Post by Basil on May 26, 2018 7:12:41 GMT -6
As Basil and Nikita entered Paradise Plaza, something, or rather the absence of something, set them both on edge. Nikita cautiously walked out in front of a small bookshop named “Contemporary Reading”, side-stepping several corpses that dotted the otherwise clean tiled floor, and gave the area a quick look-around. Basil glanced cautiously out of the corridor leading from the warehouse entrance, and saw what had both of them on edge : Paradise Plaza was completely empty and silent, save for the usual soulless muzak that played endlessly over the mall’s PA system.
Nikita waved for him to come over, and he did so while casting cautious glances around him. The constant drone of the zombies that infested the mall was grating enough, but the silence seemed somehow worse. Basil saw many lifeless zombies lying around the plaza, their skulls displaying significant signs of trauma.
“Looks like someone’s been cleaning up around here”, said Nikita, her cold blue eyes constantly darting around, her body tense and alert, ready to dive for cover at the first sign of trouble. She reached for a small pocket sewn into the side of one of the fat mag pouches on the strange belt system she’d been lugging about and pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes out.
“So that’s where you’ve been getting your fags from”, said Basil with a chuckle. Nikita gave him an odd look, the cigarette already between her lips. “Huh?”, she said, pulling a small lighter from the same pouch, “what? Where did you think I was getting them from? My ass?”
“Hey, I was just joking”, said Basil, shrugging a little to readjust his rifle’s strap. The Lee Enfield MK3’s heavy wood and steel build was a lot less fun to drag about outside of a padded gun case at his local shooting range, especially in a mall filled with bloody zombies and nutcases. Nikita smirked and blew a cloud of acrid tobacco smoke from her nose. “Sorry, mujik, I’m just on edge. Silences like those”, she paused, raising one hand a little as if to indicate the absence of moaning zombie lungs, “never mean anything good in my experience. It just stinks of trouble.”
Nikita blew out some more smoke and cautiously made her way to the nearest raised flowerbed, which had a short grey clock tower rising from the center. A plastic or plaster bird (a parrot?) sat on top of it, its wings outstretched. Basil again noticed Nikita’s jagged facial scar, and the worn look of her webbing with its dark stains and patched up holes. The woman definitely had an interesting past buried beneath the surface.
“Stop”, he heard her say, her voice a low murmur. He froze and felt his heart start to beat faster. “Hear that?” she said, and Basil listened; he too heard the faint clap and flutter of many, many feet walking nearby, and the sound seemed to be coming closer.
Suddenly, a single loud gunshot echoed through the quiet plaza. Basil almost jumped out of his skin. More gunshots followed, and from the sound and frequency it seemed that someone was in a fight somewhere. Nikita had her AK-74 in her hands by then, her trigger hand moving to flip the assault rifle’s security off.
“Must be Mike and Arianne,” she said, raising her voice to be heard over the din, “let’s go!”
She rose and started to run towards the stairs next to a colourful shop called “Kid’s Choice Clothing”, and Basil followed, his Lee Enfield also in his hands. Halfway there, Nikita saw movement from the corner of her eye and looked to the left. Her eyes widened as she saw a large crowd of yellow-clad cultists advancing down the plaza in exactly the same direction she was going. They froze, and Nikita could almost picture several sets of eyes widening in surprise behind the pea-green plastic goblin masks they all wore.
Their surprise cost them, however, as Nikita immediately threw herself flat on the floor behind a raised flowerbed. Less than a second later, the blast of several gunshots drowned out the sound of muzak, and bullets and buckshot zipped through the empty space where Nikita had been standing only moments before.
“BASIL! WATCH OUT!” She yelled, but the Englishman had already retreated behind the clocktower.
Basil’s palms were slick with sweat, and his heart was hammering away so hard he through his chest was about to burst outward. For a moment he was paralysed. What should he do? This wasn’t at all like shooting at targets at the range!
“Go around, she’s cornered!” He heard a cultist shout excitedly. The shout brought him out of his paralysis as he realised that his Russian friend was in danger. Kneeling behind the flowerbed, he rapidly took aim at one of the cultists who was shooting at Nikita with what appeared to be an old hunting shotgun. He squeezed the trigger and felt the familiar hard kick of the ancient military rifle’s wooden stock against his shoulder. His shot hit the cultist squarely in the chest, and he went down without a sound.
“There’s another one over there! Kill him!” Yelled another cultist, and the group scattered in a mess, some hurling themselves to cover while others simply stayed in the open and turned their guns towards Basil. The Englishman loaded another .303 round into the chamber, his hand working the lever expertly, and fire again. Another cultist went down, the heavy British round knocking him backwards and leaving a red aurora of blood on his chest.
Basil swiftly went behind cover just as the other cultists began to shoot. Bullets hit the flowerbed, ripping geraniums and ferns to shred and sending clods of black garden soil leaping into the air. Basil hit the floor hard as buckshot grazed the concrete clock pillar with a loud THWACK, and he crawled a little to the left to get a better firing position.
Paradise Plaza was now hell, as the cultists poured fire upon the two survivors. Nikita dragged herself to the end of her now battle-scarred flowerbed and unleashed a burst of gunfire from the floor. Several cultists ducked, but another wasn’t so quick, and a bullet punched through his garish plastic mask and splattered the wall behind him with blood and pulverised brain. Nikita fired again, her AK rocking back against her shoulder from the perfectly controlled bursts of automatic fire.
