Chapter 56 - The Price of Mercy
They were a step from the door when Hanks's instincts screamed at him.
He grabbed a fistful of Kenny's shirt and hauled him backward hard.
"Down!"
Both men stumbled back into the lobby as the world outside came apart.
The doorframe exploded in splinters. Glass blew inward in a glittering spray. The wall around the entrance stitched itself with impact craters before either of them had hit the floor.
Across the street, a rust-eaten pickup and two SUVs welded over with rough steel plating sat at hard angles, and seven or eight men crouched behind them laying down everything they had into the post office entrance.
Then, cutting through the gaps between gunshots, came a voice — young and cracking, soaked in tears but edged with pure hate.
"That's them! The ones in the post office! A cop and some guy with a beard!"
A pause for breath.
"They knocked me out and took my stuff!"
Hanks and Kenny pressed flat against the interior wall as rounds chewed through everything in front of them. Neither one could get their head up.
Kenny's face had gone the color of chalk. Cold sweat ran down his forehead. He looked at Hanks with an expression that held shock, relief at still being alive, and something that looked a lot like guilt.
"That's the kid." His voice was barely audible. "He brought them back."
The killing intent that surfaced in Hanks's eyes was the purest version of it yet. He surveyed the room's layout in the same breath he spoke.
"I told you. Mercy has a price." He said it without heat, which somehow made it land harder.
Rounds hammered the entrance in a continuous stream, filling the lobby doorway with flying debris and keeping them completely pinned inside.
"Back up — find cover." He grabbed Kenny and they both rolled deeper into the lobby, putting overturned office desks and a metal service counter between themselves and the entrance.
Bullets cracked against the counter and punched through the drywall above them in irregular bursts.
Hanks leaned out and fired back twice, but the angles were wrong — too much cover between him and the shooters. He pulled back.
"We're boxed in." Kenny was breathing hard, his knuckles white around the shotgun grip. He looked at Hanks, something desperate in his eyes. "Hanks, I — "
"Save it." Hanks cut him off, voice sharp and low. "Their fire's too heavy for the front. We need a back door or a side window. Move."
The snap of it shook Kenny out of his spiral. He pressed it down, nodded hard, and they moved.
Using the cover of the desks and filing cabinets, they pushed deeper into the building. The furniture behind them came apart under the gunfire as they went.
Outside, someone noticed the shooting had slowed at the entrance.
"They're running! Around the sides — some of you push through the front!"
The gang split into two groups without hesitation, peeling off toward the flanks and the main door at the same time.
Hanks and Kenny kept low and kept moving.
"Here." Kenny spotted it first — a narrow corridor branching off toward the rear of the building.
"You lead. I'll cover." Hanks turned and raised the P226.
Two men came through the front door at a run. Hanks shot them both. The ones behind scrambled for cover and started firing blind around corners, muzzles extended without looking.
Kenny was already in the corridor. At the far end: a back door. Padlocked from the inside, heavy-gauge steel, not going anywhere on its own.
"Hell." Kenny yanked at it. Nothing moved.
"Move." Hanks lined up the P226 and fired three rounds into the lock cylinder in a tight group.
The lock came apart. He kicked the door open.
Outside was a narrow service alley — a few dumpsters, scattered garbage, and for the moment, nobody pointing a gun at them.
The shouting from inside was already getting closer.
"Which way?" Kenny's voice had an edge to it.
Hanks looked both directions. Left: movement in the shadows at the alley mouth, shapes that were probably people. Right: a tangle of residential streets and broken fences going deeper into the neighborhood.
"Right. With me."
He went first. Kenny stayed on his heels.
They made it maybe four steps before figures appeared at the left alley entrance behind them.
"Back there — they went right!"
Rounds snapped past and sparked off the brickwork beside them. Hanks yanked Kenny sideways, spun, and fired twice in the same motion.
One man dropped, hands going to his throat where the bullet had torn through it. The others flung themselves behind whatever was nearest.
Hanks and Kenny ran. They used every dumpster and piece of rubble they could find, moving fast and low, rounds occasionally skipping off the walls around them.
"This isn't working." Kenny was breathing through his teeth, face flushed. "We can't outrun bullets."
Hanks stopped, turned, and fired.
Three shots, smooth and even. The two men leading the chase went down before they registered what was happening. The rest broke for cover, and for a few seconds the pursuit lost its momentum.
He dropped the empty magazine and was running again before it hit the ground.
Kenny had stopped marveling at the shooting. He just ran.
They threaded through a maze of back alleys — cutting left, cutting right, the yelling and intermittent gunfire following them through the narrow passages, rounds occasionally kissing the walls close enough to kick fragments into their faces.
Hanks pulled Kenny hard into a cramped courtyard packed with rotting lumber and broken furniture. On the far side, a section of wooden fence had half-collapsed into the next alley.
"Through it. Go."
They scrambled over the wreckage and dropped into a quieter passage on the other side, narrower and darker, the stench of old garbage thick in the air.
Hanks's lungs were burning. But his mind was already ahead of his body.
Running wasn't going to end this. They needed to break contact completely, or stop running and force the issue.
At the end of the alley sat a school bus, rolled onto its side, rust eating through the yellow paint in long brown streaks.
"Kenny. Get behind the bus."
Hanks said it quietly and fired to punctuate it — clearing the last of the magazine, then slamming a fresh one home before the spent brass stopped bouncing.
Kenny understood immediately. He went low and scrambled to the cover of the bus's undercarriage, got his back against the chassis, and brought the shotgun up on the alley mouth. His jaw was set. The guilt wasn't going anywhere, but he pushed it down and focused.
Hanks didn't take cover.
He stood, drew a breath, and leaned out.
The P226 fired in a controlled burst — not spraying, not panicking, each shot placed. The two men at the front of the pursuit had no time to adjust. They went down hard, and the men behind them scattered for anything solid they could put between themselves and that muzzle.
Hanks stepped back behind the bus. The return fire rattled against the heavy metal shell of the vehicle — loud, harmless, buying them seconds.
"Now. Far side — deep into the alley."
They broke from cover and ran, leaving the disorganized return fire behind them, pushing into a narrow passage so choked with old garbage that the smell hit like a wall.
Behind them, the shouting continued — but it was getting less coordinated. Less certain of where they'd gone.
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