Total Annihilation Read online

  Josie took off, Ben right on her heels. They covered the first block just fine, and were just getting across the street when a burst of semi-automatic weapons fire pulled them up short.

  Josie and Ben both threw themselves at the nearest wall, the impact almost knocking her breath out of her.

  There was another quick burst from down the road to their right, and they both hit the ground, taking cover behind a set of concrete steps leading up to the front door of the house they were up against.

  “I’ll cover to the right, you get through that door?” Josie said, pointing up.

  Ben nodded. Josie set herself up to use one of the steps as a firing support, and keep as much of her face covered as possible.

  “Just don’t step on my gun,” she said, just before she pivoted and took up her firing position, sending three shots downrange just to see what moved.

  She caught the muzzle flash from the gunman as he sprayed another dozen rounds back.

  Meanwhile, Ben had vaulted her and hammered the butt of his rifle into the deadbolt on the door, and struck the doorknob with a following blow.

  The door burst open, and he was right through it, spinning so he could aim out the doorway and cover Josie.

  She jumped up and tripped on the second step, sprawling through the doorway in an undignified heap, but she at least got in.

  “Close it!” she shouted, scrambling for the sofa.

  Ben figured it out right quick, and after slamming the door, helped her shove furniture against it.

  They did the same in the kitchen, hauling the refrigerator over to barricade the back door. A quick look around showed them a hallway leading deeper into the first floor of the house, and with a stairway up.

  Squatting in that hallway seemed to give them the best view of anything coming in through the kitchen or living room, as well as putting them close to what looked like a bedroom and bathroom if somebody tried getting in the windows there.

  They waited a few long, tense moments, listening to for any sound from outside.

  The steps up to the house were about three feet up, which meant it would be an honest climb up into one of the windows, but it also meant that somebody could get right up to the house if they were careful, and not be seen.

  The tension was unbearable as they waited to find out if the people that had shot at them were content to leave them pinned down, or if they were going to come after them.

  After what felt like an eternity, they heard something big and meaty slam into the front door.

  Ben immediately fired his rifle before Josie registered a thin silhouette through the curtain on the window in the front door.

  The shot went through the window, and there was another wet sound of impact, followed by a simultaneous stream of obscenities and the thud of a body on pavement.

  That snapped Josie out of the mild daze that the interminable wait had put her in, and she fired three more shots at the door.

  None of them seemed to have hit anybody, but she was able to hear whomever it was she’d shot at making a rapid retreat.

  A few seconds later, she heard glass break in the kitchen, and the sound of someone trying to shove the door open despite the refrigerator.

  Josie quickly reloaded the Benelli while she listened to the struggle.

  “Let’s not waste any more rounds shooting at walls,” Josie said. “And if we have to go up the stairs, try not to shoot through me, OK?”

  Ben gave a nervous little laugh at her attempt at a joke, and moved over to the stairway, going up a couple of steps.

  She shifted over to the side a little bit to make sure she wasn’t in his line of fire.

  There was one more grunt from the kitchen, and it sounded like the entire refrigerator had been knocked on its side.

  Several pairs of feet came stomping through the room, and as soon as a body appeared around the corner, both Ben and Josie fired.

  The first man staggered backwards, and a second one appeared in his place, managing to fire a couple of wild shots before ducking back into the kitchen.

  It was starting to look like it was going to be a stalemate, when one of the living room windows directly across from the hallway burst into shards of glass.

  A second blast followed, and shot peppered the wall right next to Josie’s head.

  With the window blown open and the curtains shredded, Josie could see that the house’s yard was filled with trees.

  She had no way of knowing where the shot may have come from.

  Even when the gun barked a third time, and another section of wall was ripped apart by shot, she couldn’t see a muzzle flash.

  “We’ve got to go up!” Josie said, as a fourth blast from the shotgun came in, hitting closer to her than any of the previous shots.

  Ben started back up the stairs while Josie followed, desperately seeking any target she could fire back at.

  Once they hit the top of the stairs, Ben dropped to his stomach.

  “I’ll take anything that comes for the stairs. You want to check the windows and see what’s up?”

  Josie stepped over him while he trained the rifle down the stairs. There were three rooms up on the second floor, a small bathroom, a master bedroom, and an office.

  It was still dim enough that Josie hoped that by standing back from the windows, she would be able to see without being seen.

  From the master bedroom, which had windows out on three sides of the house, she could see that the back yard of the home was filled with decorative trees, none more than fifteen feet high, but there were a lot of them.

  Whoever was down there had plenty of concealment from above. The side yard was almost as bad.

  The house next door had once had a nicely manicured lawn, but it was now overgrown.

  She thought she could make out a set of tracks through the tall grass, but nothing was moving over there anymore.

  There was also nothing to see on the two sides of the house that faced onto the streets.

  Nobody was moving in the open, and by looking at buildings across the street she couldn’t see any obvious firing positions.

  None of this made Josie feel comfortable. She felt trapped.

  She couldn’t even begin to guess how many people were coming at the house.

  It sounded like at least two were down in the kitchen, stomping around an occasionally throwing a few rounds towards the hallway.

