Free Web NovelChapter 13: Gotta Go Old School
The room I stepped into through the hole in the wall was small enough that five people standing in it would have been a crowd. Walls were painted a pale color that had absorbed years of cigarette smoke until the color was something else entirely.
A thin mattress on a low frame sat at the corner with no headboard over cheap floor tiles, several of them cracked across the center where the blast had traveled through the foundation.
One look and anyone could tell that no one actually lived here.
I knew what this building was built for from the get-go.
Half the city knew.
And as if that wasn’t evidence enough, the two half-torn people on the floor near the blown-out wall had made it clear.
The man was middle-aged, face down, with flesh burnt and ripped open.
The woman beside him was younger, lying on her side with one arm extended, a deep burn running from her shoulder to her hip, her chest not moving.
I stepped over both of them and moved to the apartment door without another glance.
After all, I wasn’t here on some righteous crusade.
I pressed my back against the wall beside the door, shotgun up, and let the awareness extend into the hallway beyond.
[Four people, maybe eight meters out...] I thought, sensing them positioned together.
Reaching into the inventory, I pulled a grenade, removed the pin, and kept it with the safety spoon held in my grip while I worked the door handle with two fingers and rolled it low through the gap without showing any part of myself.
The grenade clinked against the tile floor with a sound as though I just threw a rock, and then the hallway exploded with noise.
"GRENADE!"
Scrambling of boots echoed through the hallway, the very next second. Someone hit the floor, cursing out loud. Someone else crashed into a wall. And then:
-BOOM-!
The door frame shook while dust came through the gap beneath the door in a single hard puff, and the ringing in my ears went up a register even through the ear protection.
The hallway went quiet except for the alarm and the distant sound of shouting from the floors above, along with a wet, rhythmic sound from somewhere further down the hallway.
Then the wet sound resolved into words, or the attempt at words, and I knew someone down the hallway was still alive and still had enough lung capacity to let everyone in the building know about it.
I pulled the second grenade, rolled it through the gap in the same motion, and turned my face away.
-BOOM-!
And what followed was complete silence.
I spent two seconds crouched against the wall, letting the dust settle, telling my lungs to slow down, and they partially complied.
[Gotta turn the ground floor into a killzone...] I thought, running it through quickly.
Clearing this building room by room wasn’t an option. Nor did I have any intention or time for killing every asshole here.
So, I needed them pushed upward, away from the basement. Five minutes of believing this is a full assault would give me the perfect window to go and actually get out of the basement.
I pulled the door open and peered around the edge of it at floor level, shotgun barrel first.
The hallway was long and narrow, the emergency lighting was doing most of the work because two of the overhead fixtures were down, and the smoke from the grenades had settled into a low haze that made the far end of the hallway indistinct.
And the moment I peered out, the far end of the hallway lit up.
-Thard-!
The round hit the doorframe six centimeters from my face, erupting concrete fragments off the wall in a spray on my face.
I immediately shoved myself back in, breathing hard through clenched teeth.
I could feel the hot blood running down my cheek where the largest piece had gashed my face.
[This is bad...]
This was a classic corridor stalemate.
Someone was at the far end with good reflexes, a clear enough sightline, and no reason to come forward.
I could not advance without walking into a firing position. Nor could I stay here without being flanked through the courtyard entrance.
I crouched below the door frame and held the awareness out as far as it would go.
The shooters at the far end were beyond my ten-meter radius. I couldn’t feel them.
And as I ran through my options, thinking maybe to get out and find a new entry point, the idea arrived.
[Maybe I use Telekinesis... Maybe I can push a grenade down this hallway at the edge of my awareness and chuck it...]
I pulled a third grenade, removed the pin, and held it with the spoon compressed in my palm. Then I focused.
It took several seconds to get a grip on it, feeling the pressure built between my eyes immediately, that foreground sensation of the telekinesis engaging while I focused, like applying force to something you cannot touch.
Slowly, I felt the grenade’s weight lighten between my palms.
I could feel the compression as a secondary grip, a held tension running from my forehead outward.
[This is... insane...] The thought floated up from beneath the focus as I slowly let go. Yet the grenade hovered there, with the safety spoon still on it.
[Okay... easy now...]
I started extending the grenade forward through the doorway, keeping it below waist height, and the pressure behind my eyes increased with every centimeter I pushed it out. freewebnøvel.coɱ
I was working through it and starting to feel it become manageable when the awareness suddenly caught something moving fast and low on the floor, and it caught it from two directions at once.
And that’s when the sounds came.
Rapid beating of claws on tile, rattling of metal collars, and the low, consistent growls of trained dogs.
And there were two of them. Both German Shepherds.
[Fuck!] My concentration fractured, wobbling the grenade in the air 8 meters down the hallway, yet the spoon still held.
I shoved it the rest of the way in a single violent mental push, chucking with as much power as I could deep inside the hallway, and immediately felt the agony rip through the front of my skull like something had drilled itself between my eyes.
And the moment I chucked it, the dogs burst through the doorway, leaping at my throat before I could react. freeωebnovēl.c૦m
And just as they got within inches of my throat, my mind detonated.
-Boom-!
