Run: An Emma Caldridge Novella: The Final Episode Read Online Free PDF Page B

as the padlock rattled. The door creaked open and the pale light from the bulb illuminated the interior once again.
    The woman with the angelic face, which Emma now thought of as evil, stood in the entrance, holding a small tray. Four feet behind her stood Carl with a gun in his hand.
    “Give them the food and get out,” Carl said. The woman took two steps into the room and the light went dark.
    “What the hell?” Carl said as the woman gasped.
    Emma slid past the frame, moved left and dropped to a crouch. She knocked into the rake collection and a hard wooden handle hammered her on the side of her head. She pushed it away and it clattered onto the cement floor. She grabbed the portion of it she could, but in the pitch-black was unable to determine its dimensions.
    “I’ll shoot you!” Carl screamed in the enclosed basement.
    Emma grasped the handle, picked up the rake and swung blindly in the direction of the voice. It connected with Carl’s leg with a satisfying smack and the handle vibrated with the force of the blow. He screamed again, this time incoherently, and Emma hauled the rake back for a second swing. This time she hit something softer, perhaps his torso, and a gunshot echoed in the enclosed space. She used the muzzle flash to aim her next hit and felt the prongs of the metal rake dig deep into soft tissue. Carl groaned and was silent.
    Using the handle of the rake as a guide, she scuttled up next to him, found his head at the working end and moved her fingers down. A warm substance covered his face and she followed the prong of the rake until she reached slimy contact with his eye socket. The rake had removed the eyeball. Carl didn’t move.
    “Ryan, you all right?” Emma said.
    “I’m at the stairs,” Ryan said. From above came the pounding of feet.
    “They heard the shot.” She ran her hands along Carl’s right arm, stopping when she felt the wrist. He still clutched the gun. She pulled it free of his fingers and stood up. The basement was quiet, and she paused, trying to discern where the woman was, but could hear nothing over the thudding noises coming from above. In her mind’s eye, Emma visualized the basement and headed toward the stairs. She bumped into Ryan at the bottom.
    “I have Carl’s gun,” she told him.
    The door at the top of the stairs opened, sending a shaft of daylight into the basement. A man stood in the entrance. Emma shot him and he crumpled.
    “Get behind me, I’m heading up,” she said, then started climbing the narrow staircase with Ryan behind her.
    Reaching the top, she paused. Several voices clamored in the kitchen. Someone said “Shh!” and the room fell silent. Then she heard, next to the entrance, a soft inhalation and exhalation in a rapid rhythm. Presuming he had his back pressed against the wall and was waiting to pick them off as they emerged from the stairwell, Emma reached behind her and gave Ryan the signal to wait, and then waved him farther away. He nodded and retreated a step.
    She checked the weapon in her hand. It was a Beretta pistol. She turned, taking care to move slowly in order to keep the tread beneath her feet from creaking. She put the gun’s muzzle against the drywall, hoping the spot she’d chosen wasn’t directly behind a stud, and fired.
    Drywall projectile bits sprayed into the air and a man shrieked. She heard an uneven series of steps as he lurched away, turned to Ryan to tell him to follow her and saw the woman directly behind him. She held the heavy bush pruning shears in her hands and swung the pointed end at his head. Emma straight-armed Ryan against the stairwell wall and hammered her foot into the woman’s sternum, knocking her off balance. The woman tumbled down the stairs on her spine and stopped when her head hit the cement floor.
    Emma didn’t stay to see if she was alive, instead plunging through the doorway into the attached mudroom.
    Johnson turned into the hall holding a shotgun, took one look at her and jerked