Through the Fire and the Flames

Chapter 4

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Jerry paled as he and William walked around the cavern, looking for more of the hostages that the soldiers had taken. The dead body of his friend Victor lay lifeless, and bloody, right in front of him, bullet holes all in his head and chest. Will, as Jerry started to nickname William, was peeking around a corner ahead of them, while Jerry was silently crying over Victor's body.

"He was a good friend and emeber of our resistance. Victor, you will be missed, and I'll personally make sure we take the emprire down..." Jerry stood up and followed after Will, who began to go around the corner, seeing no one there. "Hey, we need to go left at the next intersection if you want to go to the lower levels of the cave."

"Okay, but we still need to get some more ammo so I can keep shooting. I've only got 3 clips, and only part of the 3rd one. I think," William said as he got to the intersection. "Where's any type of armory?"

"There is none, we don't use weapons often. It's just that way for us."

"Oh, I see..." Well, that makes thinkgs that much harder for me...

William got to the intersection and followed Jerry's advice to go to the lower floors. The cave got a lot darker, and the lighting became much more sparse, making it hard to see much of anything. "Why is there no lighting here?"

"This is the control level, and we only lit the main control room to make it harder to get around here for intruders, but I think the soldiers have infrared vision in this area now," Jerry explained. William nodded and continued along the darkened path.

William spotted another hostage, and 3 soldiers guarding her. Quickly William saw the guards had infrared vision goggles on and each had also a silenced sub machine gun with them. William shot the first in the head, blood splattering on the others goggles, rendering them blind in the darkness, and he used this time to shoot them in the heads also, making sure not to hit the goggles on their heads. The hostage screamed in pure fright, and attempted to run away, right towards William and Jerry.

"Hey Cicilia! It me! Jerry, along with a friend. Get out of here NOW!" Jerry directed the young female anthro, and she left quickly. "They probably heard the shots and her scream, so we'd better watch out even more..."

William rushed into the room and killed another guard before he had the time to wipe the blood off his goggles and the guard fell instantly. Apparently he was hiding from the view of the room entrance. William picked up the goggles from the one guard who didn't get blood on his googles, the first one he shot, and grabbed the gun he held, the silenced SJ-62 9MM SMG.

SJ-62's were common for attack teams, and William picked up the remaining clips on each guard. This left William with 7 fresh clips and 3 partially used ones, which he loaded in the empty clip to make it where he had 9 fresh clips and one clip with 5 bullets left. In other words, he had 275 bullets for the SJ-62, and approximately 14 for his Jerrsion .44.

He wiped off the remaining blood on the goggles left and gave one set to Jerry and kept the other 2 for later use. "I think the control room is to the left now... It's the only room with a door in the way, but I don't have the keycard to the door. Only Wes and a few others have it. I didn't see Victor having his keycard, so one of these guards have it here somewhere."

"At least that helps out..." William replied as he searched the dead guards. And sure enough, he found a keycard on one of them. "Ah, here it is..."

William let Jerry lead the way to the room, and he quickly found the room using the IR goggles. Inserting the keycard, William prepared himself for what lay next to the other side of the door. The door split open and William ducked behind the wall, checking for voices. Oddly, he heard none. He stepped in the room, and only saw what looked like a normal room. At least one for being in a cave and being lit for once. "Is anyone here?"

William's voice projected back at him and Jerry, who entered after Wiliam had gone in without any resistance. "Why's no one here? I'd think they'd have at least one or two more hostages in here... What with there being 3 guards for the door and a single hostage."

"I think there's something here. You hear that beeping?" William turned towards the source of the noise, and walked towards wherever it was.

"Uh, what beeping?" Jerry asked in confusion.

"Stop, and listen!"

Beep, beep, beep, beep...

"Oh, that beeping... wonder what it is?"

William facepalmed. "This is the lowest section of the facility, right?"

"Uh, duh..." Jerry looked at William weirdly, "What?"

"You know what that means if there's beeping in the bottom of a cave that had only a few hostages?" William attempted to get Jerry to catch his point, but Jerry didn't understand.

"How should I know?"

"It means that... THERE'S A BOMB ABOUT TO BLOW!" William yelled at Jerry, who now understood fully of the situation. "Move!"

Jerry didn't need to be told twice, he ran for his life. "AAAAHHHHHHHHH!"

"You don't need to yell when you run... in fact, that makes you slower!" William shouted to Jerry and Jerry stopped his yell.

Behind them, the bomb in the control room beeped 4 more times, and then it exploded violently, causing the room to collapse, and the collapse began to spread into the hallway, and to follow the path it encased. And that exactly where William and Jerry were.

The cave was catching to the duo as they rounded a corner back to the main floor, and was only 20 feet from crushing them, adn was catching them easily. The entrance to the cave was still over a hundred feet away, and their hopes to make it out the way were shattered when the door to the cave shut automatically from a rockslide that was triggered by the explosion.

"No!" William shouted at the rocks that now blocked the exit. They reached the end of the tunnel, and turned to meet the impending doom of the rocks...