete carnage. While there are only two left standing, one with Carlos on the other side of the foyer, and one on our side, who’s currently sizing up who he thinks he can take; there are tons of bloody corpses strewn across the floor. I pick my steps carefully as I charge the contemplative raider to make his decision for him. I’m just about to bat a grand slam to end this shit, when a gunshot pierces my ear drums. The bullet whizzes past me and lands between the masked eyes of the final raider.

“I’m guessing I’m a little late for the party,” a familiar voice announces from behind me. “But better late than never, as my momma always said.”

<~~~<~~~
~~~>~~~>

“I agree with your momma,” I say to Cory.

Turning to face him, I see that Cory’s holding a plastic bag of goods in his hand. Said bag goes dropping immediately to the ground, carelessly spilling the bottles of pills in a bloody puddle on the ground; at the same time I hear something else fall behind me with a clunk, and a choked voice says his name.

“Livi?” Cory asks with an equally affected voice, as he stumbles a few steps forward. “Is that really you?”

In response, five feet of leather clad woman; missing the helmet, run so fast it’s almost impossible to see her. Olivia’s jet black braid identifies her, as it flows behind her sprinting form. I’m thinking it’s to kill the son of a bitch who dared call
her
‘Livi’
but alas, it’s not meant to be, because she instead hurls herself into Cory’s chest. His arms immediately encircle her in a bear hug that is a hell of a lot friendlier than the one she received twenty minutes ago. And far more welcome, judging by the way Olivia is clinging to Cory just as tightly.

I’m hoping that this is her long lost brother. Or a cousin’s, sister’s, ex-boyfriend’s uncle’s nephew. Anything other than what I think it is. But I’m proven wrong, when Cory pulls back and cups Olivia’s filthy cheek with absolute, undeniable love filling his eyes; as he takes in her beautiful face like it’s a dream come true.

Obviously, he’s not gay, so I’m gonna take a wild guess here and say that this is the missing fiancé. The bastard who deservingly spoiled her with a ring that must have cost him his life savings. Isn’t that just my luck? The one girl that I actually
want
warming my bed, already belongs to the guy who showed me how to survive. A true war hero, and handsome prick to boot, who owns her heart just as much as she owns his.

“I’m guessing you two know each other?” I inquire with a forced bland tone, since I want to scream my rage at the injustice of it all. But I guess this is what I deserve. This is my penance for bringing Victoria into our ranks, and mentally fucking or insulting Olivia for the majority of our short acquaintance.

But not Cory. Oh no, he deserves her in spades. And Olivia must agree, since she hasn’t stabbed him, or freaked out when he touched her; like he’s doing right now. The fucker has an arm wrapped securely around her waist, like a brand of ownership. What a dick, why not just lift your leg and piss on her?

“I’ve known Olivia her whole life,” Cory answers with a smile.

The bastard actually smiled. He
never
smiles. Not once in the entire year that he’s been with us, has he so such as cracked a glimpse of his teeth. Actually, maybe he has no teeth just like his grand pappy, and that’s why he doesn’t smile? That’s it. Cory doesn’t smile because he’s afraid his falsies will fall out. Ha-ha you toothless prick, I got all my teeth.

“I even changed her diapers,” Cory adds and earns a half-hearted elbow to the ribs from a grinning Olivia.

Okay, now that’s just sick. What kind of pervert changes the diapers of his future wife? A depraved fuck, that’s who. What’d he do, rob her from the cradle? I heard that they still do that down south, so he probably did, since he’s got at least five years on her.

And how dare he make her smile? Olivia likes to scowl, or glare daggers, like the one she hurls when she’s pissed; which is admittedly most of the time. That’s her forte, not a flash of beautiful teeth that light up the entire dimly lit room. She’s supposed to strike fear, not lust. Goddamnit, Junior! I said fear, not lust! Go back down into hiding before the real Olivia sees, and chops you off like the bodiless head staring at me with his dead eyes.

Hold the fucking phone. That’s it. Cory doesn’t know the psycho that he has the great honor of calling his fiancé. Maybe he’ll cut her loose, and I can swoop in as a revenge fuck? I’m game for that, a little bit of angry sex with the psycho is the least I could do for her as my personal thank you.

And when I say psycho, I say that in the most flattering way possible. There are good kinds of crazy, like ones that keep you alive; and then there are the bad kinds of crazy, like the ones that could get you killed. Also known as the red headed viper that’s bound and gagged in the master bedroom’s walk-in closet, and currently missing a few of her digits, as a courtesy to Olivia’s amateur surgeon practistry.