Logan
I kick down the front door with my submachine gun in hand, aiming it into the darkness. The building is the last place I’d expect them to hole up: a commercial toy store which has been going out of business for the past few weeks, selling everything at half price, sometimes lower. The first thing I see when I push into the building is a giant Superman cutout, smiling at me with his pearly white teeth. I jog to it and duck down, not that it’ll protect me any. That’s a mistake a lot of the new guys make in gunfights, thinking that car doors or cut outs or tables will stop a round of bullets from turning them to mush. Maybe they’ve played too many video games.
I look down my iron sights, watching the aisle. The store is separated into five aisles, each of them yawning toward the rear, where a small door leads to what I’m guessing is the storage area. Spider jogs in after me, and then a couple of the other men, all of them with their heads low, aiming their weapons. Soon the place is full of Demon Riders, shotguns and pistols and rifles aimed down every aisle.
“Slowly, fellas,” I say.
We stand up and advance down the aisles. I’ve got my sights on that door, listening for any movement. I hear it: muffled footsteps, hushed voices, the almost inaudible rasp of metal. There are men tooling up on the other side of that door. I nod to Spider, who hears it too, and he takes a tear-gas grenade from his pocket, courtesy of one of Uncle Sam’s shipments. He pulls the pin and tosses it. It hisses across the store, making a whining noise, and it’s about to enter the storage room when someone from the other side kicks the door closed.
“Shit.”
The tear-gas grenade bounces off the door and back into the store proper.
“Cover your eyes!” I roar.
The men start pulling their shirts and jackets up, covering their faces as best they can. I pull my shirt right up to my nose, leaving just a slit for my eyes, watching the door as the room fills up with the stinging liquid. Luckily it’s a big room and there’s only so much tear gas in one grenade, so we don’t get the worst of it, but it’s still a failure. I look at Spider, and he shrugs—and then a bullet tears through his spider tattoo and exposes his brains, which fall from their bone-white case like filling from the crust of a pie. He collapses on what used to be his face, twitching.
Then the store turns into hell. Men rush from the storage room, firing at us, and we all fire back. I catch two men in the chest, but the pricks are wearing bulletproofs. I catch another in the chin, two rounds which detach his jaw and toss it across the room in a shower of red. Another man falls when I shred his knees out from underneath him. A couple of Demon Riders fall around me, but we’ve got the numbers and we’ve got the experience. One by one, the mafia falls until there are only three men left, squeezed together an overturned crate. I fire a few rounds into the crate and hear a metallic clanging sound. There’s something metal, solid, protecting them.
“Biker scum!” a man roars, firing over the top of the crate.
I whisper to a nearby Demon, “The next time he does that, take his hand.”
“Boss.”
The man tries for another blind-fire, and this time our man turns his hands to ribbons. He drops his gun on the floor, screaming at the top of his lungs, his voice tearing.
“Two left.”
I call over to them, “You fellas can either die here or go on your way. Those are your choices. But you’ve gotta make it now, right this second. What’re you gonna do?”
Their answer is a volley of fire over the crate. I crawl to Spider’s body and reach into his pocket, making sure not to look at his mess of a face, and take out a tear-gas grenade. I nod to all the men to cover their eyes and then toss it over the crate. They try and take it, but pretty soon they’re writhing and moaning in pain, firing blindly in our direction. I take out both of them with well-placed headshots and then advance on the storage room, still on high alert, ready for any fucker lurking in the shadows.
“Secure the area,” I tell my men, nodding to the room, which is even bigger than the shopfront. It stretches in all directions.
We spread out, searching in the nooks and hidden places. I pause when I come to the basement. The door is ajar and there’s a light on down there, shining dimly up the stairs. I creep down slowly, trying to be careful, but when I see her on the floor like that I lose control. I run over to her, happy and angry in equal measure: happy I found her but angry that she’s like this, a dirty rag stuffed in her mouth. I kneel down and go to take the rag from her mouth, but then her eyes go wide and she tries to shout. There’s someone behind me! I turn—too late.
Moretti smacks me across the face with a pistol, once, twice, and then bites down on my hand. I drop my weapon but bring my hands to his wrist like Dad taught me. Get their weapon, son. Never let a bastard do you like that. I grip his wrist and dig my thumbs into the veiny part. He yelps, fires off three shots, and then drops the weapon. I head-butt him and he falls back, but then he springs up and catches me with a right-hook.
“You’re a dead man,” he says.
“We’ll see,” I reply.