“KILL THE UNBELIEVERS!” yelled a cultist at the top of his voice. “KILL THEM FOR THE TRUE EYE! ONLY THE TRUE-”
His cry was cut short as Basil put a bullet through his shoulder. The cultist fell out of sight and lay screaming on the floor. A bullet slammed into the clock pillar, missing Basil by about ten centimeters. The British hotel owner was in a red haze of adrenaline, too engrossed in taking aim and shooting to feel the terror that also coursed through his body. A shout rose from ahead of him, and he saw a cultist dash from a store brandishing a stick of dynamite. “COVER ME, BROTHERS!” he howled as he sprinted across the tiled floor and leaping over the bodies of his fallen brethren.
“NIKITA! HE’S GOT DYNAMI-!” yelled Basil only to be cut short as a bullet grazeed his shoulder, ripping through his jacket’s thin cotton fabric and leaving a bloody gouge. Basil screamed and fell back, dropping his Lee Enfield and reaching up to clutch his shoulder. More bullets whizzed overhead. Gosh, it hurt so much! Where was Nikita? Where was the dynamite madman?!
The suicide bomber was rushing towards Nikita’s position, his feet pounding the tiled floor. Nikita fired a few shots, but missed him. The cultist shouted in triumph, only to slip on a bloodstain on the floor. He stumbled, and Nikita nailed him in the stomach, sending him sprawling with a scream of pain and fanatical anger. The stick of dynamite escaped his grasp and rolled a few centimeters across the floor as the mortally wounded cultist struggled to catch it. The wick fizzled down to its last, and Nikita threw herself to the floor again.
The explosion rocked Paradise Plaza like a monstrous thunderclap, shattering the tiled floor and turning the dying cultist into red mush. Broken concrete and tile flew everywhere like shrapnel, ripping up the flowerbeds and gouging deep holes in the palm trees. Nikita’s ears were ringing and her vision was blurry from the blast, but she ignored it, falling back on her training and battle experience. She took a deep breath and charged out of cover, taking advantage of the lull in the gunfight. Basil had stopped screaming, and for a horrible, fear-filled moment she thought he was dead. As she reached the clock pillar, she threw herself downwards and powerslid into cover. Bullets flew after her, breaking a few tiles on the floor.
“KILL THEM! KILL THEM! KILL THEM ALL!” shrieked a female cultist. Nikita found Basil lying with his back to the flowerbed, one hand pressed down on his shoulder. His jacket was torn and bloody, his face pale and drawn. Nikita quickly reached for the small pouch that hung from one of her shoulder straps and tore its velcro flap open. “Don’t move, Basil”, she said, bringing a bandage out of her med pouch, “let me see it.”
Basil nodded and removed his hand. Nikita grabbed his sleeve and ripped it right off, exposing his entire arm and shoulder. A bloody gash ran across the top of his shoulder, but didn’t seem too deep to be cause for alarm. As Nikita rapidly bandaged the wound, Basil smiled crookedly and said: “Hey, that was an expensive jacket you just ruined!”
“Shut it”, said Nikita, who couldn’t help but smile a little. If the Englishman could still crack a joke, he wasn’t doing that badly. “Think you can still shoot?”
Basil winced as a bullet hit the flowerbed and showered him with garden earth. “Yeah...my firing shoulder’s still good.”
“Good,” said Nikita, grabbing his Enfield and thrusting it at him, “now shoot the bastards!”
In the time it had taken to patch Basil up, some of the cultists had mustered enough bravery to leave cover and approach the pair’s hiding spot. Nikita popped out of cover and emptied her magazine in a single long burst of fully automatic fire, raking the advancing line of cultists with hot lead. The cultists fell like wheat to a scythe, and Nikita stuffed her spent mag into her Smersh’s half-open buttpack. As she plucked a fresh magazine from another pouch, a loud cry echoed through the chaos; in the distance behind the battered palm trees and flowerbeds, a fresh mob of cultists was rushing to the aid of their comrades.
“FORWARDS, MY BROTHERS!” yelled a cultist, his resolve obviously strengthened by the influx of fresh bodies, “THEY CAN DO NOTHING AGAINST THE POWER OF THE TRUE EYE!”
“Oh Christ,” wheezed Basil, “here they come!”
With a wild yell, the cultists hurled themselves forth banzai-style, some firing wildly from the hip, others waving whatever crude weaponry they had. Nikita clicked the new mag into place and fired at the incoming madmen, killing three of them with three shots. Basil also fired, albeit more raggedly, bringing down one cultist and injuring another, who kept on coming despite the wound.
Nikita switched into full auto and fired left and right, the sheer number of cultists giving her an overabundance of targets. The enemy fell, screaming, but still more came, and soon Nikita found herself staring into the bloodshot eyes of a masked cultist as he leaped onto the flowerbed.
“DIE HERETIC!” he howled, swinging his baseball bat wildly only to get a bullet through the face. His mask exploded, his jaw pulverised by the bullet. Broken teeth and bone flew into the cultists behind him.
