Everyone Dies in the End #23

Artemis

Artemis leapt to his feet. The stairwell door was open, yet not completely so, as if someone was holding it. He emptied the rest of his clip at the opening. He doubted the sparking and whining ricochets hit anything but cinder block and metal, but the door slammed shut. The reprieve wouldn’t last long.

Short, blonde hair was breathing normally now, but her eyes remained closed. The shirt was still bloody, the cloth still holed, but he knew, just knew, the flesh beneath would be sealed.

“Let’s go!” Artemis wasn’t an assertive young man, an alpha male, or the leader of any pack he had been a part of, but the words weren’t a question, a cajoling, or plead. It was a command. Susan ignored him, as she had done since he shot the ganger, but fear was a strong motivator. Artemis reached down, grabbed the back of Susan’s shirt and jerked her to her feet. She whirled on him, her eyes a crazy blue, the pentagram glowing. Artemis didn’t care.

“We go now, or we die here. Which is it?” Susan glared a heartbeat longer, bent to the girl, checked her breathing, and then grabbed her pistol from beside the girl’s head. Susan stood, her eyes cold, the pentagram nothing but a tattoo. “Let’s go.”

They got one step and then hell broke loose. First the door creaked, and once again Artemis sparked a couple more rounds off the frame. Real life guns were just not as easy to aim as their video game counterparts.

“Run!” he screamed, and both of them did, but then the other door—the door at the far end of the lobby—flew open, and four, five, maybe even six of Kill Dog’s gangers poured through, firing their weapons. The air burst to life, bullets whining, buzzing, and singing through the lobby. The rounds chipped the cinder block walls, splintered the suspended ceiling, and shattered the glass that remained in the front windows, but none—miraculously none—hit Susan or Artemis. Susan fired at their new assailants, and a couple dove for a sagging couch, the others hid behind an upended ping pong table. Arty and Susan crouched and ran, ran for their lives. They made it to the door, and Artemis thought that they just might make it, that they just might live, and then a pair of toughs spilled out of the abandoned gym across the street.

           Trouble behind, trouble ahead… the mind’s a weird creature, thought Arty as the lyrics tumbled across his thoughts. The gangers Susan had pinned behind the couch and pong table rose, the door Arty sparked shut opened, and the toughs on the far side of the street pulled their assault rifles to their shoulders. Gently Artemis reached for Susan’s hand. It was time to die.