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Red Moon: Revolution

Chapter 8

"Police are currently on route to what appears to be a shooting in progress at the Seattle-Tacoma Airport." A formally dressed red-headed woman spoke from behind her position at the news desk. Being breaking and very spontaneous news that had forced her to come back to work after her original hours had been finished, there was no teleprompter telling her what to say, there was only a large screen that had all the current information available which wasn't much. "Currently there is no information on how many shooters there are, but witnesses report that there have been casualties."

She gave a quick glance over to the monitor off to her right which showed her just how exactly she looked to the viewers. Even though she had been rushed back, she still looked impeccable. She reminded herself to thank the makeup team for doing such a great job in the five minutes that were given to them. A large block of red flashing text scrolled on the bottom of the screen, reading, "Breaking News!"

"The thousands of flights that had been scheduled for the next several weeks had all been cancelled and the dozens of other flights had to be rerouted to nearby air ports." She said it with a bit of empathy. She had actually been on her way to the airport herself to go visit her sister in Montana for the week.

A new set of information appeared that prompted her to sit up straight and re-address her audience that was quickly growing close to one hundred thousand.

"This just in." She spoke when the red light across the room shut off, informing her that the camera was back on her. It had shifted over to another reported that was in a helicopter, following a long line of law enforcement vehicles. "New reports from witnesses indicate that the shooters may be attacking a rival gang as they indicated that the shooting began after an argument between two groups of people. At this moment, the TSA is sending over the video tapes directly to the FBI for a speedy analysis. There is currently no official statement from the government, but we'll keep you informed as this situation progresses and new information is revealed." The woman gave a smile. "This is Kate Nearing, representing K5 news. On to you Tom."

The screen flashed as the K5 logo rolled around and music began to play and then it shattered as a bullet flew into the television screen that hung up for the pleasure of waiting airport passengers. Though there weren't any passengers left, it had only taken a few minutes for everyone to flee the area, leaving the two sides of the Inquisition to settle their score.

"Save your bullets." Huffman nudged the man next to him who had a spray of blood across his face from when the arrogant man with the suit case had been shot. "We can't exactly be resupplied, y'know?"

"They called us a gang." The man said as he peered over the desk they were taking cover behind. He took note of how quiet the place was. All of the shooting and death that had occurred in the first ten seconds were like a distant memory as everyone scattered and found their own respective hiding places. No one wanted to come out because it quickly became apparent that both sides had guns and both sides had their sharpshooters that picked off anyone who left the safety of their cover. It was now just a waiting game.

"They can call us whatever they want. So as long as they don't learn of out true identity." Huffman thought about just how much he had screwed up, letting his volatile emotions take control. He had barely passed the Guardian training school due to it. The instructors had called him unreliable in the heat of the moment, but capable of handling himself when needed. Just blew that out of the window.

"The Coordinator isn't going to be happy with this." The other man reminded him. "He wanted us to stay low and out of sight."

"I know." Huffman growled. He hated that he was being reminded about his own orders which he had printed out and stuffed into his right pants pocket. "I fucked up." He said in a mocking tone, though he did understand just how much he really did fuck up.

The Coordinator hadn't wanted to engage against the main bulk of the Inquisition, he preferred to stick to the shadows for this one since his resources were limited. Even with his vast pool of intelligence and assets out in the field, it still wouldn't hold up in a straight fight.

"We need to get the rest of us together and get out of here before the local authorities arrive." Huffman spoke about the Seattle police as if they were from a different country. Being in the Inquisition was like being a citizen of another country with its own politics and military. It didn't matter if his passport had American flags all over it, he was Inquisition. "Did you see where anyone went?"

"I saw Marco and Jennie head towards the TSA office." The other man pointed down to the south. "There may be a weapons locker there, if that's what they were going after."

It was a sound plan. The small .22 caliber holdout revolvers they were carrying weren't going to cut it. "We should back them up."

The other man nodded in agreement and looked back over the desk. Nothing had changed and there was no sign of the enemy. They could be anywhere from the next boarding terminal to the other side of the airport, there was no way to tell. "We'll need to move fast."

"Aye." Huffman scooted towards the edge of his cover and kneeled into a ready position. Hitting a target that was moving, even if it was slow was a difficult feat, he intended to be the fastest target possible in case someone drew a bead on him. "I'll go first."

Huffman took a deep breath. He had butterflies in his stomach from the anticipation, not knowing if someone would shoot at him or not. "It'll only take a second. Just one second." Huffman said to himself, calming his nerves. It was a small, but effective trick he had taught himself when he had been in high school, running track. Staring down the long track, knowing that in just a few minutes he would be running against others in a fast and heated race. It had always wracked his nerves, in those few moments right before the gun went off. To combat it, he would just tell himself that it would end fast and it did. Nothing worked better to calm himself down than the truth.

Without wanting to delay any longer and lose his nerve, which was nearly impossible, Huffman sprinted out into the open and across the hall where he needed to be. His feet protested as he ran in thick slip on shoes that were meant more for a stroll around an office than a dead sprint. He made it, nothing shot at him.

"You turn." Huffman motioned to the other man who got into a similar position with one leg behind the other, ready to push off. He bobbed back and forth as he went through his own kind of ritual to egg himself on. His body rocked back and forth like some coin machine that children would ride in front of the grocery store. It was a mistake to do that.

