The following takes place between 6p and 7pm
I hit the locking bar of the door with my shoulder and sprinted out into the inferno-like parking lot. Even lacking air-conditioning, the interior of the mall had been a still, low heat. Out here it was a different animal completely. Brutal sun, hot wind, and the baking pavement was releasing heat of its own.
I swapped the cellphone to my left hand and pulled the pistol from my bag as I ran. I wanted to be able to shoot if I had to.
The voice on the other end of the line said “The roof of Cofrin Library” and gave me an address further up University, along with a picture of a conglomeration of tall brick buildings. I slapped the phone shut and traded it in my pocket for the keys.
The car was burning hot, but I didn’t roll down the windows until I was back on the street. Didn’t want anyone walking up and shooting me in my seat.
The speed I put on the car whipped my hair around like I was in a wind tunnel. I’d have to find something to tie it back with at some point. I can’t pull off that gloriously disheveled look like some can.
The commercial district ended soon, and I sped through clusters of red brick apartments and homes. A sign at one point announced this was the final resting place of Tillman’s Nursery. Another casualty of the Great Recession, probably.
I felt like I was leaving the city as the street turned into something approximating a highway. Lots of wide-open space out here, lots of tall grass and blacktop stretching into the distance. No shade.
Apartment buildings started cropping up left and right as I drove. Probably student housing. I wondered where I’d be living in LA when I started in the fall. Probably dorms.
I’d visited Brett about a month ago and found he’d gotten an apartment right away with a guy named Austen Vaet. He and my brother had quickly become fast friends, and were planning on transferring to San Fran right around the time the rest of us Calloways transitioned back to LA. Probably my brother’s suggestion – he was still pissed at our mom. Austen was a cute guy, and despite the fact that we’d be attending different colleges in different, distant cities, I resolved to find my way to “hang out with my brother” more. That’d be a good excuse.
The lack of shade gave way to shade as I entered a forested area. Tall trees sheltered the road from the acidic sunlight, the canopy layered as the trees grew out of the hill on the right.
I saw the University of Wisconsin Green Bay sign too late, and the little Mazda showed me it could move when I slewed it through a U-turn on nearly two wheels. Good handling.
Even the shallow grade was enough to make me worry about scraping off the undercarriage, and I used that as an excuse to slow down. Beautiful entrance to the college. Buried in the trees, a shady yet sunny median, clean and professional sign. At the currently unmanned guard shack I saw three of the blue fifty-five gallon drums.
Well, if I’d had any doubts about where I was going before…
I could see the Cofrin Library rise in the distance, just over the crest of the hill. A massive building of rather odd architecture – it looked like a collection of brick towers of varying heights and angles, all jammed in next to each other. It didn’t look anything like any of the other buildings out here.
I spied movement to the left. On a broad green, people ran and dodged around each other, spraying wildly. I shook my head. Such fights were great for getting wet, but a tactically poor decision. Take cover, act decisively, end the fight quickly. Dancing around like it was West Side Story with water guns was not how you go about winning twenty large.
Cofrin Library had a circle drive in front, and the sides were lined with cars. Oh yay. People.
I slotted the car into a parallel park job barely big enough for a Red Ryder Wagon – I’d probably get parked in anyway – and left the car locked and running after making sure my spare keys were in my satchel. I knew I’d want to leave this scene in a hurry.
The wind blowing through the car had made me temporarily forget the overpowering heat outside. It baked up off the pavement, almost with the visible heat lines from cartoons. Even the grass and the scattered birch trees looked wilted. I ran a hand across the back of my neck and it came away slick.
I avoided the killzone of the sunken amphitheater labeled “UW Credit Union” and walked quickly to the doorway of Cofrin Hall. It was an ominous building, no doubt. I pushed through the tinted glass doors and went inside.
Holy tall atrium, Batman!
The atrium was so expansive, the library seemed like a building inside the shell of another building. The walls stretched up eight stories from the tile floor, and the large tinted windows filtered the sun like through a brown glass beer bottle. Ahead were more doors and an elevator. Before I took the elevator, I filled both soakers at the blue barrels just inside the door. They gave me buttons for each floor. I was heading for the roof, of course I pushed eight.
I cleared my mind as the elevator rose, put myself in a blank, almost robotic state of mind. Just like Dad taught, don’t think about racking the pump. Roll with the kick, its quicker to use a reflex than it is to decide to perform that action.
I was jolted out of my tense but peaceful blankness when the elevator car stopped unexpectedly. Floor three out of eight. They’d probably want to funnel me through some sort of battlefield.
The doors clanked open and the blankness returned as I sprinted forward. The huge room beyond had a white tile drop ceiling and firm, fuzzy off-white carpeting. Translucent plastic sheeting covered tall bookcases on the right side of the room, and similar sheets covered the chairs, tables, desks, and waist-height bookcases on the left side.
It looked like Dexter had arrived early and decorated a killroom. The sound of running feet intruded into my evaluation, and I pushed the Pulse Master forward on its sling, brought it up to the semi-aimed position I’d been using. I moved forward, bent forward slightly, sweeping the nozzle back and forth. Something different between the plastic covered stacks caught my eye, and I twisted at the waist, and pulsed the trigger four times. Four shots, two people, one hit to the chest apiece, and one of the misses blew into mist that splattered into their faces off the plastic.
I kept moving, reaming on the pump as I moved.
The elevator dinged, and I twisted my head to catch a glimpse of four people spilling out of it. Literally spilling – two tripped. Another twist of the head the other way, and then water reached for me from across the library as three someones shot at me from the other side of one of those low bookcases. They were two bookcases away from me, the empty space between occupied by plastic-covered tables and chairs.
