Chapter Three
Nothing is Ever Simple
Amy lay crushed beneath one of Claire's companions, a good-looking Hispanic guy, who'd thrown her to the ground when the gunfire had started. "Holy shit!" she exclaimed, rolling out from beneath him. "What do we do?!"
"Get your stuff!" yelled the other person Claire and her brother had brought, a woman with chin-length golden-brown hair. They waited for a break in the gunfire, and then the woman and Chris got up, firing blindly out the window.
Shouts sounded from the rooms around them at the noise, and Amy prayed everyone was safe as she crawled on her hands and knees to the bed. She slid into the straps on her book bag, then clutched her duffle bag tightly, grabbed her purse from where it was hanging on the bunk bed, and flung its strap across her chest.
"Out the door!" Chris shouted, dropping back to the floor and crawling backwards as more shots started.
He reached up and turned the knob, sliding out on his stomach. He beckoned to Amy, who crawled towards him as Claire and the Hispanic guy got to their knees and shot out the window again.
She hadn't even noticed the shoulder holster Claire had been wearing when she'd hugged her. It was beyond bizarre to see Claire shooting; they'd gone to the range together, yes, but that was a lot different than being in the middle of a shoot-out and watching her best friend fire a .45 out their dormitory window.
Claire and the guy hit the deck at the same time, then began to crawl out the door behind the woman. Chris pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt and yelled, "Barry, trouble! Get ready to pick us up, now!"
Claire slammed the door shut, and they got up and started running. A few of the girls on the floor were opening their doors, wondering what the commotion was.
"Stay in your rooms!" Amy screamed instinctively. "Lock your doors!"
Amazingly enough, the whole lot of them did as they were told, a few of them shrieking at the sight of the guns in the hands of Claire's friends. "Amy, take this!" Claire shouted, as bullets began to tear up the door behind them. Claire handed her a nine-millimeter, which Amy took, hands shaking, and the five of them continued running for the stairs.
The stairwell door burst open suddenly, and five people dressed in black, wearing ski masks, poured into the hall, all of them holding assault rifles.
Boom!
Claire's gun went off, making Amy jump. She cast a startled glance at Claire and saw her taking careful aim. The gun fired four more times.
And just like that, all five of the guys were dead.
Claire ejected her empty clip like a robot, automatically slamming another one in. "Shit, the elevator's moving! Can hold twelve of them, easy!" the Hispanic guy shouted.
"Go, go, go, go!" Chris yelled, and they quickly stepped over the dead bodies and hurtled down the stairs.
It was all Amy could do to concentrate on not breaking her neck as they practically flew down the steps. All she could see was Claire, a cold glint in her eyes behind her sunglasses as she shot five people to death.
They arrived at the first floor just as machine-gun fire started to rain down from above, shot down through the gap in the center of the staircases. Chris barely paused as he shoved a key in the storeroom and turned it, then kept running.
"There they are!"
Claire hauled Amy back into the hallway before another burst of gunfire sounded. The glass front doors around the corner shattered. Someone shouted, "Move, move, move!" from the gunmen's direction, and, as one, Chris, Claire, and their two friends leapt around the corner and opened fire, the woman and Chris with shotguns, the Hispanic guy with an assault rifle, and Claire with her handgun.
Screams of agony sounded; they'd hit their mark. In the silence, footsteps could be heard pounding down the stairs.
"Run!" Chris shouted.
Amy forced herself not to look at what must be a pile of dead bodies as they dashed through the broken glass of the doors and out the second set of shattered glass.
A van was waiting for them in the fire lane, the door open. A good-looking guy about Amy's age was leaning out the sliding door, holding what looked like a Desert Eagle handgun.
"Leon!" Claire shouted, diving up into the van beside him and reaching down to help Amy up. Amy grabbed their hands, allowing herself to be pulled inside, then collapsing on the floor where the seat would've been. The door slammed shut behind Chris and the other two, right before several gunshots hit the van's barely-closed door and one of the windows cracked in a spidery mess.
"That… was… fun," said the Hispanic guy, breathing heavily.
"Shut… up… Carlos," wheezed the woman.
The guy called Leon looked down at the lot of them, sprawled on the floor. "See? Nothing is ever simple."
The van drove off at top speed, only slowing down to the speed limit when they reached the interstate. "No one back there," Chris said wearily.
Amy swallowed, struggling to focus, a million questions buzzing through her head. Judging by the names occasionally said in the van, and the vague memories she had of Claire describing her brother's work with the S.T.A.R.S. and news articles on the trouble in Raccoon, Amy began to make connections on the people in the van. Leon was obviously the "friend" who'd broken into their dorm—though, since Claire was holding his hand, Amy wondered if they were more than that. She remembered most of the others as S.T.A.R.S. members from Raccoon—Barry, Rebecca, and Jill, whom Claire had mentioned might end up as Chris's girl, though Jill was snuggled up against the Hispanic guy named Carlos. Chris actually seemed closer to Rebecca; she'd joined him on the far seat in the back, patting his leg, while he smiled at her and stretched his arm along the seat behind her in a not quite possessive manner.
No one spoke for a while, which was starting to tick Amy off, now that the initial shock was over. The group glanced at each other—well, minus Barry, he was driving and barely looked in the rearview mirror at them, a pensive look on his face—but no one seemed to want to say anything. Amy wanted answers, but she had no idea what to say. Claire kept looking at her and biting her lip, then looking away. Chris and Leon had their gaze focused on Claire worriedly. Rebecca glancing around the group, probably waiting for someone to say something, and Carlos and Jill just had this teenager-look on their faces that said "Now is not the time to make out. Damn."
Amy took a deep, shuddering breath. Obviously, these people had no idea what to say any more than she did, and she was going to have to initiate the conversation. "What… what's going on?" she said finally, feeling like an idiot.
The group in the van glanced at each other. Carlos shrugged. "You've been marked for assassination, lady."
The look on Amy's face was so startled and confused that a few of them smiled, but their grins were brief. "Well, here goes," Chris said, leaning forward. He began to tell her the whole story. He ended with introductions, pointing out each member of the group in the van.
When he finished, Amy's eyes were as wide as Coke cans. It was too much. "So, these people are going to hunt me down?"
"We hope not," Jill told her gently. "We think they'll give up on you, and move on to their next targets."
"They're going after other people?"
"Yes. Five others. Three have, um, already been dealt with," Leon said.
"Are… are you going to rescue them too?" Amy asked.
"Hopefully," Claire replied. She hesitated. "And we were hoping you'd help us."
***
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