Gods and Monsters

VIII

Mr Smith's Safe House - Iver, Buckinghamshire

Charlie rushed downstairs to the first floor, searching drawers and cabinets furiously. Mike quickly followed after telling the child to hide under his bed and not to come out until either he or Charlie returned.

"What are you doing?" Mike asked, "Shouldn't we be getting the kid out of here?"

"They've got the only exit covered. The only way we're getting out of here is if we fight our way out."

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me."

Swinging open one wooden cupboard in the corner of the room, Charlie revealed a stack of rifles, handguns and grenades. "So that's where you were hiding. I knew Mr Smith wouldn't let me down." Grabbing two SA80 assault rifles, Charlie chucked one to Mike who awkwardly caught it.

Fumbling around with the gun, Mike watched as Charlie pulled a few flashbang grenades from the side of the cupboard and set himself up by the top of the stairs, staring down at the ground floor.

"Shouldn't we contact Mr Smith? What about Scarlett and Peggy?" Mike asked, his hands shaking slightly at the thought of the firefight they were expecting.

"Mr Smith is on another assignment and wouldn't be able to get here in time." Charlie pulled out his phone, staring at it for a second before placing it back in his jacket pocket. "Looks like our friends outside are using a signal jammer too. No way of contacting either Peg or Scarlett."

Despite the fight with Jared Brody and his goons at the airfield and the Purple Vice Exchange, Mike still wasn't comfortable with firearms. He had been a strong believer that guns were unnecessary for a police officer since he had first signed up but he found himself forced into using them more and more often recently. As he looked up the stairs that lead to the young child, Mike realised those feelings needed to be pushed aside for now. He would do whatever it took to protect that child, knowing that whatever Eugene and his associates had in mind for him certainly wasn't good.

"Time's up, Charlie!" Trevor called from outside. "You had your chance to end this, now it's ours. Move out!"

The ten soldiers outside all picked up their high powered weaponry and began moving towards the house. The soldier just ahead of Trevor knelt in front of the safe house, placing a breaching charge on the door as the others watched. Once the charge was set, the soldiers stepped back before Trevor raised the detonator, pressing hard on the red button.

The building shook slightly as the door was blown off its hinges. The soldiers had lined up outside the building as they began their entry to the safe house. Charlie fired his Colt Python once, the bullet hitting the soldier in front square between the eyes. Stumbling back, the soldier slowly dropped to the floor, the others merely stepping to the side as their colleague collapsed to the gravel outside.

Mike watched as Charlie casually threw a flashbang down the stairs before switching to his assault rifle and blasting a volley of bullets down the stairs. Although they hadn't always seen eye to eye, particularly in the first few months when Deadbeat was founded, Mike was thankful he had Charlie watching his back right now.

As Charlie reloaded, Mike moved over to the stairs and pulled the trigger on his rifle, the kick of which almost sent him back into the wall. He didn't think he had hit any of the soldiers as they had ducked back behind the walls, but it gave both he and Charlie a chance to reload and breathe for a moment. For a few minutes, Charlie and Mike then exchanged fire with the soldiers below, neither group truly sure who had the upper hand at the moment, but Trevor and his soldiers had the advantage in numbers making them the bigger threat of the two ultimately.

Then, from downstairs, rolling past Mike and Charlie came a small, round object. One that they could have easily missed if not for the circumstances.

A grenade.

"Oh, bollocks!" Mike cried as both he and Charlie ran and leapt across to the other side of the room, taking cover behind the sofa.

The explosion was deafening. Both men were left with their ears ringing, now further away from the stairs but still between the soldiers and the child upstairs. Two of the soldiers made their way up the stairs but were quickly sent tumbling back down as their heads exploded in a bloody mess.

"What's your ammo like?" Charlie asked Mike as they waited for the next wave of soldiers to join them upstairs.

"I'm empty. You?"

"Three shots in the python, none in the rifle."

The two men sighed, knowing they were too far away from the gun cabinet to rearm themselves, now hoping they could take out the remaining six soldiers with three bullets. As they discussed their options, a noise from upstairs piqued their interest. Keeping one eye on the stairs to the ground floor to ensure no soldiers came up, Mike looked up as he saw the Purple Vice child slowly make his way down the stairs.

"No!" Mike called while keeping his voice hushed, "You need to stay upstairs, it's too dangerous down here!"

The child kept walking down the stairs, his hands outstretched in front of him. It was only when he knelt behind the sofa with Mike and Charlie that the pair began to understand what was happening. The child was sweating from head to toe, his eyes glassy as he took deep, heavy breaths. But it was the child's hands that were most peculiar. Still outstretched in front of him as he knelt next to Charlie and Mike, the child's hands glowed a deep purple.

Watching the child's eyes dart from his left hand to his right and back again, Mike could tell something wasn't right. "Are you okay? What's going on?"

The child simply looked up at Mike, his eyes verging on tears as he slowly shook his head from side to side. 

Continued in Part 9...

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