It Cannot Get Any Worse

Darrin kicked in the old wooden front door with hardly a pause. A stairway ran upstairs right in front of the door. Darrin was sure they would be hiding in the basement. Perfect, like shooting fish in a barrel. He kicked open the door to his right ran through the room and kicked open another door. As he expected, the basement stairs were right below the other staircase. “Down here” he called to Todd. He did not imagine anyone would be lurking upstairs with the safe basement with thick concrete walls so close at hand. At the bottom of the stairs, a landing divided in two different directions. A door on the right side and a laundry room open to the left.

Darrin pointed Todd to the door and stepped down into the laundry room. Another door led to out of the back of the laundry room. Darrin kicked that door open and looked inside. A guy standing there fired a crossbow at him. What the fuck? Darrin ducked back as the bolt slammed into some storage shelves behind his head. Crossbows are slow to reload. That guy is dead. Darrin stepped through the door and jumped back once again. Two more crossbow bolts thunked into the wall behind him. Darrin could not believe what he saw. The entire room seemed to be filled with guys pointing crossbows at him. One was kneeling and reloading. Two had fired at him and at least two or three more were pointing crossbows in his direction. How many more times could they miss? Darrin was not sure he had enough bullets left to kill them all. He felt for his fanny pack for the spare clip. It was gone. He remembered leaving it in the car when he dug the morphine out for Ely.