Apocalyptic Pirates 4, page 17
“It’s the waiting,” I whispered. “That’s the hardest part.”
She nodded and tightened her grip on her gun.
We were silent again.
The wind moaned and rattled the door in the frame. The dark shadows in the lobby seemed to shift and exhale as though moved by an invisible force, or as though the wind outside was strong enough to penetrate the hotel walls and disturb the atmosphere inside.
I strained my eyes into the darkness.
The front of the lobby was made up of lots of small panes of glass set in a lattice framework that formed the door along with floor-to-ceiling windows. From our vantage point, we could see the entire stretch of the path that led up to here from the beach. The palmetto trees made short, stubby shapes in the darkness. The rain gleamed on the pebbles in the path. Lightning flashed and lit up the silver, rain-drenched night.
And I saw something dart between the palmettos.
I grabbed Letty’s arm.
Her breath was a ragged whisper.
Thunder growled, and when it ebbed, I heard the crunching of boots over the path.
Shit, it was so chaotic out there, I doubted anyone upstairs had been able to get a clear view of the approaching cartel members.
Then a gunshot shattered one of the panes of glass in the door.
Letty yelped and covered her head as the glass exploded inward. I kicked my foot through one of the lower window panes so I’d have a clear shot, and then I dragged Letty down with me onto her stomach. More bullets whistled through the night and smashed into the glass door, and there was a discordant clang as one of them hit the piano.
I shoved the barrel of my gun out through the broken part of the window and fired a couple of shots into the night. Letty hunkered down next to me and shoved her gun through the gap next to mine.
I couldn’t see well enough to properly aim, but then lightning flashed again, and I saw the shapes of men in the bushes. I aimed, pulled the trigger, and heard a yell rise up from the gang as one of them went down.
“Yes,” I gritted out.
Finally, shots cracked out from upstairs, and there was another shout from the men outside. And then a figure rushed out of the rain and ran straight for the hotel’s front door.
I fired on instinct, and I was close enough that it didn’t matter that my aim wasn’t the best in the dark. The bullet smashed into the guy’s leg, and he toppled over with a howl.
Two more figures sprang out of the darkness and dragged him back into the palmettos, and Letty sent a volley of bullets after them.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I shouted. “Make sure your shots really count, otherwise we’re just giving away our positions.”
“Shit,” Letty ground out. “I’m not a good enough shot for this.”
“You’ll be fine,” I encouraged her. “Slow down, take a breath, and only fire when you’re pretty damn certain you’ve got a clear target.”
“Can you hold the door by yourself for five minutes?” Letty’s voice was high-pitched with the tension that I could feel thrumming through her body. “I’m going to look around and see if there are any extra weapons I can use.”
“I don’t think that’s the best idea,” I warned her.
“If I get another weapon,” she pointed out. “Then that means there are two guns for you to use. You’re a way better shot than me, Drew.”
Reluctantly, I knew that she was partly right.
“Letty, this is kind of a situation where ranged weapons are literally the only useful thing,” I said and quickly scanned the path outside. “That seems to have warned them off for now, but–”
Letty leaped to her feet before I could finish my explanation and ran to the lobby desk.
“Wait!” I hissed.
I glanced quickly over at her, but then movement in the trees outside made my whip my attention back to the front.
It was difficult to make out what was happening through the driving rain, but then shots rang out from somewhere else in the hotel. I ground my teeth and wished I knew what the fuck was going on. Then I remembered the radio, and I jammed the “call” button.
“Guys,” I rapped out. “What’s happening?”
“Nothing major,” came Shannon’s voice from the walkie-talkie. “We got a few guys trying the back door, but we sent them off. What about up the front?”
“I keep seeing glimpses of them,” I said. “I still can’t tell how many there are, but I shot at least two.”
“Nice.” Shannon’s voice crackled through the speaker.
The panes of glass above my head suddenly exploded as the gang members outside unleashed a volley of gunfire. Shards of glass pattered down all around me, and a gust of rain and wind swooped in through the broken windows and howled through the lobby.
“Letty,” I yelled. “I could really use another shooter right now!”
“I’m coming!” she shouted back. “Two seconds!”
I risked glancing around to see where she was and saw she was rummaging through the shelves and drawers behind the lobby desk.
“What the hell are you looking for?” I shouted.
I pressed myself against the carpet and squinted through the sights of my rifle. I could just make out the shapes of what could be gunmen in the palmettos, and I carefully took aim.
My shot sent one of the figures lurching back.
“Fucking yes,” I hissed.
But my victory was a small one, and more shots cracked out. They shattered the glass in the door and window, and I heard more glass breaking upstairs where they must have been aiming at the upper floor windows. I couldn’t tell how many gunmen there were, but they weren’t backing down.
I peered through the rain, and I realized that the group was dividing in two. There must have been about five gunmen still keeping their shots concentrated on the door and effectively pinning us down, but there was another knot of men who had split off from the others and were getting closer to the hotel.
Then Letty was suddenly by my side.
“Drew,” she panted. “I’ve got a flamethrower.”
“You’ve got a fucking what?” I yelped.
“Here.” She showed me a can of spray deodorant and a lighter. “I found them behind the desk.”
