The Survivor Read Free

Nate watched their gloved hands rise, blued steel glinting inside curled fingers. A bullet lasered past his face, close enough to trail heat across his cheek. He was, it struck him, utterly unafraid. In his indifference he felt a weight lift from his shoulders, felt a smile curve his lips, felt imaginary manacles release. And then his hands, too, were lifting. He reminded himself with alarming calmness that he had to keep his wrists steady as he’d learned in basic, that he should not anticipate recoil, that he was, if not an ace, a decent shot. The air around his head took form as more bullets rocketed past, and he aimed across the teller partition at the first man and squeezed, and half the masked head went to red mist. The man toppled out of sight. His companion was shooting, the muzzle flashing but still inaudible beneath the earsplitting action of the saw. Nate was firing, too, the far wall giving off little puffs of drywall, spent cartridges cartwheeling across his field of vision. He stepped forward through the laid-open teller gate into the incoming bullets, to his death, his senses alive with the thrill of freedom—no, more than that. The thrill of liberation.
    Number Two’s mask was stretched at the mouth—he was screaming—and his arms were trembling. Nate watched the bore winking into view like a black eye, and he stared back, his thoughts pounding a suicide urge:
    Steady your hand . Hit me.
    But the barrel jerked left, right, bullets framing Nate’s silhouette. Nate replayed the man’s growled threat— You’re gonna want to listen now, girlie —and anger sharpened his focus. He felt the Beretta kick and kick in his hands until the flight suit’s fabric did a little dance above the man’s chest and he fell down and away.
    Sometime in the past second or two, the saw had paused, leaving the pop of the bullets suddenly naked, and Nate turned quickly to face the vault door. A man emerged carrying the circular saw, hood pushed up atop his head, wearing an expression of mild surprise. Nate shot off his ear in a spray of black blood. The man swung his head back, and Nate put a bullet through the puzzled furrow between his eyes.
    Really? That’s the best you assholes can do?
    The back-strap checkering on the grip had bitten into the web of his thumb. The scent of cordite spiced the air, dragging him almost a decade into the past, to burning sand and blood in his eyes.
    He blinked himself to the present. Four down, two to go.
    Moving again behind the teller line, he looked down at the automatic rifle on the floor, contemplating an upgrade. But he couldn’t spare the time untangling the sling from the body, so he walked swiftly toward the vault door, stepping across workers’ quivering bodies. “Sorry, ’scuse me, sorry.”
    Sobs and gasps answered him. A wail of sirens grew audible, faint enough to be imaginary.
    A pistol reached around the vault jamb, firing blindly. Nate drew a careful bead on the gun hand and kept on, swift and steady, not because of courage or heroism but because he hadn’t a thing to lose. He fired once, the round clanging off the vault door, and then he adjusted and fired twice more, a whirl of muscle memory, reaction, and instinct. The pistol flipped back, the fingers spreading comically wide, as if waving, and the hand vanished intact.
    Five more steps brought Nate to the vault door, and he strolled through without hesitation. A man sat in the far corner, aiming at the doorway, locked elbows resting on the shelf of his knees. He took a clear-as-day shot at Nate’s head, but the wind of the bullet kissed the side of Nate’s neck, the slug bouncing around the vault more times than seemed plausible. Nate swung the pistol, figuring he was too close to bother with the sights, and unloaded two shots into the guy’s gut. Simultaneously he heard the scuff of a boot in the blind spot behind him. He sidestepped, the coolness of metal brushing his neck and turning to a dagger of flame in