“UUURRRAAAAAA!” Yelled Nikita, unslinging her AK and grabbing hold of its handguard with both hands. A cultist went down with a yell as she clobbered him with the butt of her rifle.
Basil shouted and avoided a cultist’s garden sickle. He rolled away, avoiding another blow from the garden tool, and fired his rifle point blank into his attacker’s crotch. The man howled and crumpled, and another one threw himself at Basil, who kicked him in the stomach.
“Not today!” shouted the Englishman, loading a fresh round and sending it into the cultist’s head. The bullet ripped half the cultist’s cheap mask to shreds and blew a gaping hole in the side of his skull. Basil continued to fire from the ground, hitting a cultist in the kneecap and another one in the belly.
Nikita finished pummelling a cultist’s skull into mush before raising her rifle and firing at the others. The two survivors’ resistance had apparently been brutal enough to take the wind out of the cultist’s sails, and they were now running back to cover without even bothering to help their wounded. Nikita’s fire brought four more down, adding yet more corpses to the battlefield.
But still they fought on. The cultists poured a hail of gunfire in the survivors’ general direction, shredding the clock pillar’s cheap concrete. A few bullets even hit the white bird on top, smashing a wing and blowing its head off. Nikita and Basil fired back in kind, but couldn’t match the sheer volume of fire the enemy was focusing on them.
And just to make things worse, Nikita saw two cultists rise from cover and hurl dynamite at them. “DYNAMITE!” she shouted. The sticks looped through the air, one of them falling just short of their firing spot, and the other landing right in front of Nikita. Without a thought, the Russian woman grabbed the stick and threw it back with all her strength.
Several cultists yelled in fear as the dynamite came flying back towards them, only to detonate in mid air. The explosion ripped through a nearby palm tree’s trunk, breaking it in two, and the trunk came crashing down onto the floor.
“There’s more of them!” shouted Basil before pointing towards the stairs next to Kid’s Choice; more cultists were rushing down into the Plaza, some pausing to fire at Basil and Nikita. A bullet flew right into a small lamp in the flowerbed that had been miraculously spared during the chaos, and it exploded with a shower of sparks. Basil fired at the oncoming cultists, killing two of them and sending another one screaming over the railings, but his heart sank with every extra yellow coat that popped out from the top floor.
Nikita, on the other hand, kept on firing, relentlessly cutting down any cultist unlucky enough to be in her sights. Again she switched mags, mechanically stuffing the old one into her buttpack and clicking another one into place. The cultists seemed to have inexhaustible reserves of manpower and ammunition, whereas she was down to seven mags out of twelve.
Being overrun was starting to become a very, dreadfully real possibility.
The new wave of cultists brought its new share of dynamite-loving maniacs, and two charged out from cover screaming at the top of their voices. One of them had, to Nikita and Basil’s horror, had gone so far as to grab two lit sticks and strap several more to his waist with duct tape.
“SHOOT THAT MAN!” yelled Nikita, switching her fire to the suicide bomber. The other bomber yelled as Basil got him in the chest, throwing his explosive gift into “Player’s”, a nearby record shop that had also been spared by the fighting. The shop exploded outwards, showering those assembled outside with broken record cases and debris. The suicide bomber kept on coming, his comrades covering him with copious amounts of gunfire.
Nikita fired shot after shot at him, but whatever twisted deity the cultist worshipped seemed to have given him its favour, as almost all her bullets missed. Finally she hit him in the shoulder, but the crazed man seemed to completely ignore the impact and kept on coming. Basil aimed and fire, but his .303 only grazed the bomber’s flank. Nikita fired again, and this time the bullet hit him square in the chest.
But still he kept on coming.
“WILL YOU DIE YOU BASTARD!” yelled Nikita, firing the last bullets in her magazine.
Every single shot missed.
The cultist, with a shout of triumph, covered the last few meters and threw both dynamite sticks and Basil and Nikita before hurling himself onto the flowerbed.
“RUN!” yelled Basil, and both of them sprinted for their lives. The cultist detonated, and the world was swallowed by the blast. Both Basil and Nikita were thrown through the air, the former landing heavily on the floor and the latter crashing onto the ground in front of a shop called “Cam’s Camera”. The blast obliterated the clock stand and its base, sending bits of concrete, plaster and steel in all directions, and shattered all glass surfaces nearby. The front of “Child’s Play” was ripped off its moorings and came crashing to the floor, crushing a wounded cultist.
Nikita arose, her head spinning and her ears filled with a deafening hum. She could hear the distant, muffled shouts of the cultists somewhere. Her gun was gone. With a hand she checked to see if her belt was still there, and found it had survived the blast. She looked around for her companion, and found him lying motionless on the floor a few meters away, just outside “Contemporary Reading”.
“Basil...” she mumbled, but felt something pass overhead with a muffled whine.
A bullet.
Nikita scrambled over to the shop, finding cover behind a stand designed to hold photos. Bullets slammed into the floor and into the stand. She fumbled for a small pouch nestled towards the back of her Smersh, pulled out her handgun, an MP-446 Viking, and checked to see if it was loaded. A magazine filled with 9mm bullets slid out, and Nikita slapped it back in. She could taste blood in her mouth, and she was bleeding profusely from a gash in her forehead, but the worst was the pain she felt in her belly. She looked down and gasped as she saw a large piece of glass embedded in her waist just beneath her ribs.
