Revenger

37

Schultz and Ajay Panu were desperately pushing against the metal shelving they’d leaned against the back door. The top half of the door itself had long since been obliterated by a combination of gunfire, iron pipes and even an axe that one giant, Viking-like rioter had smashed against the wood until Schultz had stood up, aimed through the hole the man had made and blown him away with one of his two precious bullets. He and Panu were both powerful, heavily built men, but they were tiring badly, and even a man of Schultz’s fighting pedigree — a Marine commando who had spent most of his career in the SBS — could not for ever overcome the handicap of a shattered arm, nor ignore the pain and blood-loss that came with it.

Panu was leaning his left shoulder against the shelf to prevent the invaders from pushing it over, and using his right arm to swing his baseball bat at anyone who clambered up over the top. But he, too, was now wounded. The full force of the shotgun blasts from the other side of the door had missed him, deflected by the shelves and the boxes filled with packets of rice and sugar that had been piled on them. But still he was peppered with bits of shot and splinters of wood, and the dark pinpricks on his shirt were slowly seeping together until more and more of his upper body was slick with seeping blood.

Now another attacker was clambering over the shelves. Ignoring Panu’s attempts to bat him away, he crouched at the top and then sprung down, straight on to Panu. The attacker’s momentum caught Panu by surprise and knocked him off his feet. The big Sikh hit the concrete floor with an impact that drove the air from his lungs and as he lay helplessly pinned to the ground, the attacker lifted a carving knife into the air, held in both his hands, pointing directly down at Panu’s throat. He arched his back, brought his arms up to the top of the killing stroke, and then launched all his strength through his shoulders and arms to bring the blade plunging down.

Schultz fired his final bullet, a shot to the attacker’s temple from point-blank range that killed him instantly.

But the action of turning to shoot took Schultz’s attention away from the men climbing up the shelves and exposed his shattered left arm at the precise moment that another man jumped down from the top of the metal and hit him almost precisely at the point of the wound. The pain was more excruciating than any Schultz had ever experienced. It left him sickened and paralysed with agony. He was barely even conscious of the machete swinging down towards his throat. With Panu still struggling to free himself from the weight of the corpse now lying on top of him there was no one to save Schultz as the blade sliced deep into his abdomen, just below the ribcage.

At that precise moment Carver came through the door from the supermarket. He blew away the man standing over Schultz, then pumped the gun and hit another shadowy figure looming over the shelving. Carver raced across to Schultz, who was lying in the middle of a rapidly expanding pool of blood. It was obvious that there was no saving him, but he seemed to be trying to say something. Carver bent down and caught the words, ‘… meant to be like this’, before the flickering life in his old comrade died.

Carver wasted no time in mourning: leave that for the funeral. He switched his attention to Panu, pulled the body off him, lashed out with the butt of his gun, cracking it into a grimacing, tattooed face that had suddenly appeared out of the darkness, and shouted, ‘Run for the basement. Go! Go!’

Panu scrambled away on all fours until he found his feet for the last few paces that took him to the door to the basement steps. Carver followed him, stepping backwards, keeping his gun still pointed towards the shelves.

He had two cartridges left.

A hand clutching a gun appeared over the top of the metalwork and fired blindly downwards.

Carver ignored it. His attention had suddenly swung one hundred and eighty degrees to the sudden sound of hammering on another door — the one into the supermarket. With an explosion of dust and wood, the lock was blown away and the door swung open.

Carver fired another round straight into the exposed doorway, hitting at least one, possibly two targets. Then, as the bodies were thrown out of the way and the first rioters from the supermarket ran in, just as the invaders from the back yard began to climb en masse over Schultz and Panu’s abandoned barricade, Carver ran for the basement door, yanked it open, dashed through, pulled it close behind him and turned the key in the lock.

He threw himself down the steps as the first bullets ripped into the door.

The door crashed open. A rioter burst through and stood at the top of the stairs. He was a wiry little hoodie with a hunting knife in his hand. Carver had one round of ammunition left. He could use it to take out a rioter, or he could give one of the women an instant, painless death instead of the gang-raped mutilation to which the rioters would subject her.

He was just about to make his choice.

And then the timer in the microwave went, ‘Ping!’