At Least They're Committed

The Ruger 357 Magnum is no longer heavy in Leah’s hand. She’s been carrying it awhile. Crouching behind a wall of pressed wood and fabric, she turns to Lin and motions for quiet by the light of the moon. Lin scoots closer, into position, cradling her Walther P99 with her left hand while reaching into her breast pocket for an extra magazine with her right hand. She nods at Leah.

The hall is narrow and dark. When the red laser sights turn the corner 50 feet ahead the advantage falls to the gals. Leah stops breathing and Lin follows suit. In the moonlight Lin watches Leah hold up her left hand, focusing her energy on the upcoming signal rather than the red, piercing beams bouncing against the wall to her right as the enemy moves closer. There had to be seven guns out there, but she isn’t about to take the time to count.

After what seems like hours but is likely no more than 10 seconds, Leah raises one finger, then another, then another. Three . . . Go time.

Leah falls out of the cubicle onto her right side, pulling back the hammer and trigger over and over and over. Lin spins in around the corner, straddling Leah and aiming the semi-automatic down the red lines and fighting the recoil, bam, bam, bam. Leah pounds the empty casings quickly out of the chamber, sliding in six live hollow points as Lin covers. “Go!” she calls and Lin withdraws behind the flimsy barricade, dropping the magazine and refilling the chamber as Leah again shoots from the weathered carpet. The women take heed of the pop, pop, popping against the wall behind them. The assailants are shooting high in the dark, as they’d gambled they would.

This time when Leah is empty, Lin stays back. The gunfire has stopped. Leah rolls onto her chest and in one motion pushes herself back into the cubicle. They duck under the office desk, through the rough cut hole into the abutting cube closer to the hall, closer to the danger. Leah reloads, Lin grabs another mag and the small orange ball off the desk. The faintest sound of footsteps whoosh on the carpet on the other side, undetectable to the untrained ear. The steps stop in front of the first flimsy cubicle. The women stand, inching closer to the entrance to the alternate fox hole. Leah nods and Lin tosses the orange rubber ball like a live grenade into the first cubicle. It bounces only once against the back wall before the gunfire explodes next door.

Lin and Leah leap out behind the perps, Lin facing the hallway from whence the villains came, Leah the group in front of the cubicle. Back to back, the women brace each other against the recoil as they empty the chambers in either direction. Three, four, five, six . . . Leah — out of bullets long before Lin — sprints to the light switch on the other side of the office. Both are aware the crossfire has stopped crossing.

“Holy fuck!” Lin breathes aloud. Light bathes the macabre scene, two piles of bodies, one down the hall, the other in front of their improvised fox hole. The casings tinkle against each other as they hit the carpet and Leah reloads. Springing again into action she pops a cap into each of the assailant’s skulls, shattering bones and brains, dark red blood soaking her favorite Dior pants, spraying onto her chin and into her gritted teeth. “Double tap. Four of em,” she calls out to Leah, spitting out warm brains and blood. 

A more graceful gun, the 99M discharges into the other six perps with far less mess. Still, Lin’s favorite knee-high, spiky heeled boots are a mess. “Six. Holy fuck!” she says again. “Who the fuck are they?”

“Let’s find out,” Leah kicks a corpse to its back with her gray Manolo Blahnik pumps. “Head’s gone. Can’t tell.”

Lin kicks over another. “Um, Lee, you need to see this.”

Leah drops her arm to her side. Stepping robotlike forward. “Let me guess . . . I no longer have a date tonight?”

Lin shakes her head slowly back and forth, “That’s not it at all. It’s . . . it’s . . . ” she kicks over another body. “They’re . . . ”

Leah is standing at Lin’s side now, looking down wide-eyed, gasping. “No way! Fuck this shit!”

Lin, still surveying the gore, says, “Well, I guess we’d best get ready for our dinner dates.”

“Yup,” Leah whispers. “I guess so.” 

Lin’s eyes alight. “What’d you bring to wear?” 

“The red Gaultier,” Leah puts the 357 into a purse she’s retrieved from the desk drawer. “You?”

“Black Chanel!”

“Yay! Fun!” The women snicker and head to the showers to clean up.