29 January 2013
I could feel the cool 3am air on my face as we stood by the freshly shattered window. Peering through, I could see our escape route snaking in zigzags down the outside of the motel. The fire escape. I motioned to Emma to go first. She smiled nervously at me. I squeezed her hand to try and give some kind of assurance, and smiled back. She just nodded, knowing that we needed to stay as quiet as we could. She carefully stepped through the window and on to the platform outside. Below lay the other stairs, platforms and ladders that made up the fire escape and led eventually down to street level. But that was a long way down. I'd found myself thinking of different ways to go about it, maybe all the way down to the street, maybe just go a floor below and try to make our way back down through the building instead of outside it... 'Are you coming?' came her hard whisper from the platform she'd reached, already one floor down. I shook my head clear and climbed through the window, just as the door to the room burst inward and bullets started noisily filling the air. My first instinct was to reach for the gun, but the brick dust shower I got from a too close for comfort shot convinced me otherwise. I jumped through the window and landed in a sprawl on the platform, scrabbling to get to my feet. I saw the ladder and started my descent to the next floor. Emma was already on the next ladder down. Had to admire her coolness. To my knowledge she'd never held a gun, let alone get shot at. It's not the best of feelings, and here she was shrugging it off and climbing steadily down some old rusty fire escape, quite surely and steadily, no panic...as if...she'd done it before... More bullets rained down toward us. No chance of a clean shot, not with all these ladders. Small mercy. Emma had stopped and was looking up at me. I was directly outside a window and pointed to it as if to tell her, I'm going in here. She nodded, and almost simultaneously, we broke the nearest windows to us and leapt through. She landed in a hallway. I landed in the front room of a young black couple, I knew this because I could see them and they were in a state of undress on the couch. 'Excuse me...' I said, hoping to avoid a confrontation and get the hell out, quick. The man just languidly raised a hand and pointed to the front door. Then he put the hand back in the warm place it had been and carried on as if nothing had happened. 'Man you're the coolest thing I've found today.' He put up his hand again and as I ran through their front room I high-fived him. I reached the door and stood still with my ear up against it. There were voices, but they were distant. The door had a spy hole, so I took a few seconds to look through into the hallway. Nothing. I opened the door and led with the gun into the hallway. I had to find Emma. I knew she'd come back in the building the floor below me, so I strode quickly but quietly down the hallway to the stairs. I could still hear loud voices, the goons shouting at each other I supposed. But they weren't anywhere near. My confidence in my ability to get us out if here was building. Just had to find her. Walking softly down the stairs, I found myself on the next floor down. Jesus the place was a shithole. Mould was creeping up the walls, the carpet was utterly threadbare and pockmarked with cigarette burns. What a mess. Ok if you felt the urge I suppose. Although the only urge I felt right now was to have a shower. On the hallway, a door suddenly opened to my right. An obese man with his shirt hanging out found himself staring at my gun, and gently backed off and quietly closed the door behind him, apologising all the time. The door clicked shut. No sign of Emma. She must have made the next floor. I was quietly impressed with her handling of the situation. I'd tell her too, if I could find her. Which was coming fast, because barely had the thought left my head than I heard a womans scream. Followed by guttural 'oofs' which could only be made by a man. I sprinted along the hallway until I reached the stairwell where I found her just putting a goon to sleep with an immaculately placed roundhouse. The guy just fell and flopped on the floor, definitely out of it. 'Where the hell did you learn that?' I said. 'Jackie Chan movies. Come on, let's get out of here.' Good answer. I'm with smartass over here.
Hoping to avoid any more external routes out of the motel, carefully and quietly we took stairwell after stairwell, hallway after hallway. Mercifully we didn't come across any more goons, nor did we have to deal with any more lookylookies. In fact it seemed very quiet indeed. I realised that the distant voices had stopped, even though we'd made enough noise to raise the dead in our bid to reach the lobby. Which was just around the next stairwell. I motioned to Emma to hold back, which she did, gratefully bending over to rest with her back against the wall and her hands on her knees. I led with the gun. Rounding the corner, the reason for the silence became apparent. I recognised the assholes I'd seen earlier when we'd first got to the motel. They were dead, laying in strange arrangements where they'd fallen under an apparent hail of gunfire, like twisted and punctured store mannequins. I could smell the coppery smell of blood cloying the very air. I took in the scene, not moving, scanning for the slightest movement. My coat was in shreds after all the glass it had come in contact with, and reaching to the inside pocket, I could feel the pouch. I'd forgotten it, and I took it out and put it in my jeans pocket instead. I discarded the coat, and tucked the gun into my waistband. Across the lobby was what was left of the front door, now shattered and hanging from its remaining hinge. Glass littered the floor. Beyond that was what was left of Mo's head on the sidewalk. Beyond that, I hoped, was our way out. But then, movement. Instinctively I grabbed the gun and pointed it toward the figure of a man that seemed to have appeared from nowhere. There was nothing I could tell about him, it was too dark to get a good look. But he didn't move again. Instead he just stood facing me. I'll admit, I didn't know how to play this. Shoot him? Make good our escape to the street? He was only one man, and I could see no-one else, so it seemed a logical choice. Maybe he knew something. Maybe I could beat something out of him. Maybe he knew nothing. His silence made the whole situation uneasy. 'You won't need that.' He'd finally spoken, and the voice was familiar. But I couldn't quite place it. I took the briefest of glances. There was still no other sound, no other movement. What the hell? Then he spoke again. 'Take him.' I was aware of a sudden movement behind me, and before I could turn and bring the gun to bear, it had been kicked out of my hand. Then out of the darkness came a leg, with a foot that connected squarely with the pit of my stomach. A perfect roundhouse. I'd never been so winded. As I struggled for breath, and raised my head, I was briefly aware of soft golden hair swishing in the darkness. Then the leg lashed out again, and it's foot sent me crashing into blackness for the second time that night...
Replay 7 • Opuss № I