John Krygelski - The Aegis Solution

Tapping the railing, Elias noted to Wilson, “You obviously planned for this.”

Wilson, who was about ten feet away from him and also crouched behind the barrier, glanced over and huffed, “It would take a fool not to plan for an attack. With a clear picture emerging as to what Kreitzmann and company were up to, I assumed that at some point we might be under siege.”

“Incoming! Three o’clock!” shouted Tillie, simultaneously triggering the launcher she had assembled from her pack.

Elias’ eyes snapped to the area to the right of the path, in the direction Tillie had indicated, as he heard the WHOOMP of her launcher. He saw another beige figure, or perhaps the same one as before, at a standstill, struggling to untangle himself from a jumble of ferns. Whatever it was that Tillie had shot slammed into the trunk of a tree right next to the frenzied figure, releasing a white cloud of gas. Elias was not sure how effective the gas would be in this wind, but his question was soon answered as the rapid movements of the beige attacker suddenly slowed.

The moment her first shot had been released, Tillie madly reloaded and, as she saw the effect from her first hit, launched another, which this time slammed directly into the chest of the assailant, briefly enveloping his head and upper torso in white gas. Elias drew a bead on him and was ready to pull the trigger, but Tillie stopped him. “Save your rounds. He’s going down.”

Sure enough, the beige figure abruptly dropped to the ground.

“Good shooting!” Stone shouted. “How many more do you think there are?”

“When I watched the video of the attack on ZooCity, I only saw a pair of them,” Elias answered.

“I think,” began Wilson, his voice ominous, “that the frontal attack was merely a diversion.”

Elias looked at Wilson, who had turned around to face the shack.

“What is it?”

Wilson held up one hand, indicating that Elias should listen. Within moments, over the din of the constant gale, Elias heard the distinct crackling coming from within the shack.

“They’re burning us out,” Wilson sighed.

“Oh, no!” gasped Tillie.

“Clearly, while Zipper number one kept us occupied out front, the other made his way to the rear and torched my home.”

“They don’t need to come at us,” Elias warned. “With the shack burning, we’ll be running out to them in a couple of minutes.”

Wilson looked crestfallen. “I can’t believe I didn’t anticipate this possibility.”

The man looked so sad that Elias, even in the midst of their predicament, wanted to say something to make him feel better, when Tillie, from the far side of the porch, shouted, “What do you expect, Wilson? You are an old fool!”

Elias, startled by her harsh comment, turned and saw that she was grinning at Wilson. Looking back, he noticed that Wilson had snapped out of his remorse and had begun to chuckle.

“You’re right, my dear. I am an old fool. But at least I did think of plan B.”

“Plan B?” Stone asked, his eyes flitting back and forth between looking at Wilson and watching the bushes and trees around them.

Instead of explaining, Wilson nodded at Tillie, who set her improvised launcher on the deck and scrambled to the corner of the porch. The crackling of the fire on the other side of the wall had escalated to a loud rumbling, and smoke was already streaming from under the door.

Tillie grabbed a long pole with a hook on the end, which was held to the wall with a spring clip. Keeping herself low and out of the line of sight of the Zippers, she twisted around and, using the hook, unlatched a hinged plywood panel mounted to the ceiling of the porch.

Released, the panel swung down and butted perfectly to the top of the railing, enclosing the side of the porch. She slammed down a bolt latch, fastening the two, and rolled the pole to Elias, motioning for him to do the same with the next panel. He looked up and saw that there were panels for each open section, lined up between the support posts. He unhooked the next one and it dropped loudly. Within a moment, it was latched, and he moved on to the third, doing the same.

As he did, he saw that Wilson had begun the same procedure at the other end of the porch and had two panels down, handing off his pole to Stone to drop the third and fourth, the last one longer, as it had to cover the opening in the railing at the steps going down to the grounds. Within less than a minute, they were completely shut in, and Elias could smell the smoke from the fire which was certain to burn through the front wall at any time now.

“Okay,” Elias asked, “now that we’re trapped, what do we do?”

Standing, Wilson quickly moved to the center of the porch, where the table was, and pushed it roughly to the side as he explained to Elias, “This is an atrium. It is surrounded on all four sides by the structure of Aegis.”

“Right.”

“Although it doesn’t rain with great frequency in this part of the country, when it does, it tends to be a deluge.”

As he spoke, Wilson had reached down to the wooden deck and gripped a handle which was flush with the planks. “Where do you think all of the rain that falls into the atrium goes?”

“Soaks in?”

Shaking his head, Wilson replied, “Hardly. There is too much volume of water in too brief a period for a builder to be able to count on that. And you must remember, this entire complex is built on concrete. These atria are nothing but huge planters filled with soil. Below the dirt there is an impervious surface. Therefore, the water would have nowhere to go.” With a grunt, he pulled up a section of the deck and indicated, “A storm drain. Every atrium in the place has one.”

Elias looked down into the opening and saw a manhole-sized steel collar set into a concrete pad. The collar had at some point held a grate but was now unobstructed.

“I built over the manhole and made the trapdoor my secret back door.”

With an ugly crunching sound, the flames burst through a small section of wall.

“We’d better get moving,” Stone cautioned, eyeing the flames.

“Yes,” agreed Wilson. “Tillie, grab our kit, please.”

“You got it.”

Tillie kicked a panel in the wall at the opposite end from where the flames were breaking through. The face of the wall, where she had kicked, swung open, and she pulled out a duffel bag and dropped it down the storm drain. She returned for her backpack and launcher while Elias, Wilson, and Stone gathered up their weapons. They all heard a loud crash when something heavy hit one of the latched panels at the perimeter.

“They’re trying to get to us. I guess they don’t want to wait until we come running out.” With that, Tillie dropped down into the opening, catching the top rung of a steel ladder affixed to the side of the riser.

Another crash followed the first, and Elias aimed his rifle at the spot and triggered a short burst from the automatic. Even over the thundering sounds of the wind and the crackling and roaring of the fire as it broke through more of the wall, they all heard the scream come from outside.

“Guess I hit someone.”

Tillie was already down into the darkness, and Wilson was just beginning his descent. After Elias’ shots, there were no more attempts to batter the panels around them, but the fire was rapidly making the porch an untenable location. As soon as Wilson’s head disappeared into the darkness below, Elias slung his rifle over his shoulder and stepped down onto the first rung, following quickly.

As Elias descended, Wilson shouted up to him, “Tell Eric to pull the lid closed behind himself!”

He started to relay the message but was cut off. “I heard.”

Far enough down to allow Stone to join him on the ladder, Elias took a second to look down and saw that Tillie was standing on the sandy bottom of the storm drain system and had unpacked an LED lantern from the bag. They all finished their descent, and Wilson turned to Tillie. “You’re the one who explored this labyrinth, so lead the way.”