“Oh you bastards...” she swore in her native tongue, her teeth clenched against the pain. “You fucking...fucking...FUCKING bastard BITCHES.”
With a yell she rose, fighting the pain radiating from her abdomen and ignoring the blood that dripped freely onto the floor of the shop, and came face to face with five cultists. Before they could react, Nikita howled and fired, bringing them all down.
“KILL THE UNBELIEVER!” yelled the remaining cultists in unison, and they converged onto the shop as one. Nikita fired twice, stopping two cultists in their mad charge, and limped to the back of the shop. She threw herself over the counter, whimpering as white hot pain shot through her body. Again she rose, and again she killed two cultists who’d entered the shop, her bullets leaving bright red poppies of blood on their even brighter yellow coats.
Basil awoke in Hell. His entire body burned and ached, his injured shoulder was wet with blood and his ears screamed like a thousand dying men. He rolled over, and saw many, many yellow-clad people attacking what seemed to be a photography shop.
Nikita, he thought, and he began dragging himself across the floor. A cultist lay dead, his hand pressed on a bullet wound in his chest. His gun, a Ruger Mini, was within arm’s reach, and Basil took hold of it like a drowning man grabbing a lifebuoy. He fumbled with the unfamiliar rifle before taking aim and shooting the closest cultist in the back. The man went down with a surprised yelp, and the four remaining cultists turned around.
“THIS ONE IS STILL ALI-” yelled a cultist armed with a mace, only to have Basil shoot him straight through the throat. Two cultists fell to gunfire coming from within the store, and Basil finished off the last one with a bullet to the chest.
More shouts sounded in the distance. He had to move quickly.
Basil hoisted himself up and half-ran half-stumbled into Cam’s Camera. He came face to face with Nikita, who stood doggedly behind the battered and bullet-riddled counter.
She squeezed the trigger, and the gun clicked, empty.
“Oh”, she said, her voice hoarse and shaky, “it’s you.”
Basil smiled weakly. “Good thing you ran out of bullets. I don’t fancy going home in a coffin.”
“THERE THEY ARE! KILL THEM!” Nikita winced as they heard the crazed shout. “C’mon”, she told Basil, “get behind the counter. We’ll hold them ‘til...’til help comes, I guess. We can’t let them get to the Security Room.”
Basil nodded and limped to the counter. As he scooted in beside Nikita, the Russian woman slapped a fresh mag into her Viking. Basil found himself cursing under his breath, cursing Michael Rhodes for his arrogance, cursing Cindy and Veta for leading the cult to them, cursing the survivors for not helping in the battle, and, of course, cursing himself for going to that stupid, STUPID hotel conference here in Willamette.
The first cultists showed up outside the shop. Nikita took aim and fired, shooting the first raincoat fetishist clean through the head. Basil fired too, the recoil almost knocking him backwards. Miraculously, the bullet found its mark and hit a cultist in the shoulder, bringing him screaming to the floor.
“DEATH TO THE HERETICS! PRAISE THE TRUE EYE!!” howled a cultist before dashing forward and hurling yet another stick of dynamite at the shop.
“OH SHI-” shouted Basil before the blast knocked him against the wall. The world then went very black very suddenly.
Nikita stood firm despite the blast. Basil seemed to have fallen at last, and she could only admire the Brit’s courage and tenacity. He, who had never ever seen battle or even been in the army, whose peaceful life had been interrupted by the outbreak in Willamette, had fought until the end. The pain she felt from her wounds made her head spin, and tears escaped from her stinging eyes to mingle with the dirt and blood that caked her face.
“Kill the unclean!” shouted a cultist just outside the shop. The first cultist burst into the blasted shop and was promptly gunned down. Nikita was barely sane now, the pain, the anger and the despair colliding to drive her completely mad with anger. Three more cultists burst into the shop and were mercilessly gunned down by a screaming Nikita.
Another cultist entered, screaming and brandishing a hammer. Nikita pulled the trigger, only for the Viking to make a loud click. No more ammo. The cultist howled again and lunged at her, delivering a glancing blow to Nikita’s shoulder. She yelped and threw her gun aside, sending it spinning across the counter, and tugged her knife from its holster. As the cultist swung again, she slammed into him and slammed her blade upwards beneath his ribcage. The man fell back, coughing blood and whimpering.
Completely undeterred by his comrade’s death, a cultist leaped over the counter and slashed at her with a garden sickle, cutting her left arm. Nikita screamed in pain and anger, and brutally slammed her fist into his gut. As the man doubled over, she brought her combat knife through his plastic green mask, stabbing straight into his eye. Another cultist attacked her with a baseball bat, but she grabbed him, abandoning the half-blind attacker from earlier, and drove him into the counter, crushing his larynx against its hard steel and wood angle. As the man died with a horrible wheeze, Nikita punched the hilt sticking out of the other cultist’s eye, driving it deep into his skull and ending his existence with a choked whimper.
And then renewed gunfire raked the inside of the shop. A bullet grazed Nikita’s shoulder and face, and the fresh pain seemed to crush what little energy and resolve she had left. Slowly she collapsed behind the counter, her eyes filling with tears of rage and despair. Blood from her belly had soaked through her shirt and the front of her trousers.
