The Killing (6 page)

Dana tutted. ‘Yeah micro-brain, but it’s also blindingly obvious.’

Lauren reared up. ‘Who are you calling micro-brain, Cheesy?’

‘You try calling me Cheesy again,’ Dana screamed, facing Lauren off, ‘and I’ll rip off your head and spit down your neck.’

James placed himself between the two girls. ‘Calm down and stop yelling. We’re supposed to be killing everyone else, not each other.’

‘Suppose someone comes after us,’ Dana spat. ‘They know we were dropped in this area and that’s the first place they’ll come looking.’

‘Well that’s where I think we should go,’ Lauren said, sounding narked.

‘OK, OK,’ James said, feeling the pressure of being in charge. ‘What if we station a sniper on the roof of Lauren’s building, then we’ll barricade the door so that it looks like we’re all in there? But really, all except one of us are in the low building opposite.’

‘That might just work,’ Dana nodded. ‘If anyone comes by and tries to storm the building with the sniper inside, you lot can steam out from behind and ambush them.’

James looked at Dana. ‘Do you want to go up the stairs and be the sniper? Are you a good shot?’

‘Better than any of you, I expect,’ Dana said. ‘Though it’ll be pitch dark soon and we haven’t got night scopes.’

‘If you hear anyone, start shooting so that they think we’re in there.’

‘What if it’s one of you guys?’ Dana asked.

James looked blank.

‘We need a signal,’ Bethany said. ‘Meow like a cat or something, then you’ll know it’s one of us.’

James nodded. ‘But if you hear a meow, return with a bark, like a dog. That way we know it’s not someone ripping off our noise. And remember, once it gets dark, sound is the best way of tracking us. Only call out if you absolutely must.’

‘OK,’ Dana said, as she set off towards the high building. ‘You’d better not make a mess of this. I’ll see you losers later.’

Lauren waited until Dana was out of earshot before responding. ‘Not if I see you first, Cheesy … And thanks for taking
 
her
 
side, James.’

James tutted. ‘It’s not a question of taking sides, Lauren. Face facts, Dana was right.’

‘This is all very well
 
if
 
your plan to lure the opposition towards the big building works,’ Lauren sniped. ‘But what if they see through it?’

‘Will you shut up and let me think?’ James said. ‘We need to get under cover. Kerry’s team was only dropped a few hundred metres from here. They could be on our backs any second.’

James led Lauren, Bethany and Jake towards a single-level structure with a canopy, designed to resemble a fast-food stand. He opened the aluminium door and stepped inside, surprised by how cramped the space was.

‘Bethany and Lauren, keep the chatter down and watch out of the window. Me and Jake will cover the rear.’

‘There’s a duffle bag behind this table,’ Bethany said excitedly, as she crouched down near the back window.

James turned towards her. ‘Large said we’d find extra equipment scattered around the training area.’

The team gathered in a semi-circle. Bethany undid the buckle and opened the bag, revealing five pairs of night-vision goggles. The sets were specifically designed to clip on to their helmets.

‘Sweet,’ James grinned. ‘These will give us a massive advantage once it starts getting dark.’

‘Hang on though,’ Lauren said. ‘This is the first building we’ve been in and we’ve already found some valuable equipment. For all we know, there’s something useful in every building.’

Bethany finished her sentence. ‘And if we hole up here while the other teams grab a load of fancy equipment, we could end up being totally outgunned.’

James, Lauren and Bethany looked at each other. ‘Lauren,’ James said, ‘you stay here with Jake, be ready to start shooting if someone attacks Dana’s building. Me and Bethany can head out on to the street. We’re gonna check all the other buildings and see what we can find.’

‘What am I, an octopus?’ Lauren gasped. ‘I can’t do all that on my own.’

‘You’ll have to try your best,’ James said stiffly. ‘You’ve got Jake with you.’

‘Great, a red shirt,’ Lauren sneered. ‘What’s he gonna do?’

