“They’re going to blow the hatch. It’s going to be loud, but don’t panic.” Agnarsson told them. “The second you see an arm or a leg through the breach, shoot it. Remember, they’re going to have to come through a small opening one or two at a time, so we have the advantage. We don’t need to run around, just stay low and stay behind cover. Sandra? There’s no choke on that gun, so for God’s sake don’t fire from directly behind me, or you’ll cut me to shreds.”
Sandra nodded, then quickly turned to her father. “I love you, Papa. I’m not afraid.”
Those were the last words Agnarsson heard before the world filled with smoke and thunder. The blast wave hit so hard that for a moment of stupefying fear he thought he’d taken a bullet in the chest. But he was still kneeling, still breathing, and his finger squeezed the trigger even before his conscious mind recognized the mass emerging from the smoke and dust as a human body. The body rocked backwards, lost its footing, and fell back through the ragged metal hole in the door that had just become visible. Another body came into view and he fired again.
Bodies. That’s how he thought of them as he watched them fall: they were not living men, not the fragile vessels of human souls. At best they were actors in a play, and the crescendo of gunfire was the orchestra. The rifle at his shoulder was his violin, and each fret of the trigger the signal for another body to drop over. The drums rolled staccato behind and in front of him, the muzzle blasts and the tanging whip-crack of bullets cutting through the air, breaking and ricocheting off the walls. A hand grenade skipped off the cratered floor, bounced back from the barricade and exploded, the crash of cymbals, and then the orchestra went quiet.
No, it went on playing, only he couldn’t hear it anymore. He felt