Morgan stood up. "They're fighting," he said. "We should help."
Otta stood with him, clutching her necklace with a blank look on her face.
"Where's it coming from?" asked Morgan, leaping to the door. "Can you hear it?"
"No." She paused. "Yes. Up north, there."
"Where do you keep your gun?"
"My gun? It's at Sami's house."
Morgan sucked air in through gritted teeth. "That's all the way across town." He shifted on his feet, thinking. "Sami will have it for you. I'll just get mine. Good luck!"
Throwing open the door, Morgan turned for his home, righted his posture and sprinted. Already, his muscles were warmed up, and now the gunshot noises bathed him in adrenalin. Air beat against his face, the smoke stinging his nose. The world blurred. Finally, he reached his home, stopping before he could crash through the door. Opening it, he dived into the living room and pulled his rifle off the wall. Holding it firmly in shooting grip, he ran back to the northern part of town.
Otta was no longer at the restaurant. She was a block to the north, with the small crowd of police and militia who gathered around a square brick building that housed Dee's Laundry and Raim's Sewing. Everyone hid behind walls or crouched behind dumpsters. A few of them popped out of cover and fired into the windows of the building, and more bullets answered them, taking chips out of street and the walls. Mercifully, Morgan saw no bodies. No one had gotten hurt.
"They're in that house," said Otta, pointing at the brick building. "They might have a hostage. I don't know for sure."
"Who are they?" asked Morgan.
"A gang, but better armed than the ones I know. Half of them have guns."
Morgan was at a loss. "What do we do?"
No one answered him.
"We have them," said a familiar voice behind him. Morgan turned to see Nakasi, standing tall in full combat gear, her bow ready and loaded in her hands. The policewomen stood apart from her, as if expecting her to bite them. "I saw them. They don't have hostages. They're acting like they have time on their side, but they don't." She gave a twisted smile. "We have them."
"But how?"
She looked up. "No hunt is worth dying for. Every bandit knows that. All we have to do is scare them until they're-"
A war cry came echoing down the street. Morgan, Nakasi and Otta all looked, and none of them liked what they saw.
There were dozens of them, new bandits all dressed in bleached white shirts with red figures scrawled on them. Machetes waved above their heads like giant teeth, and three-- no, four of them-- had guns firing wildly into the sky.
Morgan darted behind a wooden wall that peeked past a street corner. Looking out, he saw the police scatter, shooting back at the bandits. Nakasi brought up her bow, then aborted the shot and took cover across the street from Morgan.
Morgan could not hear anything. Gunshots from three or four different kinds of gun blended into a formless roar. Morgan thought he saw Nakasi's lips moving, but if she was addressing him, she was wasting her breath.
He risked a peek down the firing line, then quickly pulled his head back. There were too many bullets flying. He took off away from the firefight, then turned left at the end of the block, circling around the gunshot noises.
He finished his loop and poked his head out into the street, seeing the backs of at least thirty white-shirted women run away from him, machetes high. Two of their own lay dead on the ground behind them.
