Tainted (Urban)

Chapter 9: Two Conditions...

As the crowd complied with the violent battlecry, I snatched Alex by his flannel's collar. As I pulled him close, it felt like I was trying to latch onto one of those flailing inflatable Airdancers.

"They're after you, Alex," I hissed in his ear. I pushed him away slightly to allow him space to look around again. I honestly didn't know if the alcohol had impaired his vision at this point though, but I guessed that he could see enough to get a grasp on the situation. There were now violent partiers rampaging through the house screaming out my friend's name.

"Oh...wow." He said with a hint of surprise. He then started to break out into a thundery laughter that I found to be out of place. Alex tended to find funny things to be more hilarious than they actually were, but now was not the time for that. This fool was going to get his ass beat any minute now if he kept drawing attention to himself.

I quickly pressed a palm to his mouth to stop him and I just hoped he wasn't too drunk to remember that he could breathe through his reddened nose.

We received a few suspicious glances after Alex's brief fit of laughter, but soon enough they had gone back to their manhunt. I knew that they would eventually figure out that my friend was the culprit behind this nonsense.

I would definitely be guilty by association, so these drunkards would most likely attack me as well. Now, I would fight for Alex if it came down to it, but the idea of avoiding a confrontation at this point was the most appealing.

I rubbed my side, my skin still tender from being kicked by that idiot CeeCee. Yup, finding a way out of here was for sure priority number one.

I attempted to move with the crowd in order to blend in with their pack mentality, but the mob was moving away from the front door with each movement. They probably had folks posted at the front entrance waiting for somebody to attempt to escape anyways.

I sighed.

I would have to figure out another way out there. And the drunken target hanging off of my shoulders was not offering any assistance whatsoever. I had to keep checking just to make sure that he was still conscious. Every once in awhile, he would mutter something about finding our target. But right now, I was more concerned with Alex's safety.

By the time we had circled around the house for the second time, I had pretty much mapped out the entire place. There were two meatheads stationed at the front door, two at the backdoor, and one more standing atop of the staircase leading to the basement. There were only four windows on the first level of the house and none of them had easy access. It would take a good thirty seconds to get one open, let alone squeeze two people through them. In that amount of time, the mob would've spotted us and had us halfway to Heaven.

It seemed as if the upper level was the most inconspicuous location in the house. I figured that it was due to the fact that everybody was either too tired, too drunk, or simply too lazy to run up and down the stairs. If Alex and I were lucky, we could find a window or something on the upper level to slip out of.

Since the mob was moving like a wave, I knew that Alex and I had to slow our pace until we reached the back of the crowd. That would've left us with about thirty seconds to scramble up the stairs before the front of the horde reached that room again.

"Alright, we're up!" I whispered to Alex as we broke off from the group. I don't know why I had said that to him like I wasn't the one carrying around his weight. It felt like each step was the most crucial event to ever happen in my life.

I began to worry about if I had miscalculated the timing. Then I began to worry about if I happened to lose my grip on Alex and he went crashing down the staircase. What if I went crashing down the staircase?