The Gender War (The Gender Game #4)(69)

Tim and Jay nodded gravely. I hoped, for all of our sakes, that they were taking this seriously.

“Does everyone know what they’re doing and where they are supposed to be?” Viggo asked the rest of the group.

One by one they nodded, the worry, fear, and disagreement draining from their faces as they turned their minds to the task at hand. I bent over, grabbing two extra clips and two rifles from the well-stocked bag Ms. Dale had brought with her. Slinging the straps for both guns over my head, I gave them a tight nod and headed right—opposite of the way the boys had gone. I wished I could be closer to them… I wished I were going in their place… but it wasn’t to be.

Viggo followed me as I headed down the hall, heading deeper into the house and its catacomb of elegant, empty corridors. I paused when I reached the turnoff that would lead me to my set of stairs. His were straight ahead.

“If I don’t get to say it after,” I began to say in a hoarse whisper. I got no further than that—Viggo grabbed me around the waist, pulling me tight against him, his lips on mine, pressing hard, kissing me as if his life depended on it. I couldn’t help lifting my hands to his shoulders and kissing him back, pressing myself into him, until I wasn’t sure where he ended and I began.

And then, too quickly, it was over. He breathed a soft, “Good luck,” into my ear and disappeared down the hallway toward his stairwell. I watched him go for a moment, my cheeks flushed and my lips tingling from his kiss, and then pulled myself together.

I set up at the stairway, lying flat on my belly at the top of the landing, a few feet back so I could see down the narrow passage with a little cover from the angle. These stairs weren’t as dangerous as the main staircase, and I felt a moment of worry for Owen, hoping that he had set up well, that he wouldn’t catch a bullet as a result of all the open space. Mine was a tighter space, partially because it was intended for the servants, partially because it wrapped around. I had a clearer line of sight through the wooden bannister from this angle. The advantage of being able to set up like this, beyond the defensive position, was that, when I braced myself and my gun on the floor, all my left hand had to do was pull the trigger. If the setup had been different, I realized, I was the one who would have had to stay in safety with the refugees.

I’d barely settled into place when I heard the creak of a floorboard below me and to the left. I pulled my rifle up to my shoulder, pulling the bipod legs down to stabilize it, and then waited, my heart thudding hard against my ribcage. For a moment, I considered the fact that I was about to kill a bunch of women, Matrians, my countrywomen, without even giving them a chance to defend themselves.

Until I remembered Warden Nelee’s clinical voice as she handed out the order. These women had all agreed to kill innocents in cold blood. I exhaled slowly as I heard a muffled thud on the steps, and I used my thumb to click the rifle over from auto fire to single shot. When a brown-capped head came into view, I gazed down the sights, inhaled, then exhaled slowly, pulling the trigger.

My shot caught her right below the ear, appearing as a deceptively small red spot that resulted in a splatter of blood on the wall opposite. Her body dropped with a thud, and I heard a gasp, followed by, “Hostiles on the stairwells!”

Then the shooting began. I flinched when bullets whizzed past me and hit the stairs nearby, sending shards of wood flying, and I ducked down as they fired round after round. When the shots paused, I could hear them scrambling as they exchanged fresh guns and bodies for those with expended magazines. I quickly sighted down the stairs again, pulling the trigger once, twice, three times—gritting my teeth when I caught another one in her shoulder.

She screamed, her cries carrying up the stairwell, and didn’t stop until I put another bullet in her head—just over her temple. Then she slumped down on the steps, her thrashing suddenly dying out. More panicked shouting, and I rolled out of the way just as one of them leapt over the dead to the next landing, the barrel of her gun rising up toward me.

I rolled back to a kneeling position, somehow keeping hold of my rifle, and fired at her. But from this position, the shots were too wild, and she dove back down the stairs, wary but uninjured.

Then the cycle began again. They fired from below, afraid to come farther because of the wide range my fire covered. I ducked back, then aimed and took down as many of them as I could while they reloaded or switched guards. It didn’t take them long to become more cautious. They weren’t advancing, but I hadn’t yet taken out enough of them for them to halt the attack, either.

It didn’t feel like the battle had been going on very long, yet it also felt like it’d been going on forever. Fear pounded through my chest and burst in my veins, mixing with the adrenaline, the rage, the cold-blooded calculations that were telling me I couldn’t hold out for much longer. There were a lot of them. I didn’t know how I hadn’t been hit yet. I’d been using my bullets very sparingly, and I’d brought two guns on purpose, but what about when I had to reload?

Just then, the floor shuddered under my feet. Not hard enough to be an earthquake, but enough that the very walls of my stairway seemed to tremble. I clutched my rifle tighter as I heard thunderous footsteps approach, and then the sounds of panic and anger erupting into mayhem. Women yelled and fired downstairs, the flash of the shots echoing on the walls below. I heard an inhuman snarl, followed by screams, thuds, and the sound of wood and bones breaking, punctuated by screams of panic that turned into begging and then to pain. Then, silence.