Elevation. I wanted elevation.
I smiled, remembering a movie called American Outlaws. I did kind of identify, personally, with Colin Farrell.
It took very little alteration to my course to angle towards the waist-high bookcases, and I barely broke stride to push up and jump. I pulled my feet up at the apex and landed on the top of bookcase, the plastic sliding a bit and nearly dumping me off. Up here, the scene looked different. An angle: I had one.
I pulsed the trigger quickly, taking out two of the three that had shot at me with a sweeping ark. The third ducked.
My boots hammered the top of the bookcase, and I threw a glance over my shoulder at the four that had left the elevator. Clearly trained, two had taken up covering positions and weren’t moving. The other two were moving from cover to cover, heading for the “alley” between the two low bookcases. Returning to face-forward, I caught the Elevator sign against the wall in the back. I’d had enough of this party.
I jumped again, a long leap that ended with my feet squarely hitting the tall back of an upholstered chair. It tipped over backwards, and I rode it down, landing on both feet and breaking into a run again.
I’d landed a one-in-a-million stunt, and three steps later a rolling office chair took me out at the knees. I landed with a thud that I unfortunately had to describe as heavy. I’ve got like two percent body fat, how can that be a heavy thud? I rolled to my back and laid down a few bursts of suppressing fire at the two moving members of the Elevator Four as they moved into the alley. They had the good sense to back up as the guy who’d ducked my initial bookcase-borne assault opened fire on them as well.
I rocked to my feet, ducked around the computer table that had decided to send its chair out to trip me, and put my head down to run. I kept low as I ran, ducking behind desks and chairs. The sounds of a fight raged behind me, and only a few easily avoided beams flew my way. As Dad said, it’s not the ones addressed to you. You need to worry about, it’s the ones postmarked “To Whom It May Concern.”
I punched the elevator button hard, and crouched down next to the wall, waiting for the door to ding open. The one guy I’d missed behind the bookcase was giving a good account of himself, fortunately for me. He was holding the Elevator Four off with precision shots. Pretty soon though, he’d run out of water. I wanted to be out of here before that happened.
A new problem presented itself when the elevator door opened and water hissed out, the person inside waving the soaker in a fan pattern. I was very lucky I had chosen not to stand in front of the door, and that they had not waited inside. I stood, pushed the Pulse Master back on its sling, and drew the Triple Shot from my satchel, switched it to my left hand.
Carefully. I would do this carefully.
Whoever was inside didn’t see anyone threatening them immediately ahead, and started inching out. Female hands holding a green soaker with a bottom-mounted tank like an Uzi.
I moved explosively. My right hand pushed the nozzle way out of line while grabbing on to the thick housing with enough force that I could guarantee it wouldn’t be angled back towards me. I spun around the woman in the elevator, wrenching her around and firing twice at her, the Triple Shot unloading under my right forearm. Then I gave the water gun a shove. The whole move had taken less than two seconds, ended with me standing where she had been a fraction of a moment ago, and probably confused the hell out of her.
She started advancing and I clicked the trigger of the Triple Shot, knocking her glasses askew with the headshot. Retreating into the elevator, I pressed up against the right side, keeping my backup pointed out the door, and hit the button for the top floor. The door closed, and I let myself sag against the wall for just a moment, letting my breathing return to normal despite the adrenaline coursing through me. Then I straightened and pumped the Triple Shot back to full pressure, did the same for the Pulse Master.
The doors swished open, and I rotated around the doorway, checking for hostiles. Another library floor. All tall bookshelves this time, a plastic-draped maze of them. Faint sounds of movement further back through the stacks. Remembering my own trick, I leaned just my head out of the elevator, looking left and right for shooters. Nobody, and I left the elevator car, advancing with the Pulse Master held up in the sights-less ready I’d learned to use.
I moved quickly past the ends of every bookcase, checking down the long, long aisles for shooters or for some clue where to go. The tinted windows at my back cast everything in long sunlight shadows. Chairs and tables for reading were pulled up against the outside wall. This was pretty library. I wondered, not for the first time, what college in LA would look like.
My clue where to go presented itself. Far down an aisle, deep in the stacks was a metal staircase leading up into the ceiling. Obviously a pull-down like from an attic.
The fact that it was unguarded made me nervous.
I sprinted for it, ducked over the back of the soaker. Just contemplating that made me feel foolish.
The ladder wasn’t unguarded. The players nearest it were hiding, pressed up against the backs of bookcases in the narrow cross-aisles so I wouldn’t see them until I passed. Luckily as I approached I saw an elbow sticking out from the corner. Obviously disciplined, they must’ve been curious why the footsteps coming towards them stopped, but they didn’t show it by investigating. Bad for them. Their discipline allowed me to creep up silently and shoot each one hiding on each side of the aisle with a soaker in each hand.
Usually dual-wielding is just a good way to waste ammo, but occasionally it works. I didn’t stick around to register any complaints, I took the stairs of the pull-down ladder two at a time, Triple Shot aimed up into the darkness.
There was a small landing at the top, a firedoor leaking light around the edges. Halfway up, the door opened, and a person with a massive soaker courteously backlit themselves for my shot. They swore and moved to the side as I dashed past them. I heard the click of a trigger and the hiss of water leaving a nozzle, and before I could feel the cold water slapping into me, I threw myself on the hot, white gravel rooftop.
Someone standing by the door. I’d nearly had my own trick pulled on me. I rolled, fired three times and tagged out my ambusher with a shot to the thigh and stomach. He didn’t look happy, but he didn’t look like he was going to do anything about it. I ignored him as he exited the roof, and I started looking for my next assignment.