They had done everything in their power to stop the cultists from breaking through to the Security Room, and now, with Basil either dead or unconscious, and Nikita dying, they couldn’t go on fighting any more.
They were going to die.
Nikita waved for him to come over, and he did so while casting cautious glances around him. The constant drone of the zombies that infested the mall was grating enough, but the silence seemed somehow worse. Basil saw many lifeless zombies lying around the plaza, their skulls displaying significant signs of trauma.
“Looks like someone’s been cleaning up around here”, said Nikita, her cold blue eyes constantly darting around, her body tense and alert, ready to dive for cover at the first sign of trouble. She reached for a small pocket sewn into the side of one of the fat mag pouches on the strange belt system she’d been lugging about and pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes out.
“So that’s where you’ve been getting your fags from”, said Basil with a chuckle. Nikita gave him an odd look, the cigarette already between her lips. “Huh?”, she said, pulling a small lighter from the same pouch, “what? Where did you think I was getting them from? My ass?”
“Hey, I was just joking”, said Basil, shrugging a little to readjust his rifle’s strap. The Lee Enfield MK3’s heavy wood and steel build was a lot less fun to drag about outside of a padded gun case at his local shooting range, especially in a mall filled with bloody zombies and nutcases. Nikita smirked and blew a cloud of acrid tobacco smoke from her nose. “Sorry, mujik, I’m just on edge. Silences like those”, she paused, raising one hand a little as if to indicate the absence of moaning zombie lungs, “never mean anything good in my experience. It just stinks of trouble.”
Nikita blew out some more smoke and cautiously made her way to the nearest raised flowerbed, which had a short grey clock tower rising from the center. A plastic or plaster bird (a parrot?) sat on top of it, its wings outstretched. Basil again noticed Nikita’s jagged facial scar, and the worn look of her webbing with its dark stains and patched up holes. The woman definitely had an interesting past buried beneath the surface.
“Stop”, he heard her say, her voice a low murmur. He froze and felt his heart start to beat faster. “Hear that?” she said, and Basil listened; he too heard the faint clap and flutter of many, many feet walking nearby, and the sound seemed to be coming closer.
Suddenly, a single loud gunshot echoed through the quiet plaza. Basil almost jumped out of his skin. More gunshots followed, and from the sound and frequency it seemed that someone was in a fight somewhere. Nikita had her AK-74 in her hands by then, her trigger hand moving to flip the assault rifle’s security off.
“Must be Mike and Arianne,” she said, raising her voice to be heard over the din, “let’s go!”
She rose and started to run towards the stairs next to a colourful shop called “Kid’s Choice Clothing”, and Basil followed, his Lee Enfield also in his hands. Halfway there, Nikita saw movement from the corner of her eye and looked to the left. Her eyes widened as she saw a large crowd of yellow-clad cultists advancing down the plaza in exactly the same direction she was going. They froze, and Nikita could almost picture several sets of eyes widening in surprise behind the pea-green plastic goblin masks they all wore.
Their surprise cost them, however, as Nikita immediately threw herself flat on the floor behind a raised flowerbed. Less than a second later, the blast of several gunshots drowned out the sound of muzak, and bullets and buckshot zipped through the empty space where Nikita had been standing only moments before.
“BASIL! WATCH OUT!” She yelled, but the Englishman had already retreated behind the clocktower.
Basil’s palms were slick with sweat, and his heart was hammering away so hard he through his chest was about to burst outward. For a moment he was paralysed. What should he do? This wasn’t at all like shooting at targets at the range!
“Go around, she’s cornered!” He heard a cultist shout excitedly. The shout brought him out of his paralysis as he realised that his Russian friend was in danger. Kneeling behind the flowerbed, he rapidly took aim at one of the cultists who was shooting at Nikita with what appeared to be an old hunting shotgun. He squeezed the trigger and felt the familiar hard kick of the ancient military rifle’s wooden stock against his shoulder. His shot hit the cultist squarely in the chest, and he went down without a sound.
“There’s another one over there! Kill him!” Yelled another cultist, and the group scattered in a mess, some hurling themselves to cover while others simply stayed in the open and turned their guns towards Basil. The Englishman loaded another .303 round into the chamber, his hand working the lever expertly, and fire again. Another cultist went down, the heavy British round knocking him backwards and leaving a red aurora of blood on his chest.
Basil swiftly went behind cover just as the other cultists began to shoot. Bullets hit the flowerbed, ripping geraniums and ferns to shred and sending clods of black garden soil leaping into the air. Basil hit the floor hard as buckshot grazed the concrete clock pillar with a loud THWACK, and he crawled a little to the left to get a better firing position.
Paradise Plaza was now hell, as the cultists poured fire upon the two survivors. Nikita dragged herself to the end of her now battle-scarred flowerbed and unleashed a burst of gunfire from the floor. Several cultists ducked, but another wasn’t so quick, and a bullet punched through his garish plastic mask and splattered the wall behind him with blood and pulverised brain. Nikita fired again, her AK rocking back against her shoulder from the perfectly controlled bursts of automatic fire.
