CS: Blood Lines (Cont. V)

“Don’t stand on ceremony,” Reno said. Max stepped from the car, letting the door shut behind him. He glanced out at the streets here, several of the windows across the way filled with watching people. This was not the kind of car that belonged in their neighborhood and they knew what was going on. Children were being herded away from the windows and a few phones were already visible. It wouldn’t do them any good to call the police, they wouldn’t come. Not here. Every house here looked the same, half the addresses worn off the buildings, no way to tell which house was the wrong house to enter. To Max, they all weren’t that inviting.

He turned to see Bobby sliding around the back, keeping himself low to the ground but making enough noise to arouse suspicion. Max sighed and walked around the front of the car and towards the door. He kept his body rigid and tense, but his hand was a good deal away from the gun concealed under his jacket. His spiky, blonde hair didn’t move in the light wind rolling through the silent streets. How could anyone not know something was going to go down when all the sound cut out? This was better than anything everyone else was doing it seemed. People screamed and cried about violence and disaster, but the first thing they flocked to see was a car crash.

A shadow crossed in front of one of the lower windows near the side of the house Bobby was sneaking along. With a flash that a slow-motion replay wouldn’t clear up, Max’s gun was out and a single shot went through what little glass was left in the decrepid window and there was a yelp. Max moved towards the window, pressing his body lightly against the side of the house. He moved very lightly across the porch, the boards were loose he could already tell. He glanced from his current point in the small crack of the house he could see, the foot of the man all that was visible. It twitched. He turned and fired through the wall, the second yelp a strangled one.

Max dropped to his knee as three bullets screamed out through the wall and over his head. He glanced up at the exit marks in the wall and placed one shot very carefully. There was an expletive from inside as Max’s second shot aroused a loud thump from inside the building. A shotgun blast stirred a few of the pigeons from the upper floor as the back door was blown in and light poured through what Max could see in the window. Several gunshots and another shotgun blast was heard.

Distraction was always key in being the victor of a gunfight. Max leapt through the window, already knowing it would be a painful landing. The frame shattered with the help of years of neglect and Max was in the house, his eyes scanning quickly for signs of anyone. There was a man on the stairwell taking cover from Bobby at the backdoor, two bullets and the man slid down the stairs. There was no one else in view as Max crashed down onto the table just inside the window, shattering it with a loud crack.

He rose and dusted himself off, sunglasses still on his face, a cloud of dust billowing away from his feet. “You all right Bobby?” Floorboards creaked above him and he brought his gun up, firing several shots through them as he crossed backwards. There was a separate creak behind him, not heavy enough to be Bobby, who was easily 200 lbs. Max brought the gun under his arm and fired several shots, dropping to his knees and picking up the Ingram from the wounded man he had shot through the wall from outside. He turned to see another man dressed in a tank-top khakis stumble backwards and slide down the wall. People seemed always to die the same way, a moment’s stagger and then a trademark position. It was just like the movies in that respect. He brought the Ingram up and made sure that it was ready for anything he encountered upstairs. Bobby stepped through the mess, surveying the bodies.

“Got one coming out the back door and a second one in the kitchen. This place stinks,” Bobby said conversationally. That was the way it was in every aspect of violent life, it just became a chore. Something people talked about like housewives as they cooked. “I see you’ve got four?”

“And one upstairs. He’s at least wounded.”

“You sure?”

Max smiled, “I pulled the trigger, that means I hit him.” He rose and slowly moved up the stairs, ignoring Bobby’s mocking impression. There was a flurry of motion off to Max’s right and he unloaded the entire clip into the wall, a perfect spray of high fire then low fire. He tossed the Ingram aside and moved up the stairs with speed, sliding along the wall and kicking in the door leading to the upper level of the front of the house. Bobby went around the other way.

Two bodies were up here, one hit several times from Ingram fire and the other laying on a bed with a bullet in his shoulder. He did not make a move for the gun very near him, but glanced over towards it. He didn’t glance at the gun.

Max turned and fired through the wall, there was a yelp followed by a shotgun blast and a body flew into view, a slug buried in his back. He crashed through the loose floorboards in front of Max and he disappeared into the lower portion of the house. The man scrambled for his gun now, only to find it gone, along with one of his fingers. He pulled back, “Fuck!”

The clip fell from Max’s gun and he slid his other clip into it. “Bobby?”

“Yeah?”

“We need anything from this guy? He’s not going anywhere.”

“Depends.” Bobby emerged into view and grabbed the bleeding man who writhed in pain as he was lifted up. “You got anything we might need to know?”

“Nothin’,” the man spat out.