Sara Reinke - Backwoods

“Andrew, you have to go,” Dani pleaded through the door. If Suzette had been able to hear the gun blasts as Barron, Spaulding and the other soldiers had tried to fight off the screamers, then Dani likely had, too. She may not have understood fully what was going on, but she’d been able to deduce enough to recognize the peril.

“Not without you,” he replied, gritting his teeth, turning the battering ram of his rifle’s butt against the door knob now.

“Andrew, please,” she cried. “I don’t know what’s going on out there, but people are screaming. Something’s wrong, there’s something very, very wrong, and you have to get out of here!”

“I’m not leaving without you,” he said again. Backing up, he leaned down, grabbed his flashlight again. Propping it beneath his arm, he clasped the rifle between his hands. “Stand back,” he called to her. Then as a second thought, he added, “Way back. Get underneath Moore’s desk. I’m going to try and shoot out the lock.”

“Andrew,” she protested.

“Just do it,” he cried. “I’m not leaving without you. I’m going to get you out of that goddamn office and out of these godforsaken backwoods, and I’m going to personally drive you all of the way back to the Bronx so you can see your kids again, do you hear me? Then we’re all going to go to North Pole, Alaska so I can introduce you to my mom and tell her she was right, that everything happens for a reason because you’re my reason, Dani Santoro, whether you like it or not, now just shut the hell up and stand back so I can shoot this goddamn door!”

And with that, bracing himself, readying for the thunderous report as it fired, he squeezed the trigger. Then blinked, bewildered, at the hollow click that followed.

“What the hell?” He frowned, cocking the gun to get a better look at it, trying to figure out what he was doing wrong.

“What is it?” he heard Dani say.

“I’ve got an assault rifle,” he called back. “It won’t shoot.”

She said something, but he couldn’t understand. Moving back to the door, putting his ear to it again, he called, “What?”

“Turn the safety off,” she said again. “There’s a switch on the side panel. Turn it to semi.”

He tilted the gun again, spied the little toggle she’d mentioned, then did as instructed. “Okay. Now what?”

“Is your bolt open?”

Another glance at the gun. “How can you tell?”

“It’s a slide bolt on the top of the gun. Is it pulled back?”

“Uh. No.”

“Then you’ve got a round chambered in there already. You’re ready to shoot.”

“Okay. Got it.” He backed away from the door again, raising the rifle. “Stand back. I’m going to try again.”

This time, when he squeezed the trigger, a loud series of rapid-fire shots blasted out. The rounds ripped into the doorframe, door and neighboring wall, pulverizing the drywall, punching through the metal door, clanging noisily off the chrome knob and lock plates.

“Jesus!” he yelled, because the gun had a mind of its own, and even though he’d gripped it tightly, the shots went wild, a meandering semi-circle arcing wildly toward the ceiling.

When he’d stopped shooting, he stood there stupidly, listening to the soft patter of drywall dust peppering the floor, watching it dissipate in the air in a thin haze.

“Holy shit,” he said as the door to Moore’s office slowly swung inward, then listed on its bullet-ridden hinges and crashed to the floor. He could see Moore’s desk inside through a lingering haze of gun smoke and shattered plaster dust.

Dani slowly raised her head from behind the desk, eyes wide. “I said switch it to semi, not burst.”

Sheepish, he let the gun fall from his hands, clattering to the floor. “Sorry.”

“Don’t do that again,” she said, then scrambled out and rushed across the room, stumbling over the fallen door. With a gasp and a cry, she flung her arms around his neck and fell against him.

He allowed himself the luxury of holding her for a long, lingering moment. “Come on,” he whispered through the tangled mess of her hair and into her ear. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

She nodded. “Sounds good.” As they drew apart, she caught him by the hand, cutting a glance down at the M16. “But I think I’d better handle the rifle from here on out.”

“Yeah.” He nodded as she hefted it in hand, snapping the safety back on. “That sounds good, too.”

The hallway leading to Moore’s office stopped at a dead end. Which means we’ve got to go back the way I came, Andrew thought. Back toward the office where Suzette was hiding. Where we heard her screams coming from.

Shit.

“Stay behind me,” he whispered to Dani once they reached the mouth of the hall, the juncture from which he could look to his left and see Suzette’s door, half-ajar and plainly in view. He had snapped off the flashlight before reaching this point and stayed in the relative shelter of the wall for a long moment, unmoving.

“What are you doing?” Dani whispered.

“I’m listening,” he whispered back.

“For what?”

For sniffing, he thought, because even when the tumors had grown over the screamers’ eyes, they’d been able to smell their quarry, a distinctive snuffling. Truth be told, he was also listening to an equally telltale sound—that of chewing. Because Lucy and the other primates in the stockroom hadn’t just been mauled to death. They had been eaten.

“Come on.” The recessed emergency lights in the hallway were dim but cast enough of a glow so he could see nothing moving. But the fact that Suzette’s door stood open kept him uneasy, even as he crept out from the adjoining corridor to approach. He heard the soft whisper of Dani’s footsteps as she fell in behind him.

They made it several feet down the corridor, then a soft sound, a warbling groan, drew them both to abrupt, simultaneous halts. It was a woman’s voice, feeble and pained, and it came from beyond the darkened threshold of Suzette’s little office.

Dani stepped toward the door and alarmed, Andrew reached out, catching her by the arm. “What are you doing?” he whispered, eyes wide.

“Someone’s hurt,” she whispered back. “It sounds like Dr. Montgomery.”

“We can’t go in there.”

“She’s hurt,” Dani said again, brows narrowing. “We can’t just leave her.”

She was right and he knew it. Even though nearly every instinct in his body was screaming flight not fight at the moment, he resisted the urge to simply charge past the opened door and run as fast as he could down the corridor. Because even though he might not have much cared for Suzette at that moment—and even though there would’ve been no way in hell she’d do the same thing for him—he knew she was still alive and needed help. Especially if the screamers were still in there with her.

Following Dani this time, he reached behind him, drawing the pistol from the back of his pants. At the click as he thumbed off the safety, Dani glanced over her shoulder at him. Taking the nine millimeter into account, she raised her brow.

“I’m better with this one,” he tried to reassure her.

She managed a quick smirk. “Here’s hoping.”

They stood together at the threshold of the office, backs pressed to the wall. Cautiously, Dani leaned forward, using the barrel of the rifle to ease the door open all the way, sending it swinging inward in a slow-moving arc. Earlier, emergency lights inside had been aglow, but now there was only darkness. With her hand, Dani motioned Andrew forward so he could point the flashlight beam into the room, sweeping it in reconnaissance.