Ghosts by Matt Rogers (ap literature book list txt) 📕

he’d fallen from. He knew the second shooter would lunge out into open view for a chance of finishing off his prey. He couldn’t risk not being able to return fire…

But he snapped his ankle.

Pain shot up his leg like a rocket igniting at launch. He tuned it out, completely ignored it. It wasn’t real, it wasn’t there. The second shooter stuck his head out the window, just as Slater had predicted.

Slater blew his face apart before the guy could shoot down at him.

The second shooter slumped over the sill and momentum carried him forward and he spilled out onto the awning. Lay there with one hand draped over the lip, dangling in open space.

Lay still.

Slater was still ignoring his ankle. He rolled and got to his feet and his whole leg gave out. He tumbled back into a seated position, sweat beading on his brow, teeth clenched in frustration.

King was there by his side in seconds.

King offered a hand. ‘Get up.’

‘I can’t.’

‘What is it?’

Slater pointed to his ankle.

King said, ‘You can get up.’

Reached down and got his hands under Slater’s armpits and hauled the man upright. Slater balanced on one leg, trying not to look at his bad ankle. He was gravely compromised. But he could hop. He jumped and bounced and jolted his way over to the warehouse’s entrance door, then slumped to the side of it, his back to the wall. At least the awning now separated him from any shooters sweeping their barrels over no-man’s-land.

King said, ‘Body count?’

‘I killed three out back. Two in that window.’

‘So there’s one more?’

‘There’s no guarantee Ray didn’t summon more. And he had a guy in the lot behind this one. There could be more in the surrounding properties.’

Before they could formulate the beginnings of a plan Violetta was racing past them.

King stopped her with a hand on her stomach. ‘What are you doing?’

She jabbed a finger down at Slater. ‘He’s compromised. Can’t shoot it out with reinforcements by sitting on his ass. You stand guard. I’ll get Alexis.’

King said, ‘I’ll do it.’

‘It’s tight corners in there. And lots of shadow. I’m small. You’re big.’

King knew he couldn’t waste time thinking about it any longer.

And he trusted her completely.

He said, ‘Go.’

She ran in through the open door, her own SIG up, and disappeared into the bowels.

King adopted a defensive position, dropping down on one knee, and swept his gun over the darkness all around them.

Waiting for more of the late Keith Ray’s henchmen to bleed from the night like the ghouls they were.

56

All the lights were off.

Violetta swore under her breath.

She crept across the cavernous space in a crouch-walk, slipping past dormant machinery, navigating around abandoned forklifts. She passed a cluster of tables arranged in the centre of the warehouse floor, their surfaces covered in laptops and computer towers. A makeshift command centre, identical to what she’d put together after going incommunicado from the government. This was Ray, packing up and fleeing his old HQ, probably paranoid of Gates getting desperate and going to the police or the media with a tell-all confession. A couple of the laptop screens were still open, softly pouring pixellated white light across the tables. Violetta crouched by one and scanned the screen.

It was a live feed of Wan’s back alley.

She almost jolted with surprise.

So Ray had eyes on Gates. It would have spelled the end of the war if the war hadn’t abruptly ended here. Out of curiosity Violetta touched a finger to the track-pad and scrolled to activate the rewind function. The time accelerated in reverse and she watched close to an hour go by in a handful of seconds. Then a brief flash of movement by the back door, then back to nothing.

Violetta paused. Fast-forwarded a couple of minutes. Played at 1x speed.

The back door opened at 8:03p.m.

Melanie Kerr stormed out.

Gates appeared behind her, filling the doorway — all spindly limbs and shadowy menace.

She paused on the bottom step and turned back to face him. Like the furious exit had been an act all along. She eyed him. He said something to her. She nodded, walked back up the stairs, and went back inside. Gates closed the door behind her.

All was forgiven.

Violetta memorised the scene.

Then closed the laptop and moved on.

She was at the back wall in seconds. There wasn’t a peep from the rest of the warehouse. A house-sized partition wall led to a separate corridor, plain and unfurnished and unadorned with decorations. Weak light came from a door at the end — she likened it to the glow of a desk lamp. She kept the SIG trained on the light the whole way down the hall, then turned into an office with a desk and a chair and a blinking security camera in the upper corner—

Hands grabbed her wrists. Someone lunging at her from the side.

The hands were a similar size to hers.

She and Alexis recognised each other in unison.

Alexis let go immediately, and Violetta brought a finger to her lips. They froze in place, listening intently. They heard nothing.

Then footsteps.

Outside.

In the hallway.

Loud.

Coming right at them.

Violetta had enough competency to recognise that Ward’s estimate of six men remaining with Ray was just that — an estimate. There could be more than one. So although every part of her wanted to step outside and put an unsuppressed round into the guy’s face, she refrained. She had surprise on her side, and that was it. Not size, not strength.

Didn’t matter.

She lunged out of the office and pistol-whipped the guy in the face with the butt of her SIG. As suspected, he was bigger, and he was stronger. But the simple laws of physics broke his nose all the same. He lunged, too, swinging his own pistol around in an attempt to aim and shoot, but he was already blinded by watery eyes and an aching septum. Violetta didn’t help when she smashed the butt against the same broken nose, further injuring it, grinding the bones together. He went down on one