  A couple of harassing shots came through the second floor windows, some into rooms she was in, some she wasn’t.

  Josie assumed by this that she wasn’t visible through the glass from outside the house, but the amount of glass was also being steadily reduced.

  She found a place in the master bedroom where she could duck behind a wardrobe, and be about four feet from the window, but still be covered by something that felt pretty solid.

  She sighted down her shotgun’s barrel, hoping to catch sight of any movement, but couldn’t find a target.

  At least Ben had the clear lane down the stairs to see anything or anyone coming. Josie just felt useless.

  A concentrated burst of gunfire came up from downstairs from at least two different guns, with Ben’s .30-06 adding a third voice to the argument.

  Bullets were coming furiously up the stairs, some of them punching through the wall of the ceiling of the master bedroom.

  “Crap, I’m out!” Ben said, ejecting the last spent shell from his .30-06.

  Josie turned away from the window and jumped over to the bedroom doorway.

  “Reload or switch to your pistol!” she yelled back.

  While Ben was fumbling around with the rifle trying to reload, Josie blasted another three rounds from her shotgun at a man now charging up the stairs before reloading herself.

  At least one of the rounds must have hit, as the man’s forward momentum suddenly stopped, as if he had been kicked in the face, and he tumbled down the stairs.

  “Use this,” Josie said, sliding her now reloaded Benelli shotgun over to Ben
and then drawing her Shield 9mm out from her waistband.

  She figured the semi-auto shotgun would be easier for him to use while prone than the bolt-action rifle would.

  Her sending the assailant rolling down the stairs seemed to have stopped their attackers for a moment.

  In that short pause, she had just enough time to see that Ben was bleeding pretty heavily from a fresh wound on his left arm.

  “You’re hit,” she barely got out, when another window somewhere on the first floor shattered, punctuated by the sound of more glass breaking inside the room.

  “Doesn’t hurt yet,” Ben said, but she could tell he was lying through his tightly gritted teeth.

  A second item came flying into the house from the window that had been shotgunned out earlier.

  “Oh, no,” Josie said under her breath, recognizing a Molotov cocktail.

  This one failed to break, and just rolled around, its rag fuse burning but not yet doing any damage.

  One of the master bedroom windows behind her shattered.

  She turned just in time to see another bottle come hurling in.

  The rag on this one stayed lit while the bottle shattered on impact with a dresser.

  Josie ran for the dresser, scooping up blankets off of the bed on the way, and quickly started to smother the fire.

  From the office, she heard the sound of another cocktail crashing through a window and bursting into flames.

  She desperately looked out the windows, wondering if her best option was to try and survive the drop down to the street without breaking her legs and run for it.

  She was about to call Ben back to have him follow her, when there was a rapid burst of gunfire from outside. This was different, though.

  None of the bullets were hitting the house, and they seemed to be coming from farther away than inside the kitchen or the back yard.

  Those nearer guns did start firing a second later, but were clearly being aimed away from the house.

  “Think it’s the cavalry, or something worse?” Ben asked.

  “Maybe it’s the infantry,” Josie responded.

  As the gunfire continued, Josie and Ben glanced at one another nervously.

  Either things were about to get better or a whole lot worse.

  Chapter 22

  With the gunfire raging outside, Josie cautiously crept over to the shotgunned out window of the second story bedroom, keeping her head low and hoping for a quick glance to try and determine where the new shooters were coming from.

  Whoever they were, they clearly weren’t friends of the men who up until a few seconds ago had been trying to kill them. It was good news because their attention had been temporarily diverted, but Josie knew that now was no time for slip-ups. Just because whoever had suddenly arrived on the scene weren’t allies of these men she and Ben Cooper had been fighting against for their lives didn’t mean they were for them.

  Keeping herself low and close to the wall, and with both hands wrapped tightly around her Smith & Wesson Shield 9mm pistol in a proper combat grip, Josie allowed her blue eyes and freckled face to quickly peek over the windowsill and into the street below their building.

  In an abandoned apartment building opposite from the house she and Ben were in, she could see twin muzzle flashes coming from the bottom windows. More bullets were striking the walls around those windows. That meant the men and the new arrivals were firing across the street at each other.

  Here’s our chance to get away, Josie thought to herself.

  “Josie,” she heard Ben utter weakly behind her.

  She turned to see that Ben’s entire left sleeve was completely soaked to the skin in blood from his gunshot wound in the upper left arm.

  “Oh my…” was all Josie managed to get out as she saw Ben drop to his knees before her eyes.

  Sweating profusely and with his teeth grinding hard together, Ben was clutching the wound tightly with his right hand but it was still doing preciously little to stop the rapid flow of blood.

  “I lied,” Ben grimaced. “This does hurt. Quite a bit actually.”

  Josie jammed her pistol in her waistband, kicked off her right boot, and yanked off the sock over her foot.

  “This is going to hurt more,” she said. “But we have to do it. Move your hand.”

  Slowly, Ben released his grip over his arm wound. More blood seeped out as he did so.

  Did the bullet hit an artery? Josie wondered.

