The Farther Shore by Matthew Eck (adult books to read .txt) 📗

it close gently. I keyed my squad radio so that the others would know something was wrong.

Suddenly the stairwell filled with the silver light of a trip flare. Cooper quickly opened the door and motioned the others in. Santiago pointed for Cooper to stay where he was, and then he started down the stairs two steps at a time, the rest of us falling in behind him.

We stopped on the ninth floor, waiting. I pointed out the trip line for a grenade simulator on the floor. Then the other grenade simulator went off on the eighth floor and something red and burning hot shot up through the stairwell and past my face. It looked like a piece of metal.

Santiago pointed for Heath and Fizer to stay where they were and then the rest of us continued down the steps, two or three at a time. We could make out their shapes by now, two of them, running. I saw the shape of a gun in the darkness and dove to my left down a hallway. They were retreating down the stairs. Using the wall as cover, I found a target but held my fire. I followed it for a moment.

Then there was a blast from the stairwell behind Santiago and me. Zeller lit into the darkness, his weapon rattling to life. My ears filled with a tremendous ringing. I started down the steps after Santiago. He cleared the distance between himself and the figures quickly, firing heavily into them.

It was nothing but the red light of tracers by now, because I couldn’t hear. Rounds ricocheted off walls and I worried I’d get hit by one of the bullets. Then the firing stopped for a moment, until Zeller fired a three-round burst that dropped one of the targets. The figure went down and Santiago pointed Zeller to the person’s aid while we moved on, hunting the other one.

As we moved past the fallen figure I told myself not to look, to keep going. If you looked at the fallen you paused long enough to join them. I followed Santiago, clearing with him to the next floor. I took aim at the target myself, but then noticed Santiago out of the corner of my eye, tracing the running figure. He took a knee and aimed. It was a difficult shot, but he dropped it.

We moved toward the person he’d shot, and then Santiago waved me past, pointing for me to clear all the way to the bottom of the stairs, in case there were more. My ears were still ringing, and I couldn’t hear a thing. There was still a long way to the bottom, and I didn’t want to separate myself from the others just yet. I walked down a few flights, then stopped and put on my goggles. There was nothing. I looked up the stairwell and saw Heath and Fizer moving toward me.

“What the fuck happened?” yelled Heath. He was close to me, screaming in my ear. He was dripping with sweat, and I could smell him.

“I don’t know,” I yelled back.

“What do we do?” screamed Fizer. The two of them looked at me, waiting.

“Hold the front door,” I said, pointing them down the stairs.

“We got to get out of here,” Heath muttered.

“Hold the door,” I said.

Heath shook his head and the two of them started off again down the steps.

I found Santiago and told him we needed to move. Then I looked down at the body. It was small for a man. Santiago bent over the figure with an unrolled compound press, the loose white ends dangling beside him. He stood and said something, but at first I couldn’t hear over the ringing in my ears. Then he was screaming and it came to me in slices, getting louder, then duller, until I finally got it: “They’re just kids.”

“I saw a gun,” I said.

“It’s a stick,” Santiago said, pointing at a stick on the floor.

“This one’s dead,” Cooper said over the radio.

Santiago called Cooper down because the one he’d shot was still alive. The boy didn’t make a sound, but he was obviously fighting for his life.

“You and Zeller get the gear,” Santiago said, pointing toward the roof.

Running up the stairs, I slipped in the mess that Zeller had made of the other child. I stood slowly and walked carefully. I told Zeller we were to grab everything.

They were all standing in a circle around the wounded boy when Zeller and I returned with the gear. The ringing had subsided enough that I could hear the others breathing heavily.

“Goddamn it,” Santiago said to Heath and Fizer, “you two should have stayed at the front door. I’m not about to lose my squad because you two can’t fucking listen.” He pointed them back down the stairs.

The boy had a hole in his chest. Cooper applied pressure to the wound.

“We got to go, Cooper,” Santiago finally said, grabbing him by the shoulder and lifting him to his feet. The pool of blood beneath the boy was expanding steadily.

Then we were down the stairs and out in the street. Standing in the open air, it was as if we’d set off a chain reaction. Machine guns echoed in the night, answering to the shots we’d fired. People seemed to be firing at the sky, down alleys, and all around us. It was as if we’d given a signal.

The van was gone.

“I can’t believe this,” Santiago said.

People standing in doorways turned their heads to watch as we jogged up the street. My rucksack dug into my hips and shoulders and my M-16 clicked like an insect as the shoulder strap bounced lightly against the weapon. My socks were already soaked in sweat. It was ten miles to the stadium in the southern part of the city.

Most of the people we passed didn’t really seem to care about us. They were just like the inhabitants of any big city when something disastrous strikes: some were eager to stand on