Storm Prey

against the wall with the long-haired guy who’d been watching Weather. She hurried down toward them. Lucas straightened as she came up, and she said, “Weather said to tell you, the skinhead is in the observation room. She’s scared.”
    Lucas and the other man never spoke to her, but both sprinted to the stairwell, the long-haired man pulling a pistol from the back of his coat as he went through the door, and then they were gone. Kristy stood in the empty hall for a moment, wondering what had happened, and whether she should go back in the OR or ... hide.

    LUCAS STOPPED at the top of the stairwell and asked, “You set?”
    “Go,” Virgil said.
    Lucas pushed the door and peeked. A man was walking away from them, a hundred feet down the hall, a skinhead, he thought. He was afraid to call out, because the actual skinhead might still be inside the observation room. Instead, he pulled back and said, quietly, “I think he’s in the hall, but I’m not sure. I’m going after him. You check the observation area.”
    “Okay.”
    Lucas stepped out in the hallway and they both walked down toward the observation room. The man ahead of them looked back, as he turned a corner, a kind of double take, and Lucas said, “Fuck it, that’s him,” and shouted, “Hey!”
    The skinhead disappeared around the corner, running, and Lucas and Virgil sprinted after him. At the corner, they stopped, did a quick peek—and saw the skinhead another hundred feet down the hall, running hard.
    Lucas shouted, “Stop,” feeling stupid, because the guy wasn’t going to stop, and then they were after him again, a hundred feet, clearing the next corner in time to see the skinhead clear the next corner, going after him again.
    At the next corner, the skinhead was in the open in a long hall of locked doors, and the skinhead turned and looked back at them and his arm came up with a pistol, and he fired once, a deafening boom, and they both jumped back behind the wall as buckshot broke plaster at the T of the intersection of the hallways.
    “Holy shit,” Virgil said, “that’s a shotgun or something,” and he cleared the hallway and fired a single shot after the skinhead, missing, and the slug popped into the brick wall thirty feet down the corridor.
    “Ricochets,” Lucas shouted, and the skinhead turned another corner, and then they were both half jogging, weapons extended in front of them, and Lucas said, “Can’t be much more of this,” and Virgil said, “Easy, easy, he could ambush us at one of these corners, take it easy ...”
    They eased up to the next corridor, did a peek, and found the adjoining hall empty. “He’s in a stairwell,” Lucas said. He’d spotted the door, and they hurried up to it, pulled it open carefully, heard the clattering of feet on the stairs below them, and Lucas started down. Virgil held back, hanging over the rail looking down, his pistol dangling in front of him, and two floors below, the skinhead stopped to look up. Virgil could see his face, leg, and foot, and fired another shot.
    The skinhead screamed, and Lucas was after him and then Virgil heard him yell, “No, no, get back,” and Lucas was running up the stairs toward him, face white, legs churning, taking the stairs two at a time, and Virgil yelled, “What?” and then below them, a grenade went off like the end of the world, and a cloud of concrete dust rose up the stairwell.
    Virgil: “Oh, Jesus.”
    Lucas: “You okay?”
    “Yeah. You?”
    “I almost ran right into it,” Lucas said. He peered down the stairwell. “I think you hit him, weird as that sounds.”
    “He yelled something ... what do you think?”
    Lucas was already on the way down again, through the cloud, and when they crossed the landing at the bottom, Lucas said, “We got blood,” and he did a peek at the door, and was through, Virgil a step behind. There were bloody spots on the tiles down the hall, and they went after them, around the corner, the blood still there, intermittently, and Lucas said, “I think you hit him in the foot.”
    Virgil said, “Another stairwell.”
    Lucas pulled the door open and all they could hear was the rack-rack-rack of something metallic bouncing down the stairs, and Lucas shouted, “Another grenade,” and slammed the door and they both ran back down the hall, and a minute later, a second explosion rattled through the hallways.
    “This is fuckin’ nuts,” Virgil said.
    Lucas yanked the doorway open and looked through