“Report.”

The bar was empty. Empty of drunks, of lowlifes, empty even of the townsfolk. They’d all gone home for the night. Why wouldn’t they? It was late, nearly half past three in the morning. Anyone with any sense about them would be home in bed by now. Yes. The bar was empty - aside from Vladischov, Zotov Yakovich, and Komarov. They stood as a trio, their arms leaning casually on the bar counter. Drinks aplenty were sat before them. Vodka. Rum. Whiskey. Beer. Multiple bottles all stuck out on the counter just for them.

Zotov Yakovich took a long, satisfied draft of his beer. It was a lighter style of beer, made to be cool and pleasant on the tongue. Nothing you could easily get drunk on. Not unless you had a few cases lying around. He looked over to the brutally scarred face of his boss. It hadn’t taken even a full ten minutes for the man to make his way over to Carlston. According to the man, it had been rather cut and dry. Pretend to be someone caught in a wreck on the side of the road, wait for someone to stop, kill them, and take their car. Then all that was needed was to break every speed limit in the books.

“As I said, ninety percent. A boy and a girl. The boy possesses injuries similar to what a car crash victim would have. Both looked extremely nervous. The girl was in her pajamas, so they weren’t out for a planned errand. They made a beeline for the police station, stopped right outside the doors, pulled something out of the trunk, and all but ran through the doors.”

Vladischov drained the bottle of whiskey before him, throwing it aside with a dissatisfied snort once it fell empty. A flex of his powerful arms sent the man sailing over the counter, feet touching down in a pool of blood next to the lifeless body of the bartender. He sent a quick glance up and down the rows of alcohol before selecting yet another bottle of whiskey.

“Numbers?”

Komarov spoke up this time, the heavyset man kneading his thick fingers against each other. It was a nervous habit even a decade in service to the KGB hadn’t been able to fully stop.

“No more than four cops. Of those four are the police chief, the desk sergeant, and one regular uniform that I’ve seen. The fourth guy I don’t know for sure. There’s a fourth cruiser in the parking lot, other than that I haven’t seen hide nor hair of number four. The desk sergeant’s a normal sight for the night shift. The others… they’re most likely working late on a case.”

Vladischov drained the bottle of whiskey in one mighty swig, throwing the empty glass container away in favor of a mostly full bottle of vodka sitting in front of Zotov Yakovich. He pulled the cork off with his teeth, the jagged incisors flashing under the warm bar lighting, and sucked down half the liquid inside before answering.

“Three on four at the most. Ain’t nothing we can do about it. Orlova and Markov are too far away to assist tonight. We can’t wait for them to arrive. It’ll be a bit flashy… but so was the raid.”

Zotov Yakovich raised an eyebrow. Unconsciously, so habitual he didn’t even notice he was doing it, his four-fingered left hand reached up to his head to sweep his hair back.

“We’re outnumbered.” He pointed out, though before even finishing those words, he already knew how futile the protest was.

As it turned out, Zotov Yakovich was instantly proved right. Vladischov drained the vodka bottle down to the last drops and crushed the glass container in his meaty, almost trash-can-sized hands.

“If this were another round with those dogs in the FBI, I would agree. But these are country cops. Soft. Weak. Spineless. They aren’t expecting trouble. We hit them hard, we hit them fast, secure the package, and fly to the wind. Once the chopper arrives it will be near impossible to track us.”

Vladischov leaped right back over the counter to land next to Zotov Yakovich and Komarov. He grinned, tapping them each square on the chest. Though the action was meant to be light, almost a gesture of comradery, the two men stumbled back a step from the force of the gesture.

“Come. Let us see if these ‘country cops’ measure to even half the ability of those back in the motherland.”

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

The only indication Cass had of the night going even more sideways than it already had was a sudden, loud noise that split into her ears from where she was in her dad’s office, rooting through the drawers in his desk for snacks to help calm Mark’s nerves. The rest of the office was empty of people, save for Mark. Everyone else had moved away to take care of various tasks once the alien was safely in one of the holding cells near the back of the first floor. Carlos had remained on duty at the front desk, Paul was sitting outside the cell just in case, Chief Thomson was making some calls, and Bill was on his way back from patrol as fast as his car could get him here.

As soon as the loud noise finished echoing around the building, Cass’s head snapped past Mark, who was standing bolt upright, to the half-open office door.

“Hey Cass…” Mark suddenly spoke up, wide eyes also glued to the door.

“Yeah?”

“Do you hear that?”

Cass nodded. Who hadn’t? She would have to be deaf to miss that. “Yeah.”

“You thinking a car backfiring or fireworks?”

“Outside a police station?” Cass snorted. “No one would be that stupid to set off fireworks. Plus it’s a.m., very a.m.”

“The Monty brothers would.” Mark countered.

