"Chase, I need you down on the ground with Renton and me; we need to scavenge whatever they have." He didn't respond; he was in shock, so I did the first thing that came to mind: I smacked him across the face, shook him, and pulled him through the window behind me.
With a loud yelp, Chase fought back momentarily, pulling against me and trying to get free until I shouted his name angrily. My forceful tone got his attention, and I could see the focus returning to his eyes.
"We have maybe ten minutes before their group arrives at our door. Get it together; we must get their gear and bring it inside to…."
Before I could finish, Renton cut me off.
"Less than that, Dean; they have radios and are at max seven minutes out. I don't see any way for them to have wheels, so the assumption is they are on foot. However, there is no way they don't know something's up."
Between the aggressive look in my eye and Renton's words, Chase obeyed, and I handed him my rifle to store them inside the room. Next, we helped each other to the ground and arrived beside my brother.
Time wasn't on our side, so every second counted, and we had no room for error.
"I count fifteen of them, y'all," Tristian said as he located the incoming targets with the drone.
Moving as quickly as possible, the three of us secured all the guns and ammo the dead had on them and relocated them into the apartment.
As we returned inside, Tristian informed us that they had stopped about a block away and were doing their reconnaissance. This information put more pep into our steps as we all picked up tasks.
Tristian kept watch while Renton, Carleigh, Chase, and I reinforced all our barriers and added blockades to each of the windows upstairs, especially my bedroom window; we took one of the mattresses and covered the hole of broken glass.
"Randal, are you there?" A raspy voice came out of nowhere, making all of us jump, it was coming from one of the radios we had scavenged off the group Renton and I Terminated.
"Randal, come in," the voice had changed. This one was deeper, more serious, and had a tone of authority.
Glancing around at the others in the room, I picked up the radio, pressed the button, and spoke.
"So which one was he, the fat one or the one with the red hair, because honestly, I don't remember which corpse I pulled this walkie-talkie off of."
Carleigh gasped in horror at my words; Chase and Tristian both went stiff, and Renton just responded by taking the drone controls away from Tristian and inspecting the group from the sky.
"Was it you who killed them?" The voice asked, apparent hostility in his tone.
"What if I did? What if I single-handedly took out all seven of your goons and was posed to take out the other fourteen... "Renton tilted the screen to me so I could see his position in reference to the rest of the group,
"members currently surrounding you, five on each side with you in the middle. Well…scratch that, there are technically four behind you, which makes me believe you are in charge of this lil band of merry men, bringing our tally up to 15 gun-toting rednecks." As I spoke, the men went on full alert, looking for me; the only one who wasn't moving was the man with the radio.
Renton zoomed the camera in so I could get a better view of the leader. Everything about him seemed ordinary, from his dirty blond hair to his non-muscular average body type.
He looked like some average guy in a supermarket, yet here he was with a pack of armed men leading a kill squad.
"You killed my men. That was your first mistake; your second mistake was trying to hide from us. I will tear apart every building on this street till I find you in your little rat hole, then I will drag you out." The voice began a boring and complacent monologue, so I bolted upstairs with Renton on my heels as he spoke about how he would find us. He didn't need to search for us at all.
"Then I won't just kill you; I'll start by cutting off one of your fingers for every man of mine you killed,"
Sliding up to the windowsill in Renton's room, I pulled back the blackout shade and sat on the end table resting beside it. I could see the walkie-talkie guy and his group from here.
They were about 300 yards away, but I could see them.
"Then, once I take off your fingers, I'll slowly dig knives into you, careful not to kill you immediately."
Slowly opening the window, I climbed out and methodically pulled myself onto the ledge, then went prone right outside my brother's window; Renton, who was right behind me, propped himself up on the window sill, and the two of us aimed with our rifles.
"Renton, leave the big mouth alive, but take out one or two of his henchmen," I stated, only receiving a grunt response from my brother.
"You will beg me for your life, and then maybe I'll put you out of your..."
BANG, BANG, BANG BANG
Renton and I Fired, interrupting him mid-sentence; I fired two rounds, landing their marks in the chests of two men on his left, while Renton took out two of the men on his right with flawless headshots.
The remaining thugs either dropped to the ground or ran for cover. The only consistent movement they all made was they started firing in random directions, completely blindsided by my brother and me.
Not one of them had seen our muzzle flash, so we were both still ghosts to the group of bandits.
Then, with a smirk, I put the radio microphone close to my mouth so I didn't have to speak loudly.
"Well, what was that about taking off all of my fingers? Come and get me, you limp dick, mother fucker." While carefully tucking myself back into the bedroom, I spat and resealed the window.
Honestly, it wouldn't be hard for them to locate us, especially since there was a pile of corpses right in front of our building. They had a fifty-fifty choice, either my building or the one across the street.
Dropping my arm and holding the Walkie-Talkie to my side, I turned around, only to find Chase standing in the doorway to my room.
"Dean, what the hell was that all about? We could have just stayed hidden, and they would have left us alone." It didn't take a rocket scientist to realize that he was scared.
Before I could answer, Renton grabbed him by the neck and slammed him against the wall; all Chase could do was struggle in vain; my brother was just too much stronger than him.
"What would that solve?" Renton said harshly before continuing.
"There are seven corpses outside our location. Do you REALLY think they wouldn't be able to figure out we were in here? Especially since there are shells and holes in our building, all they would need is a flashlight, and they could tell it was this building those shots came from." Renton gripped Chase by the shirt and threw him to the side like a child would toss away a broken toy.
Collapsing onto the carpet, Chase didn't move; he just laid on the floor in shock. There was a time not long ago when he was the bully over Renton, but now everything had changed.
In the last year, my brother had packed on fifty pounds of muscle and was twice Chase's size now.
I did nothing to help Chase up. I just walked past, scooped up the Drone remote, and followed Renton into our dad's bedroom without saying a word. As the one to initiate combat, I, of course, shared the same perspective as Renton.
Once we were both in the room, he slammed the door closed and punched a hole in the wall.
I hadn't seen him this angry since the Crucible at the end of boot camp when he twisted his ankle and thought he wouldn't finish the trial.
"What the hell doesn't he understand about this situation? We can all die at any minute, and that's completely ignoring that stupid countdown timer downstairs. We dropped seven bodies outside our home, and he honestly freaking thinks that they won't find us."
"If we had more time, we could have hidden them, but it was all we could do to secure their resources. Now we've got this pack of fools with guns after us, and Chase just thinks we should hunker down; that's a load of bull. We need to eliminate them all before they kill us first."
"Dean, tell me I'm wrong; tell me I'm missing something here because after that little statement we just made, they will be gunning for us full force, and you know just as well as I do that we've backed them into a corner that will cause them to lash out at us, which to be honest is fine by me."