21. Black, Red

T he ground floor was even darker than it had been the first time Kellen passed through it. There was bullet spray across the stairway to the second floor and all over the drywall behind it. Rhythmic gunshots were going on and off from somewhere deeper in the house. A blurry film of smoke hung in the air, along with the smell of smoldering electric fire.

“They’ holed in somewhere,” Arlo whispered from over Kellen’s shoulder. “Else, they woulda called this thing off. Fuckin’ full autos they got up in this rat house.”

The tracker dot on Kellen’s phone was still sitting at the center of the building. Either Alexei had shed the tracker, or Marcus and his team weren’t the only ones “holed in.”

“We stayin’ on the firs’ floor?” Arlo asked as Kellen moved away from the stairs and started slowly for the opening on the other side of the hallway.

At the threshold to what must have once been a picturesque sitting room, they ran across the first blood pool. The person that had left it there was dead, Kellen knew by the sheer size of the mess he had no choice but to step through.

There was a thick trail across the floorboards, suggesting someone had dragged the body off. Not far. The beam of Kellen’s flashlight illuminated the shape of a person lying on the floor right around the corner from where he must have bled out. Young, skinny, a simple T-shirt and shorts.

“God- damn, ” Arlo breathed in the silence. “They did that to their own. Fuckin’ goddamn rats. Fuckin’ hell, man, to a kid .”

The boy’s arm was gone. A three-inch margin of his shoulder and side—gone. Shot out by the mis-aimed, unbridled power of a fully automatic rifle. He would’ve lived only the few seconds it took to collapse half-upright into the doorway between this room and the hallway.

Kellen said nothing as he stepped around the corpse.

The fabric covering his face was wet. Soaked completely through. The only check to his heartrate was his own steady, forced breathing. There was another possible explanation for why Alexei’s red dot was standing motionless near the center of the house where all the gunfire was.

Separate things.

A new trail of blood led the way into the next room. Kellen heard movement even before his flashlight found the victim. There was a man sitting up against the wall in the far corner, one hand clutching his side, the other resting across a converted AR- 15 .

Kellen stepped smoothly back around the wall. His shoulder touched Arlo’s. “Northwest corner,” Kellen whispered. “Wounded, armed.”

“Go another way?” Arlo whispered back.

Kellen nodded.

But before either of them could move, a voice came through the silence left by a break in the gunshots: “Help.”

“Uh-uh,” Arlo whispered. He began retracing his steps, making room for Kellen to follow.

But the voice came again. “Please. Help me.” Two seconds of silence. “Please. I don’t care if you’re cops. Please, I don’t wanna die, man.” Another silence. “I got kids, man.”

“Ay, en serio?” Arlo snapped suddenly. “Tienes? Por qué estás aquí, pendejo? Por qué, puto Cabrón?”

Kellen had no idea how Arlo had deciphered a Hispanic voice from any other, but he had clearly deciphered correctly. The response came in part of a sob: “Por fa—Por favor. Mi bebé trata no puede sobrevivir sin mí. No puede. Por favor. No quiero morir.”

“Sí, yo tampoco quiero morir,” Arlo responded sharply. “Pero, tienes la chillona. Tengo miedo.”

“Esperarte. Esperarte.” There were a few seconds of silence. Then, the sound of metal sliding across the floorboards—immediately followed by sounds of the man coughing. “No tengo nada. Prometo. Por fas.”

Arlo made a slow move toward the doorway.

Instantly, Kellen’s hand shot out in Arlo’s way. “He could kill you.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Arlo murmured before pushing past. He scanned the room with a flashlight, then slowly entered.

The AR- 15 was lying a somewhat safe three feet from the man leaning up against the corner. Kellen watched, his own gun aimed at the injured man’s head, as Arlo kicked the rifle farther away.

Gunshots resumed from somewhere else in the house as Arlo locked the safety on his MP 5 and set it aside. “Where you hit, pendejo?” He took a compact first aid pack out of the front pocket of his vest.

“My side, man. Where my hand is.”

“A’ight, I got you.” Arlo began unwinding bandaging. “Now I’ma tell you how to stay alive through the rest a’ this shit. You listenin’ good?”

“Sí,” the man breathed.

Arlo drew the man’s hand away from his side, then immediately closed a wad of gauze over the wound. Ignoring the man’s sharp cry of pain, he began stuffing the material into the wound with a gloved finger. “You don’t touch another weapon today. Not fo’ self-defense, not fo’ nothin’. You stay right here in this corner, an’ you wait fo’ medical to get in. When they come, if you’s still conscious, you put you’ hands up high as you can reach ’em. If you can talk, you say you’s unarmed, and you need help. Comprendés?”

