From Waking in Ruins:

I’m dead, Victoria thought. He’s waiting to strike, and I’m dead when he does. She tried to suppress the rising panic by taking deep, quiet breaths, but it wasn’t working.

She dug her fingernails into her arm wound until the pain cleared her mind. As the panic receded, her mind kicked into action. She held several tactical advantages – he had to enter through the doorway, he was unsure where she was, and he’d be blind in the darkness. He’d have his knife in his hand because the walls were concrete, and any gunshot would ricochet. He’d attack with a high downward slash at first, hoping to cut her neck or chest, which would leave him vulnerable below the waist.

The door opening was to her right, so she palmed the syringe in her left hand and placed her thumb on the plunger. She shifted most of her weight to her right foot, freeing the left leg to propel her turn, and then listened for his move.

Ten seconds, fifteen, twenty…she couldn’t hold this position much longer. With the toe of her shoe, she found a small piece of plaster and kicked it to the back of the cell.

Outside, a boot turned on plaster dust, and she quietly swung her left leg around while sinking into a low crouch and extending her left arm with the syringe pointing out. He came through the opening at the same time, his blade flashing over her head and slicing only at the darkness. The syringe pierced the femoral artery in his left thigh, and she pushed the plunger hard as the backstroke of his knife strike caught her wig and sent it flying against the wall.

She jumped to the back of the cell and started counting the seconds. Hearing her move, he leaped in her direction, his body blocking the hazy light from the corridor. She rolled across the floor toward him, and he tripped and hit the concrete floor hard.

She huddled by the doorway, holding the empty syringe in front of her, praying for the critical ten seconds to pass, and coiled for a last, desperate counterstrike if necessary. Once her mental count hit ten, though, the sound of his breathing stopped.

Capping the used syringe, she rose to her feet. She slipped his pistol from its holster and walloped him on the skull, hoping to spare him from four minutes of mortal terror as he tried to coax his paralyzed lungs to draw air.

She dusted off her suit jacket and then pulled the lab coat down from the iron bar. Laughing shakily, she leaned back against the wall and clutched her arms around her chest.

 

SHE STUMBLED DOWN ANOTHER DARK CORRIDOR, picking a path through the debris and trying to match her location with the campus layout above. She’d need to make a right somewhere soon to get to the Physical Plant Building – if it even connected to this corridor.

Suddenly, a pile of furniture collapsed and hit the floor behind her. She froze and heard the scuffling of boots some distance away; another killer was now pursuing her, and she’d be trapped if this route turned out to be a dead-end. She pulled the pistol from her pocket and moved forward in the darkness, probing the wall and praying to find an exit.

As she ran her hands along the wall, her fingers found the frame of an iron door to her right. She pulled the handle, and a loud screech echoed through the hallway as the door slowly opened. Somewhere behind her, she heard the killer’s feet skidding across plaster as he turned toward the sound.

Time had run out. She spun on the balls of her feet, pulled the pistol into position, and fired three glancing rounds into the right wall, three into the ceiling, and three into the left wall, spinning a deadly lacework of concrete chips and high-powered hollow points which ricocheted down the long concrete tunnel.

Copyright 2021 Alanson Rand