"Kill the alien bitch!"

Drew had had enough of the guy shouting from the top of the trailer. Before the guys on the ground got their guns loaded up, she leapt up the side of the truck. Her fingers found purchase on the edge of the trailer's roof, and she pulled herself up and over into a handstand. The screaming guy had just enough time to have his mouth drop open in shock before her feet hammered down on top of his head. He collapsed, and Drew used the momentum of her flip to leap off the far side of the truck.

As she somersaulted through the air, a flash of pale red-gold near the floor of the department store caught her eye; a woman, hog tied and stripped down to her underwear.

"And there goes any chance I could just hightail it and wait for backup."

A light went on in the back of the van, briefly illuminating the line of cargo handlers. They wore fatigues, floppy boonie caps, and bandannas wrapped around their faces. All of it camouflaged in greens and browns, great in the forest, but doing nothing to break up their outlines against the backdrop of the department store. Before the handheld spotlight swung around to point at her, Drew pointed her taser at one of the perps, pulled the trigger, and rolled as she held the button down. The guy at the far end of her wires barely twitched, but twin spots on his chest smoked faintly for a moment.

"Great. Let Jack Hammer know these fuckers have body armor."

"Language, Williams. This is official business, and being recorded."

Drew rolled, drawing her gun and bouncing to her feet well away from the beam of the spotlight. One eye shut to preserve her night vision, she snapped a shot at the spot. She leapt away from her firing point as rifle rounds zipped through the space she'd just occupied. The guy inside the truck swore, clutching at the hand he'd used to hold the light.

"One injured in the truck. Possible gunshot to the hand."

"EMS informed. Jack has hit traffic en route."

Drew stopped, head cocked, staring at nothing. "What the hell? He's worried about traffic laws?"

"Traffic accident has the roads completely blocked."

Another volley of shots forced Drew to move again, broken field running across the lot from light post to light post, taking out the lights as she ran. "Shit. I wouldn't be surprised if these guys staged it. Tell him to expedite."

"Acknowledged."

The guy on top of the truck screamed again. "She's worth a bunch! Five thousand dollars to the guy who brings her down!" He swung down into the back of the truck before she could get a shot off at him, but she had bigger problems. His henchmen charged her, half a dozen guys armed with rifles and various hand weapons. Before they closed, she emptied the last four shots from her clip. Two guys dropped, screaming and clutching at their knees, before she ghosted into the shadows again.

"Amateurs. They always forget about the knees," she muttered as she scuttled around her pursuers in the darkness, moving toward the front of the store again. Without another word, her movements covered by the sound of the remaining four henchmen's wild goose chase, she rolled back under the truck, coming out right next to where she'd seen the bound woman.

On seeing her, the young woman thrashed around. Drew holstered her gun, slipped behind the free standing customer service desk, and found a set of scissors. When she returned, the woman had crawled, inchworm style, halfway to the doors. Just outside, the leader of the looters stood doing something with a handheld glow stick. Drew dropped silently to her knees beside the woman, grabbing her hands as she did.

If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"I kinda hoped they'd improvised. You're lucky." With two quick slashes of the scissors, she undid the zip ties hogtying the girl. Before the girl could do or say anything, Drew straddled her and twisted the bandanna gagging her. "Look. Don't make a sound, and run the first time you see an opportunity. Got it?"

At the woman's terrified nod, Drew slashed away the bandanna and rolled back to her feet. She wound up face to face with the leader of the looters. He leveled his gun at her belly and snarled.

"Looks like the bitches are in league. Don't think your funny alien powers are going to be of any use, alien."

"Mister, I don't know what kool aid you've been drinking, but I was born in Philly. I moved to Jersey ten years ago. My friends call me Drew, but you can call me Officer Williams, and I'd appreciate if you pointed that gun somewhere else."

Before her hand reached her sidearm, his gaze snapped down, back up, and he squeezed the trigger. Drew dove, trying to remember which way the recoil from an AK 47 pulled. Fragments of floor tiles ricocheted into her gut, and red rage washed over her vision. She rolled behind a counter, her hands drawing her pistol, popping the old magazine, and slamming a new one in almost of their own volition.

I go to all that trouble to free the hostage, and this asshat starts shooting with her in the line of fire?

The moment the AK stuttered into silence, Drew rolled back to her feet. Walking forward, her arms extended in a two handed shooter's grip, she punched off round after round, each one hammering home in opposing shoulders. Each shot shoved the shooter backward another half step, and by the sixth one his body armor hung skew.

"Carl, run this bitch over!"

"Fuck you, Fred! I'm not killing a cop!"

"Good for you, Carl! Don't do life for this deluded asshole!"

In the time she stopped shooting to shout encouragement to Carl, Fred grabbed something from his hip and jammed it into his leg.

"We've discovered the source of your powers, alien bitch! We've got Blue now!"

With that, he blurred into motion. His body armor flew at her, and by the time she'd ducked, he'd taken the first swing. For the next few seconds, everything blurred. Her gun landed somewhere above the drop ceiling, tossed there a moment before he clawed the empty weapon from her grip. His own weapon smashed into splinters against the concrete beneath the floor tiles, inches from her head.

A glancing blow left her shoulder burning, and Fred limped from repeated kicks to his left knee. Drew dove through the upper half of the glass doors, nearly getting her head torn off as Fred ripped the door from its frame and threw it, her, and the remaining glass into the side of the semi trailer.

He stood there, panting, glowing blue sweat trailing down his face, as she pulled herself from the wreckage. His mouth dropped open and his nostrils flared as she dropped into a fighting stance and waved him in.

"Why won't you fucking die, alien bitch?"

Three of Fred's remaining henchmen took that opportunity to come around the side of the truck, guns at the ready. Thought replaced by adrenaline laced fury, Drew charged. Three more ricochets tore chunks out of her favorite slacks, and one left a rapidly rising welt across her cheekbone. Then she closed to close quarters, and the henchmen went down like dominoes, kneecaps and elbows bent backwards by torque and leverage. The pounding rush of blood drowned out their sudden, shocked cries of pain. She spun through and past them, a whirling engine of destruction.

Drew came to a stop in the darkened parking lot, well beyond the semi trailer. To one side, she saw the entrance of the store, the spot she'd last seen the redhead. While the light had dimmed, Drew couldn't make out anything even resembling a corpse. Maybe the girl's luck hadn't run out.

The sound of metal ringing on concrete announced the end of Drew's own luck. Fred leaned out from the back of the truck, the pin and lever of the hand grenade clutched in his hand clattering to the ground. Drew instinctively grabbed for her gun, then for her taser. Both holsters flapped empty, one ripped permanently open, the other dangling half off her hip.

"Dodge this, alien bitch!" Fred lobbed the canister toward her. Her life flashed before her eyes, focused for some reason on her repeated fights with her bathroom.

"The perp has grenades."

A sound from behind her snapped her head around for a split second while the grenade arced through the air. The redhead stood there, an aluminum baseball bat clutched in her hands. That explained the last remaining henchman. It also brought into sharp focus what Drew had to do.

She leapt toward the grenade, one hand coming up in a futile grab. She'd intended to pull it to her, to wrap herself around it, but before she could even try the world filled with sound and light and the furious hammer of an angry god smashing into the palm of her hand.