“Okay,” the man breathed.

“Cops ain’ gonna shoot you unarmed. But you even make you’self out to be armed, mothafuckers gonna shoot an’ ask questions later. You mothafuckers bring full autos up in this house, that’ the kinda mode we cops go into.” He replaced the gang member’s hand over his side, lifted his rifle, and stood up.

Arlo picked up the AR- 15 on the floor and detached the magazine. He dropped the rifle behind a chair and threw the magazine into the next room. Then, with a wave at Kellen, he started deeper into the house.

It grew darker, the closer to the gunshots they got. The smoke became thicker, the metallic smell of electrical fire growing with the density of the smoke.

“I know you was coverin’ fo’ me in there,” Arlo said quietly when Kellen was in front again.

A bead of sweat dripped through Kellen’s eyebrow. Without lowering his weapon, he wiped his face quickly on his sleeve.

“Much as I don’t like you aimin’ at people’ heads like a fool who wanna get jammed fo’ disproportionate force, I got a feelin’ I can come to respect it.”

There was a bedroom wall that had come completely down, collapsed at perforations made by thousands of bullet holes.

And then, more blood. Two more bodies in the hallway. One killed by police shots, judging by the lower level of damage. The other: mauled collateral damage from another altered rifle.

The police were still limiting themselves to two-round shots, by all evidence. But eerily, it had been a long time since Kellen heard a two-round shot.

“Where these mothafuckers,” Arlo whispered, right before another round of shots went off from alarmingly close by.

The feeling that darted through Kellen’s core was like an instinct. He threw out his arm and flattened himself and Arlo to the wall. It was audible: the sound of those bullets striking wood paneling.

“Shit, those aim’ at us?” Arlo breathed in the following silence, immediately covering his flashlight.

“Maybe,” Kellen responded. He switched off his flashlight also.

Darkness. Silence. The unrelenting sting of smoke in the air.

Then, another round of automatic gunshots. The sound of bullets nailing the wall at the far end of the hallway Kellen and Arlo were standing in.

And then, out of the quiet, a two-round shot, the gunfire coming from the opposite way.

“We in a bad spot,” Arlo breathed the realization right as it clicked in Kellen’s mind.

They were standing in a crossfire zone in pitch black.

Two options: retreat to the entrance they had come out from, across the bodies and pools of blood they had maneuvered through with flashlights. Or press blindly forward for the doorway Kellen remembered being about six steps from where they stood.

Another round of automatic gunshots sprayed through the darkness in the hallway. The gunshots weren’t coming from that doorway ahead, Kellen could tell by the direction of the sound. And unless either firing party was using heat signal vision, neither gunner knew what they were shooting at.

We would be dead by now if the one with the fully automatic was able to see us, Kellen reasoned. And also looming at the front of his mind: that doorway ahead was approximately positionally accurate to the place Alexei’s red dot had gone stationary in.

Arlo was beginning to take a measured step backward right as Kellen moved forward. They separated for a second before Arlo’s hand seized the back of Kellen’s vest. “The hell you goin’? ” But he didn’t fight it. Only held his grip on Kellen’s vest as they advanced soundlessly against the wall, blind in the darkness.

Another blast of rounds.

Kellen flattened hard against the wall, eyes shut. For a moment, he feigned the ricochets were getting closer along the wall. Closer. And the rounds ended.

“I need you not to scream if you get hit,” Arlo breathed through the silence.

Unrelated gunfire started up from somewhere else in the house. Seven seconds went by, slowly moving against the wall, before Kellen registered that the sound was coming from beneath his feet.

The basement.

For a moment, full paralysis locked Kellen’s body. It’s not what you think, something lied in the back of his mind. Allowed his feet to keep moving, keep advancing toward that doorway.

Kellen’s hand contacted the edge of a doorframe. His fingers felt it out, then pressed into the empty opening beyond. Silently, he stepped into the space—just far enough for Arlo to follow him out of the hallway. In one swipe, weapon raised, he switched on his flashlight and swept the room.

For split moment, Kellen’s heartrate shot through the ceiling. There was a human form, the shape of a large person sitting upright on a chair by the wall, a firearm poised across his legs. Arlo gave a similar start, raising his rifle like a reflex.

“Dead,” Kellen whispered, vision lingering a moment longer on the sightless eyes staring back at him. He clicked off his flashlight. “I think he was shot through the wall.”

