The Tipping Point (Surviving the Fall 9)

“That doesn’t sound good. Can you feel this?” He reached down and pulled off her shoes, then pinched her toes. She nodded in reply. “Okay, great. Can you wiggle them?”

“Yeah. I tried earlier. Hurts like hell, though.”

“Yep, understandable.” Jackson gingerly lifted one of her legs and Jane groaned in pain. “You’ve got some pretty big shards of metal lodged in here. Captain?” He turned and looked for Recker, who leaned over the counter.

“How is she?”

“We need to get her out of here and to somewhere where I can get this stuff out of her leg.”

“You two,” Recker said, motioning at Rick and Dr. Evans, “Let’s get her moved.”

“Gently, please,” cautioned Jackson. “Nothing appears to be broken but there’s some slivers resting way too close to an artery.”

After a minute of shuffling under the watchful eye of the officer near the door—his rifle now pointed down, but still at the ready—Rick, Dr. Evans, Jackson and Recker got Jane lifted up and onto a thick mat that one of the other newly-arrived officers spread out across the top of the counter. As soon as she was set, he waved off the others. “Give me some space here. Mitchell? Get the trauma kit and assist.”

In less than a minute Jane was hooked up to an IV and both Jackson and the officer he had called over to help him were wearing gloves and starting to work on Jane’s legs. Recker led Rick and Dr. Evans away out into the street where Rick had his first chance to look around since they entered the small shop.

The pair of bulldozers were stopped a block down from the shop and a handful of officers were milling around them, watching Recker and the two new strangers with interest. Each of the officers looked battle-worn; their faces were covered with dirt and grime, their eyes had bags and their demeanor spoke of a lot of walking and very little rest. Like with Recker, Jackson and the other officers inside the shop, Rick detected no trace of malice or ill intent in the men and women in uniform. They looked exhausted and near their breaking point, but not like they wanted to steal from or kill Rick and his companions.

“So, tell me, Rick.” Recker stretched his neck back and forth until he felt it crack deep inside and a wave of relaxation flooded it and his upper back. “What are you and your two friends doing here?”

Rick glanced at Dr. Evans, trying to figure out how much to tell the leader of the group he had just met. There were potential positives and negatives to any choice he might make, and it was impossible to tell which was the correct one in the moment.

Chapter 9

Blacksburg, VA

Dianne Waters was a ghost. She crept along the stairs to the next floor down, keeping as close to the wall as possible and taking special care that she didn’t rub her backpack or her body up against anything that might make any noise. Her heart was racing and her breaths came rapidly through her nose, her nostrils flaring as she tried to keep herself calm.

Dark red blood clung to her skin and clothes, feeling sticky as she adjusted her grip on the five-pound sledgehammer in her right hand. In her left, the scalpels still shone in the light coming through the windows as she kept her fingers tightly grasped around them, ready to slice at any targets that might try to surprise her. Strands of hair pulled from her ponytail in the brief fight with the two men hung in her face, though she dared not move them for fear of smearing blood on her forehead.

Gore still clung to the sledgehammer even after she tried to shake it off a few times. Bits of flesh and bone and blood covered the front half of the cylindrical head of the tool and the handle was stained and tacky from the blood covering her right hand. Pausing to think about the violence she had wrought would lead to hesitation, and hesitation would invariably lead to her demise. She had to keep moving forward, slinking through the shadows to become an angel of death so that she might return and ensure that her family would continue to live.

So that is what she became.

The third man to die to her hand was at the bottom of the stairs, his back to Dianne as she crept up on him. Her footsteps were quiet enough that all he heard of her was the faint whooshing of the sledgehammer as she swung it through the air, smashing into his temple and knocking him to the floor. His body was still moving after his fall so she struck him again, then he lay still, motionless as blood pooled from the hole in the side of his head.

