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Her heart was now pounding in her chest, bouncing around her rib cage like a tennis ball ricocheting around inside of a tiny closet. How far back was it to the cabin? She couldn’t remember, exactly, but she didn’t think it was that far.
Something snapped under her foot, a twig or some such thing, and she froze. Griz stopped with her, crouching down even further, keeping his pistol pointed off to their left in the direction of the unseen enemy that stalked them.
After a few terribly long, drawn out moments, Griz nodded to her and they got moving again. Becca kept looking over to her left, trying to see where Death’s Head was, but the trees and other foliage was too thick.
She wasn’t sure if it would have been better to see them or not. If she couldn’t see them, then they probably couldn’t see her, but if she could see them, then at least she would know exactly where they were and what they were doing. Just staring out at a screen of green and brown was driving her insane with imagined possibilities of what was out there past the branches and leaves.
Finally, the cabin came into view and she had to restrain herself from breaking out into a run. It felt like she should, like she should sprint that last hundred yards and then they could escape this crazy situation, but she knew they had to keep their quiet, steady, and maddeningly slow pace.
It wasn’t just that they had to make it back to the cabin. They had to get to Griz’s motorcycle, get it started, and get out of there before Death’s Head could react.
They had gotten even closer, so close that Becca thought she could hit the cabin with a rock, when Griz suddenly pulled her by the arm and stood up straight.
“Shit,” he said. “They see us. Run. Run!”
Her heart now started beating overtime, pounding out a rapid staccato that matched the pace of her feet as she raced through the trees top speed, dragged along by Griz’s hand. She threw a quick look to the left, and thought she might have seen something quickly moving through the trees over there, but it happened so fast that she couldn’t tell.
Please please please, just let us get to the motorcycle in time, she thought, and then she actually saw the motorcycle and her heart fell out of her.
Griz’s motorcycle was there, right in front of the cabin, right where it should be. But it was lying on its side and she could see that the front tire had been slashed.
What do we do now?she had time to think, before Griz dragged her at a sprint for the front door of the cabin.
They barely made it before a massive hailstorm of gunfire erupted from the trees. Becca had never heard anything so loud; the gunfire seemed to shake the air as they leapt the last few feet and Griz yanked the door open with his free hand.
Bullets hit the doorjamb just as they crossed the threshold, sending little wooden splinters flying everywhere. Becca reflexively covered her face with her hands to avoid having any of the splinters fly into her eyes, and Griz dragged her down to the kitchen floor as more bullets smashed through the window and the walls.
For a second, Becca was shocked at how the incoming bullets punched right through the cabin walls to slam into everything in the kitchen; the refrigerator, the drawers, the stove, everything. Then she remembered back to how Skinny had shot Griz through the doorway of the motel, and she realized those cabin walls were no protection against the gunfire.
Griz was lying flat on the kitchen floor, as flat as he could get, and Becca followed suit as more and more automatic weapons fire punched its way through the cabin. She heard one of the pots sitting on the stove go flying with a metallicpingsound as bullets knocked it around. Glass from the shattered window was lying everywhere on the floor, and more and more bits of debris from the devastating gunfire fell all around her.
Everything was being destroyed all around them by the flurry of bullets filling the air. All she could do was keep down and hope none of those bullets found her.
As soon as there was a lull in the shooting, Griz rose up from behind the kitchen counter, firing his pistol out of the window, pop pop pop, as fast as he could. It didn’t last long, though. Almost immediately, a fresh barrage of automatic gunfire drove him back down to the floor next to Becca.
“They have machine guns?” Becca said, fully aware that she was stating the obvious.
Griz nodded. “Sounds like AKs.”
“AKs?”
“AK-47s,” he said. “Machine guns.”
A bullet shattered something ceramic sitting on the countertop above them, and tiny pieces of it rained down on their heads, drawing a shriek from Becca that was part surprise and part anger.
“Why do they always get to have machine guns and we don’t?” she said. “This is bullshit! Don’t you have anything bigger? Like a bazooka?”
“Just this,” Griz said, gesturing with his pistol. “Not a lot of ammo, either.”
The gunfire kept coming, relentless, loud, like a lethal jackhammer, continuing to chew up the walls and tear into everything above knee height in the cabin. Once more, Griz tried to get up and return fire with his pistol, and once more, he was quickly driven back down by the hail of lead flying through the air.
As terrifying as it was, it was almost getting ridiculous to Becca. Death’s Head seemed to have a never ending supply of ammunition, the way they blazed away into the cabin. It didn’t seem fair.
She tried to crawl out of the kitchen, further into the cabin, but had to give up immediately on that. More bullets kept snapping through the air overhead, all around, and she pounded her fists on the floor in anger and frustration as much as fear.
She felt like an animal trapped in a cage. Every time she even thought about moving an inch from her position pressed flat on the floor, a bullet would crash into something nearby and drive her back down to the ground. She felt like if she stuck a single finger up so much as an inch, it would immediately get shot off.
A third time, Griz tried to shoot back, only to have the same results as before. He dropped back down next to Becca on the kitchen floor under the gunfire that seemed to never end.
