The Shattered Earth (Surviving the Fall 3)

Three rectangular windows were set into large rolling metal doors of the type used at commercial loading docks. While two of the doors were fully closed, one was halfway open, allowing the relatively cool air inside the building to escape and bringing in the heat from outside. Jane stepped past Rick to start running towards the open door when he put an arm out in front of her, halting her in her tracks.

“Sh.” Rick raised a finger to his lips. He gently took off his gun bag and backpack and lowered them to the ground before pulling the shotgun out. He took a few cautious steps forward, not wanting to be on the wrong side of an ambush. The open door was the third of the three and the farthest away, so Rick leaned in towards the first closed door, peeking through the window to see outside.

A thick layer of dust coated the outside of the window and Rick pressed his nose against the wire mesh glass, straining to see what was outside. Behind the casino, a short distance away, was a service road and beyond that was another tall building that Rick couldn’t make out very well. A loading dock sat directly beyond the three rolling doors behind the casino but no trucks were parked either in the dock or on the service road.

With no sign or sound of the men inside or the vehicles outside, Rick motioned at Jane. “All right, looks like the coast is clear. Let’s get outside and run down this road till we find a place to hide on the other side. Ready?”

Jane nodded and she and Rick both crouched down next to the half-opened doorway. Rick put his backpack back on and was in the process of placing his shotgun down into the gun bag, ready to pull out his pistol instead, when the door leading out into the hotel creaked open. Rick’s head jerked up and he looked at the man standing before him.

The man was on the short side, with a solid build and wearing a tank top, camo cargo pants and a bandanna on his head. The gun in his hands—an AK of some sort—was held loosely, and for a long second both he and Rick stared at each other, mouths open, as they both tried to contemplate what was going on.

As the man raised his rifle he fumbled with it just long enough for Rick to stand up and fire his shotgun from the hip. Pain arced through Rick’s wrist and arm and he inadvertently dropped the shotgun to the floor. As metal clattered against the rough concrete, he heard a howl as the man in front of him clutched at his neck. Blood was pouring from the man’s neck and chest and he staggered back through the open door, tripped over his own feet and fell sideways in the hallway beyond.

Rick’s fingers burned as he wrapped them around the shotgun. He fought through the pain in his wrist as he pulled it against his shoulder and prepared to fire again if the man made any aggressive movements. There was a scuffle and a pair of shouts in the hallway and the injured man was suddenly pulled away from the open door. Rick ran to the door and kicked it shut, then twisted the latch and locked it tight. Behind him Jane held her hands to her face and shook her head, her eyes wide as she tried to comprehend what she had just seen.

Acting on pure adrenaline Rick ran back to the open door and turned to her. “Are you ready?” He shouted at her, not bothering with trying to remain quiet any longer. She nodded numbly and he grabbed her by the shoulder. “Let’s go, then!”

Rick was halfway under the door and about to help Jane through when he heard the rumble of a diesel engine drawing closer. He backed up into the utility area and pulled Jane to the side of the door. The squeal of tires came from outside and they were quickly followed by the sound of a pair of doors opening and closing again.

“What do we do?” Jane’s question was accompanied by the sounds of shouting from the men that were both inside the hotel and waiting outside near the loading dock. Rick racked his brain, trying to figure a way out of their situation. They could retreat back through the hotel and try to lose their pursuers that way, but that solution would be more likely than not to lead to certain death.

“I think they pulled up off to the right. There’s a nice bit of cover there if we crawl out. All we have to do is keep them occupied long enough to run down to the left, where I saw an alley leading through the next set of buildings. I think that’s our only shot.”

“That sounds horrible! How are you going to keep them occupied?”

Rick shook his head and smiled. “Not me, Jane. Us.”

Chapter 8

Las Vegas, Nevada

The entirety of the four minutes it took for Jane to unzip Rick’s backpack, pull out the twin bottles of vodka, find a box of matches he had put in one of the side pockets, grab a couple of old rags from a nearby shelf and stuff them into the necks of the bottles were pure agony for Rick. He spent that time alternating between peeking out the window to see if the men outside were getting closer and hoping that the ones inside the hotel weren’t about to shoot off the hinges to the doors and barge their way in.

When Jane finished, Rick nodded in approval and gave her one last final set of instructions. “Remember, just keep a tight hold on these, okay? When I tell you, throw the first one just inside the door here. I’ll take care of the second one.”

“Are you sure this will work?”

Rick had no idea whether or not it would, but he felt obligated to lie to her. “Absolutely.”

Jane kept a firm hold on the two bottles of vodka as Rick slid under the door and rolled out. He landed in a heap on the ground and groaned in pain before rising to one knee. He peeked over the edge of the walkway and guardrail next to the empty space where a truck would have backed in to the building to offload its cargo. The Humvee was still there and someone was sitting in the turret, swiveling around to watch the end of the building.

From the angle the Humvee was at,

Rick realized that anyone in their position wouldn’t have been able to see that one of the back doors of the building was open and, thus, they wouldn’t have necessarily thought to check down in that direction.

“Hurry up!” Rick whispered at Jane. She handed him both bottles and he set them down on the ground before helping her jump down. “You still have the matches?”

Jane held up the small box and he picked up one of the bottles. “Whatever you do, don’t drop this.”

The alcohol and chemical-soaked rag caught fire instantly and Jane yelped in surprise. Rick turned and gave her a wide-eyed look but it came too late. A shout down the road accompanied an uptick in the shouting and banging from inside the building and Rick realized that the time for action was either right then or never.

He grabbed the Molotov from Jane’s hand and ran halfway down the length of the loading dock with her in tow, then turned and lobbed it expertly through the opening in the loading dock door. The neck of the bottle caught on the lip of the door and broke, then the body of the bottle struck the edge of one of the metal shelves inside. It broke apart, sending the alcohol spilling across the floor.

As the flames licked greedily at the high-proof alcohol, they also found the spilled contents of a few cans of paint thinner that Rick had noticed on the shelf. While Jane had been busy stuffing rags into the throats of the vodka bottles, Rick had quickly punctured and spilled the paint thinner across the floor, all the way up to the interior door that the injured man had retreated behind.

The effects of the Molotov by itself would have been more than enough to give the two men—three if the nearly dead one still counted—behind the door pause once they got it open. The addition of the paint thinner, however, had a profound effect on them before that even happened. The paint thinner, over the course of a few minutes, had leaked underneath the door and into the carpeting on top of which the two men and their nearly-dead companion stood and laid.

Flames wound their way through the offloading area, sending a blast of heat out across Rick and Jane’s backs before traveling beneath the door and erupting in the floor on the other side. Rick smiled grimly at the sound of the men’s screaming as their feet and legs were suddenly on fire, with nothing they could do to stop it but to flee down the dark halls, the flames and their flashlights the only source of light.