Page 35 of Fight or Fly

It was barely two minutes later when several things happened at once. I smelled burning cloth, and heard Kam’s grunt of effort as he presumably hurled the first Molotov cocktail out of the window. The muted crash of breaking glass and a distant roar of flames outside coincided with a high-intensity spotlight flaring into life at the edge of the tree line, directed right into the window I was peering out of.

The dazzling light blinded me, obscuring what was going on behind it. I cursed sharply and lifted my gun, trying to aim for the source and take it out. It took four shots before I heard the crash of something shattering and the spotlight went dark, leaving me blinking away afterimages. Before I could clear my vision, a second, identical light came on, every bit as powerful as the first. My headache pounded with renewed viciousness in response. I clenched my jaw against the pain and sent half a dozen more shots out the window—all without obvious effect.

Staggering away, I kept a hand on the wall in an effort not to run into anything, and headed for the east side of the house to try and discourage the ones on that side from getting too cocky. I arrived to find the same thing there—multiple high-intensity lights playing over the house in a blinding onslaught that made it impossible to get a bead on the approaching forces. I shot a few rounds at them anyway and succeeded in taking out one light—but it didn’t make much difference with others still drilling holes through my skull.

From the sounds of it, Kam and Leo were still lobbing Molotovs—though I had little doubt they were facing similar conditions. I headed to the living room to grab a few of the gasoline-filled bottles for myself, figuring they might end up being a more effective weapon at this point.

A metallic clanking noise came from elsewhere in the house, like something had hit the floor and rolled. It sounded as though it had come from the dining room, and all the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stood up in unison. A low hissing noise followed a second later.

“Fuck!” I charged back to the room. I could barely fucking see with the brutal light coming from outside, but the sound of escaping gas was enough to guide me to a small canister on the floor. Holding my breath, I scooped it up and hurled it out the same window it had just come through.

Around the house, more clunks sounded, followed by more hissing. A second canister arced through the dining room window and skittered against the wall. I scrambled for it, getting a face full of pale, odorless gas as it hissed into life before I could toss it outside with the other one.

Rather than wait around, I stumbled toward the front room in search of Leona and Kam, uncomfortably aware of the faint numbness settling over my extremities after even such a brief exposure to whatever the fuck was in those devices. I absolutely refused to think about the VX nerve agent derivative the terrorists had been working on. Right now, all that mattered was making sure the omegas got away from it.

I slid to a halt in the doorway to find Kam slamming an upside down wastebasket over one canister, while Leona lunged for one sitting in the corner and threw it outside. There were more of them in the other rooms, too—the crazy beams of blinding light from outside illuminated wisps of white vapor rolling along the floor like someone had switched on a Hollywood fog machine inside the house.

Another canister clattered into the living room and ricocheted off the wall, sliding under the sofa and bursting into hissing life.

“Get upstairs!” I ordered, appalled to find that my words were slurring. “Keep th’ windows closed so they can’t throw any into the second floor. I’ll clear these out!”

Vapor streamed from beneath the upended trashcan. Leona—who’d been tugging fruitlessly at one corner of the sofa in an attempt to get to the other one—fell to one knee, coughing. Kam and I lunged for her in unison.

“Get her out!” I ordered, pressing her into Kam’s arms and grabbing the sofa myself. He staggered in the direction of the staircase as I shoved the offending furniture away and tried to feel around through the growing cloud of gas for the source of the hissing. The air in the room was growing hazy, and I could barely make out the pair going down in a tangle of limbs just before they reached the doorway.

“Jax!” Kam’s hoarse cry dissolved into coughing.

He sounded like he was shouting down a long tunnel, even though he was barely fifteen feet away. My clumsy fingers bumped against a metallic casing. When I tried to pick it up so I could throw it away, the whole floor came along with it and slammed me unceremoniously in the face.

I lay on the hardwood, disoriented—trying to remember which way was up so I could get my damned face out of the gas. Despite my efforts to push my body upright with my arms, nothing happened. Distantly, I heard the sound of men shouting orders outside. Boots pounded across gravel, but it might as well have been happening on a different planet as far as my brain was concerned.

Maybe if I just close my eyes for a second, I thought.Just to regroup...

I didn’t open them again.

THIRTEEN

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