Upon reflection, I must note that I have, in fact, had better days.
—From Fish and Clips, the blog of Mahir Gowda, August 3, 2041. Unpublished.
GEORGIA: Twenty-nine
None of this made any sense, and none of Shaun’s explanations had done anything to help the situation. Not that it mattered. As soon as people started shooting, I stopped needing to understand and started needing to react. I ducked, grabbing Maggie’s hand—she was the one with the least field experience, at least as far as I remembered—and dragging her around the corner into the living room. They’d need to shoot through more walls to get to us here.
“Shaun!” I shouted, hoping I’d be heard over the gunfire. “Get the hell out of there!”
“The wall’s holding for now!” Shaun shouted back. Mahir rounded the corner, taking up a position on the other side of Maggie. He flashed me a wan smile.
My hand went to my waist, habit telling me that when I was dressed, I was also armed. There was nothing there but my belt. “Dammit, Shaun! If you don’t have a secret escape plan, you need to make the crazy people give us guns!”
The woman they called the Cat shouted, “We don’t let strangers go armed in this house!”
“Sort of a special circumstance, don’t you think?” I demanded.
There was an answering burst of gunfire from the hall, followed by the sound of the door slamming. Someone who actually had a weapon must have opened the door, taken a shot at our attackers, and closed the door again. “I think everybody should have lots of guns!” said the cheerful, faintly lunatic voice of the little redhead. “Monkey, can we? Can we please give everybody guns?”
“Yes, Monkey, please?” asked Shaun. He backed into view, not joining our cluster against the wall, but getting farther away from the door to the garage. “We promise not to shoot up any more of your shit than is strictly necessary.”
“Fascinating as diplomacy is, perhaps during a firefight is not the time?” Mahir sounded frantic, like he was the only one taking things seriously.
Shaun gave him a startled look. “Dude, chill. We’re fine until they shoot through the door.”
“Then we’re fine for another ninety seconds,” said the Monkey. “Foxy, give them guns.”
“Yay!” The redhead ran to the other side of the living room. She opened what I’d taken for a coat closet, exposing enough weaponry to outfit a good-sized tabloid. Shaun whistled.
“Okay, I’m in love,” he said.
“Fickle, fickle heart.” I started for the open closet, the others following. This whole situation seemed faintly unreal. We were trapped in a decrepit-looking private home while a small army tried to shoot their way in. The fact that they hadn’t already succeeded told me this place had some pretty good armor plating under the peeling paint. The people who lived here were concerned, but not panicked. That made it a little too easy to be casual about things, like there was no way we could get hurt.
We could get hurt. I’d already died once. That sort of thing tends to teach you that no one is invincible.
“Here!” The Fox handed me a revolver, and gave Shaun a semiautomatic handgun. She kept passing out guns, grinning like a kid on Christmas morning. “We’re going to shoot them reeeeeeal good, so it’s important everybody be ready to look their best!”
Shaun and I exchanged a look, his expression making it clear that he understood what was going on about as well as I did—which was to say, not at all. Somehow, that didn’t make me feel any better.
The Monkey and the Cat joined us at the closet, both of them taking weapons of their own. The Cat glared at us the whole time, like this was somehow our fault.
“This is what’s going to happen now.” The Fox was suddenly calm, like having a group of armed men firing on her house was what it took to bring out her saner side. “We’re going to go out the back door. We’re going to circle around the side of the house. And then we’re going to shoot those fuckers until they stop squirming. Any questions? No? Good. Follow me.”
“I’m not sure which is worse,” muttered Shaun. “The fact that we’re following the crazy girl, or the fact that she sounds so damn happy about it.”
“I’m going to go with ‘the fact that we don’t have a choice,’ ” said Becks. “Maggie, you’re in the middle.”