This is the 61st in a series of 365 Flash Fiction stories I’m writing. You can find out more about the challenge here.
The Surprise, by Jonathan L. Lawrence, 31st January 2012
Word count: 899
The Story:
“Shhh! He’s coming,” Jack Lee said,gesturing, though in total blackness none of them could see, he felt more comfortable doing it.
“Are you sure?” a voice behind him whispered.
“Shh!” Jack whispered again.
“This feels daft,” a voice beside him whispered quietly.
“Will you shush,” Jack said exasperated.
“Gee,” the voice whispered.
The wait was torturous, but slowly the sound of footsteps, that Jack had heard, grew louder. As the rest of the people in the room head the footsteps, the tension became palpable.The room full of people was silent, no one even breathed.
The door to the room started to turn. No one moved.
The door opened, and a figure was left in siillohette by the light.
Everyone in the room jumped up and a hundreds bullets hit the sillohette with such force it was thrown like a rag doll back into the corridor.
“Now that’s what I call a surprise party, woooo,” the voice beside Jack called out. Jack barely heard, his ear drums still recovering from the sudden assault of gun fire.
“Check the body you moron, make sure the fuckers dead,” Jack said, “And you can all count yourselves lucky he didn’t hear us waiting for him. We just took out the deadliest mother fucker to cross the Community.” The Community, an elite criminal and intelligence organisation that fielded the best, gleaned from other organised crime organisations, and talented solo artists.
“Boss,” the voice said, in a whining pitch.
A cacophony of voices erupted, Jack rushed to see what the cause was.
As he pushed past into the corridor he could see the blood everywhere. They, the Committee, never asked for it to be clean. They wanted a statement, no one messes with the Committee’s turf.
Then he saw the bullet ridden tattered body, of a young woman.
“Fuck,” Jack said, “This was the fucking room. The mother fucking room.”
“Who is it?” the voice beside him once again said.
“I don’t fucking know,” Jack said, “You go find out Michael.”
Michael, the voice, leaned over the body to check for a pulse, and then proceed to rifle through the pockets, eventually pulled out a purse.
“Juliette Kaufman,” Michael read out from an ID card.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” Jack said.
“What?”
“Kaufman,” Jack said leaning against the wall, “Same surname as one of the committee. We’ve been fucking set up.”
“How? Who?”
“Who do you think? Everyone move out, the police will only hang back so long.”
“What do we do now?” Michael asked.
“Well you guys are going to stay low. I’ll be lucky if I live more than a few seconds once the Committee finds out,” Jack said resignedly. It had taken years to get where he was, and some vigilante ended it all just like that.
“You could run,” Michael pointed out.
“You really are new aren’t you? There’s no where to run to where they wouldn’t run me down.”
The corridor was empty, the dozen men had gone downstairs leaving Michael and Jack talking. Suddenly the air was rent by heavy machine gun fire.
“Well there goes the team,” Jack said emotionlessly. Michael had pulled out his gun, and was about go charging down.
“Wait! Michael,” Jack called, “Shoot from the window, he’s across the street.”
Michael went to the window. Jack slipped downstairs while Michael was firing towards the source of the machine gun fire.
Jack saw the scene through the door way, the dozen men were lying in pools of blood, most dead, some dying. He didn’t stop to count, maybe some got away, it didn’t matter. He dashed onto the street, hoping Michael was providing a distraction.
The gun fire suddenly started coming towards him, there was no cover, so he broke into a run towards it’s source.
He tacked sideways as he approached, trying to stay ahead of the flaming barrel that was spewing out hot slugs. He fired his gun to whatever was behind that the flashes. The gun fire didn’t stop.
He reached behind, only to find a tripod mounted machine gun, with a series of motors and pulleys moving it.He pulled them off stopping the gun fire.
In the distance he could hear police sirens. Even they couldn’t ignore such apparent war fare.
“Michael! Come on!” he shouted.
As he turned to look up at the window where Michael had been shooting from, he saw Michael’s body fall to the floor, landing with a soft thud. Michael looked back up, a figure stood in the window, his gun held pointing upwards.
“You fucker!” Jack shouted opening fire. He only got off two shots before his clip was empty. He searched his pockets for another. The figure moved, but only to put his gun away. He stood watching Jack search around the pockets of his coat,
Then the figure vanished back into the shadows of the room.
That’s when the police cars arrived. Jack dropped to his knees and interlaced his fingers behind his head before any of them had even gotten out of their cars. There was no point running, he had nothing to fight with, and he was out numbered. Not to mention there would be no point, most of the police were on the take, many were even Community members.
“On the ground,” one of them shouted needlessly, with his gun drawn pointing at Jack.
“I surrender,” Jack said, “Take me in.”
Aspiring 