James Axler – Watersleep

From within the elevator, J.B. assisted Krysty up. Once the red-haired beauty was safe, Ryan took to the ladder, giving enough room on the elevator roof for the Armorer to scramble up safely.

The climb was smooth and easy. At a few points, the rungs were slippery with old grease and grime, but it was nothing Ryan couldn’t handle. When he reached the end of the ladder and realized he was staring at a hairline crack where the top-floor eleva­tor-shaft doors opened, he was almost surprised.

“We’re here,” he said in a whisper.

“Good,” Krysty whispered back.

“I’ll have to force the shaft doors. Hold on until I signal you.”

After carefully removing the panga from the sheath at his side, Ryan used it to help open the doors, slid­ing the finely honed blade into the thin slit, then twisting his wrist back and forth, executing as much pres­sure as he could on the handle while trying to stay balanced on the rung of the ladder. He had crooked one arm through the rung for extra support, but that limited the amount of pressure he could put on the knife.

Krysty, seeing Ryan’s predicament, made her way up next to him. She pressed her firm body against his own to help hold him firmly in place, with her chest against his back as she reached out on either side and gripped the rungs of the ladder tightly.

“Looked like you needed an assist, lover,” Krysty whispered. “Be careful up there. Something doesn’t feel right.”

“What? Squatters living in the redoubt, like those bastard twins back in Old Colorado?”

“Could be that, or friends of the four men we found below.”

Ryan nodded. With Krysty’s support, he was now free to use his full upper-body strength against the closed doors. Sweat dripped down his face and arms as he exerted pressure.

Finally, with a sluggish squawk of protest, the ele­vator doors slid apart a few inches. Replacing his panga in its sheath, Ryan now had enough room to wedge his fingers in the newly created gap. He felt a fingernail on his right hand peel back as he strained to pull the doors open wide enough to squeeze his body through.

Inch by inch, the doors pulled apart, finally creating a space just wide enough for a man to slip through.

Balancing his feet on the top rung of the emergency ladder, Ryan used the upper part of the now open door for a handhold. He took a deep breath and stepped through to what he hoped was safety.

The area outside the elevator was as dim as the darkness in the shaft. The electricity was apparently out up here, as well. Ryan paused, straining his eye and scanning for any signs of movement.

Nothing. He took one step forward, and a piece of stray plastic snapped underfoot, the cracking sound leaping forward as swiftly and surely as a broken twig in a silent forest.

In immediate response, the wall next to the elevator doors erupted in an answering barrage of sound, small indentations rattling down from floor to ceiling in a sloping pattern of gunfire.

Ryan dived away from the doors for cover, hoping the noise would keep Krysty and J.B. in place on the ladder and not drive them into doing anything heroic. An empty plastiform-and-steel cargo container was lying open on one side. Ryan took cover behind it, knowing from past experience any military redoubt’s storage pods were made of sturdy stuff.

Since he was still alive, Ryan figured the shooter didn’t have infrared. His guess was that the assailant had been forced to aim by sound, using noises to track as Ryan slipped out the doors from the elevator shaft. He crouched on his hands and knees behind the con­tainer and waited, but the shooter kept firing random bursts. That was reassuring. Ryan now knew for a fact he could safely discount a night scope by the way the bullets kept ineptly chewing up the scenery.

The sniper was firing blind.

Ryan kept his head low, listening, attempting to pinpoint the exact location of the gunman over the rapid drumming of what sounded to him like an M-16 assault rifle. Obviously the shooter was firing from a vantage point located around a corner of the walkway—across from the elevator. While this was a safe place to hide for an ambush, it also meant the sniper’s aim was compromised.