When they reached the office building he explained. “We’re going to change our strategy a bit. Leave the computers for the cleanup team. Cope, are you feeling o.k.?”
“Yes sir.”
“Alright,” Lewis continued. “This is our new guy, Faldar. Gomez, I want you to show him the ropes. Dill you work with Telini. Cope, you go with Thilson. One of you opens the door, the other person checks the room, leapfrog, clear the room and check back with me. We can work on five rooms at a time. Jarn and Mary will lag behind looking for structural problems. We start on the ground floor, let’s go.”
They went through floor after floor and met no resistance for several hours.On the tenth floor, Faldar jerked open a door to a volley of automatic gun fire. Faldar and Gomez flattened against the wall on either side of the door, and looked at Lewis, who held out his hand flat, palm down. They waited.
“Clear the other rooms,” He said to the rest of the team, then he went over to Faldar. “Ready?” Faldar and Gomez nodded and Lewis stepped into the doorway, flanked by the other two. They all fired a burst into the room, but nothing moved. They spread out into the room, Gomez and Faldar checked the room while Lewis moved to the service exit.
A quick look and he saw a barricade set up one door down. He ducked back inside as the battle rifle rang out again. He opened the door all the way and held it with a chair, and then he pulled a desk to the middle of the floor. He turned it on its side and said, “Cover that door.” As he left the room Gomez and Faldar were kneeling behind the desk, weapons trained on the doorway.Back in the hall the team was gathering.
“OK,” Lewis told them, taking out his notebook and drawing a diagram of the rooms and halls. “There is a barricade about here with hostiles, no idea how many. Telini and Dil go here,” he indicated a room they had cleared already. “And wait for two clicks on the radio, then snipe from there. Thilson here, Rollins here, Roquette here, I’ll take the last door. Jarn and Mary stay by the stairs, if you hear me holler for backup or three clicks, move down three floors and call Captain DeLeah, then leave the building. Let’s go.”
He moved to the last door and checked to see that everybody was in position, then clicked one time. Gunfire erupted in the room next to him, followed by two explosions in quick succession and then silence. He moved to the service door and clicked twice before opening the door and stepping into the hallway. Seven huge, ugly men with rifles were shooting wildly in every direction as a grenade went off in their midst. The explosion slowed the gunfire as one of them slumped against the wall, then Lewis’s team opened fire. One by one they fell over until one huge brute took a quick step forward, reached out and grabbed Roquette by the hair. Everyone quit shooting, afraid of hitting her.
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Lewis was running in that direction when the monsters’ head exploded along with an echoing boom from the other end of the hall. Lewis skidded to a stop and silence descended on them for a moment.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been manhandled like that before,” Roquette said quietly as Rollins helped her back to her feet. She looked a little shaky and somewhat embarrassed but when Lewis inquired as to her well-being she replied that she was fine. They searched the bodies for weapons and ammo, which would be taken to the DeLeahs for maintenance and distribution. Lewis finally got a look at their faces and saw gray skin stretched over misshapen skulls, crooked noses and huge sloped forehead. Their arms were as long as their legs and nearly as massive.
The search yielded a staggering array of weapons, from knives and clubs to firearms, including a small caliber minigun. Roquette spent a lot of time studying the gun. Lewis praised Dil for his shot. The rest of the building went smoothly, all three floors. Then they found the roof access.
They all gathered around Lewis who said. “Alright, the DeLeahs said there might be ‘flying things’ here, anybody know what that means?”
“Sure,” Faldar said. “There are some in the cliffs around Mist Bay. The people call them leatherwings, and they’re tough costumers, mostly they only come out at night. They aren’t real fast when moving on the ground, but don’t get near their heads, they have a lot of teeth. If they have a nesting place with eggs or little ones, they will fight to the death.”
“We’ll go quietly,” Lewis said. “Be careful.” He turned the handle and eased the door open.
Fast as lighting a four-foot long head full of teeth grabbed him by his left shoulder and yanked him through the door. He cartwheeled through the air and landed in a roll on the roof. Another one grabbed his boot and started dragging him across the roof. He swung his rifle up and fired a burst one handed, dropping the beast in a pile. He could hear the rest of the team shooting and yelling. Then Dil came flying across the roof and crashed into a shed, he slid down the wall, and lay still as death.
Lewis tried to rise, but his shoulder pain shot all through him and his right foot would not bear his weight. He managed to draw his service pistol and fired four shots at a leatherwing coming around the shed. It fell down, but was quickly replaced by two more. He aimed as well as he could and put four rounds into each one. The gunfire faded away, replaced by a dull ringing in his ears and the sound of distant voices as he drifted off into darkness.