The Link 3 - The Huntress

Chapter 27 - Anthony

People were streaming from the building as I drove up. The front entrance was blocked by an SUV. I parked on the road, just beyond the gate, as fear of what might be invaded my thoughts. Taking my colt, I ran through the gate slowing long enough to see two young men on the ground. They looked dead, sprawled were they fell. The bitch was already here, and it's killing had begun. Damn me for not poisoning her as a child. I prayed I wasn't too late. Mr. Sabbatini was all the family I knew.

The drive was longer than I remembered and my body was complaining. I gasped in lung fulls of air and forced my thighs to ignore the pain. People were streaming out of the left side of the building. The right, where Mr. Sabbatini's room was located, seemed devoid of any activity. I ran to the left, knowing he would have been one of the first evacuated. I had to find him in the mass of evacuees. I had to. The alternative was unthinkable.

"Mr. Sabbatini," I called out as I approached the double doors that lead from the back parking lot into the building. People in wheelchairs were being pushed farther away from the building. Some by nurses, others by patients themselves. I reached out and grabbed the arm of a nurse, one I remembered seeing in the past.

"Mr. Sabbatini, where is he," I said. The nurse looked at me and screamed. Idiot, I thought to myself, I was brandishing my gun like a maniac. I quickly lowered it, tucking it into my pants. "No, no. I looking for Mr. Sabbatini," I shouted. It was too late. The nurse left her patient alone in his wheelchair and began running, yelling about a gun.

The panic increased as I ran in circles, examining wheelchairs one by one, and shouting for Mr. Sabbatini. People were scattered wide, and I heard no response to my calls beyond crazed orders to get the patients away from the building. Mr. Sabbatini wasn't out here. I drew my gun and ran for the door.

Inside a doctor was running down the hall. He had pulled his white coat across his face, and he was waving me away. "Gas," he shouted, pointing at two more young men on the ground. I pulled my shirt over my nose and used my free hand to hold it in place. "Get the hell out of here," the doctor said as he ran past me out of the door. His shouts of gas mixing with the other calls, increasing the pandemonium. Gas or not, I moved forward. I had too. God's chosen was in trouble, and I was his only soldier.