Avenge Thy Brother

Chapter 13: Bloody Murder

            Even though I couldn't open my eyes, I heard the sound of a car horn blowing steadily. The moment the blowing stopped; I opened my eyes to see I was suspended upside-down in my seat barely being held in place by my seatbelt. When I unbuckled myself, I fell onto the roof of the car. It was at that moment that I noticed Karen was no longer in the driver's seat. Her window had been broken out by the impact of the crash so she must have crawled out. I heard the sound of footsteps and immediately searched for my pistol. Luckily, I found it. I also found my surveillance glasses; however, they were broken into two pieces. The footsteps stopped and I prepared myself to shoot in any direction I had to. When I saw a pair of boots step up to the driver's side upside-down window, I breathed a sigh of relief.

"Are y'all alright in there?" I heard a man's voice call out.

"I need help," I told him. I climbed to the driver's side window and the man helped me out of the car. I looked at him and offered, "Thank you. Sir, did you see a woman get out of this car?"

"No. I just drove up and saw this car turned over in this embankment. Are you okay?"

"I need you to get back in your truck and leave, sir."

"But shouldn't I call..."

"Sir, please, leave. It's not safe for you to be out here." I checked my clip and reloaded it back into my pistol and pulled back the slide to chamber the round. As the man was heading back to his truck, I asked him, "Which direction is the old Saber candy factory?"

"It's a little ways up the road around a deep curve and to the left."

"How about a shortcut?"

He pointed to a set of woods across the road and said, "Those woods will get you there quicker."

I ran across the road and darted into the woods at full speed. The man was right, it wasn't long before I was at the old factory. It wasn't as dilapidated as I was expecting. The factory had shut down in 2006 but the building still looked decent. The moment I stepped out of the woods, a bullet flew past me and hit a tree. I immediately shot back in the direction the bullet had come from and heard my bullet ricochet off of the building.

"Karen, I'm placing you under arrest," I called out. "You might as well come out because this whole thing is over."

"This ends once you're dead," she called out before firing at me again.

I retreated behind a tree and that's when I remembered my watch. There it was on my wrist. I hadn't forgotten it. Without wasting another moment, I pressed the locator button. When I heard the sound of a door opening and closing, I stepped out from behind the tree and hurried to the building. There were cars and trucks parked on one side so I knew there were multiple people inside. If I walked in through the front as Karen had done, I would have been ambushed.

"There has to be another way," I said to myself as I walked alongside the building. When I got to a rusty fire escape, I smiled and said, "Yes!"

The fire escape had been severely eroded so I had to be careful. It took patience and luck, but I made it to the roof of the building. No one was up there so I made my way to the first fire exit I saw. I slowly and quietly opened the door and gained access to the stairwell inside the building. I quietly descended the stairs and when I made it to a door with level six written above it, I slowly pushed it open.

The top floor of the factory was completely abandoned. There were labs and offices on that floor but no one was up there but me. I headed back to the stairwell and opened the door but immediately heard footsteps coming. I picked up on six different types of concurrent tapping on the cement steps from their shoes; meaning there were three people coming. I closed the door as softly as I could and hurried into one of the labs. The moment I found a good hiding place, I heard the sound of their footsteps out in the hall.