Steve held out a cautioning hand to Ms. Miller, beckoning her to stand away from the door to the basement. It could be nothing. It could be hooligans breaking into the house for fun thinking the occupants were still at the wake. Hell, it could be a raccoon. A big raccoon.

Steve eased the safety off his Sig Sauer and racked back the slide, readying the deadly weapon for immediate use. The gunmetal was a cold lump in his right hand, cold and formed into an ugly shape that could spit out chunks of lead to decide particularly deadly arguments once and for all.

His left hand ghosted forward to grasp the handle of the basement door. It opened slowly, but silently. Once that had not been the case, but mere hours after moving into this house Steve had made himself busy giving every hinge a good greasing. He’d seen men killed before over a creaky door. He was determined not to add his name to the list. Once the door was a quarter open, his hand abandoned the doorknob to flick on the light switch. It clicked, but nothing came on.

Definitely not a raccoon. The bulb was busted. No raccoon would do that. Steve moved slightly to the side so the doorframe would cover more of his body and held his Sig at the ready.

Steve shot a look toward Ms. Miller. An unspoken conversation passed between them, quickly and concisely. Someone was down there with malicious intent. His every instinct screamed for him to retreat. To make tracks for the street as fast as possible. To hell with their cover. To hell with information gathering. Their line of communication with Mr. Sun in Washington was too important to risk. Losing the equipment was unfortunate, but Ms. Miller’s life ranked higher on the priority list Mr. Moon gave him after the briefing. A fight would be too disadvantageous.

Behind him he could hear Ms. Miller darting toward her bedroom to grab what equipment she could carry. Steve’s own body turned to help, to lock the basement door shut, to give them a few precious seconds to turn tail and run. But then, what felt like a bolt of pure roaring fire pierced through his right leg. The world tilted backward. Only, after a second, Steve realized it wasn’t the world tilting, but him. His back brushed against the half-open door, pushing it fully open and then meeting air past that.

Steve’s hands windmilled as he fought to stay upright. Every second he was exposed was another second his attacker could strike again. The fire in his leg intensified. His balance failed. Steve tumbled down the stairs, his leg howling out in pain as it bounced off every step. He fought to tuck his body in, to keep his Sig Sauer clutched securely in his hands so it would not be lost or accidentally discharged. He was falling into the darkness to join whoever the hell was down there. Unless Lady Luck smiled, Steve was already a dead man walking. But a dead man could still buy enough time for Ms. Miller to warn Mr. Moon.

Then his body came to a halt at the end of the rickety wooden stairs, in the murky-black depths of the basement.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Jack’s javelin struck true, piercing the leg of the half-turned man at the top of the stairs. The man fell backward, perhaps surprised by the sudden strike taken the moment his back was turned. Jack moved in a flash. He surged to the bottom of the stairs right as the man, wearing a now-blood-flecked white collared shirt and a pair of slacks with a hole in them, tumbled to a halt.

The man reacted quickly, wrenching his gun up to point toward Jack, but by then it was too late. Jack’s foot lashed forward to knock the weapon out of the man’s hand, followed by a steady right hook to the chin. The man was flung to the side, disappearing behind the pitch-black curtains of darkness. Wherever the gun landed was unknown. The black gunmetal of the weapon blended in perfectly with the darkness of the basement.

An animalistic snarl of rage tore through the basement, but not from Jack’s lips. It was the man in the collared shirt, lunging out of the darkness with a combat knife in his hand. The man lunged, movements jerky from his wounded leg, but by now Jack had his axe ready and parried the knife to draw forth a shower of sparks. One of them landed on Jack’s face, causing a maddened smile to split across his features amid the stinging pain. Jack’s opponent had correctly judged running for the stairs was futile with that leg of his.

“Ha. Haha! AHAHA! I SHALL KILL AND EAT! AHAHAHAHA! DEATH IS HERE!”

The collared-shirt man matched Jack's bellows of joy with a wordless roar of his own. He swept his knife out, causing Jack to jerk back, then answered with an axe swing of his own. The swing bit lightly into the man’s shoulder, drawing out a thin line of blood. That was good. Good! A fine match! A fine opponent! Two men, honest men doing their utmost best to kill each other! This was what made life worth it!

