Chapter 13 - The Breach of the Warehouse
The reinforced steel side door of the warehouse blew inward in a ball of blinding white fire and churning black smoke, sending a shockwave that rattled the rafters and rained dust down over the entire room. Arthur instinctively lunged forward, throwing his body over Sarah and Lily as shards of metal shrapnel ricocheted off the concrete floor all around them.
Through the billowing smoke and flickering orange flames, three heavy tactical operatives poured into the warehouse, their weapons raised and sweeping the room with disciplined precision.
“Drop your weapons and step away from the workbench!” an amplified voice barked through a tactical mask.
Marcus didn’t hesitate. With surprising agility for his age, he dropped to one knee behind the heavy metal frame of the forklift, shouldered his hunting rifle, and squeezed the trigger twice. A deafening roar echoed through the cavernous space as heavy slugs impacted the concrete barricade near the intruders, forcing them to scramble backward into the cover of the smoke.
“Move! Out through the back loading bay!” Marcus yelled over the gunfire, racking another shell into his rifle chamber.
Arthur grabbed Sarah’s hand, pulling her and a crying Lily toward the rear of the warehouse where a rusted metal shutter led out to the old railway spur. Sarah’s face was pale, streaked with soot and sweat, but she gripped the flash drive in her pocket with white-knuckled intensity. She didn’t fight Arthur this time; survival had completely eclipsed anger.
“Marcus, come with us!” Arthur shouted over the staccato rhythm of returning suppressive fire pinging off the metal shelving units.
“I’ll buy you thirty seconds, David, but my fighting days ended ten years ago!” Marcus roared, firing another round into the overhead water pipes to create a thick curtain of steam and spraying water that blinded the approaching operatives.
Arthur threw his weight against the rusted back shutter, pushing it up with a deafening screech of metal against metal until a sliver of cool night air and moonlight broke through. He shoved Lily through first, then helped Sarah scramble up and over the concrete loading dock before diving out himself just as a burst of automatic gunfire chewed through the wooden pallets right where they had been standing.
They hit the gravel embankment hard, rolling down the slope into the dense brush of the surrounding forest as the warehouse behind them erupted into a secondary explosion of orange flame and black smoke.
Coughing and gasping for breath in the dark woods, Arthur pulled Sarah and Lily to their feet, their clothes torn and covered in soot.
“We have to reach the old communications relay tower on top of Blackwood Ridge,” Arthur panted, pointing toward a jagged silhouette of steel rising above the tree line against the starlit sky. “It’s the only place with an analog broadcast signal strong enough to upload the Helios database to the international press before Prometheus locks down the regional network.”
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As they began their steep, grueling climb up the forested slope, a low, ominous rumble echoed from the valley below, followed by the blinding sweep of searchlights cutting through the canopy.
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