Once Upon A Nightmare

Hunter creeps closer, staying low like a spider inching along the baseboards. It's the caretaker in the chair. The pools of blood on the worn hardwood flooring are marked with signs of the victim's feet where they flailed in pain. A bullet hole punctuates each ankle.

Each knee reveals the same. Each is shattered. The caretaker's bare chest tells another tale. His short-sleeved shirt tossed aside near the desk several feet away, his chest and abdomen slashed. Not deep, but painful for sure and scalpel precise. Blood no longer trickles but more of a smear. And no sign of Luigi. "He's here or he ran."

The end came for Pisces' caretaker with one bullet in the forehead at close range leaving most of the back of his skull embedded in the soft headrest of the chair. It does little to enhance the plaid fabric.

Hunter starts, hunched over, toward the desk for cover. As he slides in on his knees at the desk, the popping of automatic fire erupts, rounds splattering the desk, library shelves behind him and dumping the unlit desk lamp and several books on the floor. One round grazes Hunter barely tearing his stocking cap, creasing his forehead. The burst are from two weapons, five to seven rounds each, three volleys.

Hunter recognizes them as HK54's, German updated versions of the Uzi.

Seconds after the third volley, two more weapons erupt from outside on the veranda into the walls of the study. Unmistakable sounds of HK54's. they are followed by to short burst from the veranda.

Dvorah's Uzi. In this split second, Hunter takes advantage of the distraction, rises to a crouch behind the desk and fires two double-tap shots at the silhouettes. Both drop, hard, weapons crashing and clattering on the floor.

Dvorah screams, "Two down. Coming in," as she crashes through the veranda's already shattered windowed doors. She's on the floor, in a crouch, pressed in the corner of this vaulted room, low, like a crab, arms and weapon sweeping the air like feelers.

Hunter shouts, "Comin' out. Two down inside. Cover."

He takes three short leaps, using shadowed lumps of furniture as cover. He checks the two inside shooters sprawled on the vaulted room floor. No pulse. Blood pooled beneath their shattered heads. Hunter kicks the weapons away.

Suddenly, a shadowy figure leaps into the room from the veranda, spraying rounds a random. A short five round burst from the crouching Dvorah hits the figure in the skull before he can turn his head to take the next look. His momentum carries the body for several feet before he collapses, crumpled on a throw rug. Dvorah shouts, "One more do--" The front door crashes open before she can finish.

Another figure burst into the entry, firing his HK54 in erratic sweeping motions, each spraying ten rounds or more. Hunter turns and fires three times in rapid succession, sounding as one.

SpftttSpftttSpfttt. The first strikes the charging figure, center mass. the heart. The last two are in the forehead before the body falls. It happens so fast and yet looks like slow motion as the figure stops in his tracks with the chest shot, then the back of the head explodes, and without dramatic teetering, the figure falls lifeless and thuds to the floor, HK54 rattling on the tile entryway at the front.

The air fills with the smell of burning gunpowder and the odor of blood.

Dvorah shouts, "Third down. Looks clear."

Hunter growls, "Third down here. We're at six. Hold."

They get lower in their crouch. Listen. The room that just exploded in gunfire and splintering of wood, glass, lamps and tables is still as a cemetery. Hell, it is a cemetery now, or at least a morgue.

Hunter commands, "Search plan change. Cover me."

"Go."

Hunter moves as a cat leaping from spot to spot. Just a phantom flickering from doorway to doorway in his black clothing. He completes the search and reenters the main room, slides next to Dvorah, touching shoulders and whispers, "Clear. Empty except for Luigi. He's in the bathtub with a hole in his head. Let's check outside. Something is haywire."

"Haywire?"

"Wrong.."