My foe let out a roar of rage and I watched him double at the midsection; he brought both hands down and hit the floorboards, causing the whole room to shake. There was a calm, a quiet, and then a cracking noise as my enemy disappeared through a hole in the floor. Just a second later, the splitting of wood reached my ears and I jumped, a moment too late, as the floor crashed down around me and I fell to the basement.
The shock of the landing snapped my head back, my head hitting the boards that I had fallen with. A dazed sensation overwhelmed me, as though everything in my vision had taken a mighty sway, like it was all jerking around me. “Apparently, I don’t always land on my feet,” I said, and felt a sharp pain in my back. “And more’s the pity for it…”
The dust was thick in the air, choking me with the smell of the wreckage. Particles of wood, plaster and concrete, oppressive and thick, coated my tongue and nasal passages. I coughed, trying to expel it, even as I tried to sit up. The floorboards of the house were all around me, at odd angles from the landing, and the dust was so thick I couldn’t see much of anything, even if I’d had my eyes open for more than a few seconds at a stretch without them filling with tears. I could taste the foul stuff that hung in the air, a dry, awful flavor like the oldest bread on the face of the earth coupled with paint.
I stood and finally got my head above the dust in time to see the beast of a man roar at me again and charge. I threw myself to the side, smashing into an old piece of wooden furniture as he went by. “If I ever get out of here,” I said over the noise of my enemy hitting the far wall with shattering force, “I will personally beat Clyde Clary to death with nothing but an old shoe.”
There was a sharp increase of moisture in the air, I could feel it, as though it were about to rain, the cool, clammy sense that I was sweating and chilled. “Why a shoe?” I heard from above me as the sound of someone dropping to the floor of the basement and hitting the broken lumberyard that lay across it reached my ears. “Why not something really good, like a hammer or a mallet?”
“Because I won’t be emotionally satisfied by the sound of a hammer hitting him over and over,” I said, keeping my eyes trained on the dust in front of me, even as the moisture began to pull it from the air, clearing my vision. “I think it might take a while to work out my rage on him, and I’d like to have the enjoyment of the sole of it slapping him in the face over and over again.”
“Yeah, well,” Scott said, and I saw a thin aura of moisture around his hands as he pulled it from the air and then dispersed it in front of us, “tell him yourself in a second; Kat’s getting him ready to fight again right now. Hopefully he’ll be down here in a minute.”
“Reed?” I asked, and caught a twinge of pain in Scott’s expression. “That bad, eh? I should have known.”
“He’ll be fine,” Scott said. “But Kat can’t fix him and Clary without draining herself dry, so…”
“So you’d rather have an idiot at our backs than a guy with a brain? How very thoughtful of you. It’s almost like you want the enemy to kill me.”
“Hey,” he said, looking vaguely offended. “I’m down here with you, aren’t I? Besides, in this fight, brawn seemed to be the needed thing, more than brains, at least.”
“Oh, that’s well thought out,” I said, watching the last of the mist clear to reveal a shattered, dark hole where my enemy had charged into the foundation wall of the house, now empty, “I’d be more upset with you, but I’m too busy wondering where this Omega jackass went—”
“GERONIMO!” I heard from above, then the sound of something impacting on the stairs, followed by the breaking of all manner of wood as the stairs collapsed.
“Wow,” Scott said. “Maybe you were right about that idiot bit.”
I rolled my eyes at him in the barest control of my fury. “Ya think?!” I adjusted my footing and stared into the black, gaping hole in the foundation; it was so dark in the basement I couldn’t see into the depths of it. It could be a foot deep or twelve, and I wouldn’t be able to tell. “Clary, you just destroyed our escape route, you moron.”
“What do you need to escape for?” Clary’s voice came along with the shifting of boards as he prised himself free of the wreckage of the stairs, which had dissolved about six steps down. “We got him right where we want him, now!”
“Oh, do you?” A voice came from the darkness next to the staircase, and I heard something massive shift, stone moving against skin, and then something flew through the air. I was slow in my reflexes and I felt Scott slam into me, knocking me to the floor as Clary’s rock-skinned body passed over me and hit the support beam behind us, causing the ceiling to cave in again. Panic threatened to overwhelm me as the remains of the upstairs collapsed on us. Scott took the brunt of the impact, shielding me with his body. He lay across me, trapping me in place, confined, unable to move more than a few inches.
After a moment of pause for everything to settle, I coughed and tried to move. The pressure of Scott’s body lying across me made it difficult, and I felt warm liquid run down onto my clothing, seeping through against my skin. I pushed against him, but he was limp and silent, offering no suggestion that he might be conscious. I thought about crying out for help, but I didn’t know if Clary was even in a fit state to assist me. If he was down, then Kat was the last one standing, and she wouldn’t be much use in this fight, assuming she could even hear me outside. I tested moving Scott and felt the wreckage shift a little as I pushed up on him. I paused and tried to listen for movement, but my ears were still ringing. I pushed again and worked my left hand free.
I batted a few stray pieces of floorboard off Scott, then pushed three medium sized slabs of the subfloor off him before rolling him to the side and off me. He was still breathing, but it was shallow, slow, and there was blood soaking his clothing, a piece of rebar jutting out of his back. “Dammit,” I breathed, still unable to hear myself talk. The only light in the basement came from above us, and most of that from the hole where the front door had been, the gray soft light of the overcast day visiting what it had upon us. Scott’s eyelids fluttered as I slapped him lightly, and he coughed blood that ran down his cheek and chin. “Dammit all to hell.”
The crunch of a foot behind me signaled the presence of someone else and I launched myself back, the only direction I was conveniently poised to spring—and right into a pair of tree-trunk like legs. I knocked my enemy off balance as I saw a shattered face, split with rage. I caught the flash of a crow in my mind’s eye as he fell upon me, his upper body landing on my lower, and I brought a knee up to “cushion” his landing, and it caught him full in the face. He tried to return the favor, jerking his legs as though to kick me with them but I knocked one of them aside and punched him in the groin. Twice. For luck. And possibly spite.
I kicked him in the face and rolled him off me as I pulled a glove off my left hand with my teeth, spinning around and lunging to land on top of him, bringing a knee into his groin again. There weren’t going to be any points awarded for the cleanliness of this fight, and I didn’t care. I just wanted to survive it. I got astride his abdomen even as I wrestled to get the glove off my fingers; the moment they were free I jammed my bare hand against the skin of his neck, choking him as hard as I could. With the other, I slammed him with punch after punch, driving his already broken nose into his face. “What…” I said, forcing my words out even as I evaded his hands, which were reaching for me, “…is…Operation…Stanchion…?”