She threw herself onto her stomach and wriggled underneath the grand piano to the bottom of the door. The glass was still intact here, but she grabbed her rifle and broke out the bottom pane with the base of it.
“That’s really fucking dangerous,” I gritted out.
“Everything right now is really fucking dangerous,” she retorted.
We didn’t have any more time to argue about it because at that moment, the gang descended on the hotel door.
I was firing without pausing for breath. My ears were full of the sounds of rain, wind, and gunfire. My heart was pounding in my chest, and my face was drenched from the wind and rain, but I fired shot after shot at the mass of men attempting to break into the hotel.
They fell, some from my bullets, and some from bullets fired from upstairs, but there were too many of them.
One of them vaulted over the body of his fallen colleague and grabbed hold of the door handles.
For one split second that lasted for an eternity, I saw his face looming up out of the darkness with his features briefly lit by the lightning. His eyes were wild, and his teeth were a white flash in the black scruff of his beard.
I tried to twist my rifle around, but the angle of the broken pane against the length of the barrel was too extreme, and I couldn’t have hit him this close. I tried to throw myself backward for a better angle, but there were more gunmen rushing out of the shadows, and I had to swing the rifle around and aim for them.
“Letty!” I yelled. “Whatever you’re planning to do, now would be a good time to do it!”
There were more men coming, and they ducked and dodged through the bullets to reach the front door. They slammed their hands against the remaining sheets of glass and lifted their guns to smash through the door.
Then I heard the scratch of a lighter.
“Die, you son of a bitch,” Letty shouted.
A plume of orange and white flame burst out from the bottom of the door. It wrapped the first gunman’s ankles in a garland of fire, and it took him a few seconds to realize what was happening, but in those precious moments, Letty sent out another rasping tongue of flame. It hit the rest of the gunmen and roared around their boots and sneakers.
A panicked scream went up from the men.
They fell over themselves in their hurry to get away from the door and ran away shouting and yelling down the path.
The radio crackled, and Kemelia’s astonished voice came over the speaker.
“Holy shit,” she shouted. “Was that a flamethrower?”
“Sure was,” I announced, and I gave Letty a delighted grin. “Letty’s invention. Deodorant and a lighter.”
“That’s actually genius.” All the static couldn’t hide the sudden leap of excitement in Kemelia’s voice. “All channels, all channels. This is Kemelia. Did you catch that? Did you see what just happened?”
“Something about a flamethrower?” Shannon’s voice came through the speaker.
“Anyone without a long-range weapon, raid the rooms,” Kemelia ordered. “Hairspray, deodorant, booze, any flammable cans that you can find. There’ll be a box of matches in all of the bedrooms and in the kitchen. Does anyone not know how to set the spray alight?”
“We’ll show them,” Ray’s voice crackled through the radio. “This takes me right back to my Civil Rights days.”
“Be careful, guys,” I warned. “This stuff is dangerous.”
“Pshaw,” Ray scoffed. “This is kids’ stuff.”
What was it with old guys being so thrilled about the possibility of blowing things up?
I kept my gun trained carefully on the clump of palmetto trees where I’d last seen movement. It seemed like Letty’s flamethrower had discouraged the gang for now, but they were still out there and probably already plotting their next move.
And it turned out that we didn’t have to wait too long for that at all.
The palmettos shook and rustled, and at first I thought it was the wind. But then lightning flashed again, and I saw the brilliant, white light gleam on the barrels of the gang members’ guns. That split second was all the warning I got before the ragged remnants of the gang suddenly charged out of the bushes yelling at the top of their lungs.
I unleashed shot after shot into their midst and picked off as many as I could before they reached the door. The gang had clearly decided to throw everything they had into one last rush, and while seven of them dropped like flies, a few of them were quick enough to reach the door.
Letty’s flamethrower rasped out its deadly flame again, and the men fell back screaming.
I saw a few of them running out of my visual range and attempting to go around to the back, but then more shots rang out, and I knew that Shannon and Dia must be taking care of them.
There was the smashing of glass in the lounge behind us, but it was instantly followed by another rasping roar, and then a hideous shriek as someone else’s flamethrower found its target.
Something heavy fell from an upstairs window and thudded right onto the head of one of the men. He fell like a rock, and the men around him darted around and tried to figure out where the missile had come from.
Another heavy object thunked down onto the men, and then another, and another. Vases, lamps, a footstool, and a bedside table all rained down onto the gang members’ heads. A vodka bottle with a flaming rag tucked into the neck streamed a line of fire behind it and shattered in the middle of the group of men. Fire leaped up in all directions, and the men screamed and scattered.
“Holy shit!” I laughed a little manically.
The tides were definitely turning in our favor now.
From somewhere upstairs, I heard a whoop of triumph from the maker of the homemade Molotov cocktail. I was going to guess it was either Ray or James.
I was on my last magazine, but even as I squeezed the trigger and felt it click on empty, I knew we’d won.
We’d set almost half of the gang on fire in one way or another, and the others had either been shot with bullets or injured by the furniture thrown down by the defenders upstairs. Most of them were hightailing it through the palmettos back the way they’d come. There was one guy left who was shouting furiously at them, presumably yelling at them to come back and try again.
