Day 180 - Scavenger- Chapter 1 - (1593 words)

©Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Scavenger

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 1

Aaron was cold and shivering despite the heat of the night, this was insane and frightening. There was no sense he could make of the situation, all he could do was keep moving forward and hope against hope that none of the bullets flying around had his name on them.


He was crouched behind the bar, at sixteen years old this was the first time he had ever been behind one but the circumstances were far from ideal for his first time even though he was underage still. There was shattered glass on the floor like tiny little blades of gravel, rocky in shape but viciously edged pieces that would have torn his feet to shreds if he wasn't careful.


The shooting had stopped long enough for Aaron to hear his own heart thumping in his ears like it was the loudest sound on the planet. He could hear nothing else but the adrenalin that flowed through him drowned out all of his senses anyway. If he stuck his head up when he thought the coast was clear he could be playing right into their hands, but then if he never looked he'd never know if the shooting really had stopped because the bad guys had gone away.


The bad guys. What else could you call them? They were the ones looking for him, the ones that put him in this predicament and the ones that were firing guns at him. Guns, with real bullets at a sixteen year old boy. He'd wanted to feel like a man, he was growing and taking more responsibility every day and railed against whatever authority tried to hold him back. This was insanely different though, he genuinely wanted someone else to the the adult now, to take charge and to save him.


Save me please! He whispered the plea in his own head but he knew that no one was going to save him but himself. No one else would because no one else could. That would be against the rules, and if there was one thing that he had learned in the past twenty four hours, it was that nobody broke the rules.


Bare feet was a problem to be sure and he could not walk, crawl or slide on the broken glass covering the floor. He could sweep it away conceivably, but that would make a shower of noise that the 'bad guys' would hear if they were still there. That would give away his position as effectively as popping his head above the bar and inviting a sniper shot to his head.


That gave him the germ of an idea though and he had the tools to carry it out nearby and it maybe, just maybe enough to give him an escape route. He could see the fire exit and it was approximately fifteen feet from where he was, close enough to run to, but too far away to not get picked off if the gunmen were still targeting him. There was a couple of feet of glass between him and open, clean ground but he could not easily clear it out of the way so he needed a plan.


A bottle of liquor was on the floor next to his left foot, a bourbon of some kind with a toothy grinned prospector type staring out at him from the label. It was unbroken and half full, not too heavy but with enough heft for him to be able to lob it pretty far he thought. Aaron looked out the opposite end of the bar to the fire exit as far as he could see. Which was maybe about fifty feet to the VIP couches, behind a velvet rope that was frayed and tattered from the barrage of gunfire that had decimated the bar minutes before. He held the bottle and prepared to throw it across the room in a low arc, hoping not to be seen but to be heard when it landed. As he tested the weight for a last time he looked at it closer and saw his own reflection in it, convexly distorted and coloured amber by the brown nature of the whisky, but still it was him.


I've never tried it, and this may be my last few seconds alive. It was an honest thought, he did not want to go out drunk, but then again he did not want to go 'out' at all. Aaron opened the bottle carefully in a crouch and got an overwhelming waft of alcohol from the neck, it was not his first drink ever, he had wine and beer under his mother's supervision before, but this was hard liquor. The grown up stuff, but by the cheap look of the label he suspected it was not 'top shelf' material as his richer friends referred to their parents home stash.


It was a hard thing to do, upending the bottle into his mouth for a sip of the liquid, and even as the fire in bottle hit his tongue, burning him instantly, the gap around the neck allowed a significant amount to spill out. He felt icy cold liquid cascading down his neck and chest, under his shirt. The coughing and spluttering he tried to silence but deep breaths and blinking back tears and a gagging sensation were all he knew soon enough.


He bit into his fist to calm himself down and awaited the shots that would likely be coming, but there was nothing. Had they left? Was he safe and free to leave and get on with the task at hand, the one they had committed to stopping him from completing? The one they were prepared to use deadly force to stop him for good?


Can't be true? Can it?


Aaron took a second and smaller swig of the bourbon and this time it was smoother and easier, the fire was a warming and more mellow heat and it filled him from the inside out with confidence. The cap went back on and he lobbed it further and faster than he though he had done. The bottle hung in mid air for a half second before dropping to the floor and out of site, hitting hard ground and breaking with a very loud smashing sound.


At first there was nothing then he heard the scuffle of feet and a rush of people towards the sound.


Now. Now or NEVER!


The Dutch courage made him braver than he should have felt, and through the noise of the people swarming in he fled in crouch towards the fire exit door. He did not look back and did not look to the sides, instead Aaron was across the floor in two seconds and he opened the fire exit with a rush, feeling there was something on the other side knocked aside by the violence of his momentum.


Not caring what it was he darted through and got behind the door that swung slowly shut on a hydraulic arm.


Faster, faster! Aaron willed the door but it slowly inched shut, he grabbed it in the last seconds and closed it with a tiny click and listened on the other side of the door but no one was moving towards him and he could hear them calling to each other to search around the area where the bottle was.


“Bzzt. Control.” A radio static and a voice made him jump out of his skin as he realised he was not alone.


Spinning around he scanned the area, which was a landing on an internal staircase, but strangely there was no one else there.


“Bzzt. Control, Copy.” The noise came again, and this time he saw where it was coming from.


Below him on the railing maybe a floor down was a body, a man in black with a balaclava and a gun slung around his shoulders was staring up at him sightlessly. Aaron ducked until he understood that the man was dead.


Jesus, did I just kill him? Oh my god. I fucking killed someone! He was pretty sure even his straight-laced mother Tara would forgive the blasphemy and the bad language given the day he had been having, but he still felt a little guilty about even thinking like that.


The man had been on the other side of the door and Aaron banging into him had pushed him backwards and over the railing, where he had fallen 20 feet and landed across the banister a floor below, snapping his back or neck – maybe both. He was definitely dead though.


He looked like he was SWAT or army or something official to Aaron, and he had killed him. It was an accident, of course but he had still killed someone. It made him feel small, shrinking every moment. This guy must have had a family, kids and a job and he was probably here to save him and what happens? Aaron ruins it all and pushes him to his death.


“Bzzt. Control... That fucking ... Alpha is still wild. Repeat. Alpha is still wild.”


There was anger and frustration in the voice, and Alpha was Aaron. He knew that, he had been referred to as Alpha already before and that made this guy a … 'bad guy'. That somehow made it better, not all the way of course. He could still have been a family guy just doing a job, but now he knew that the 'job' was killing Aaron.


Kill or be killed. How had his life turned this way?