Page 13 of Kings & Carnage

She stopped short, her gaze drawn to something behind us. I didn't know what it was, but I knew from the expression on her face that it probably wasn't good.

The Kings noticed it too and we pivoted toward the elevator. I understood immediately why the doctor looked so alarmed: the four men exiting the elevator and walking purposefully toward us clearly weren't at the hospital to visit a sick relative.

They were Roberto's soldiers, as recognizable to me as family even though I didn't know their names.

They were big, wearing the combination of jeans and leather jackets that were favored by street soldiers. They thought it made them blend into the rest of the population, but to anyone who was a member of the family, they might as well have been wearing a sign that saidI'll kill you for a hundred bucks.

The biggest one was nearly as tall as Neo. He reached under his jacket and withdrew a gun.

Neo reached back and grabbed my hand. "Run!"

Chapter6

Willa

He didn't have to tell me twice, partly because he was already dragging me behind him and partly because I had no desire to come face-to-face with the four men moving toward us.

Neo shoved the doctor toward the wall as we passed. "Get down and stay down!"

Then we were flying past her, Rock and Oscar a blur of movement on our heels.

I had no idea where we were going or where we were supposed to hide. At the end of the hall, the door was open to a hospital room, the curtain drawn around what I assumed was a bed, the TV mounted near the ceiling blaring a game show.

I was grateful for my boots as we rounded the corner into another long hall. If I’d been in socks, I would have slid into the wall at the speed Neo was pulling me along.

I had only a split second to worry about the gunshot wound in his chest, Rock's head injury, the bullet hole in Oscar's thigh. A second later, two shots rang out behind us, embedding themselves with a thunk into the wall to our right.

“Fuck!" Neo said, scanning the doorways on either side of the hall for an escape.

We were coming up on another corner, and I was starting to understand that the hospital was laid out in a series of hallways that met to create a square. If we could get around two more corners we'd be back at the elevator, although waiting for it to arrive didn't seem like the best idea.

A couple of nurses and an older man in a hospital gown appeared in the hall, drawn out by the commotion.

"Get back! Get back!" Oscar screamed as we ran past.

We were approaching the end of the hall when I spotted a small metal plaque next to a closed door.

Stairs.

Neo must have seen it too because he pulled me toward the stairwell. He opened the door and practically threw me through it and then waited while Oscar and Rock followed.

Halfway down the first flight of stairs, I glanced back and saw the three of them pounding down the stairs after me.

"Go go go!" Oscar shouted from the back.

I hit the second flight of stairs and heard the door open above us, followed by the sound of heavy footsteps.

The aches and pains that had been so noticeable twenty minutes earlier were gone, my body flooded with adrenaline as I went into full-on fight-or-flight mode. I could only hope the same was true for Neo, Oscar, and Rock, that they weren’t feeling the pain of their injuries, which were a lot more serious than mine, and especially that Rock would remain conscious and that he wasn't doing further damage to his head by fleeing the hospital instead of resting like a not-insane person.

Roberto's men had apparently given up on being quiet because shots were fired above us, echoing through the confined stairwell and making my ears ring with the sound of metal on metal.

I had no idea how many flights of stairs we'd descended when we hit one of the landings and I saw a sign for the second floor next to a door leading out of the stairwell.

We were almost to the ground floor. Roberto's men were still right on our heels, but if we could just make it into the lobby we’d have somewhere to run.

"One more!" I shouted, hoping the Kings could hear me over the noise of clanging footsteps on metal stairs and the shots that rang out every few seconds.

Roberto's men were obviously just hoping to get lucky and slow us down because there was no way they had a clear shot in the stairwell.

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