Lies(49)

It doesn’t particularly surprise me when Helene appears at my side with a rifle and a bag in one hand, and my bulletproof vest in the other. There’s no real point in either of us hiding down in the basement. Archie’s coming at us with everything he’s got. Everyone needs to be up here helping if we’re to stand a chance of coming out of this alive. Even if it’s just wrapping wounds and shooting in the bad guys’ general direction.

“You forgot this.” She drops the vest beside me.

“Thanks.”

Carefully, Helene raises her head just enough to check on the view out the kitchen window. “There’re dead bodies all over my lawn.”

“There’s also a hole in your living room wall,” I say.

“Whatever will the neighbors think? Make that bandage tighter, Betty.” She watches my hands closely, finally shaking her head once more at the chaos all around us. The woman is calm with a touch of irritated. Like someone interrupted her tea party or something. “Not that I’m surprised by all this. Archie always did have a habit of taking things too far. Not a subtle bone in his body. Also, he’s afraid of us. We’ve proven rather difficult to kill up until now.”

An explosion shakes the left side of the house where the bedrooms are. Thankfully, all the windows were boarded earlier. Another roar comes from the same direction a moment later. Guess the claymores are doing their job.

How a neighbor hasn’t heard and called the local police, I have no idea. Perhaps the cops will scare off the attackers. A girl can only hope. But the most likely scenario is Archie and his gang killing innocent people before concentrating on attacking us once again.

“Sounds like a few someones tried to approach through one of your rose gardens.” Bear smiles. Even in the low lighting, his face is pale from blood loss and pain. “Good work surrounding the house with thorny things, by the way. Always useful for slowing people down.”

Helene just nods, checking over her rifle. The bag she brought up with her is full of weaponry. You can’t say the woman didn’t come prepared. The bang of various pistols is overtaken by the ongoing bark of the submachine gun Fox is wielding. It’s loud as all hell. Makes it almost impossible to hear a damn thing apart from a long, suspended tone in my ears.

“Okay, all finished.” I have to almost shout for Bear to hear, even though he’s right beside me.

Bear pulls himself up into a crouch, immediately putting weight on the leg. Testing it, I guess. He grimaces, then nods. We’re done here.

I wipe my bloody hands on my jeans before struggling into the vest. At least a small percentage of me is now bulletproof. Truth is, it’s no easier being in a firefight for a second time than it was the first time. All of the noise and action and fear of death are as bad as they ever were. God, I hope we don’t all die. A metallic taste fills my mouth, dust and gunpowder everywhere.

“Time to get back to work,” says Bear. “Pick a position that covers you with as much wall as possible and keep your heads down whenever you’re not shooting.”

Then, with those words of wisdom, he’s gone.

“Betty, follow me,” yells Helene over the sounds of war, crawling toward the kitchen door with its shattered glass and upended kitchen table blocking half of the view and providing us with cover. As per Bear’s instructions, there’s solid wall on either side of the entrance for us to also hide behind and Fox is alone holding off this side of the house. The woman has chosen well. “You take the other side. We can cover for each other when we have to reload.”

It’s also a solid plan, which is more than I have to offer. I summon up the will to peek around the wall, taking in the back garden.

For a moment, it’s hard to make out anything in the fading light, until a muzzle flashes like a tiny firefly in the dark, bullets whining around me. More adrenaline floods my system, the fight-or-flight mechanism setting off all my internal alarms. I want to huddle into a ball and hide. Hell, I want to run. But I refuse to give in to the fear.

Still, I’m back behind the bricks before any thought of shooting even crosses my mind. The gun’s shaking in my hands. But we have to win this. Everything has to be all right. And while I know logically Thom can look after himself, not being able to see him scares the crap out of me. He has to be okay. I’m not up for dealing with anything else.

I focus on keeping my elbows steady. A trick an old florist once taught me on my first day of real paid work, when my hands were shaking from nerves. Different stakes back then, but it worked then, and it works now. A bit, at least. Enough for me to lean out and fire a volley of shots in the general direction of the muzzle flash. There’s no time for guilt or any of that bullshit. If I kill someone, so be it; they came at me first.

Helene and I take turns shooting at anything moving out in the twilight. Not sure I hit any actual people; my aim isn’t that great. But we have to be slowing them down, at least.

As my eyes adjust to the gloom, I can see she wasn’t lying about all the bodies littering her lawn. With all of the rose bushes and ornate hedges, it’s like a garden party gone wrong. Psychotically so. Archie apparently brought a small army with him, and bit by bit we’re mowing them down. In the gray-and-violet sky, the first star twinkles. With something so everyday ordinary in sight, it’s hard to keep a grip on how we all got into this mess.

We don’t bother to reload. Instead, we grab fresh weapons out of her bag of tricks sitting between us.