Lightning cracked, and thunder roared, and I saw the pale oval of his face lit up by the storm. His eyes were gleaming, and there was a cut streaming blood on his forehead and another open wound on his huge bicep. But he wasn’t backing down, and as if in slow motion, I saw him whirl around and raise his gun for one last attack on the hotel.
I grabbed Letty’s rifle, slammed the butt into my shoulder, and pressed my eye against the sights. The guy filled up the entire viewpoint, and I trained the sights on his forehead.
“Die, you scumbag bastard,” I breathed.
I pulled the trigger.
The guy’s head burst like a melon under the force of the shot, and he crumpled to the ground. He lay there with the rain hammering down on his lifeless body. No one came to drag his body away. His men had all left.
We’d won.
The radio crackled into life.
“Drew, did you see that?” It was Ally from upstairs. “They’ve gone! We did it!”
“Yeah.” My voice was hoarse, and my jaw was stiff where I hadn’t realized how hard I’d been gritting my teeth. “We did it.”
A cheer sounded from upstairs.
“Drew!” Kemelia shouted through the radio. “Drew, it’s done! It’s over!”
I nodded to myself as I tried to catch my breath, but then I turned and looked into the darkness behind me.
“Everyone okay?” I hollered.
A resounding cheer of relief answered me back, and I chuckled as I took that to mean everyone on my level was perfectly fine.
I dragged myself to my feet and offered Letty a hand to pull her out from underneath the piano. Our feet crunched on broken glass, and the wind moaned through the shattered holes in the door.
“It’s over,” I sighed.
Letty threw her arms around me, and I buried my face in her hair. She smelled strongly of deodorant and burnt cloth, but underneath the smells of battle I could just about make out the sweet perfume of the coconut oil in her hair. The scent of it steadied me, and as Letty and I gazed into each other’s eyes, a slow grin spread across my face.
“We fucking did it,” I said.
“I know,” Letty breathed. “I can’t believe it.”
I pressed my lips to hers and tasted the rain and sweat on her mouth. Letty gave a little moan and nudged deeper into the kiss. The adrenaline of everything that had just happened was coursing through me, and I wanted to laugh, and shout, and shoot my gun into the air like a lunatic.
Footsteps sounded on the staircase behind us, and as Letty and I broke apart, Ally came thundering down the stairs.
“Oh, my god, you guys!” she squealed. “Letty, that flamethrower idea was genius!”
Ally caught Letty’s hands in hers and jumped up and down with pure glee at what had just happened. Letty laughed and jumped with her, and then Ally darted in and placed a loud kiss on my cheek.
“Hey,” I said teasingly. “Don’t I get better than that? I helped save the day, too.”
“Oh, if you insist,” Ally giggled, and she threw her arms around my neck and captured my mouth with hers. We kissed voraciously, and then Ally broke away to grab Letty’s hands again. “I can’t believe you did that!”
“That was so fucking cool!” Shannon yelled as she and Dia came running into the lobby.
They both crowded around Letty, and all four of them grabbed each other’s hands and jumped up and down in excitement and booby delight.
Jesus, I thought women only did that sort of thing in movies.
I would have joined in with them if I hadn’t been quite so manly, but I was content to just stand by and grin at their antics.
“Drew,” Kemelia called as she came running down the stairs. “Anyone hurt down here?”
“No.” I shook my head. “No casualties, just the broken door and windows down here. What about everybody upstairs?”
“Not a scratch, just broken windows that we can patch up,” she replied and stared out intensely into the dark storm. The wind sent in a gush of raindrops through the broken glass, and she screwed up her face. “I don’t think they’ll be coming back here tonight.”
“Me, neither,” I agreed. “But we should stay vigilant all the same.”
“That’s what I was thinking.” She nodded. “I’m going to set a watch at the front and back doors down here.”
“Count me in,” I told her.
“Thanks.” She sighed and ran her hand over her shaved head. “Well. That was a lot of excitement for one evening.”
“Cheer up,” I said dryly. “Now comes the extremely boring part: The cleanup.”
Kemelia snorted a laugh. “Yeah, that’s going to be fun for everyone.”
“We should also scout the area outside for fallen weaponry and ammo, even survivors,” Shannon pointed out.
“Good thinking,” Kemelia agreed. “This is going to be a bit of a haul I think.”
Despite Kemelia’s cynicism, we managed to get the cleaning up done in a relatively short time.
Kemelia sent a group of four out to brave the rain and search for useful weaponry and the like outside, and then she divided the rest of us into teams to tackle each room where there had been damage done. We armed ourselves with brooms, dustpans, and trash bags, and with everyone working together, we managed to get the hotel serviceable again.
Someone ran out to one of the supply sheds in the hotel garden and came back with a couple of tarpaulins, and with the help of a nail gun and an obscene amount of duct tape, we managed to secure them over the broken gaps in the lobby door and windows. There were some smashed windows upstairs, and a cracked pane in the lounge, which we covered with plastic trash bags and duct tape. It wasn’t going to win any awards for style, but it got the job done okay.
