The hallway was empty.
“Make sure to reload cause the kitchen is gonna be crowded with equipment and people, and grab a flashbang to throw through the ticket window.”
First I shot the hinges off the kitchen doors watching them fall with no reaction from the inside.
I popped out old clips on my .22s replacing them with new ones tucking the mostly empty ones back into the vest. No need to litter.
Then I changed my mind, put both guns in their holsters and grabbed one of each grenade.
Judging the angles I threw the frag grenade with my right hand into the middle of the kitchen.
With my left I threw like a girl managing to get the flashbang slightly past the doorway, and turned away from the flash.
“Then just enter the kitchen and you should be able to pick them off easily enough while they’re blinded.”
I slid feet first into the far corner of the kitchen fitting into the gap between the wall and the double wide freezer coming to a standing position in a way that would have made my little league coach proud.
Bullets thunked into the wall I had just passed by and into the side of the freezer.
In passing I had seen their locations, but something told me these guys were better trained than the front crew and were constantly moving.
A giant fucking hole appeared in the freezer and the wall about a foot from my head along with the unmistakable sound of a desert eagle.
I crouched. It fired lower. I got scared. It fired again and again, but the bullets ceased to penetrate.
The bottom of the freezer must have been filled, the food stopping the bullets.
“So why do I need two 45s.”
“You would have grabbed them anyway as a compensatory device I was just giving you a valid excuse to carry an overly powerful weapon.”
I pulled out my 45s waited for the ninth 50 shot, stood up looked through one of the holes and fired through two others.
I emptied both pouring bullets into the one reloading his desert eagle another who had grown overconfident
and most of the kitchen equipment hoping it would cause the rest to pause while I grabbed my other guns and ruthlessly murdered them.
“So it’s still like lunch time right?”
I jumped to the top of the serving line then back against the oven then over the top of the line to the other side
avoiding fire and killing one who took cover behind the oven and looked to the side rather than up.
“It’s like 1:15″
Diving under the line head first I shot two sets of legs and rolled to an upright position.
Then finished them off.
“So like we should wait like 20 minutes or so, to like prevent civilian casualties.”
“Yeah, sure.”
I couldn’t see hear or subconsciously feel anyone else in the room so I started to relax.
“So there’s two ways I can think how I’d like to spend 20 minutes.”
“Oh really,”
I walked to the end of the kitchen where according to the blueprints there should be a walk in freezer, that’s it, a walk-in freezer without a
passage to what would be a concealed basement if the door weren’t wide open.
“Well one involves a walrus and a bucket,.,. and the other involves ahaa.”
“Stop talking.”
“Shit”
I had two grenades and a few bullets in each 22.
“Shit”
There was no light coming from the basement.
If I couldn’t see them they shouldn’t get to see me, that’s cheating.
I turned off the walk-in light, and just cause I’m a scaredy cat I shot out the kitchen light instead of closing the outer door.
“Oh”
I emptied a clip down the stairwell, and threw the gun down too for good measure.
“Aaah”
Then I threw both grenades down hoping the frag didn’t destroy the stairs too much, and ran down after them into the fire.
I fired into the dark at what I thought was a sound, hitting what I’m sure was a well meaning wall that was just doing it’s job.
The casualties of war.
“Yeah unh yeah”
A real sound sent me flat to the ground avoiding gun fire in my general direction.
I saw the muzzle flash again and to my surprise kicked it out of the shooter’s hand with my right leg, my left sweeping his legs, a full body spinning motion, sorta,,..
A quick silent neck crank later I stood up and drew my katana, and began to stalk a possibly imaginary opponent.
Something crunched underneath my foot, I dove, he fired. I rolled, he shot, he missed.
“Uh”
“uh”
“”
Silence returned. I knew he had limited bullets, he knew I had to get close.
Completely stopped Completely silent completely dark.
“”
I closed my eyes slowed my breathing and began to focus solely on the sounds of nothing.
I began to feel the rhythm of the earth pulsing around me. I felt it and melded with it, becoming it, searching for a sound that didn’t fit, that didn’t belong.
I raised the sword above my head turned and threw. It struck home with a scrunch a gurgle and finally a thunk.
“Aah”
“Aarhhh”
“Ohhoh”

---

Left side, a sound, a shifting.
Delicately and silently I reached for the mostly empty clip.
Already aimed slowly, so slowly its almost painful I replace the clip until it clicks home and fire.
“If you were going to go gay who would you go gay with?”
“Brad Pitt.”
“We could try a four way I know AJ would be down.”

---

We called in a cleanup crew waited for them to show up and headed back to hq.
Shade was already there waiting for us.
“You two hooked up didn’t you.” he said
“The subway situation is taken care of then?” I asked
“You did. Hi five dude.”
“How’d you explain the explosion, and the shootings?”
“How’d your wife take it?”
Courtney jumped in “Yes we hooked up Shade, Carly more than approved and was glad the operation was over. Now how the fuck did you handle the subway?”
“No one besides us really saw the explosion, so we just decommissioned that car. The shootings we called gang activity.”
“Fuck”
“Fuck what?”
“We called the restaurant a gang related shooting.”
“We’ve pretty much created a fake gang war.” Courtney
“The media is gonna be all over this shit.” I said
“Eh, it’ll be about as real as all the other shit they report” Shade
Tweedle de walked in so I asked “Where’s Tweedle dum?”
“Dead. That fucking captain wasn’t. He took out Ernie and took off.”
“When?” Courtney
“Nearly an hour ago, I just finished talking to his wife”
“What the fuck. Why didn’t contact us?” Shade
“There wasn’t anything you could have done, Ernie was dead”
“I don’t fucking care about your butt buddie, you just let part of a major terrorist group go. We could have caught him.” I said
“Fuck you, you said it was just clean up and that’s what we did.”
“Shit, well fuck. What’d you call that fucking scene, gang activity?”
“How’d you know.”
“On a million dollar yacht, gang activity, fuck you’re an idiot.”
“Just leave.”
He left us three nonretards to muddle over what to do with the situation, but finally we decided that any action would only make matters worse.
We had taken out Tran, one of the biggest threats to modern society in general. We had accounted for and destroyed all of the virus and we lost no one of importance.
A damn good day.
Now I could be me again, plain old Vers.
And I’d get the chance to see how far I could take this whole Courtney thing.
A sweet awesome good day times like seventeen.
Shade went home, and we made it a sweet awesome kewl good day times like thirtyseven thousand by having a quickie on the conference table.

The next day I woke up when Courtney rolled into me smiling a million megawatt smile.
I liked it way too much.
I would have let that morning linger into forever if I could,., but we both had to pee.
Plus I was really hungry, and wanted coffee. And we needed to clean up our cleanup efforts.
So we met up with Shade made tentative plans, each of us taking over an area.
I went to the river where stupidly the hardest thing that needed explanation was my stealing of the horse.
My apologizing for being off “my meds” seemed to satisfy those that were curious.
Shade returned to the subway, had the car dismantled, ever the tree hugger recycled, and through threats and bribes forgotten.
The shooting witnesses accepted what they were told, and promptly joined up in a class action book deal/lawsuit.
And Courtney returned to the restaurant where she built up the story that a certain local reporter was
obviously trying sensationalize the news by reporting that there were multiple gang shootings
when a gas leak had been the only murderer there.

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