Lockey vs. the Apocalypse by Meadows, Carl (love novels in english .TXT) 📗

“Buckley? Jones?”

“Here boss,” crackled a voice over the line.

“Go check out the cameras on the left side of the house, exterior wall.”

There was a pause. “Erm, which left, boss?”

“For fuck’s sake,” hissed Bancroft, then clicked the handset again. “What the fuck do you mean, ‘which left?’ There’s only one left, you fucking moron.”

“Erm, well is it the left as we come out of the house, or left as if we were looking at the house, you know, like, from the gate? In which case, it would be the right of the house as we come out?”

Bancroft closed his eyes, blowing out his cheeks as he struggled to control his temper.

“You’re coming out of the house, so it’s your left, you dumb fuck.”

“Got it, boss,” crackled the response.

“All I’ve got left are fucking idiots,” he muttered, as the barrel moved from Isaac’s temple. He released a long, shaking breath as quietly and gradually as he could. Bancroft moved away from the monitors, heading to the table where a bottle of scotch and tumbler awaited him.

As he turned his back, Isaac caught movement on one of the cameras facing inside the grounds, blinking as he watched a dark-haired woman glide smoothly over the wall, drop to her feet in perfect balance, then start a quiet stalk towards the exterior wall of the house.

Isaac glanced over his shoulder, finding Bancroft’s back still turned as he poured himself a double. Hands on the control panel, Isaac gently pressed a switch to isolate that camera and then with a gentle push, moved the joystick and turned the camera to a wider angle. Bancroft turned back just as Isaac finished edging the lens away from the woman. There was nothing but quiet space on screen now. It was the tiniest act of rebellion.

But it felt like a victory.

Nate watched as two men exited the front door, each carrying Mac-11’s, wild and dangerous weapons in the hands of untrained morons like these two village idiots. He recognised both as part of the crew that had first cornered Erin outside the store, when Nate had put down Bancroft’s simpleton brother. They had not been trusted with firearms while out in the wild, so he doubted they had any shred of ability between them. Still, firing the fully automatic Mac-11 would create a spray of bullets, and even idiots could get lucky, despite the small calibre of ammunition. A bullet in the head was still a bullet in the head.

Nate had watched Erin simply ooze over the wall off to his right and cross the space between the outer wall and the side of the house, cursing as he watched her run right into the field of vision of a camera she had not spotted. Nate gritted his teeth, waiting for the alarm, or some form of reaction.

“Huh,” he muttered. As he watched through the optics, he saw the camera angle away from her, concealing her position. The operator must have seen her to start moving the camera so swiftly.

He remembered the driver of the fuel truck saying one of the captives was an electronics nerd. From this evidence, it seemed the man in control of the cameras was joining the revolution in his own little way.

Putting the binoculars down, Nate picked up the SA80, placing the stock against his shoulder. Perfectly still, he lined up the left-hand thug in the scope. The two were simply talking, not taking their roles seriously in any way.

The goon went down as Nate’s round punched through his chest, the gunshot like a crack of thunder in the still of the summer night. He dropped like a stone and his comrade froze for a moment in shock, staring back at his dead friend. A second crack of thunder struck him down, the bullet smashing him high in the ribs.

Two shots. Two kills.

Nate nodded, satisfied with his work and moved the sight to track Erin’s progress. It took him a moment to find her.

“You demented little squirrel,” he murmured.

Somehow, the tiny woman had scampered up a drainpipe at one corner of the building and was now on the roof. It had been maybe twenty seconds since he had seen her flatten herself against the outer wall of the house. Now she was edging herself across the roof on all fours, trying to keep her noise minimal. Within moments she was directly above the window where Nate suspected the trained shooter was perched. There was no evidence of a barrel, suggesting the man knew what he was doing and was slightly set back from the window, his rifle resting on a table just a foot or two back from the open space.

Flat on her stomach, Erin slithered to the edge of the roof, reversing herself as she first dangled her legs, then dropped to just her fingers, suspended from the edge of the roof. Her toes found the ledge of the window next to the shooter’s and she lowered to that perch, holding herself in place with one hand on the top of the window frame, back flat against it, as her right hand reached inside the large pocket of her loose combat trousers and pulled out the frag grenade.

She looked his way, knowing he was watching, and split her face into a beaming grin, waving with the grenade in hand.

Nate could not stop himself snorting and shaking his head.

Still with her “shit-eating grin”—as she liked to call it—Erin clamped the pin between her teeth, wrenched it out; well, she tried to wrench it out.

“Not like the movies, eh kid?” Nate murmured to himself in amusement, as she tugged and shook her head, before finally managing to pull it clear. Nate chuckled to himself, then watch as Erin somehow managed to lean out and away from the window she was perched on. For such a small individual, the strength in her grip was impressive considering the major shift in her centre of gravity.

Without hesitation, she unerringly