‘I don’t
wanna
stay with
 
her
,’ Jake said. ‘Can I go outside with you, James?’

‘James,’ Lauren said. ‘This isn’t a strategy, this is a disaster. One minute we’re all holing up here waiting for an ambush. Now you want us all to split up. If someone comes after us we’ll get picked off one at a time.’

‘Well, what do you want me to do, sis?’ James whispered angrily. ‘I’m the team leader. Being my sister doesn’t give you the right to start an argument over every single decision I make. Now, I know this isn’t ideal, but we can’t let the other teams get hold of all the equipment.’

‘How about I stay here with Bethany and you go out hunting with Jake?’

‘Fine, whatever,’ James said angrily. ‘I’ll go out with Jake. You stay here and play dolls’ houses with your little friend.’

It was hard to read Lauren’s expression through the visor over her face, but James was fairly sure she was glowering at him. He spun on his heel and crashed out of the aluminium door. Before realising how stupid it was to make so much noise, James felt a loud crack against the side of his helmet. As he stumbled sideways, a second shot tore painfully into his ribs. The paint dribbling down his side was yellow, indicating that he’d been shot by a member of Kyle’s team.

James had been hit hundreds of times by paintballs. It wasn’t nice, but the stinging went away ten minutes later. The simulated ammunition was in a different league. James could hardly draw breath as he collapsed against the side of the building. Luckily, the third shot skimmed past his shoulder and clanged into the metal door behind him.

As James gasped, he spotted the eleven-year-old twin girls from Kyle’s team ducking down behind a car. James reached for his gun, but the pain in his chest made him clumsy.

‘Don’t think so,’ the girls chanted, as they came out of cover with their weapons aimed at James. ‘Drop your gun, and throw us the pack with your eggs in.’

James didn’t want to surrender his eggs, but the girls were standing at the regulation three-metre minimum shooting distance, and he’d already found out how painful the simulated rounds could be from much farther out.

As James unhooked his pack, a red shot smashed into the thigh of one girl, sweeping her right leg from under her. James realised it had to be Dana, firing from up high. A second later, Bethany booted open the door behind him and shot at the other one. The round missed, but the girl ducked and James used the instant while she was distracted to roll forwards and aim his gun. He took great satisfaction in blasting the girl who’d shot him moments earlier. She fell over backwards, and James pumped her twice in the back from minimum range.

The twist of fortune had taken seconds. Now the twin girls were writhing on the ground with James, Dana and Bethany pointing guns at them.

‘Let’s have those guns over here,’ James said. ‘No sudden moves.’

It took a while, because both girls were hurt. As soon as they’d pushed the guns out of reach, James ran in and grabbed them. He unclipped the magazines, before flipping back the operating handles and pocketing the driving springs. Without this small component, the rifles were useless.

‘Give us your backpacks,’ James ordered, menacing the girls with his rifle.

The searing pain in his chest and the fear of getting shot again had left James running on his most basic survival instincts. He didn’t give a damn about the feelings of the two girls squirming at his feet.

‘You can’t shoot us from this close,’ one girl said desperately, as he closed back in to grab their backpacks.

‘Sue me,’ James snarled, jabbing the girl with his gun as he ripped the pack off her shoulder. ‘Why don’t you write a letter to the United Nations?’

James threw one pack backwards towards Bethany and unzipped the other one himself. He threw down the polystyrene egg box and smashed it under the heel of his boot. Bethany did the same. It was a good feeling, destroying one third of team A’s eggs less than twenty minutes into the twelve-hour exercise.

‘What can we do with them?’ Bethany asked, as she contemptuously wiped her
eggy
boot on to her victim’s suit. ‘They know our position and we’re not allowed to take hostages; we’ll have to move out of here.’

As Bethany spoke, James noticed a lump of plastic rolling from beneath one of the cars at the kerbside. He instantly knew it was a stun grenade, but didn’t get a chance to take cover before its powder-blue flash erupted. He stumbled backwards, half blind, as the bitter taste of smoke hit the back of his mouth.