  It had looked like a flesh wound when she had first seen that Ben had been hit. In any case, the bleeding needed to stop and it needed to stop now if Ben was to last much longer without passing out and later dying of blood loss, Josie knew.

  “Okay, I’m going to need you to watch the door,” Josie ordered. “Draw your pistol. Anyone shows up, I don’t care who they are, you take them down.”

  Ben turned to face the door and with his right hand drew his Walther PPK/S .380 ACP pistol that he aimed at the entrance. He cocked the hammer, just like Josie had shown him before, to put the weapon in single action mode for a shorter trigger pull. Any hostiles showed up at the doorway, and it would be easier for him to squeeze the trigger and put a bullet in their brain.

  “Go for it,” he said. “I’ve got you covered.”

  “Like I said, this is going to hurt,” Josie responded.

  With that, she quickly raised Ben’s arm and began wrapping the sock tightly around his upper arm above the sight of the gunshot wound.

  “AAAHHHH!” Ben cried out as internal pain shot throughout his entire arm and shoulder, causing him to reflexively lower his pistol from the door way.

  Josie tightened up the sock further into a double knot to keep it secured.

  “There,” she said. “At least that will help with the blood for now.”

  The gunfire between the two parties was continuing on outside. As long as it did, Josie knew, it meant the men who had been trying to kill them were distracted. Or at least some of them…

  “We have to get out of here,” Josie said, reaffixing her boot over her foot. “Now’s our chance to escape.”

  “Maybe you should go without me,” Ben looked at her. “With my leg wound and now this I’ll just slow down. I can cover you.”

  “Don’t say that!” she snapped. “We’re in this together and you know it! Now pick yourself up and haul ass!”

  The gunfire outside abruptly stopped. Silence.

  Josie froze.

  Her pupils darted around the room frantically for their larger weapons. The Benelli 12 gauge semi-auto shotgun and the scoped Ruger M77 .30-06 bolt action were on the floor next to one another, but the .30-06 was empty. Both guns were maybe six feet away.

  And it was right when she spotted those guns that Josie felt a dark shadow sweep itself ominously over the room. Her heart raced. It could only mean one thing.

  She tilted her head up and standing uneasily in the doorway was a man dressed in camouflage, blood dripping onto the carpet from a significant gunshot wound to his abdomen. Blood was also seeping out of the corner of his mouth. He wasn’t going to last much longer.

  But it wasn’t the presence of the mortally wounded man or even the pistol he held in his wobbly hand that scared Josie. It was the look she could clearly identify in his stale, emotionless face, the same look she had seen in some of the prison gang members when they had attacked her and Roy’s homestead…the resigned and yet desperate look of a man who had accepted his deathly fate but who also wasn’t about to go out without taking somebody with him.

  Josie’s hand instinctively shot for her Shield in her back and at the top of her lungs she cried out “BEN, WATCH OUT!”

  Ben had already seen the man arrive at the door from the staircase before Josie. His arm was bringing up his Walther .380 just as the man was raising his own sidearm.

  BANG! BANG!

  The two DEAFENING gunshots went off almost simultaneously.

  The man at the doorway was hit and staggered from side-to-side from a new bullet wound
that opened up in his stomach.

  Josie swung up her 9mm and double tapped two more shots to finish what Ben’s bullet had started. Both rounds struck the man in the sternum. He fell away from the doorway, out of Josie’s view, and she could hear him tumbling hard back down the stairs.

  Her ears ringing from the close proximity gunfire, she turned back around to face Ben, and to her horror, yet more blood was flooding his jacket from a fresh bullet hole in the middle of his torso.

  “I’m sorry, Josie,” was all he managed to say, sorrow and disappointment evident in the tone of his voice.

  He fell face first to the floor with an echoing THUD. To Josie, it seemed like he was falling in slow motion. She flung herself over to him.

  “BEN!” Josie cried, turning him over onto his back. “BEN! NO! BEN! NO!”

  To her relief he was still breathing, but he was unconscious. Josie’s eyes darted everywhere. His face was deathly pale and he was soaked completely in his own perspiration and the purple-red blood that was now flowing even more freely from the gunshot wound in his torso then had been coming from his arm.

  It was a miracle he was even still alive, but what the hell more was she supposed to do?!

  Then Josie heard the absolute last thing she wanted or needed to hear: several more footsteps rapidly coming up the stairs.

  She didn’t waste a second. She reached for the semi-automatic 12 gauge and scooped it up in both hands to take aim at the door where the man had been.

  The footsteps grew louder and closer and then they stopped. She could hear heavy breathing. Whoever was there was on the other side of the doorway, just outside of her point of view.

  Josie exhaled slowly and rested her finger over the trigger. No matter how many were on the opposite side of that door, she was determined to take at least two of them down before they would have any chance of getting her or Ben.

  Chapter 23

  “Twenty-three thousand five hundred and forty, twenty-three thousand five hundred and forty one, twenty-three thousand five hundred and forty two…”

  Ojo had been keeping track of each of his steps since he had begun following Roy, who had taken off with Alex in the Land Rover. He had simply walked down the road after the Land Rover. When he came to a ’T’ in the road, he turned left because the tracks in the dirt indicated that was where Roy had turned.