Cass shrugged her shoulders. Her head was tilted, right ear in the air in a vain attempt to hear better. It was only one loud noise. Nothing had followed it yet.

“They moved East, out to the big city. About half a year ago I think?”

“Really?”

Cass looked back to Mark, who caught her glance. “Yeah.”

For a moment, Mark paused. He looked… almost lost. Confused, even. “Topeka?”

Cass shook her head. “A bit more East.”

“Lawrence?”

“Yeah.” Cass swung her head back to look at the door. “I think they sell dirt bikes now.”

Mark’s reply was dispirited. Now he didn’t just look lost. He sounded lost, too. Like he'd returned home after years of travel to find that his family and all his neighbors had moved away without telling him.

“Huh.”

Another loud noise split the air. Cass sat bolt upright and then launched herself out of her chair. "I think those are gunshots."

Mark gulped. “Crap.”

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Cass wasn’t sure of the precise line of thought that propelled her to open the gun safe behind her dad’s desk, only that if it was gunshots, then she couldn’t bear waiting around. Opening the safe wasn’t particularly difficult. The code was her birthday. It always was. Inside the safe was nothing unexpected. Her dad’s old service revolver, a black-colored Colt Trooper .357 six-shooter. A wooden handle worn from years of use, a scratched-up black barrel that shone under the light of the office with a gleam that told her how well-maintained the weapon still was. Two speedloaders sat innocently next to the butt of the gun, along with a jet-black police baton. All of it was old kit from the days her dad used to be just another pair of boots on the ground.

Cass’s shoulders flinched as a flurry of gunshots rang out from downstairs. There was no doubt about it now – someone had walked into the station and started a fight. The question remained, was this some truly unruly drunk, determined to commit suicide via cop, or was this something else?

Regardless, the fact that the gunshots were still going off sent a pang of worry through her heart. Her dad was down there with two good men. She didn’t think anyone would get past them, but damn it all if Cass was going to sit helplessly up here doing nothing. She grabbed the service revolver, stuffing it and the two speedloaders into the pockets of her pajama pants.

The speedloaders were already set up for action, the small cylindrical devices allowing for a revolver to quickly be loaded instead of having to insert ammunition into the six-shooter one by one.

A hand reached into the gun safe, momentarily surprising Cass until she recognized the bulky limb was just Mark leaning in to grab the baton, holding it to his chest with a face as pale as the moonlight leaking into the windows.

“Come on.” Cass muttered, surprising herself that the shakiness she felt in her chest wasn’t reflected in her voice.

Mark nodded. “I hope you’re still a decent shot with that kind of thing.”

And then they exited the office to descend the steps one at a time to what sounded like a warzone below.

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

The first thing Cass saw was enough to bring disgusting, acidic bile to her mouth. Blood was splattered all across the receptionist's desk. Carlos was nowhere to be found, but there was a still, human-like lump lying on the ground behind the desk. She couldn't recognize for sure who it was. She didn’t want to. A small part of her brain insisted it was just some prop dummy. Maybe Carlos found a crash test dummy to play a prank with!

Or maybe the man was dead.

Cass wasn’t given more than a second to process the horrific sight. Glass from a window no more than ten feet away from the bottom of the stairs shattered in a cacophony of noise as a small, spherical object was tossed through from the other side. Her dad’s voice roared out a panicked command and her body automatically complied.

“CASS! RUN!”

She took off like an arrow loosed from a bowstring alongside the wall, keeping low and running toward her dad’s voice. Heavy footsteps behind Cass told her Mark was no more than a step away. Three seconds later a deafening explosion shook the room as the grenade exploded. A sharp flare of pain ripped through the back of her left leg, but Cass stumbled and kept running. Mark let out a hoarse shout, but the ringing in her ears from the gunfire and the explosion drowned the words out.

Something slammed into a wooden desk right next to Cass, but she kept running. Mark’s bulky figure entered the side of her vision as the man sped up to draw even with her, his hands now completely empty. The baton had been lost somewhere in the chaos.

Then Cass saw her dad. Crouching behind an upturned desk, a pump-action shotgun in his hands and a thin stream of blood coming from the top of his forehead to drip down his right cheek. He gestured something with his hands. The meaning wasn’t immediately apparent, but Cass got the message when the back of a nearby swivel chair was hit by something moving quite fast and began to rapidly spin around in a tight circle. He wanted her to take cover, the sooner the better.

Cass immediately obliged. Another wooden desk was adjacent to her, so she darted around it while Mark heaved the piece of furniture on its side. The movement barely seemed to cause him any effort to make, despite the desk being fairly sizable.

“What the hell. What the hell!” Mark’s panicked gasps finally registered in her ears. They still rang from booming gunshots echoing around the building, but it was better than before.