“Lemme find me a dresser,” Arlo murmured.

Another spray of gunfire erupted into the hallway. Arlo lowered himself to a crouch on the floor, and Kellen quickly did the same.

More gunfire, farther off again. Toward the back of the house.

“We’ holed in real good,” Arlo whispered forebodingly. “You see the adjacen’ hallway straight across from us?”

“No, I don’t see it, I can’t see anything,” Kellen whispered back.

“Nah, I mean, did you see it.” Quiet. “Mothafucker.”

“Across the hallway from us?”

“Mm-hm.”

“That’s too risky.”

“Did I suggest goin’ there? Nah. Just keep yo’ ass clean out the doorway, is all I’s sayin’.”

There was a small silence, gunfire ceasing.

“I’m clear from the doorway,” Kellen muttered.

Silence. The smoke was a little less dense closer to the floor.

Kellen wiped another drop of sweat out of his eyebrow.

Another round of gunshots.

And then—an explosion.

Shock hit Kellen’s nerves like shrapnel had just blown through his entire nervous system. He ducked, body folding closer to the floor, his hands instinctively lifting to shield the back of his head.

Ringing. Nothing. Ringing.

The small sensation of someone moving closer to him. Arlo.

A second explosion. Clatter and skid of debris falling.

Kellen dimly registered the feeling of a hand touching his back. Crawling up his spine. Then the sensation of a leather tactical glove covering the back of his neck.

There was light when Kellen opened his eyes. The air was close to unbreathable. Dust, particles, and thick smoke filled the air.

The glow was firelight, Kellen slowly registered in the ear-ringing quiet that followed. There was firelight coming from the adjacent hallway. Black smoke was pouring out at ceiling level. The burning smell in the air was no longer that of a smolder.

There was a shape against the light. Silhouetted against the black and red, the shape of a person standing in the hallway.

Kellen knew that form even before his mind fully registered it. Small, slender. A high-neck crop top, ankle boots, tight jeans. Folds of fabric hanging forward over the left shoulder from the blindfold.

Kellen straightened to his feet unsteadily, his hand lifting to the doorframe for support. His fingers repositioned the Glock in his grip.

“Alexei.”

The figure hadn’t heard. He moved against the wall—slowly, off balance. Then he stood there as if paralyzed, the intensity of the fire creeping up behind him.

A new round of gunfire cut the air, and Kellen darted back within the doorway. The form in the hallway across from him shrank against the wall. The silhouette turned its face toward the wood paneling, sweat glistening off its neck, lips pressed shut.

Kellen lowered the fabric across his face. “Alexei!”

Alexei’s face lifted—turned in Kellen’s direction. Pale lips parted. “Jay?” The word made no sound under the gunfire. Alexei shifted an inch against the wall.

Kellen’s hand shot out like a reflex. “Don’t move! Don’t move! There’s an open hallway between us!”

Visibly trembling, Alexei fell still.

“Eastland.” Arlo’s voice.

“I have to get to him,” Kellen breathed. Both hands lowered to his weapon.

“You crossin’ this hallway?” Arlo asked.

“I have to.”

“Twice? There an’ back?” Arlo didn’t wait for an answer. “You know you can’t take him to the truck.”

“I know.”

“You got a plan?”

“I’ll figure it out.”

Arlo was silent for several seconds. “You do what you gotta do.”

“You too,” Kellen whispered.

“Stay alive, mothafucker.”

Stay alive. Kellen counted four seconds of precious silence before moving out into the exposed hallway. He was across it in two seconds. Rapid gunfire erupted behind him, but the only thing that registered was his own grip seizing Alexei’s shoulders.

A startled flinch darted through Alexei’s body. His arms shot up, gripped Kellen hard. His hold was so tight, it would’ve hurt. His fingers grasped onto the bulletproof vest across Kellen’s chest.

“Jay.” Barely a breath. His hand moved to Kellen’s neck, gripped into the fabric of his hood, knuckles white with pressure. He was trembling. Trembling so hard, he could barely stand. “Did they get them out? The people in the basement—There are people in the basement—They need—I need to make sure they get out―”

Something large and dangerously close snapped loudly under the wear of the fire. Kellen locked his arm around Alexei’s shoulders and started through the nearest doorway. A sliding door in the next room opened to a joint bathroom. Then another bedroom on the other side. Finally, a corner room.

Black smoke coated the ceiling above, slowly flowing in from the air vents. Kellen released his grip on Alexei and dragged a wooden chest against the wall in front of one of the boarded-up windows. He found a metal pipe fragment, stepped up on the chest, and began prying away the boards.

