Page 132 of Queen of Anarchy (Dirty Broken Savages 2)

47

River

The shooting doesn’t stop.

Several people sitting in the pews get up and start returning fire, shooting toward the doors of the church and wherever else they seem to think the attackers are hiding.

Others start taking cover, hitting the floor in their nice clothes and army crawling toward places they think might be safe.

There are people hiding behind the pews, using bibles as cover like that’s going to protect them somehow.

It’s the chaos we wanted… only it wasn’t caused by us.

Someone grabs my arm, and I almost go to shake it off before I realize it’s Priest. He drags me down to the ground with Gage and Ash, and we shelter behind our pew.

“I have to get to Hannah!” I tell them, raising my voice to be heard over the noise.

Gage nods quickly. He sticks his head up enough that he can look around, trying to spot her. “There,” he says as he ducks back down, helping me move forward. “Left side, three rows up.”

The same place she was sitting, then. She hasn’t moved. That’s helpful.

I start crawling over, thanking anything and everything in the universe that I was smart enough to not wear a dress for this. It would have been twice as hard to crawl as it is now.

Bullets keep whizzing overhead, thudding into the wood of the pews and shattering the stained glass windows. The glass rains down on the people sheltering near them, and there’s another round of screaming. Shouts and cries rise up, some panicked and some angry.

I keep moving, pressing up on my hands and knees as high as I dare to so I can crawl faster and get over to Hannah. She’s hunched down behind her pew, thankfully alone.

Her arms are around Cody, and the little boy cries into her chest while she keeps him tucked away. I grab her arm, and she jerks back, her blue eyes wild for a second before she realizes it’s me.

“What’s going on?” she hisses, sounding terrified. “Is this how it was supposed to go?”

“No. This wasn’t the plan,” I tell her, my stomach twisting itself up so tight that I feel like I swallowed a rock. “This isn’t how it was supposed to go at all.”

And I have no idea where it went wrong.

But there’s no time to think about that now. Right now, we have to try to salvage what we can of the original plan and get the fuck out of here.

I look back to where I came from and see that Gage and Priest are returning fire against the group attacking the church. Someone grabbed the actual priest and got him away from the altar, it looks like, and the bride and groom to be aren’t in the front anymore either. Now there are figures in black tactical gear and masks up there, firing round after round into the crowd. One of them gets hit right in the chest with a bullet and goes down hard.

I glance over, tracing the path of the bullet that took the guy down. Knox and Ash are behind another pew, shooting as they make their way over to where Gage and Priest are.

“Stay with me.” I turn back to Hannah, giving her a serious look. “We’re still going to try to get out of this. We can do it.”

She looks worried, but I can tell it’s more about what’s going to happen to her son than anything else. She nods, though, moving with Cody to be closer to me as I start to crawl back to where the Kings are.

I pull my gun from the holster at my back and start shooting at anyone who gets too close, laying down enough cover that Hannah doesn’t have to worry.

Hopefully.

I hear a yell and the pounding of footsteps, and I look up just in time to see a man with a gun racing toward me. I’m out in the open, in the middle of the aisle, and I try to get my gun up in time to get him before he reaches me.

He gets close but then goes down hard, shot through the gut.

“Fucker,” Knox snarls, moving in closer.

“Shit,” I gasp, breathing hard. My heart is galloping in my chest, and I have to try a few times to get in a deep breath.

I turn to make sure Hannah is okay, and her eyes are wide and terrified. But she’s in one piece, Cody still clinging to her.

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