He recognised Kyle’s voice. ‘How’d you like that little toy, Adams?’

Another stun grenade erupted. This one had been lobbed through the back window of the food stand. Lauren screamed as she stumbled blindly out of the aluminium door with Jake close behind her.

Kyle howled in pain as Dana shot him from up high. She’d picked out a perfect shot through the smoke, hitting Kyle in the scantly protected area where the helmet met the padded overall. James only got a second to gloat before he felt an excruciating pain in his lower back. He caught sight of the blue paint spattered on his sleeves and looked over his shoulder to find all five members of Kerry’s team closing on his position in a V-formation.

James had already taken three painful shots and he couldn’t face getting hit more as Kerry and Kyle’s teams closed from opposing directions. He lost all thoughts of leadership as he scrambled to his feet, cut down a side street and ran away as fast as he could.

He ran a few hundred metres through the streets, almost to the opposite side of the training compound. He found a house and fired a couple of rounds inside. When nobody fired back, he jumped through the glassless window and dropped to the concrete floor.

There were blue flashes from stun grenades and the constant rat-tat of simulated ammunition as the three-way battle raged on in the distance. The sky was turning amber, meaning it would be dark inside half an hour.

James had taken three hits. The first shot had ricocheted harmlessly off his helmet, there was a dull ache in his stomach from the second, but the shot to his lower back was the killer. An agonising spasm fired down his leg as he slumped on to the floor. He felt relieved at getting away from the action as he caught his breath, but he quickly realised that as the senior agent, he had to go back and try to reunite his team before darkness fell.

Before standing back up, he broke the rules by turning towards the wall, flipping up his visor and wiping away the sweat streaking down his face.

When James looked up, he noticed a grey box in the corner. He scuttled across and was delighted to find a dozen ammo clips. Everyone had started with two twenty-eight-round clips for their rifle. James had nearly used a full clip already and he realised that as the night went on, ammo was going to become a valuable commodity.

James locked a full clip on to his rifle and stacked the remainder into his pack, even though each clip weighed more than a kilogram.

He walked cautiously back towards the window and listened. The battle had splintered into numerous smaller actions, characterised by short bursts of gunfire spread over a wider area. James realised that this greatly increased his chances of coming under fire on his return journey.

He kept low as he exited the building into a narrow alleyway, ducking below the roofline of the parked cars, with a paint-spattered breezeblock wall at his back. He ended up in a main road, keeping a finger on the trigger and breaking into a sprint as he cut across the road.

‘Meow.’

James stopped in his tracks and crouched down beside a car, unable to work out where the sound had come from.

‘Woof,’ he answered cautiously.

Two heads popped up inside a car parked on a driveway. Because of the orange sunlight reflecting on the visors, it took a second before James recognised Dana and Jake.

‘Get over here,
dingus
,’ Dana whispered. ‘There’s a bunch of Team A kids hiding out three doors up the road.’

James quietly opened the car door. He dragged himself across the multicoloured stains over the rear seat, being careful to keep his head below window height. He noticed Dana was covered in about twenty splats of different coloured paint.

‘You got nuked,’ James gasped. ‘Do any of them hurt?’

‘Not too bad, most of the hits were from long range,’ Dana said bitterly. ‘I’m gonna have so many bruises, I’ll look like a black man in the morning. All my eggs got smashed, too.’

‘Who got hold of you?’ James asked.

‘Nobody actually got me, they just got mashed up when I was rolling around on the floor being shot at.’

‘All but one of my eggs are cracked as well,’ James nodded. ‘So how come you ended up all the way out here?’

‘I tried to follow after you when you shat your pants and ran away,’ Dana explained. ‘Jumped down from a first-floor window and picked up Jake along the way.’

‘I didn’t shit my pants,’ James said indignantly. ‘I made a tactical decision to withdraw under heavy fire.’