into the chest of the largest brute. The dirty, smelly, inner-city thug, and three other cackling teenagers, dragged her, kicking and screaming, back inside. She had only caught a brief glimpse of Danny outside, nose bleeding profusely, before the door was slammed shut. An eternity’s worth of pain and humiliation followed.
Guns firing and people screaming out their deaths, finally ended her torture. The animals scrambled away, toiling with their pants and shirts as they went. Maggie hoped against hope for one more chance to talk with her son before she died.
……..
Allen quickly formed a loose plan. Jason would stand outside the truck to cover both ends of the parking lot, and to ensure that the trucks didn’t get ripped off. John was sent hobbling away to the northwest opening, to overlook the courtyard from between buildings A and D. Jason could also make sure no one was sneaking up on the tottering man from his position. Derek was tasked with covering the northeast corner, between buildings A and B. Allen would swing down to the southwest opening, between buildings C and D, trying to draw most of the gunfire to him. The Brown brothers and Jason were to keep people from outflanking Allen, and shoot anyone who exposed themselves to fire at him within the courtyard.
As soon as Allen reached his designated opening, he could see Danny sitting outside their apartment door; his face bloodied. Anger coursed through his body with the realization that people had, most probably, already breached his home. ‘Why else would he be sitting outside?’ his mind started to reason.
Then, from across the courtyard, he saw a pudgy, out of place, black youth leaving one of the upper apartments on building B’s south end. Training took over for Allen, and the rifle rose up instinctively. Before coming over, he had flipped up the MBUS battle sights, and the co-witnessing red dot hovered just above the front post, centered on the teenager’s face.
Allen had already fired three times before the smiling, pistol and bag holding looter had descended half-way down the stairs. The first round smashed through thug’s nasal passage and spinal column. This dropped him, the brains signals no longer reaching their destinations, causing Allen’s next two rounds to sail high. The thug’s body tumbled the rest of the way down the stairwell, clearly dead, before bouncing off the hard landing, scattering canned goods from the bag out into the grass.
Smoke and heat from the fire in building D billowed across the courtyard, obscuring visibility with thick, grey-black wafts. Allen stood out in the open now, waiting for another target to emerge. A loud, high-powered rifle cracked, the sound driving across the ground from his left, followed by howls of agony.
“John must have got one,” Allen muttered, still scanning for more threats.
Another rifle report sounded from the exact same direction, which was quickly followed by another further off to his right. Allen knew that the Brown brothers had found a better vantage point to see from, being on the other side of the smoke. He stepped back to the corner of building D, as he stood more chance of getting shot accidentally by one of the brothers, than he did of seeing across the smoke-filled courtyard for what they were shooting at.
Someone was howling an unearthly death throw. Another crack of a rifle abruptly ended it. From behind the corner, Allen could not tell which of the brothers had fired the killing shot.
Fifty feet away, from the center of the courtyard, a small-framed black girl ran out from the cover provided by the smoke. She was carrying a chromed pistol in her right hand, and, as a result of the smoke choking her, had the inside crook of her left arm held protectively over her nose and mouth.
Allen did not hesitate. Shooting from the hip, he fired twice at the girl.
The girl was so short that his first shot carved a crease across the top of her braided head leaving behind a bright red, contrasting trail. The second shot missed her diving body altogether. The girl screamed shrilly and started to writhe around in the grass of the courtyard, her left hand probing cautiously around the wound on her head. Allen snap shot at her again and again, puffs of grass and dirt flying up when he missed. Enough of rounds struck home, however, and her flopping stopped shortly after.
A few more crisp rifle shots and pistol shots, deeper and more hollow by comparison, sounded out