Looking back at Mitzy and Fluffers, I can’t do much but shut the door to the safe room. I’ll be back for them.
Hopefully.
Taking a long, deep breath, I shove earplugs into my ears and get into position.
Can’t be a good daddy if I can’t hear the baby crying.
Squatting down beside the detonator, I turn my head away from the stairwell and get a sudden case of the chuckles.
“Boom time.”
Pushing the button down, there’s a split second before the world explodes in a deafening roar of rubble and highly energized shit going haywire.
I’d be lying if I said this didn’t give me a slight boner.
Moving quickly, I start to rush up the stairs.
I get to the second step before I’m flung backward by a giant blast of fire and heat coming from upstairs.
What. The. Fuck.
For a third time today I find myself at the bottom of the stairs, pondering just exactly how the fuck I got here.
“Gas line,” I gasp out once the heat starts to dissipate.
Fuck.
Thank god the safe room has an independent air and water supply. That gas eruption and the C-4 aren’t going to do shit to the room… but holy fuck. I wonder just how much of the house I have left upstairs.
I have safety shit everywhere to prevent a total catastrophic failure… So we should be good... I hope.
Standing up from the floor, I shake my head and move quickly up the stairs. If the first explosion didn’t take out some of the assholes, I’m sure that second one got at least a couple.
Glancing down at my M4A1 assault rifle, I wince. No wonder my back hurts like I got fucking hit with a baseball bat. The damn thing is bent and fractured.
Shit.
That’s going to make things a bit harder.
Stopping to drop the useless rifle, I wonder for a moment how exactly these fuckers found their way here.
Simon scrubbed the existence of this house from the public registry. Sophia and I weren’t tailed here when we made our getaway.
There’s only a few things that could have happened.
We could have a fucking rat.
Amanda could have given out our location.
Or someone fucked up and got tailed.
Pulling a Glock from my under-the-arm holster, I take off the safety and finish making my way up the stairs.
Now is not the time to worry about how they got here. I can worry about it later.
After I’ve killed them all.
Above me, it sounds like mass confusion. There’s some shouting, some screaming and wailing.
I’ve caused some carnage at least.
Time for what my boy Gabriel likes to do—mayhem.
Taking the final steps two at a time, I don’t hesitate. Hesitation is the thing that will kill me now.
Moving up past the blockage that’s been blown away from the stairs, I grin. At least I did that right.
Stepping over the rubble, I notice blood is splattered all over the floor, and directly in front of me is a smoking corpse. I’m guessing he was blown in here from the kitchen.
Quickly looking around, I raise my gun and spot a man on the floor near the garage. He’s shell-shocked. Rolling around, he’s trying to find his gun and get his bearings.
Walking over to him, I kneel down and put my knee on his neck. My free hand rips his head to the side and I feel his neck snap.
No one will be leaving this house alive, and this is as personal as I’m gonna get.
Until now, I’ve been operating on pure instinct. I haven’t let my emotions or thoughts push past the barrier of my primal instinct to kill.
Sophia.
She weighs so heavily on my mind it’s almost unbearable. The guilt of her being taken… Fuck. I should have protected her. I didn’t. If anything happens to her, I’ll fucking cease to exist. I can’t go on if she isn’t in my life.
I’ll be a dead man walking.
If I had my choice, I’d die before her. If she were to go before me, it would only be a matter of hours... maybe minutes…
Standing up from the body and the dark thoughts that race through my mind, I turn toward the sound of scuffling feet in the living room.
Someone’s coming to check out what happened.
Moving toward the sound, I really wish I had my fucking assault rifle. The bullets for the assault rifle are Teflon-coated and pierce through the armor these fuckers are wearing like they’re butter. While my pistol’s bullets are coated too, they’re not nearly as powerful. Meaning I’m going to have to aim at their weak spots.
Creeping into the decimated kitchen, I want to internally weep at the destruction the small gas explosion caused. It’s fucking devastation in here. All my counters and appliances are destroyed…
Goddammit.
The only thing that seems to have survived the blast is my cast iron skillet.
Squatting down, I grab the skillet out of the smoking rubble and wait for the sound of shuffling feet again.
Someone is slowly but surely making their way toward me.
The moment I see feet, I jump up and bring the skillet up hard against the fucker’s chin. I whack him so hard, the bone in my arm vibrates and I can feel his jaw bones crushing.
Dropping the skillet, I grab his falling body and put the tip of my gun under his chin. Pulling the trigger twice, I end him. His brains splattering against the inside of his helmet.
My gunfire isn’t going to go unnoticed though.
Shoving the body to the floor, I pick up the skillet and move to the other side of the kitchen. I consider hiding behind the fridge, but I know better. In movies fridges stop bullets, but in real life bullets slice right through them.
There’s more scuffling and movement in the living room area and I know they’re positioning themselves for a drawn-out fight.
I can’t let that happen.
The longer this shitshow goes on, the less likely I’ll be walking out of this alive and unscathed.
Not that I truly have a chance of getting out of this alive or without a mark as it is…
“Jack?!” a voice calls out, moving closer.
Lifting the skillet, I grin and chuck it at the first person that pops into my vision. The skillet smacks the man square in the face, hitting the mask he’s using to hide his identity.
“Yahtzee,” I snicker as I follow it up with two shots to his chest.
Staggering from the blows, I notice one shot went through but the other looks like it only impacted.
Fuckers. I hate when they wear armor.
He slumps against the wall and I run up to him. Yanking my tactical knife from my thigh sheath, I slam it into the side of his neck.
Not bothering to wait to see if he’s dead, I pull the knife and keep moving.
A triple-burst of fire comes from the living room, the rounds narrowly missing my head.
Ducking down, I look back at the cop I just knifed. Waddling back to the body, I yank the flashbang grenades from his tactical vest.
These will liven the party up a bit.
Pulling the pins from both grenades, I toss one into the living room then I quickly turn my head and put my arm over my eyes.
Shielding myself just before the grenade blows.
There’s some yelling after the explosion, but if I’m judging it right, they were expecting something like that.
Grinning, I release the handle on the second grenade, wait a moment, then toss it into the living room.
This time they scream in annoyance and pain.
Yeah, they weren’t expecting the second one.