“KILL THE UNBELIEVERS!” yelled a cultist at the top of his voice. “KILL THEM FOR THE TRUE EYE! ONLY THE TRUE-”
His cry was cut short as Basil put a bullet through his shoulder. The cultist fell out of sight and lay screaming on the floor. A bullet slammed into the clock pillar, missing Basil by about ten centimeters. The British hotel owner was in a red haze of adrenaline, too engrossed in taking aim and shooting to feel the terror that also coursed through his body. A shout rose from ahead of him, and he saw a cultist dash from a store brandishing a stick of dynamite. “COVER ME, BROTHERS!” he howled as he sprinted across the tiled floor and leaping over the bodies of his fallen brethren.
“NIKITA! HE’S GOT DYNAMI-!” yelled Basil only to be cut short as a bullet grazeed his shoulder, ripping through his jacket’s thin cotton fabric and leaving a bloody gouge. Basil screamed and fell back, dropping his Lee Enfield and reaching up to clutch his shoulder. More bullets whizzed overhead. Gosh, it hurt so much! Where was Nikita? Where was the dynamite madman?!
The suicide bomber was rushing towards Nikita’s position, his feet pounding the tiled floor. Nikita fired a few shots, but missed him. The cultist shouted in triumph, only to slip on a bloodstain on the floor. He stumbled, and Nikita nailed him in the stomach, sending him sprawling with a scream of pain and fanatical anger. The stick of dynamite escaped his grasp and rolled a few centimeters across the floor as the mortally wounded cultist struggled to catch it. The wick fizzled down to its last, and Nikita threw herself to the floor again.
The explosion rocked Paradise Plaza like a monstrous thunderclap, shattering the tiled floor and turning the dying cultist into red mush. Broken concrete and tile flew everywhere like shrapnel, ripping up the flowerbeds and gouging deep holes in the palm trees. Nikita’s ears were ringing and her vision was blurry from the blast, but she ignored it, falling back on her training and battle experience. She took a deep breath and charged out of cover, taking advantage of the lull in the gunfight. Basil had stopped screaming, and for a horrible, fear-filled moment she thought he was dead. As she reached the clock pillar, she threw herself downwards and powerslid into cover. Bullets flew after her, breaking a few tiles on the floor.
“KILL THEM! KILL THEM! KILL THEM ALL!” shrieked a female cultist. Nikita found Basil lying with his back to the flowerbed, one hand pressed down on his shoulder. His jacket was torn and bloody, his face pale and drawn. Nikita quickly reached for the small pouch that hung from one of her shoulder straps and tore its velcro flap open. “Don’t move, Basil”, she said, bringing a bandage out of her med pouch, “let me see it.”
Basil nodded and removed his hand. Nikita grabbed his sleeve and ripped it right off, exposing his entire arm and shoulder. A bloody gash ran across the top of his shoulder, but didn’t seem too deep to be cause for alarm. As Nikita rapidly bandaged the wound, Basil smiled crookedly and said: “Hey, that was an expensive jacket you just ruined!”
“Shut it”, said Nikita, who couldn’t help but smile a little. If the Englishman could still crack a joke, he wasn’t doing that badly. “Think you can still shoot?”
Basil winced as a bullet hit the flowerbed and showered him with garden earth. “Yeah...my firing shoulder’s still good.”
“Good,” said Nikita, grabbing his Enfield and thrusting it at him, “now shoot the bastards!”
In the time it had taken to patch Basil up, some of the cultists had mustered enough bravery to leave cover and approach the pair’s hiding spot. Nikita popped out of cover and emptied her magazine in a single long burst of fully automatic fire, raking the advancing line of cultists with hot lead. The cultists fell like wheat to a scythe, and Nikita stuffed her spent mag into her Smersh’s half-open buttpack. As she plucked a fresh magazine from another pouch, a loud cry echoed through the chaos; in the distance behind the battered palm trees and flowerbeds, a fresh mob of cultists was rushing to the aid of their comrades.
“FORWARDS, MY BROTHERS!” yelled a cultist, his resolve obviously strengthened by the influx of fresh bodies, “THEY CAN DO NOTHING AGAINST THE POWER OF THE TRUE EYE!”
“Oh Christ,” wheezed Basil, “here they come!”
With a wild yell, the cultists hurled themselves forth banzai-style, some firing wildly from the hip, others waving whatever crude weaponry they had. Nikita clicked the new mag into place and fired at the incoming madmen, killing three of them with three shots. Basil also fired, albeit more raggedly, bringing down one cultist and injuring another, who kept on coming despite the wound.
Nikita switched into full auto and fired left and right, the sheer number of cultists giving her an overabundance of targets. The enemy fell, screaming, but still more came, and soon Nikita found herself staring into the bloodshot eyes of a masked cultist as he leaped onto the flowerbed.
“DIE HERETIC!” he howled, swinging his baseball bat wildly only to get a bullet through the face. His mask exploded, his jaw pulverised by the bullet. Broken teeth and bone flew into the cultists behind him.
“UUURRRAAAAAA!” Yelled Nikita, unslinging her AK and grabbing hold of its handguard with both hands. A cultist went down with a yell as she clobbered him with the butt of her rifle.
