Our first and nearest gun store was to the northwest direction of the station according to Captain Quentin earlier during our short talk when we were walking down the stairs. Then, once we had finished there, we were to go for the northeast direction of the first gun store. The last and also the furthest gun store, was further northwest of the second gun store.
Just when we started our journey, I had asked Della if we were to go for the second and third gun stores before going for the nearest one. However she said that she would prefer if we go to the nearest one first, since if anything goes wrong, we could reach for the station quickly. Since she also stated a logical reason, I agreed with her and went to the northwest direction first.
The northwest direction was the path that brought me, Jonathan, and Ryan to the bridge where we were attempted to be robbed on the previous day. As we stepped and walked on that same bridge, I recalled on what I had done to one of the people with my fire ax. Thinking back, I could have just hit him with the fire ax's butt. But then again, if I had not injured that person, things could have become much worse for the three of us then.
At first, I thought that I might be going at a pace too fast for Della. However, it was already no less than 15 minutes of walking and I still saw Della following steadily right behind me. It seemed that despite her face showing a rather sleepy and fatigued expression, I suppose she had a decent good rest at the previous night. She also did not show any trouble in carrying her bag, even though that hers looked more stuffed than mine.
When I focused back at the road ahead of us, I could see a faint sight of a distinctively wide building constructed like a shed. As we moved closer to it, we could see a sign board indicating a shooting range facility.
"Is this the one?" Della asked.
"I suppose." I said, "Even though if this one is not a store, there may still probably some spare ammunition inside."
Della agreed with me, and we immediately decided to get inside the building. She suggested getting inside through the front entrance, to which I had my doubts if it could be opened at all. To my surprise, the glass entrance door was not locked as Della went ahead inside. I quickly followed her to the building, still confused on why it was left unlocked by the owner.
I had to admit that I was lucky on still bringing Ryan's flashlight with me, as the lobby was pretty dark once I closed the entrance door. I took the flashlight out from my pocket, and lighted our way deeper into the building.
Based on what we saw from outside, the building only had two floors. However, we had yet to see the stairs leading to the second floor. As we entered the building, I immediately noticed that the shape of the first floor was a definite square.
The lobby on the first floor only had two other rooms – one was located at the far left corner which was the restroom since it had the sign, and the other was located at the near right corner which was probably the staff room. Between those two rooms, was the indoor firing range with all of the targets still hanging down from its ceiling.
We decided to go to the staff room first, and as we were getting closer to the room, we realized that there was a stairs leading to the second floor just beside its door. I tried to open the door, but unfortunately it was locked. Since the only other room left was the restroom, we headed to the second floor.
Once I lighted our new surroundings, I could at least be sure that the area around us was no more than half of the first floor. However, I also noticed that the second floor was more like the office section for the facility, since it had several room with windows covered in roller shade. The next thing we did, was to find a room with no windows which could indicate that the room was the weapons storage.
There were three different paths for us to choose – left, middle, and right. Without further concerns, we took the middle one since we could see a door just in front of the stairs, hoping that it was the storage room. Just as we arrived at the front door, we realized that it was just another office of bigger size. We proceeded to search for the storage room again, feeling like we were almost circling around the whole second floor, before we finally found the last room without any windows.
"Finally," she sighed, " Just as I was starting to get bored…"
I suppose that I should not have expected any door to be locked in the first place, as I got one granted for the storage door. When she tried to open the door, it turned to be locked, just like the staff room at the first floor.
"Great, and now this..." I said as I finally let out my pent-up dejection.
"Should we just skip this one out?" she asked in a fully worn-out tone.
To be honest, I had a brief thought about it just as I found out that the room was locked. However, I also came to notice that the door had no marks of break-in attempts, indicating that no one had ever tried to get something from inside the room by force.
It also brought me back to think that if the door was already locked right from the start, then indeed there was a higher probability that something valuable was stored inside it as well. And besides, we had already come that far from the station, so I believed that we might as well went inside, even though we had to use force.
The next question that came into my mind was, how we could open the door without actually have to use the key. If only Jonathan was also there with us, he would probably just give it a couple of kicks to break it open. The other option that came across my mind was to shoot the door handle with my submachine gun to break it along with the lock.
However, should there were aliens nearby they would most likely notice our presence and hunt us down, except that they would somehow not attracted to the sound like what had happened at the museum. We could also try to find the key from the offices on the second floor, but it would cost us more time, not to mention if the offices were also locked, and let alone if the key was not inside any of them.
