eleventh instalment

Siege

The first hour passed easily, no noise from anywhere. The blast had killed off most of the animals in the city, leaving just a few rats and lesser varmints in the area to make scratching noises. The silence was a double edged knife to Anara, the dead night offered up even the smallest sound to her ears, but left just enough space for her to imagine any number of sounds, spanning from voices all the way to screams and howls. She ignored these, allowing her mind to drift just enough so she wasn’t exhausted from the long watch and listened for footsteps outside the room on the stairways. She had taken the liberty of straying briefly after the others had left, giving Hernandez a gun and telling him to shoot anything that moved until she came back, she found a glass desk, broke it down into small fragments and carefully covered the stairs in the pieces. It hadn’t been long after she’d come back that Hernandez passed out, from exhaustion or his wounds Anara couldn’t tell, she checked his vitals as best she could after he passed out, his heart rate was slow, but his breathing was a steady eighteen breaths a minute, she’d even taken to using it to gauge how much time had passed. It was almost 2400 when she checked her watch, she got a bit worried, granted she assumed it would take more than four hours to search an entire hospital but she had been able to hear them over their radios until a half hour or so ago, and then it just cut to static after they blew the door to the basement open. Half her mind was wondering to what was going to happen when all this shit got sorted out when she heard the ominous noise of glass crunching on the stairs. Just one step, and then what or whoever it was stopped, obviously noticing the noise. Anara got up from her seated position against the wall and cautiously stepped towards the window, checking to see if there was any sign of someone leaving the building. She peered over the wall, keeping the doorway in her peripheral vision, and instantly crouched below the jagged window sill.
The street was filled with a few dozen of the creatures. She hadn’t seen them before now, but they were definitely the same creatures that had attacked Saunders and Hernandez. Their darkened skin appearing morbid through the night-vision goggles, they moved in a crouched over fashion, but from the way they moved, she could tell it wasn’t from any crippling damage, but more from an animalistic instinct. They used their hands almost as secondary legs as they moved, bounding like dogs or wolves to move quickly and quietly through the broken city. Their clothing was minimal and ragged, mostly loincloths, and the vast majority of them had several straps about one or both of their thighs, holding cruel knives in thin sheaths. They were never still, their heads always moving from side to side, scanning the night for signs of inhabitants. The only organization that she could pick out was that, in the direction they seemed to be headed, they had a sort of advance scout, moving about fifteen or twenty yards in front of all the rest; and every time they’d come to a hole in a building, one of them would break off briefly to check it out, frequently going inside. She whispered quietly into her throat mic to see if she could get a response, but all she got was a brief increase in static. Sgt. Tobin let out a brief curse as Hernandez woke momentarily to let out a low moan that the silence and tense situation magnified into a painful howl. Anara froze momentarily, still looking out at the things in the street, watching intently to see if they noticed anything. One head turned to look her way, and she felt a shiver run down her spine. It felt as if the thing was staring straight at her, as if it could see through the veil of dark night and know that she was there. A few seconds passed, with Anara frozen, not so much from fear as from caution, and the things head turned away. If it saw her, it gave no reaction, and a few more seconds later, she slipped her head back below the jagged line of the broken window sill and turned quietly back to the doorway just in time to hear a metallic click and see a shadow thrown against the far wall by a quick and deadly explosive blast. A horrid screeching broke from the hallway and Anara knew the jig was up. She got to her feet, shouted to Hernandez to try and wake him up, and opened fire on the things in the road, hoping they were still too dazed by the loud noise to react quickly. She fired in short three round bursts with her P90, the silencer reducing the noise to just above a loud spit, from what she could tell she took down two or three with the first few bursts, one a gut shot, another she clipped in the leg, and a third she took clean in the side of the head. The wounded creatures fell in awkward positions and writhed, screeching, as the others scattered into dark corners or the protective areas of the ruined buildings.
The sudden attack had granted her a few seconds to prepare more, she woke Hernandez from his light slumber, and told him what was going on, then propped him up by the door with a pistol and some flashbangs, and she went to the makeshift armory and got some more P90 ammo and a few flashbangs herself, and then took up position again by the outside edge of the building, waiting to see if the cultists would make an attempt to probe their defenses, or a full out charge. Her eyes caught a movement on the second floor of the building across the way just in time, and she instinctively ducked to the side as a series of nails hit her right arm, which had taken the place of her head at the edge of the building. She let out another low curse, and as she brought the sub-machinegun up to her shoulder to fire another burst, Saunders’ voice broke in over the radio “Anara, we’ve got the goods and we’re busting it back to you. We heard a blast, give us a sit rep.” She was sure he could hear the relief in her voice as she said “The situation is we’re in deep shit sir,” she paused to squeeze off a few more rounds, more to scare the things back into the shadows then an aimed shot, “I count about two dozen or so of the bastards outside, one tripped the claymore so I opened fire, but I took some shrapnel to the arm and Hernandez is a bit woozy, we could use a little support.” “Alright Sergeant, hold tight, we’re on the way.” She turned slightly to Hernandez and shouted “Hold on buddy, they’re on the way back, just keep watching that door.” Anara thought she saw him nod slightly and she turned back to keep the outsiders at bay.