And an omnidirectional wave of pure concussion erupted through me, sounding like a crack of a whip, sending the damn mutts flying into a wall.
I didn’t know how I did it, why I did it; it just happened.
One of them was bashed into a wall with the side of its skull and went limp immediately, while the other slammed into the far corner of the room and hit the floor on its side with wet gargles coming from its throat.
Somewhere down the hallway, the grenade detonated.
But I could neither hear the explosion nor feel it through the walls. To me, the entire room had gone a blinding white.
I was against the wall without knowing how I got there, panting worse than a dog, snapping my eyes left and right as I blinked hard, trying and failing to bring any semblance of sharpness to the vision that had gone blurry.
My knees were partially bent, and my shoulder was taking most of my weight against the plaster.
But what clenched my teeth harder was the fact that the awareness was gone, completely gone, I could no longer feel the 10-meter radius, and what filled that gap in senses was just pure darkness.
Through the blur, I saw the black and brown silhouette of the dog rising, and before I could even think about anything, Tikki launched off my shoulder.
I saw the blur of him go past my face, claws out, body fully extended, letting out a distorted shriek, launching himself at the dog’s face
Through the blur, I saw the dog snap at him.
I was already going for the 1911 on my chest before the thought to do so even formed, my hand shaking badly enough that I missed the grip twice before finding it and-
-Thard-!
I fired just one round blindly at the larger mass of fur and muscle, desperate for the sound of a canine yelp instead of Tikki’s screech.
And the moment that canine yelp reached my ears, I fired two more.
-Thard-!-Thard-!
Two more, and the silhouette stopped moving.
I was on my hands and knees before it had, crawling forward across the tile and the debris and calling Tikki’s name over and over between pants.
And I found his silhouette near the dog’s body, his tail fully puffed, his ears flat and all four feet on the ground, shaking slightly in his legs.
I grabbed him and ran my hands across him, his head, his neck, both sides, both back legs, looking for blood that was not the dog’s.
And he let me.
Up close, I saw his eyes were wide, his pupils blown out, and he was breathing fast, but at least he was breathing.
"You’re okay right? Tell me you’re okay! Please!"
He slow-blinked once before climbing back onto my shoulder and into his pocket, gripping my shoulder with his claws like before.
It was only then I let out a breath that shook on the way out while I stayed crouched there for four full seconds, convincing myself that he’s okay while the migraine drilled between my eyes.
Slowly, I stood up, and it was then my brain registered that the awareness was still missing.
And right after it came the realization of the consequences that entailed.
"This is bad..." I breathed.
The ten meters of space around me that had been filled with constant information for the last several hours was empty now.
It was now just walls, noise, and my own blurred eyesight in a building full of armed men all out to kill me.
[Okay... guess I gotta do this old school...]
I had barely turned towards the door when a large man barrelled through it with a fire axe raised high in his hand.
He was already mid swing by the time I registered the threat, and through sheer instinct, I went down.
The axe head hit the wall where my shoulder had been, exploding plaster across the room, and I was already moving. Bereft of sight, sound, and awareness, I was operating purely on instinct.
With the karambit already drawn from the plate carrier by a hand that needed no signals, I slashed across his knee in a single diagonal gash, using the momentum of the duck.
-Slash-!-AAAAHH-!
His leg gave way under him right then and there, while a scream tore out of him.
Just as he started to turn, I pistol-whipped him upward across the jaw with the butt of the pistol, staggering him.
But he didn’t go down. And I used that.
He grabbed for my collar with his free hand, and I drove the karambit straight through his throat in an uppercut and shoved with every ounce of being and began driving him through the door, using his body like a meat shield and the karambit in his throat like a handle.
I saw two blurry shadows coming through the door just as I raised the pistol.
My meat shield took the first shot and felt the impact travel through him while I fired the 1911 twice over his shoulder at the first man’s face.
His jaw came apart from the skull in pieces while I pushed the dying man I was holding forward, while a ragged roar tore out of me.
The other man and the ones behind him immediately ran back, and as I pushed my meatshield out, I saw the blur of 4 silhouettes.
And the moment I did-
-Thard-!-Thard-!-Thard-!-Thard-!-Thard-!-Thard-!
I fired until the slide locked back.
Then I kept pulling the trigger.
The click was the first clear and sharp sound that cut through the fog that had been my brain.
And yet, teeth clenched and eyes wide, I was still pulling the damn trigger, standing in the hallway over four bodies with the karambit shoved into the throat of a barely alive man spilling blood on my hand.
I shoved him away from me with my shoulder, wrenching the karambit free as he hit the wall, and pulled the shotgun out, muzzle raised, even as I leaned against the wall.
Sweat was running down the inside of the helmet, pooling at the chin strap. My vision was still blurry, pulsing at the edges, while the migraine was still sitting between my eyes like something lodged there.
"At least the hearing is back..." I panted, reaching for that telekinetic awareness, and found nothing but complete absence.
Just gone, the same way a limb goes numb past the point of sensation, and I had no way of knowing when or if it was coming back.
Panting still, I held the shotgun, looked at the hallway in both directions, knowing full well that I didn’t have the privilege to stop moving, because I could hear the sound of footsteps and the barking of dogs surrounding me.