"Fine, I guess we have no choice after all…" I said as I readied my submachine gun.
"What? Really?" she said, probably doubtful of what I was going to do.
'THUMP THUMP'
As I fired a couple of rounds to the door handle, the door finally creaked open, but not completely. Della gave a final push by kicking it, opening the door completely. In an instant, my mind was filled with distress and anxiety as I thought that there was definitely no turning back from the noise that I just made.
"All right, and now we better be quick!" I said with a low voice, as I rushed inside behind her.
At least we were right to assume that it was indeed the storage room for ammunitions, as we could see that there were several ammunition boxes and even few handguns when I lighted the room inside with the flashlight. Without further thinking, I toss my backpack to Della's side as I gave her lighting to fill my backpack with more ammunition.
I assumed that she was also in a state of panic because she clumsily picked up an ammunition box before she dropped it, spilling rounds of 9mm bullets as she was attempting to pour them into my backpack. I noticed right from the start that she was filling my backpack with the incorrect type of ammunition, but I realized that I had no time to correct her since we just made a noise that would raise the aliens' attention to us.
It felt like she was taking forever to fill my backpack with the bullets, but she eventually finished. She was getting started to fill her bag with .45 ACP rounds, when I started to hear some faint thudding sounds.
Apparently, Della also noticed the sound as she quickened her pace. As the thudding sound was getting louder, I forced myself to take her bag and zipped it close, before I gave it bag to her and took mine and rushed to hide behind the office wall to our left, leaving the ammunition box opened inside the storage room with some 9mm rounds scattered on its floor.
I was very grateful of my own movement calculation, as it might took less than ten seconds after we were covered behind the office wall before an alien had arrived at the second floor. I lowered my flashlight, and signaled her to breathe deeply and calmly as we slowly walked away from the direction of the storage room, following the wall that covered us.
As we were getting closer to the stairs again, I could still hear a couple of loud thudding sounds from behind us, probably came from the alien that was still searching for the source of the noise. I felt my heart pounded fast, and my neck drenched in sweat as I tried my best not to make any creaking sound when we walked down the stairs. I gave out a sigh of relief when we were finally at the first floor again and managed to sneak past the alien. However, I could not yet get calmed down as I was still wondering if there were other aliens outside.
"There should be another door for exit, right?" Della said, panting and still in panic.
"Supposedly, every building has at least one…" I responded as I was trying to calm myself down.
I tried to take a peek about the condition outside the building from the entrance door, and I had my heart beating fast again as I clearly saw that there were four aliens outside, accompanied by one T-shaped aircraft approaching the building slowly. Realizing that exiting from the entrance door was not an option, I returned to Della's side and told her what awaited for us outside.
As if the threat outside that was getting closer to both of us was not enough, a thudding sound was heard again followed by few others from the second floor. I immediately realized that the alien there was about to go down to the first floor again. Thoughts of dying at the hands of foreign creatures started to fill my mind, making my legs shook and my spine chilled by the fear as I leaned against the wall behind me.
Just then, Della began to walk silently towards the shooting range, climbed up the fence, and continued heading to the firing yard. Even though I still did not know what she was trying to do, I knew full well that leaning against the wall would not save myself either. I forced myself to swallow my fear, and began to follow her as silent as I could.
When I reached the middle of the firing yard, several thudding sounds from above us were heard again. Spontaneously, I picked up my pace and headed towards Della, who seemed to be standing behind one of the hanging targets. When I finally caught up with her, I finally realized that she was actually standing right in front of a door.
"Let us just hope that this door will lead us outside…" she said as she slowly tried to open the door
I held my breath deeply as she was trying to open it. I also realized that the thudding sound was then heard from the direction behind, indicating that the alien had most likely reached the stairs and was about to go down.
'Click'
I felt like a ray of hope was restored to me when the door was not locked. We rushed to the other side of the door and slowly closed it back as we were once again back to the streets outside. When the door was already completely closed, I had my knees fell and hands holding my body against the ground as I was panting hardly and finally began to take a deep breath and calmed myself down.
I looked at Della's direction, and saw that she was leaning to the wall beside the door, slowly dragging her back down against it and panted rapidly. We managed to escape from the imminent threat that was going to fell upon us. We were finally safe again.