The Tale of Ren - Book one: The Hunt Begins

9. Dropping one by one like flies

The masked men on the ground floor hear a noise. A man with a lion mask turns to a man with a green coloured, faceless mask. 'Go upstairs and see what that noise was.' He commanded. The man nods and went upstairs.

      He turns around a corner. Strangely, he sees that the lights on this floor are off. He loads his riffle and aims at everything that may move, well walking through the dark hall. He arrives at a broken window and realizes that someone might have gotten inside. He quickly looks around him, slowly moving forward. As he walks he hears something falling and looks behind him. He aims his riffle at the place where he heard the noise. A fire extinguisher roll towards him. He slowly walks forward to it. But suddenly he realizes that he hears footsteps. Not his own, but a faint second pair of footsteps. Somewhere in front of him. He squeezes his eyes to try and see in the dark further ahead. Two red glowing eyes appears out of nowhere. From shock, he almost dropped his riffle, but instead he started shooting. The pair of red eyes avoided the bullets and came closer very fast. The man screams it out while shooting and trying to hit the red eyes. A hand appears out of the darkness, grabs his face tightly and thrust his head backwards on the ground. The hand pulls his head up and thrust it against the ground again. Than it throws the man hard against the wall. The man lies on the ground, not moving anymore. Ren passes him and walks further in the direction where the man came from.

Gun shots sounded from the upper floors and echoes to the ground floor where the hostages and the other masked men were. 'The hell was 'at!' Shouts someone of the masked men.

'Maybe that new guy got scared of something Glow.' Jokes a man with a giraffe mask.

'Yeah, maybe Raffey.' Suddenly more gunshots follow from different places on the upper floors.

'H-Hey Glow, aren't those places where we have stationed the others? Hey Glow!' And Raffy turns to Glow. He sees that Glow's eyes look nervous. 'Maybe they all got scared.' Glow says a little bit less convincing than he wanted it to sound. A hostage suddenly screamed, making the two men jump a little. Glow, Raffy and the other masked man looked at the woman who screamed.

'The hell's wrong with you.' Says Raffy.

The woman points up. Everyone looked up and sees at that moment a masked man falling down. 'What the hell!?' Shouts Glow.

'Look, up there.' Says one of the masked men and he points at the third floor. A boy stands on the edge of the floor.

Ren quietly creeps up behind the last guard of the masked group. He quickly muffles the man's mouth with his right hand and breaks his back with his left elbow. A little grunt of pain came out of the man's mouth. After that he throws the man down. A few seconds later he hears a woman scream and looks over the edge of the floor. He sees people looking up to him and hears one of the masked men shouting: 'Look, up there.'

Whoops, I forgot that the hostages were down there, oh well. Ren thinks. He gathers air in his lungs and shouts to the masked men.

'Hey, you people there. Release the hostages and nothing bad will happen to you!' he yells from the top of his lungs. The masked men look at each other. 'Forget it! Who are you anyways? You look like a child, are there cops with you? There are, aren't there!?' Shouts the leader with the lion mask back and points his gun at Ren.

'Wow, wow, wow, calm down, easy man. No cops, just me. I alone am enough for you lot. But like I told you, release the hostages and nothing bad will happen.' Shouts Ren back. The lion begins to lose his patience.

'"I alone am enough for you lot" you say? Don't get cocky you damn brat. Fire!' He shouts, and the masked men point their guns at Ren and shoot.

      Michelle jumps up from her place. 'No, Ren!' She shouts.