Then the man’s knife darted forward. This strike sliced into Jack’s own forearm, but he hardly felt it past the adrenaline that raced through his veins like premium gas through a race car. He tightened his muscles, relishing the feeling of his own meat twisting around the smooth steel blade, trapping it beneath his skin for a split second – long enough for Jack’s steel-toed boot to lash out like a battering ram against the white-shirted man’s wounded leg. The man howled out in agony, his body shuddering violently, but he did not run from the source of his pain.

That truly was a genuine surprise to Jack. The man retreated not an inch, instead focusing every drop of his strength into wrenching the blade of his combat knife, all seven inches of wicked-sharp steel, out of Jack’s arm. Jack’s muscles trembled and then failed as the steel withdrew with a 'shlicking’ sound of blood-wetted steel drawing against living flesh. The blade could no longer be trapped in the cage of Jack’s formidable body.

Jack’s axe squealed in delight, joyfully biting into the man’s shoulder again and again and again, just as the man’s knife slid in and out of Jack’s chest, scratching against ribs and bones and tendons, beating and biting and mangling. Jack’s laughter rose to fever pitch with each strike from the axe and dagger until his mouth was flecked with bloodied foam and the man’s strikes grew ever weaker.

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Finally, after the weakest stab of them all, Jack flung the man away, delighting in the crunch of bone as the collared man’s body struck a wooden support beam.

But still, the man drew himself to his feet. Whether it was through adrenaline, training, or sheer willpower, the man stood. Thus, Jack was genuinely surprised for a second time by his opponent. The combat knife shook in the man’s hand, but otherwise held firm. Jack’s teeth, bloodied and foul from his wounds, flashed in the darkness.

“AHAHA! DEATH IS HERE!” Jack screamed.

Then the man in the collared shirt let loose one last howl of fury in defiance against his death and charged. Jack sidestepped the stabbing knife, raking the blade of his axe against the man’s back as the charge went past. The man swiveled, still moving quickly despite the blood spurting from his ruined leg. The knife caught Jack in his side, but the wound was shallow. His opponent was already too weak to manage a killing blow. This effort was naught but a firework shot into the night sky. Bright, beautiful, but doomed to quickly fade away into nothingness.

Jack tossed away his axe like a bag of trash being thrown to the curb. To keep it would be to hold too great of an advantage over the enemy. This fight was far too fun for that. His fists, as sturdy and unyielding as chunks of concrete, hammered against the man’s chest, cracking ribs, bruising organs, and splitting flesh. The man struggled to withdraw his knife from Jack’s side, but Jack twisted his torso to remove it from the man’s grasp.

His hands beat at Jack’s face, at first with calculated strikes toward Jack’s eyes, but those strikes soon morphed into frantic, unfocused blows as Jack fit his hands around the man’s face and began to squeeze his thumbs into eye sockets that were the perfect shape to fit them.

The man’s eyes soon failed, popping like grapes against Jack’s power. The man screamed out again, this time not in rage, but in agony. In fear.

But for a third time, Jack was pleasantly surprised. The man’s hands had stopped beating at his face, whipping around to pluck the dagger from Jack’s side to slam into Jack’s chest, the blade of cold steel only stopping when it ran into Jack’s fifth rib.

“HA! GLORIOUS! GLORIOUS!” Jack screamed in exaltation. Truly he was blessed to find an opponent such as this! Still screaming and panting, Jack continued to grasp the sides of the man’s head, slamming it into the concrete floor again, and again, and again, until bloodied skin gave way to white bone and grey brain matter, the skull splitting like a rotten pumpkin dashed against the ground.

Jack leaned back, smiling while his barrel-like chest heaved for air and his wounds sang stinging hymns in protest of being exposed to the cool night air filtering past the broken door. A glorious battle against a nameless foe. It was a shame Jack had failed to get the man’s name. He might have remembered it for a few years.