Not bothering to stop to catch her breath, Dianne stepped over his body and hurried down the next flight of stairs, heading for the ground floor. She heard voices talking in the hallways nearby, but no one was close enough to see her so she continued forward, her weapons ready to strike at a moment’s notice.

When Dianne turned the corner on the landing to the last set of stairs leading onto the ground floor she stopped and froze for an instant before hastily backing up into a corner near the window where the shadow from the wall could conceal her presence. Three figures stood in the wide open first floor of the facility, each of them carrying a rifle in their hands and bearing grimaces on their faces. While she could only see three figures at first, the one closest to her was talking to a fourth who she couldn't see. However, based on their conversation, that one was searching through the back closets and rooms near the cafeteria and administrative offices. The man closest to her was blocking her exit through a nearby side exit while the other two men were wandering around near the other two visible exits from the building.

Crouched down on one knee in the shadows, Dianne watched the men carefully, trying to figure out if there was a pattern to their movements that she could exploit to get past them. They wandered and turned and talked at random but there was no apparent order to their actions. Glancing at the scalpels in her left hand, she placed them gently on the floor, transferred the sledge from her right hand to her left and then drew her pistol from its holster. She began tensing her legs, preparing to fire on the man in front of her before making a mad dash for the closest door when the frantic shouts of someone a few floors up caught the attention of everyone in the building.

“Holy shit! They’re dead! They’re dead!!” The shouts echoed through the quiet corridors of the facility and Dianne glanced upward, realizing that the two men she had killed in the hallway had just been discovered. She glanced at the man who was near the stairs at the same time he focused on the stairwell and began running toward it. He was so distracted by the shouts from above that he didn’t even notice Dianne at first. Only when he was three steps up did he see her still crouching in the corner, a pistol in one hand and the small sledge in the other.

Dianne stood and swung the hammer at his head, but he brought his rifle up reflexively and blocked the blow. The sledge slipped from Dianne’s hand and crashed to the ground, bouncing off of the carpeted stairs and away from where it could be easily retrieved. With his aim ruined by the force of the blow

to the rifle barrel, the man lunged forward at Dianne, grabbing at her throat as he shouted at her.

“I’ve got you now!”

Dianne felt herself toppling over backward under the weight of the man, her left arm held out to try and shield herself from his attack while her right arm came up, still holding the pistol. She pressed the end of the gun into the man’s gut and pulled the trigger five times, each round snapping loudly in the confined space. The man’s eyes grew wide and he screamed in pain after he realized what was going on. His body became dead weight as he fought to get away from Dianne and he rolled off of her, tumbling to the ground as he writhed and shouted, calling both for help and to alert his comrades of Dianne’s presence.

“She’s here! Help!” The man called out with a gurgled voice as Dianne got back to her feet and half ran, half slipped down the remaining stairs. The other two men in the lobby turned at the sound of the gunshots and the man’s cries and started running in her direction. After glancing around to see that the nearest exit from the building was too far to run without fear of being caught, Dianne turned to the closest window and squeezed off three shots. The rounds easily punctured the thick glass, causing spiderwebs to spread across from top to bottom and side to side.

The panes of safety glass were nearly ten feet high and wide and were designed to be nearly unbreakable, though if their structural integrity were to ever be compromised, they were supposed to shatter into small, dull pieces that wouldn’t hurt anyone nearby. As Dianne ran for the glass, gunshots echoing loudly in the lobby of the building and shouts of alarm and pain coming from both the bottom and upper floors, she held both arms up in front of her head and braced for an entirely different impact than that which arrived.

Dianne cried out in pain, not from the impact with the glass, but from the sudden blow to her upper legs. The fourth man who had been prowling through the back offices had come out just in time to see her running for the window. He gave chase and tackled her, sending her tumbling through the window and out onto the rough dirt and soil just outside. Even through the pain and the chaos, Dianne’s priority was still the medication in her backpack, and she resisted rolling onto her back despite how that movement would have alleviated her pain.