Basil shouted and avoided a cultist’s garden sickle. He rolled away, avoiding another blow from the garden tool, and fired his rifle point blank into his attacker’s crotch. The man howled and crumpled, and another one threw himself at Basil, who kicked him in the stomach.
“Not today!” shouted the Englishman, loading a fresh round and sending it into the cultist’s head. The bullet ripped half the cultist’s cheap mask to shreds and blew a gaping hole in the side of his skull. Basil continued to fire from the ground, hitting a cultist in the kneecap and another one in the belly.
Nikita finished pummelling a cultist’s skull into mush before raising her rifle and firing at the others. The two survivors’ resistance had apparently been brutal enough to take the wind out of the cultist’s sails, and they were now running back to cover without even bothering to help their wounded. Nikita’s fire brought four more down, adding yet more corpses to the battlefield.
But still they fought on. The cultists poured a hail of gunfire in the survivors’ general direction, shredding the clock pillar’s cheap concrete. A few bullets even hit the white bird on top, smashing a wing and blowing its head off. Nikita and Basil fired back in kind, but couldn’t match the sheer volume of fire the enemy was focusing on them.
And just to make things worse, Nikita saw two cultists rise from cover and hurl dynamite at them. “DYNAMITE!” she shouted. The sticks looped through the air, one of them falling just short of their firing spot, and the other landing right in front of Nikita. Without a thought, the Russian woman grabbed the stick and threw it back with all her strength.
Several cultists yelled in fear as the dynamite came flying back towards them, only to detonate in mid air. The explosion ripped through a nearby palm tree’s trunk, breaking it in two, and the trunk came crashing down onto the floor.
“There’s more of them!” shouted Basil before pointing towards the stairs next to Kid’s Choice; more cultists were rushing down into the Plaza, some pausing to fire at Basil and Nikita. A bullet flew right into a small lamp in the flowerbed that had been miraculously spared during the chaos, and it exploded with a shower of sparks. Basil fired at the oncoming cultists, killing two of them and sending another one screaming over the railings, but his heart sank with every extra yellow coat that popped out from the top floor.
Nikita, on the other hand, kept on firing, relentlessly cutting down any cultist unlucky enough to be in her sights. Again she switched mags, mechanically stuffing the old one into her buttpack and clicking another one into place. The cultists seemed to have inexhaustible reserves of manpower and ammunition, whereas she was down to seven mags out of twelve.
Being overrun was starting to become a very, dreadfully real possibility.
The new wave of cultists brought its new share of dynamite-loving maniacs, and two charged out from cover screaming at the top of their voices. One of them had, to Nikita and Basil’s horror, had gone so far as to grab two lit sticks and strap several more to his waist with duct tape.
“SHOOT THAT MAN!” yelled Nikita, switching her fire to the suicide bomber. The other bomber yelled as Basil got him in the chest, throwing his explosive gift into “Player’s”, a nearby record shop that had also been spared by the fighting. The shop exploded outwards, showering those assembled outside with broken record cases and debris. The suicide bomber kept on coming, his comrades covering him with copious amounts of gunfire.
Nikita fired shot after shot at him, but whatever twisted deity the cultist worshipped seemed to have given him its favour, as almost all her bullets missed. Finally she hit him in the shoulder, but the crazed man seemed to completely ignore the impact and kept on coming. Basil aimed and fire, but his .303 only grazed the bomber’s flank. Nikita fired again, and this time the bullet hit him square in the chest.
But still he kept on coming.
“WILL YOU DIE YOU BASTARD!” yelled Nikita, firing the last bullets in her magazine.
Every single shot missed.
The cultist, with a shout of triumph, covered the last few meters and threw both dynamite sticks and Basil and Nikita before hurling himself onto the flowerbed.
“RUN!” yelled Basil, and both of them sprinted for their lives. The cultist detonated, and the world was swallowed by the blast. Both Basil and Nikita were thrown through the air, the former landing heavily on the floor and the latter crashing onto the ground in front of a shop called “Cam’s Camera”. The blast obliterated the clock stand and its base, sending bits of concrete, plaster and steel in all directions, and shattered all glass surfaces nearby. The front of “Child’s Play” was ripped off its moorings and came crashing to the floor, crushing a wounded cultist.
Nikita arose, her head spinning and her ears filled with a deafening hum. She could hear the distant, muffled shouts of the cultists somewhere. Her gun was gone. With a hand she checked to see if her belt was still there, and found it had survived the blast. She looked around for her companion, and found him lying motionless on the floor a few meters away, just outside “Contemporary Reading”.
“Basil...” she mumbled, but felt something pass overhead with a muffled whine.
A bullet.
Nikita scrambled over to the shop, finding cover behind a stand designed to hold photos. Bullets slammed into the floor and into the stand. She fumbled for a small pouch nestled towards the back of her Smersh, pulled out her handgun, an MP-446 Viking, and checked to see if it was loaded. A magazine filled with 9mm bullets slid out, and Nikita slapped it back in. She could taste blood in her mouth, and she was bleeding profusely from a gash in her forehead, but the worst was the pain she felt in her belly. She looked down and gasped as she saw a large piece of glass embedded in her waist just beneath her ribs.
“Oh you bastards...” she swore in her native tongue, her teeth clenched against the pain. “You fucking...fucking...FUCKING bastard BITCHES.”
