Jakob doesn't answer—he's hesitating. The elevator worked last time, sort of. But will it work a second time?
"Come. I have an idea. I don't like it, but I don't see an alternative." He exits the stairwell and jogs to the tiny alcove containing the ubiquitous ice machine. He presses me into the corner and gives me his back, crouching just out of sight, the gun held awkwardly across his middle at a diagonal angle.
We wait.
"What's the plan?" I ask, hissing.
“Wait till they come out of the stairwell and shoot them, then run like hell."
"Oh."
The sound of a crashbar echoes through the hallway. Jakob peeks out, sinks back. Waits. Leans forward to peek again. "Four of them. Cover your ears."
I huddle back as deep into the corner as I can get, shrink into as small a ball as possible, and clap my hands over my ears. And even then, the noise of the firearm in the small space is beyond deafening.CRACKCRACKCRACK!—CRACKCRACKCRACK] Time slows. The rifle slams against Jakob's shoulder in slow motion, and I can see his finger squeeze and retract with each burst. Something craters the wall and rips a chunk out of the doorframe above Jakob's head, and then he's throwing himself backward inside the tiny alcove as a hail of bullets pepper the air where he'd been an instant before.
He recovers, catches his breath—I don't think I was supposed to notice the way he releases his death grip on the barrel and shakes his hand, or that his hand is trembling.
He exhales forcefully, re-grips the barrel, and then leans out and fires off a burst, ducks in, and pauses as rounds thud into the floor and doorframe.
The next time he leans out and fires off a burst, he lets out a triumphant grunt. "Last one. Come on, you ugly fuck." It's muttered, more to himself than to me. He leans against the inside of the splintered frame, breathing deeply and slowly. Licks his lips. Shakes out his trigger hand, wiggles a finger in his ear, wincing.
He twists out and fires a burst, only for his rifle to buck up abruptly, his last round going wild as he scrabbles back in with a yelp, one hand clapped to the side of his neck.
"Jakob!" I cry, leaving my corner and scrambling over to him.
"I'm fine," he snarls, glancing at his hand, which comes away painted red.
My medical expertise is limited to what one can learn from watching9-1-1,Chicago Med, andThe Pitt, but it looks to me like the round merely creased the outside of his neck.
The abrupt cessation of gunfire leaves a deafening silence in its wake.
Jakob frowns thoughtfully into the unexpected quiet, peeks out cautiously, one hand still pressed to his neck. "Huh. I guess I got him." He sounds surprised. "Come on. We need to get out of herefastbefore the cops or more of Pugli's thugs find us."
He rolls smoothly to his feet, glances at his hand—his neck is still bleeding, but a trickle rather than a flood. I follow hard on his heels, trying not to look at the four dead bodies.
Turns out I can'tnotlook. And they're not all dead. One, at least, is still alive, with red holes in his chest pumping blood everywhere. His breath whistles—my idiot brain helpfully supplies a memory of an episode ofChicago Medwhere the heroes deal with a similar wound. Too bad I don't want to help this man stay alive, even if I had the time or supplies, and I’m also quite well aware that watching medical shows on TV does not make me a doctor any more than an actor playing a doctor is one. His eyes are frightened as he glances up at me, gasping past the whistle.
I step over him.
The next body my eyes land on is dead, his throat a red ruin. My stomach revolts; again, seeing gore on TV doesn't prepare you for the grisly reality of it right there in front of you, seeing a real human with his eyes open and vacant, blood everywhere.
The third body is alive as well, but barely. He's writhing in agony, clutching his belly with one hand and his thigh with the other. A sickening, nauseating stench of fecal matter fills the air around him—pierced intestines, I would guess. But it's his thigh wound that's his death—the pool of blood under him is massive and spreading quickly. And even as I watch, his thrashing slows,and his hands fall away; his leg twitches one last time, and then he goes still, and his eyes stare sightlessly at nothing.
The last one is the worst. He's slumped against the door frame, the door partly closed on him, stuck against his legs. His head lolls to one side. His brain paints the wall, the floor, the carpet…
I lurch over him into the stairwell and promptly vomit onto the landing. Strong hands guide me down the stairs, but I barely see anything. White spots dance in my vision, occlude the edges. My chest is caught in a visegrip, and I can't pull in a breath. I stumble, trip on a stair. Gravity vanishes for a moment, and then I find my feet and manage to half-walk, half-stumble down the stairs. Jakob hip-checks the crashbar of the exit and hustles me through, an arm around my shoulders.
Instead of the Mercedes, however, he lifts me bodily into the front passenger seat of the idling black Ford Explorer the attackers drove, parked at an angle near the side exit, all four doors hanging open. Tossing the rifle into the back seat, he takes the bag of supplies from me, and it joins the gun on the back seat.
I expect him to take off like a bat out of hell, but he does the opposite, exiting the parking lot at a sedate, unremarkable pace. A line of squad cars with howling sirens and flashing lights streams past us on the main road, and then we're back on the freeway.
For a minute or two, silence hangs between us. I cast a look at Jakob; his neck is still seeping. "You're still bleeding."
He juts his chin in the direction of the glove box. "Is there a first aid kit in there?"
“WIth the stuff from Target in the back seat. One sec while I grab it.”
I twist in the seat and crawl—supremely awkwardly, and hyperaware of the enormous target that is my giant ass—between the seats to the back row, and then peek into the trunk. "Got it!" I snag the red plastic case with the white cross on it and crawl back to the front seat.
