The Bodyguard 5sos

Chaper Two.

As I go down the stairs, the noise of the music above recedes into a dull thudding until all I can hear is Mac's heavy breathing behind me. At the bottom I run my torch through the darkness, over the cracked brick walls, racks piled with beer and guns and try to ignore the stench of stale urine. The floor is littered with debris, rusted tins, a stained mattress. My torch falls on what I first think is a dressmakers dummy thrown into the corner. A figure huddled in a blanket is sitting chained to a hook in the wall. The pale face of a teenage girl reaches imploringly out to me, blinking in the sudden light.  

'Alice,' I whisper. 'Are you alone? Just look and we'll know.' 

Alice turns her mud stained face away from us and looks back down between the shelves. 

'Good girl.' I breathe. 

Mac and I edge forward, guns raised and peer around the shelving. At the end of the room, a door stands slightly ajar. The dull glow of a solitary light bulb edges its way out into the cellar.  

Upstairs the music suddenly stops and is replaced by the sound of my heart beating in my ears.  

The door fly's open, a shadow passes across it. 'FBI, put it down!' I shout.  

A deafening, double bang and flash of a shotgun raining fire into the air lights up the room. A chunk of wood splinters past my face. I duck back, then Mac sprints past me and disappears around the shelving.  

'FBI!' Mac shouts into the gloom. 'You're outnumbered. Throw the gun out.' 

I slip down two shelves. The shadow ducks across the door again and the blast of a shotgun ricochets around the room like thunder. I get off two rounds in return and move up another two shelves.  

I've lost track of Mac. Then the bulb goes out and we were plunged into darkness. Behind me I can hear footsteps on the staircase. I tap my earpiece. It's dead. Are the footstep our team coming down or the shooter heading up? 

A double flash of a shotgun rips into the darkness. Then a crazy barrage of gunfire opens up around me.  

'OK. Got him.' Mac's voice breaks the sudden stillness. 'Grab the girl Alexis. Alexis?'  

I'm lying in the dirt, gasping for breath. There is the strange sensation of liquid seeping into my lungs like someone has placed a leaking hot water bottle on my chest and is pressing down hard on it.

A light flashes into my face. I try to turn away but find I can't. 'Jesus Mac. You shot her.' A voice says. 

'Christ!' Macs' face appears over me, pulled gaunt with emotion. 'Get an ambulance. Now!' 

Mac lifts my hand. 'I'm sorry, Alexis.' 

I can feel the warm liquid oozing up my throat and trickling round my teeth. My mouth fills with the bitter taste of iron. I raise my head, cough up a little trickle of blood and fall back exhausted by the effort.  

Mac seems to be shrinking. Shrinking far, far, away until he's just a little figure at the far end of a telescope turned to wrong way round. Then, 'pop,' he's gone. Swallowed by blackness.  

I lie here, on the cold earth of the basement floor, under the gaze of the SWAT team. My vision's shot and I'm slowly drowning in my own blood.