Life After Death

chapter 20

We looked at each other. Pure shock travelling through us as we tried to comprehend what was happening. I could feel the different range of emotions that surrounded us all.

Anger. Fear. Panic.

"What do you want!?" Whitney shrieked, barging her own way to the window before any one of us could put an arm out to stop her.

"Well, we saw our very own logos! And we came to see who was using our name, only to find out that it's just a group of stragglers!" The man echoed.

Javon and Nathaniel had gone to the corridors. We were on the top floor, any threat had to be coming from below us. But when there was no immediate danger sensed on the floor or two below us, they came back up.

"What about a back exit? There has to be one," I franticly suggested.

"But what about Reid?"

It was as though he had heard our thoughts and ideas from outside the building, because he yelled up to us immediately, informing us that they were in fact all on the bottom floor, confirming our fears that we were stuck.

"Just come down here and save us all the hassle," the man's voice spoke again, hitting Reid round the back of the head, "There is no way around this."

Whilst we still had whatever time was left, we all grabbed every weapon we could recall we had from our rooms. Even ones we hadn't touched in weeks, that we weren't even sure we had enough ammo for, we stuck in our pockets. None of us sure how this was all going to play out, and what we were going to have to do to get out of it.

"Here," I said, crouching down and passing a pistol delicately to Brooke, "You see anyone that isn't us, aim this at them, and shoot them."

Usually, I wouldn't want a child shooting guns around the place, but I figured we probably weren't going to have much choice in the matter. But she nodded, the look of familiar terror evident in her eyes as she did so, though I doubted there was anything left in us that could assure her everything would be fine.

"We need to get to the roof," Axel stated, "It's the only place that's open, where we can see every direction."

No one bothered to question him, despite Whitney's somewhat reluctance to stray any further from Reid, and we all followed. Finding the staff stairwell that went upwards and shutting the door behind us as the nights cold air hit us. And from here, we noticed how little we really could see. If it weren't for the burning cars, and the headlights below, we'd be shrouded in total darkness. Various voices below yelling to say they had spotted us, as we leaned over the edge.

"What now!?" Jade cried, just as a bullet bounced off the brick ledge beside Jace.

"They want us dead, we want them dead. Only one of us is getting out of this," Nathaniel declared,

Javon and Whitney were among the first to shoot back in a fit of rage and frustration, Dahlia now positioning her own sniper, comparing the Reapers to the Lurkers she picked off most nights.

Reid was still in a clear space, but now only one man stood with a gun to him, the others all had their attentions turned upwards at us. Their current priority. And as Dahlia picked off the two aimed at us, I got the man behind him, leaving him now unguarded.

Clearly, he realised this, because he made a sprint for it. His legs boosting and pushing him towards the entrance. Whatever his intention was, we didn't have time to contemplate, Whitney stood in a mixture of worry and relief that he was now free. And the time he spent running, felt like minutes to us.

But it all stopped. Two shots resonating through the air, somehow more sinister than the rest. Reid falling to the floor as blood seemed to pour from both legs. The main man now stepping closer to him in the semi-circle as everyone - us and them - stopped shooting. Too fixated on what was happening, failing to take the chance to kill any more of them.