End of Women: Part Two

The Shot

Zero Hour, Houston, TX

Millie watched President Hobart's brains shoot out over the rear seat of the car. In a space of time no bigger than what it took for the bullet to leave her rifle and enter the man's head, the agents surrounding him and flanking virtually every other building reacted. The small window through which Millie had taken the shot was peppered with a hundred rounds a second.

Each one of their armour-piercing rounds bounced off concrete and shattered glass, hitting nothing in between. Millie watched it all from the safety of the sewer system below and the uplink she had to the viewfinder on the rifle. 

'Time to go?' Leng half-asked, half-begged. The smell was as rancid as sewers could be.

'Just one... more...' Millie smiled as she remotely pumped a round into the head of one of the agents before something hit the scope and her vision was compromised.

'OK, now its time to go.' 

Millie and Leng pulled on their protective coats and zipped up. Leng went first, jumping into the muck with her hands hovering inches above the surface. Millie followed. The smell of it hit her so hard she thought she might go nose-blind. They trudged through it for a half-mile until they had covered the entire base of the stadium and two streets over. 

At a T-junction Millie saw a manhole cover above their heads and decided they had gone far enough. Echoing sounds of voices behind them gave her extra motivation to jump up onto the walkway, strip off the polythene coat and toss it into the filth to sink out of sight. Then she and Leng both climbed up the ladder to street-level.

Millie pushed the cover open a crack to check their surroundings. They seemed to be inside a big parking lot surrounded by tall office buildings. But for one or two vans it was completely deserted. She breathed a sigh of relief and then pulled herself, and Leng, up out of the sewers.

Back in the open air, they paused for a moment to catch their breath. Millie noticed that Leng's thin arms were shaking from all the exertion. 

'What about the others?' Leng asked Millie.

'They go their own ways, as we agreed.' Millie replied breathlessly. 'There's no point looking for them when - agh' she grabbed at a stitch in her thigh, 'tsss, when we can't help them.'

Leng seemed less than reassured. Millie didn't have time to work her way around the woman's emotional labyrinth. They needed to move, quickly; even if they had outrun the Secret Service, they might still be arrested by beat cops just for being women. 

'This way,' Millie told Leng, heading towards a narrow rear alleyway, 'we take the back-streets all the way to...'

Millie stopped dead. She was staring into the narrow passage at something at the far end. Before Leng could look, Millie had drawn her pistol and pumped a round into Leng's leg.

The woman screamed and collapsed onto the floor, clutching her bloody thigh. Millie dropped the gun and ran, ran all the way to the manhole and pulled herself through it, leaving it to slide into place above her. Leng's screams penetrated the heavy metal and pierced Millie's heart, but she had to listen and be sure, be sure they took the bait...

Soon enough she heard footsteps, many of them, and laughter. Leng screamed even louder until someone shut her up with some kind of muzzle. Then she heard the voice of the man she feared more than any other in the world.

'Why is this one alone?' said Wilkes. 'Had any of you bothered to ask yourselves that?'

The laughter died down and the men mumbled apologies and excuses.