Rusted nails gave way easily from half-rotted sill wood, and suddenly, light from outside was coming through.

Double-pane windows and too many grilles.

Kellen put both hands to the window latches and forced them open. He lodged the metal pipe under the window sash and pushed downward on the other end.

The windowsill broke.

“Fuck. Help me with this.” He threw aside the pipe and took Alexei’s shoulder, guided him to the window, and placed his hands on the bottom of the sash. “Count of three. One, two, three―”

Alexei’s entire body folded into the effort, creating noticeable lift on the immobilized sash. He wasn’t weak, Kellen registered in the four seconds of straining that followed. He wasn’t weak. Make him sick, terrified, and helpless, and he still wasn’t weak.

The window came open with a bare metal screech.

Kellen climbed out and dropped to the ground below. He passed his flashlight across the backyard around him, then turned quickly back to the window, hands lifting to find Alexei’s. “Six-foot drop,” he said, guiding Alexei out onto the windowsill. He braced Alexei’s elbows six inches out, then let him jump the rest of the way.

Alexei landed upright with a thud. Then immediately wavered. He took four steps in an uncalculated direction across the yard. Then dropped to his knees and threw up in the dirt.

“Alexei,” Kellen whispered, approaching a few steps. He cast his flashlight across the yard again.

Alexei was wiping his lips when Kellen turned back. The boy got slowly to his feet.

And then there was a sound from behind them. Kellen turned just fast enough to see a dark-clothed figure drop to the ground from the same window they had just come through. A Joker ski mask covered the stranger’s face. And between his hands, he gripped an AR- 15 .

The assault rifle was poised, aimed.

Kellen’s fingertip turned heavy on the safety switch of his Glock, but he knew better than to raise his weapon. Better than to do anything but cling to the hesitance this stranger had already shown by not immediately opening fire.

“You a goddamn pig?” the man in the mask voiced.

Quicker than Kellen could form any kind of response, Alexei moved out from behind him. That small, blindfolded figure took the space between Kellen and the AR- 15 as boldly as if he believed he were made of titanium.

Alexei did not speak. Neither did the man with the assault rifle. Without a word, the masked gang member lowered his weapon and took off through a break in the backyard fence.

“Let’s go,” Alexei whispered. He gripped Kellen’s sleeve.

There was a working streetlight two blocks over. Kellen holstered his gun there. He yanked at the neckline of his hoodie and pulled the gaiter off over his head. His fingers loosened the bulletproof vest to allow airflow. And that was when the shuddering weakness following an adrenaline rush began to creep in.

He was drenched in his own sweat. So exhausted, he was conscious of every breath.

“Are you hurt?” Kellen turned to Alexei.

Alexei was silent, still. His skin was glistening with heavy sweat. Wordlessly, he shook his head.

Kellen took his shoulder and turned him around in the light. “You’re―” He stopped. Silently, his hand lifted to a blood trail slowly seeping into the waistband of Alexei’s jeans. Two fingers hovered, contactless, over the open wound. “Bullet or burn?”

“What?” Alexei shifted a hand past the place, then hesitated. He touched it lightly, wetting his fingers in his own blood.

“You were closer to the explosions than I was. Did you get hit with debris?”

“It’s not bad. I don’t know what it was,” Alexei whispered.

“Where are you going after this?”

There was a moment of quiet. “The club.”

“You’re going to Exotix tonight?” Kellen’s brow furrowed. Dull surprise struck his nerves. Crazy. This boy was crazy.

Another pause. Then, in a whisper: “Yes.”

“No, you’re not.” Kellen straightened. “Where do you live? I’ll take you there.” He took out his phone and pulled up a rideshare app.

“The club is where I live.” Even quieter this time. So quiet, it was almost inaudible.

Kellen’s eyes lifted. “Are you serious?”

“There’s an apartment on the second floor. I live there.”

What the fuck? Kellen’s brow flinched. His eyes lowered slowly off Alexei’s face and back down to the app in his hand. He silently tapped an option. “Is there anywhere I can take you besides the club? Somewhere there’s someone who can take care of that wound and watch you tonight?”

“Your place.”

Kellen glanced twice at Alexei. “What?”

Alexei’s fingers slowly encircled the band on his wrist. He took off the tracking device and dropped it to the cracked concrete of the sidewalk. “Greenroof. Take me there.”

Kellen’s jaw shut for several seconds. Loosened. He glanced to the left, then upward. Watched the rising tower of smoke against the sky for a moment. Black, red. “Fine.”