She gently pried open the mutt’s mouth and checked the severed tongue. The swelling had gone down, and the wound had almost completely fused together. Good! Her legs, on the other hand, would take longer to heal. Poor thing.
(((
Like an ant farm tossed around by a dumb kid, the whole library shook, explosions ricocheting down to the foundation.
“Shit! An earthquake,” was Poe’s first assumption. Tremblers seemed to have been more 192
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frequent the past few years. But the explosion and gunshots deleted the thought. She ran outside the circular foyer to find clots of people splashing into each other, completely disoriented and panicked. Poe ran down the side staircase, her unreliable Uzi at the ready. Because she felt nervous not knowing if the semi-automatic was going to jam on her again, Poe fired a shot at a potted plant on the landing, crumbling soil and roots everywhere. It worked. After an involuntary glance at her shoes, Poe continued downstairs.
Bullets zipped by her as a barrage of halfdeads wearing bulletproof vests poured forth from the black hole that was once Spanish metal-studded double doors and into the threshold, mowing down Sainvire’s people with their semi-automatic weapons.
“This is like a bad Chuck Norris flick,” Poe said over the sound of gunfire.
The chaotic sounds of running footsteps and screams curdled Poe’s blood. Gun smoke raided her nostrils and stabbed her eyes.
“Please, Bruce, Ali, Xena, light my way and deflect any bullets meant for me.” Positioning herself between the cold wall and a small hallway leading to the stairwell, Poe aimed for the heads of the invaders.
She ruptured quite a few melons before the wall started dissolving chunk by chunk from each steel-tipped bullet fired. Poe had no choice but to run back up the staircase and blindly aim at the halfdeads that dared to follow. From the upper landing, she shot accurately through balcony grates at every head that appeared until the stairs below were littered with smoking skulls.
On the opposite side, halfdeads and vampires that could withstand the sun infiltrated her floor. A scream of warning clued her in.
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“Watch out!” Poe swiveled back and saw a woman with sordid bruises on her face pointing at the escalators. Her eyes widened, realizing that the woman with the swollen face was Samantha, the nurse who had tried to help Penny but took a beating from Poe instead.
Cursing herself, Poe fired at the enemy ascending in droves by escalator and the opposite stairwell. In the time it took for her to shoot nine halfdeads, twenty of Sainvire’s people were shot dead where they stood.
Under the great painted sun dome twitched bodies beset and pierced by bullets. Samantha was not among them.
“Please make it, Samantha, so I can apologize properly and thank you for all you’ve done,” Poe prayed, crossing her fingers.
Poe’s arm shook from the force of the Uzi.
Unconsciously she bit on her lower lip until it bled.
“Mom, don’t let the gun jam again,” she entreated. She was alone among dead and halfdead, shooting every which way the enemy poured forth. A bullet pierced her triceps clean through without touching bone as she adjusted the grip of the weapon. It was her first gunshot injury, and it shook the shit out of her.
Out of the blue, Joseph appeared next to her crouching form, firing a semi-automatic from each hand.
“Go get the dog!” he screamed over the ruckus.
Shaken but fully loaded, Poe backed her way into Sainvire’s room and bolted the door.
“Gadzooks, dog, I got shot,” she said to Penny, shivering.
Penny’s ears stood like satellite dishes at the disturbance. Poe tried to stuff the dog in her pack. Her legs stiff in a plaster cast wouldn’t fit in Poe’s pack.
She wrapped the dog in Sainvire’s dark blue sheets and 194
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taped two pairs of bulletproof vests Maple had given her about the dog. She slung the mutt on her backpack and reloaded, taping two magazines together to have more bullet reserves.
Gunshots still blazed outside. She could almost swallow her heartbeat. “Blast!” Poe took a step back.
“I can’t do it.” She did not want to go out there.
She took a deep breath and carefully opened the door. With her guns ready, she stepped out. She spotted Joseph, floating barefoot halfway between the floor and the ceiling and plugging bullets at the enemy.
Poe joined in, pounding a group of already wounded halfdeads.
Joseph lowered himself, dragging Poe behind the safety of a wall.