“Dad! What’s going on!” Cass ignored Mark’s panic in favor of shooting a question over to Chief Thomson.

The man in question shook his head angrily. Then he peered over the edge of the upturned table in front of him and let out another thundering blast from his shotgun. Cass risked a glance over the side of their own slice of safety to try and get an idea of what was going on.

It was chaos. That was all she could see. Chaos. Shouting men near the entrance. One… no, there was a second on the other side of the now-broken window. The other man was crouched behind the receptionist’s desk, occasionally popping out to send a few shots from his rifle down the hall. How did she not see him? Cass’s mad dash alongside the wall would have taken her right by the man. Maybe he hadn’t been there before.

Broken glass, shattered wood, thunderous explosions of sound, and dark spots of blood sprayed liberally around the marble floor. Paul’s head poked out from a half-open side door, his revolver steady in his hands as he sent several carefully measured shots toward the broken window and the man behind it.

“Cass. CASS!”

The shouts of Chief Thomson once more dragged Cass’s mind away from trying to understand the brutality unfolding before her. Her dad’s face looked frazzled, his eyes far away. Like half of him was here in the present, and half of him was back in the jungle, stuck in the stories he would occasionally ramble about when drunk late at night. Both sides, however, were still in a firefight.

“Cass.” Chief Thomson said her name again. His voice rang with authority, the kind that no one can refuse. No one. “Get out the back and don’t stop running.”

“But I can hel-“

A glare dripping with molten-hot rage stopped Cass mid-sentence.

“Run out the back. Do it.”

“But!”

Something in Chief Thomson’s gaze snapped. He wasn’t here anymore. Not mentally. He was back in the jungle with bullets whizzing around, bombs falling from the sky, and napalm lighting up the horizon.

“DAMN KID! GET OUT OF HERE! NOW!”

Cass bit her bottom lip hard enough to draw blood, but the fierceness of her dad’s gaze was enough to propel her to action. Mark moved first as Chief Thomson leaned over the barricade to unload every shell in his shotgun toward the attacking madmen in a volley of blistering cover fire, with Paul swiftly understanding the situation and doing the same with his revolver.

Warm liquid dripped down Cass's lip. The shots were deafening in her ears. It was like the whole world had been stolen away and replaced with an endless barrage of sounds, something so loud that she couldn't even string together a complete thought. She followed Mark, doubling over and keeping low to present the smallest possible target for any return fire.

Chief Thomson’s shotgun fell silent, but the noise from the instrument of death was quickly replaced by the lighter ‘cracking’ sounds from his sidearm, hastily drawn to keep up the rain of covering fire. The back door loomed tall in her vision. Had it always been this big? Made out of such cold, unfeeling iron? It was locked like it always was. One deadbolt in the handle set to discourage any rowdy kids from breaking into the station from the back to do some cheeky acts of vandalism to liven up a boring night.

The lock moved right before Mark was within five feet of the door. A lightning bolt of dread pulsed through Cass’s body to settle in her stomach like a bad meal eaten to the last spoonful. Though it was happening in the span of only a few seconds, seeing that lock move felt like years were passing by, like she was watching the world in slow motion.

The lock ‘clicked’ as it completed the motion of moving to the side. The door shuddered. Then it moved. Moving inwards in an arc, the door swung open to reveal a strange heavyset man. Dimly, in the back of her mind (the detached part not absolutely freaking out over the situation), she recognized the man. It was one of the two smokers from outside of the bar.

A surprised curse fell out of Mark’s lips. He leaped to the side, just in time for Cass to see the heavyset man glance over to the jail cell next to her, and then flick his eyes back over to Mark. He’d completely disregarded her.

Cass could see in the corner of her eyes that the man had looked over to the very same cell the creature was being held in. Had he looked over there out of surprise, or was this the reason behind the attack?

That question was thrown aside instantly once Cass’s brain registered that the heavyset man’s thick fingers were moving toward the holster of a gun she could see poking out from under his jacket. Likely it had been stowed away so the man could use both hands to jimmy the lock of the door open.

The next moment saw something take place that Cass never thought she would ever do in her life. The man’s hand brushed aside the corner of his jacket. Meanwhile, Cass reached into her pocket. There was no doubt about it – the smoker was reaching for his gun and his eyes were locked dead-on with Mark’s pale face. The clip of the holster was brushed aside. Cass grabbed the worn wooden handle of the revolver in her pajama pocket. She was pulling it out as fast as she could, but somehow it felt like the smoker was moving at a normal pace while she was stuck in slow motion.

The smoker’s hand pulled his gun halfway out of the holster. The man was still about five feet away. Despite that, Cass could smell the faint scent of onions and tobacco smoke in his breath.

The handle of Cass’s revolver cleared the top of her pocket.

And one more gunshot split the air, adding to the whirlwind of smoke, noise, and death behind them.