With a yell she rose, fighting the pain radiating from her abdomen and ignoring the blood that dripped freely onto the floor of the shop, and came face to face with five cultists. Before they could react, Nikita howled and fired, bringing them all down.
“KILL THE UNBELIEVER!” yelled the remaining cultists in unison, and they converged onto the shop as one. Nikita fired twice, stopping two cultists in their mad charge, and limped to the back of the shop. She threw herself over the counter, whimpering as white hot pain shot through her body. Again she rose, and again she killed two cultists who’d entered the shop, her bullets leaving bright red poppies of blood on their even brighter yellow coats.
Basil awoke in Hell. His entire body burned and ached, his injured shoulder was wet with blood and his ears screamed like a thousand dying men. He rolled over, and saw many, many yellow-clad people attacking what seemed to be a photography shop.
Nikita, he thought, and he began dragging himself across the floor. A cultist lay dead, his hand pressed on a bullet wound in his chest. His gun, a Ruger Mini, was within arm’s reach, and Basil took hold of it like a drowning man grabbing a lifebuoy. He fumbled with the unfamiliar rifle before taking aim and shooting the closest cultist in the back. The man went down with a surprised yelp, and the four remaining cultists turned around.
“THIS ONE IS STILL ALI-” yelled a cultist armed with a mace, only to have Basil shoot him straight through the throat. Two cultists fell to gunfire coming from within the store, and Basil finished off the last one with a bullet to the chest.
More shouts sounded in the distance. He had to move quickly.
Basil hoisted himself up and half-ran half-stumbled into Cam’s Camera. He came face to face with Nikita, who stood doggedly behind the battered and bullet-riddled counter.
She squeezed the trigger, and the gun clicked, empty.
“Oh”, she said, her voice hoarse and shaky, “it’s you.”
Basil smiled weakly. “Good thing you ran out of bullets. I don’t fancy going home in a coffin.”
“THERE THEY ARE! KILL THEM!” Nikita winced as they heard the crazed shout. “C’mon”, she told Basil, “get behind the counter. We’ll hold them ‘til...’til help comes, I guess. We can’t let them get to the Security Room.”
Basil nodded and limped to the counter. As he scooted in beside Nikita, the Russian woman slapped a fresh mag into her Viking. Basil found himself cursing under his breath, cursing Michael Rhodes for his arrogance, cursing Cindy and Veta for leading the cult to them, cursing the survivors for not helping in the battle, and, of course, cursing himself for going to that stupid, STUPID hotel conference here in Willamette.
The first cultists showed up outside the shop. Nikita took aim and fired, shooting the first raincoat fetishist clean through the head. Basil fired too, the recoil almost knocking him backwards. Miraculously, the bullet found its mark and hit a cultist in the shoulder, bringing him screaming to the floor.
“DEATH TO THE HERETICS! PRAISE THE TRUE EYE!!” howled a cultist before dashing forward and hurling yet another stick of dynamite at the shop.
“OH SHI-” shouted Basil before the blast knocked him against the wall. The world then went very black very suddenly.
Nikita stood firm despite the blast. Basil seemed to have fallen at last, and she could only admire the Brit’s courage and tenacity. He, who had never ever seen battle or even been in the army, whose peaceful life had been interrupted by the outbreak in Willamette, had fought until the end. The pain she felt from her wounds made her head spin, and tears escaped from her stinging eyes to mingle with the dirt and blood that caked her face.
“Kill the unclean!” shouted a cultist just outside the shop. The first cultist burst into the blasted shop and was promptly gunned down. Nikita was barely sane now, the pain, the anger and the despair colliding to drive her completely mad with anger. Three more cultists burst into the shop and were mercilessly gunned down by a screaming Nikita.
Another cultist entered, screaming and brandishing a hammer. Nikita pulled the trigger, only for the Viking to make a loud click. No more ammo. The cultist howled again and lunged at her, delivering a glancing blow to Nikita’s shoulder. She yelped and threw her gun aside, sending it spinning across the counter, and tugged her knife from its holster. As the cultist swung again, she slammed into him and slammed her blade upwards beneath his ribcage. The man fell back, coughing blood and whimpering.
Completely undeterred by his comrade’s death, a cultist leaped over the counter and slashed at her with a garden sickle, cutting her left arm. Nikita screamed in pain and anger, and brutally slammed her fist into his gut. As the man doubled over, she brought her combat knife through his plastic green mask, stabbing straight into his eye. Another cultist attacked her with a baseball bat, but she grabbed him, abandoning the half-blind attacker from earlier, and drove him into the counter, crushing his larynx against its hard steel and wood angle. As the man died with a horrible wheeze, Nikita punched the hilt sticking out of the other cultist’s eye, driving it deep into his skull and ending his existence with a choked whimper.
And then renewed gunfire raked the inside of the shop. A bullet grazed Nikita’s shoulder and face, and the fresh pain seemed to crush what little energy and resolve she had left. Slowly she collapsed behind the counter, her eyes filling with tears of rage and despair. Blood from her belly had soaked through her shirt and the front of her trousers.
They had done everything in their power to stop the cultists from breaking through to the Security Room, and now, with Basil either dead or unconscious, and Nikita dying, they couldn’t go on fighting any more.
They were going to die.