Not for the first time Lewis silently thanked Matt for his foresight in picking up the bear spray, way back near the beginning just after the Gulf burned. His friend had almost run out of the stock he’d gotten from the store, but Lewis had managed to snag the ones he still had left: enough for everyone but Trent to carry one on their person.
It wouldn’t exactly be a silent takedown, but it was definitely quieter than a gunshot and with luck would choke off any warning shouts.
Only a few seconds later the door flew open and half a dozen armed men streamed in, flashlight attachments on their rifles waving wildly. They froze for just a second when they saw the empty cages, and Lewis used that time to spray a broad sweep at point blank range in the general direction of their heads. He dropped three before they even realized they were under attack, while between them Rick and Jane took out the other three and made sure all six had gotten a good faceful.
The blockheads had mostly dropped their weapons and were on the ground retching and gagging, trying to shout around the breaths they couldn’t catch. Lewis kicked the rifle out of the hands of the one soldier who managed to keep hold of his and dropped down to put him in a choke hold, while the freed prisoners swarmed over the others and got to work clubbing them to death with the weapons he and Jane had brought them.
It was a savage display, but Lewis didn’t exactly blame them. He slammed the door shut again, made sure all the blockheads were at least unconscious, then distributed the newly captured weapons to more unarmed prisoners.
Once all that was done he motioned to the prisoners watching him in tense anticipation. “Get to Trev at the new exit and be ready to go.” They’d pushed their luck hanging around for so long and then taking down that patrol, and there was no telling when it would finally run out.
Speaking of which… as the prisoners detached from the south wall and trickled over to the west one, Lewis cracked the door open and slipped outside to take over playing sentry for Rick.
At which point a few of the soldiers milling among the tents turned his way. Lewis didn’t know whether it would’ve been less suspicious to just keep the door shut, hoping the lack of a sentry wouldn’t rouse suspicion. But as soon as the blockheads among the tents started bolting his way, shouting and raising their weapons, Lewis knew the jig was up.
At least he had some warning. He raised his own G3 and opened fire, slamming his back against the door to open it behind him as he did. Jane joined him as he backed into the barn, also shooting at any targets that presented themselves.
“Trev, exit!” he shouted.
“Almost there!” his cousin yelled back. “It’ll take a minute.”
“We don’t have one!” Behind him Rick had rolled open the garage door and he and a dozen prisoners were shooting out, yelling for those who had grenades to use them. Several men pulled pins and threw.
Then the enemy returned fire, punching holes through the old wood of the barn like it was cardboard. A few prisoners went down screaming. “Drop and keep shooting!” Lewis shouted, following his own advice. “Trev?”
He heard grunts and the sound of splintering wood from the wall off to his right. “Got it!”
The roar of explosions came from outside as the grenades detonated, and he heard men screaming. “Everyone out!” Lewis shouted. “Start running and don’t stop til you’re dead!”
That probably wasn’t the most motivating thing to say, but the prisoners clustered around the west wall began jamming themselves through the hole. Trev was already on the other side shooting.
Lewis kept firing into the night to the south, doing his best to pin down the blockheads there. This had turned out worse than he ever could’ve feared, alerting the camp while they were still in the barn and with enemies converging from all sides. But maybe it had been optimistic to hope for anything better.
Then luck finally turned their way. A deafening roar shook the barn from the north, and glancing over his shoulder he saw a red glow streaming through the cracks in the boards. The armory had finally blown.
He was on his feet even before the noise died out, sprinting for the opening Trev had made. “Out, out!” he screamed.
Behind him most of the armed prisoners followed him clutching their weapons, flanked by Jane and Rick still firing at the south wall, in the slightest chance they might hit anyone on the other side. But he saw to his irritation that some of the men behind him were actually fleeing out the front doors; either they realized that the hole Trev had made might draw enemy fire, or they saw the logjam there and were desperate to get out ahead of the press of people. Some went down, some didn’t. A few might’ve even done some good, ducking between tents shooting into the night.
Lewis shoved through the prisoners bottlenecked at Trev’s crude entrance, which he’d apparently created by breaking or tearing off enough splintery boards for three people to leave at once. Joining the flow of people streaming outside, he made it through the exit with his gun leveled over the heads of the prisoners in front of him, searching for the targets he knew were going to be there.
Walking right into the closest thing to Hell he could imagine.
“Out, out!” Trev yelled, firing wildly at every moving shape in front of him as he ducked through the tents.
A blockhead emerging from a tent just in front of him took one of his bullets almost immediately, and the man’s rifle clattered to the ground as he fell. Trev stepped over the body, while one of the prisoners behind him scrambled to pick up the weapon and started firing.
Trev raised his voice even louder. “Everyone get out of the barn and spread out! Don’t clump up, don’t stop!”
Deb ran beside him, firing Rick’s .45 at muzzle flashes coming from within tents. Too many muzzle flashes. They’d left the corpses of a dozen or so prisoners, the first who’d come through the hole after them, scattered on the ground somewhere behind, and more were dying by the minute.
This was a nightmare. If every second blockhead wasn’t running north to do something about the pyrotechnics display from the armory, they’d probably all already be dead.
“Maybe I… should’ve… stayed in… cage,” Deb wheezed, every shot making the large caliber pistol buck wildly in her hands. He wondered if she was even coming close to hitting anything. The haggard woman stumbled, and Trev paused for a second to catch her elbow and haul her back up. She weighed practically nothing.
Dozens of voices were shouting around him, and several more in his earbuds. Gutierrez was one of those. “Keep going, guys! The sentries and patrols around the western perimeter have all turned your way, so we’re hitting them from behind. And we’re also gunning down any blockheads we see near the edge of camp. We’ll carve you out an escape route if you can reach it.”
Trev slapped his radio’s toggle. “You’ll shoot as many of us as you will of them!” he panted, using the brief break to fumble a spare magazine into his M16’s receiver.
“Give us some credit.” An explosion lit up the night ahead of them, a firebomb, and a tent went up in flames. “See that tent? Tell your people to leave camp in the lanes to either side. We’ll shoot everywhere else, but even so we’ll be taking care to only shoot at blockheads.”
Trev ducked down as a hail of gunfire ahead ripped the tent beside him to shreds. Grabbing Deb, he pulled her between that tent and another one and dropped down for a second, fumbling for a grenade to throw at the blockheads who’d been shooting at them. The enemy seemed so intent on gunning them down that they didn’t notice it sailing towards them.