Firepower, John Cutter [best summer reads .txt] 📗

Vince fired at the tango with the Glock, pumped the shotgun, and fired again. The four men lay still, sprawled half on top of one another, twitching in death. As he thumbed shells from the side-saddle for reload, he recalled that he’d used a tactical shotgun in combat in one other fight, against a gang running guns to Boko Haram in Nigeria. Both times, it had been a handy weapon in close quarters.

He stepped carefully over the red-splashed, oozing bodies, ignoring the rank smell of shattered intestines, and went a few steps down, careful to watch the stairwell below. Blood splashed from the higher stairs; thin red waterfalls. As he went, Vince mentally reviewed the second floor: library, video center, conference room, extra storage. Nothing he needed to do here except fight his way through.

He got to the bottom, turned toward the door to the second floor — and a man stuck his plump, gaping face around the doorframe. Vince shot the NeoNazi in from about seven feet away. Blood and brains splashed and the man fell heavily to the floor.

Vince stopped, pumping the shotgun and listening. It was quiet, now, on the second floor. He hunkered down, grabbed the dead man by the back of the neck, and dragged him across the floor, the process making a big red smear on the concrete like something in a finger painting. He transferred the shotgun to his left hand, took hold of the dead man by the back of the belt, flipped his gurgling body around, and carried it close to the door, sticking the remains of the guy’s head out into the hallway at waist level. An AR-15 rattled from the left and what remained of the corpse’s head disintegrated. Vince dropped the body and waited, transferring the shotgun to his other hand.

“I think I got him!” someone yelled.

Vince stepped into the hallway and fired the shotgun at the man with the AR-15 near the library door. The militiaman screamed and staggered. He didn’t catch the full load because he was about fifty feet away, so Vince took the shotgun into his left hand as with his right he pulled the Desert Eagle and fired, shooting the swaying militiaman through the heart. His target went down — and so did a second man running out of the library, Vince’s shot cutting through his neck, the .50 round tearing away so much the head flopped over, held by a rag of skin and flesh, before the body dropped.

Vince turned to the right, firing the Desert Eagle instantly at another man stepping out of the video room doorway. The shot struck the NeoNazi in his right shoulder, the powerful impact spinning him around so that Vince’s next round took him through the back.

Vince stepped back through the doorway to the stairwell. Softly singing “All Along the Watchtower”, he reloaded the Desert Eagle and then the shotgun. He holstered the big pistol, stuck the barrel of the shotgun out into the hallway to see if it might make someone fire.

No response. He eased to the right against the wall by the door, peering down the hall to the left. He saw no one except the two dead men. He repeated the process on the other side of the door, looking right. Someone was ogling, down the hall — and Vince snapped a shot at him with the Mossberg. A chunk of doorframe vanished but he missed his target. The guy pulled back, yelling, “Oh shit!”

Vince turned, started down the stairs to the next floor. A startled man — Andy Kayson, his name was — stood on the next landing below with an AR-15 pointed at the floor. He was tanned, but for his perpetually red cheeks. His blond surfer-style hair was combed straight back, his neck decorated with Maori tattoos.

Kayson dropped the gun and raised his hands. “Don’t shoot!”

“Hello, Andy,” Vince said. “You just made what might be the first wise decision of your life. How many men down on the first floor?”

“Fuck, I don’t know — maybe four or five. The General’s got most of them organized out front. He thinks he’s gonna get you when you come out. He’s thinking of calling in the sheriff.”

“So Woodbridge is in with you guys?”

“I guess. He’s chummy with the General. What — what you going to do to me?”

“Depends on what you do now. You know the combination to the armory?”

“No — Wynn said it was something about ‘Crystal Night’ or something like that. Didn’t hear nothing else.”

“I see.” Kristallnacht, Vince guessed. Named after broken glass from all the Jewish-owned stores when the Nazi pogrom was carried out on the nights of November ninth and tenth, in 1938. Was that the combination? 9101138?

“Okay,” Vince said. “Now drop the Glock too. Carefully.”

Gingerly, Kayson took his Glock out of its holster and dropped the handgun on the stairs.

As Vince spoke to Kayson, part of his mind was listening for the sounds of Brethren on the floors above. There were a few still up there. So far, he heard no one coming. “Now head on down the stairs to the first floor, Andy. Slowly. Keep your hands up. Don’t run, or I’ll shoot you dead.”

Licking his lips, Kayson turned around and started down the stairs.

As he followed, Vince paused long enough to pick up the Glock and stick it in his waistband. Then he joined Kayson at the bottom of the stairs. First floor, barracks, storage for food and medicine — and the armory. There was a separate stairway to the basement, down a short corridor.

“Now step on out, and yell at your friends not to shoot you!”

“I don’t know, they… they’re pretty nervous.”

“Oh, come on, they’re not stupid enough to shoot one of their Brethren. Go on, or I’ll shoot you myself.”

Kayson took two