Now, the question remained – was there another in this house, and would they provide such a battle to equal or even exceed his fallen foe? Jack hauled himself to his feet. He grabbed his discarded axe, bringing it up to his mouth and darting out his tongue to slurp up the sticky residue on the blade.

Time to continue the hunt.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Cathy could hear Steve dying in the basement. And from the sounds of it, he was putting up one hell of a fight.

Steve was as good as dead, as soon as that length of rebar pierced his leg to send him falling down below. There was nothing she could do to help. Judging by the lack of gunfire, her colleague had lost his weapon on the way down. She doubted a gun would be useful down there, anyway, considering the lights were disabled. That wouldn’t change even if she went to help. All her help would do would be to add another lifeless cadaver for Mr. Moon to discover.

The door to her room was flung wide open in reckless abandon, with Cathy rushing inside to grab whatever she could carry. She had to travel light. Doubtlessly Steve was trying to buy her as much time as possible. They both knew how important her task was. Only the heavens knew if Steve could buy enough time to make it to the house Mr. Moon had commandeered.

Cathy’s teeth clenched so hard that a molar cracked. Other than that one reaction, she moved in a businesslike fashion – calm, efficient, and brisk. Her face was set in its usual calm, almost stoic mask. Steve was doing his job. She needed to do hers. The secure line of communication between Carlston and Washington could not be interrupted.

Nor could her control over the local radio waves be contested. Without Cathy’s ability to manage that traffic, redirecting support from the outside to essentially cut off the town from all extra variables, the job Mr. Moon and Dag had would be made extraordinarily harder. Without her working to keep information on the alien under wraps, the whole town, perhaps even the surrounding towns, would be forced into a sea of flames, for dead men could tell no tales.

First was her purse, snatched up in her hands and slung around her shoulder. Judging from the shouting coming from the basement, the revolver concealed within could be useful. Next was a portable radio set with a signal jammer, three walkie-talkies, and a notebook with various ciphers and key phrases to set up secure comms once she was safe once more.

Cathy rushed back into the hallway. By now the basement was quiet. There were no more shouts, no more maddened bouts of maniacal laughter.

Steve was most likely dead.

Heavy boots stomped up the stairs, slow and steady. Rough breathing followed, loud enough that Cathy could hear it in the hallway. She risked a glance, her body already halfway to the front door. There was no one to be seen in the doorway leading to the basement.

But whoever was climbing the stairs, it was not Steve. He would have made his presence known to her. A keyword, a specific whistle, just about anything from a short list of possibilities she had memorized off a note card on the drive to Kansas. It was a protocol that had been drilled into the bones of every field agent so as to prevent friendly fire.

Another booted footstep stomped against the wood, and Cathy made a split-second decision. While her left hand gripped the handle of the front door, already in the process of opening it, her right hand dipped into her purse, drawing her Smith & Wesson out into the air. Another footstep.

Cathy’s gun roared out in response, sending six .44 magnum slugs hurtling down the hallway toward the open basement door in a matter of seconds. Cathy hardly trusted her luck would be enough to avenge Steve. All the bullets could do was buy her more precious seconds. Her back brushed against the front door, pushing it open a few more inches and freeing up her left hand to fish around her purse for her speedloaders.

Her right hand flicked the revolver sideways to pop open the cylinder and shake out the empty cartridges to clatter against the wood floor. The sound was deafening in the silence left in the wake of her last shot.

There was a pause, and then another heavy footstep. Cathy slammed the speedloader into the revolver’s cylinder and flicked it shut, before letting her weapon roar once more. The sound was deafening in the enclosed space. Her hearing felt like it was physically twisting and muffling at the same time, a pressure building in her ears to squeeze at the fragile insides of her head.

The front door was most of the way open, her body halfway out into the night sky.

Cathy flicked open the revolver once again and slammed in her final speedloader. After the next six shots, she would have to reload the old-fashioned way, shoving the magnum cartridges in one by one in that painfully slow manner. Yet, without even waiting for another footstep, Cathy expressionlessly emptied all six shots into the general direction of the basement.

And then, she turned and fled.