One hundred and fifty yards away, at the end of the long line of boarding terminals, someone had noticed Huffman's short run and had setup a firing position. The woman had managed to recover one important piece of hardware, the suitcase from their group leader. Inside the suitcase had been a collapsible rifle that had been meant for their original target. While it cost a couple of dollars to fire each time, due to its silver ammunition, it worked just fine on people. S

She watched intently through her telescopic scope as she saw the crown of the next runner's head break cover as he rocked back and forth. Her finger caressed the trigger in itchy anticipation as she moved the reticule to the place where she guessed where the rest of the man's head was. The desk was made of cheap wood, it wouldn't be able to stop a bullet.

"Stop thinking about it." Huffman waved a hand over to the other man who seemed to be unable to get himself to cross the fifteen yards of open ground. "Just run. No one shot at me and no one will shoot at you."

The other man took a few deep breathes, his shoulder's shuddered slightly. He was scared. It was easy to act cocky when he was around a big group of trained professionals, but now that he was there and had seen people die, he didn't feel so great about his odds.

"Run, dammit." Huffman ordered, hoping that a stern voice would reach some part of the person that had been trained to follow orders.

The man bobbed one more time and then shot out just a bullet ripped through the desk.

For a moment, everything went red as pain flashed across the man's body. Then there was nothing as he fell to the ground with a thump.

"Shit." Huffman cursed as he watched the man get shot through the torso. He stared at the man for a moment, hoping, just hoping for some sign of life. He got one.

The man came to with a cough than brought a few flecks of blood up. His eyes were glazed over as he tried to push himself up, unaware that he had just been shot. "What..." He said as he found that he didn't have the strength to even move his arms. "My... my arms." He moaned in a weak voice.

Huffman watched on. He couldn't run out there, he would get shot and he couldn't leave him either. No man left behind.

The sniper waited patiently. While she had missed the head, she was still pleased with her shot. Now she just had to wait for the other man to come to his aid. She knew that it would happen, all Inquisition agents were taught, more like drilled, that they should never leave a comrade behind. While the werewolves thought of them as monsters, they weren't as ruthless as they would make them out to be.

"C'mon, just one step into the open." She had her sights on the spot that she had seen the other man was. So much so that she failed to watch her surroundings. She laid flat across a table in the food court, looking straight down the hall. She had effective firing control over everything in front of her, but she was vulnerable from all other sides since she didn't have anyone to watch her back and in the excitement of the moment, she had forgotten that.

"Inquisition cur." It was all she heard.

A sharp and shrill scream of bloody murder pierced the silence. Huffman didn't know what it was, but he took the distraction as an opportunity. Running from the safety of his cover, he got to the bleeding and delirious man quickly. There was no time to check his injuries even though first aid said that he shouldn't move the victim.

He grabbed the man around the chest and began to drag him back to cover.

The man let out a gurgling moan as the pain shot up through his side.

"I'm sorry." Huffman said as he heard the man's discomfort.

With the both of them out of danger for the moment, he could finally address the wounds. There was an entry wound in the man's upper chest and an exit wound around the shoulder. It wasn't fatal to Huffman's relief, but it did break his collar bone which was why he couldn't move his arms. The weapons would have to wait for the time being, he needed to help his friend.

There wasn't much he could do other than bandage the wound up and give the man some water.

"I'm holding you back." The man said between gulps. "You should leave me."

"Nonsense." Huffman sat next to him and opened up a wrapped sandwich which he had taken from one of the many kiosks around. "We stick together."

Seeing that there wasn't really any argument to be had, the man resigned back to his drink.

"We'll find the others and see if we can't find a solution to this." He looked over to the man. He seemed to be in better shape and was no longer in shock. "Can you walk?"

"I wasn't shot in the legs."

"Alright. We shouldn't linger. I wouldn't be surprised if that scream earlier was due to the werewolf from earlier. It's not like them to run from a fight." He looked around as if the werewolf would just drop down from the ceiling and rip them apart. "This airport isn't very big. We should be able to get to the TSA office in an hour if we take things slowly and don't run into anyone."

"Sounds good." He said and slowly got to his feet with some effort and help from Huffman. "I'm relatively new to your team, I don't think I've had time to introduce myself."

"We should fix that if we're going to get through this together."

"Blake." He stuck out his good hand for a hand shake, but just ended up with a gun in his hand.

"Not the place for formalities, Blake." Huffman winked. "If we make it through this alive, I'll buy you a beer. Until then..."

"Yeah." Blake said and checked the gun. It had three rounds in it and neither of them had any extra rounds to spare. They would need to be careful, then again, if they came across the werewolf, there wouldn't be a point. "Let's go."

--

Dmitri crept slowly along the walls of the airport. He had just finished off an Inquisition agent who had been firing at something. He was sure it was more Inquisition agents which were of little concern to him. At the moment, he needed a way out since Trevor obviously wasn't going to be coming here any time soon.

While it would be easy to just race off as a wolf, there were too many cameras trained on the place. Every few minutes, he would see one of the infernal contraptions fly overhead. He didn't need to appear on camera, it would raise too many questions and there were enough as it was.

It didn't make sense that the Inquisition were killing each other like this. Though it seemed as if there was some sort of split occurring between The Coordinator and the rest of the Directors. Dmitri wasn't complaining, it made his job easier in the killing department, but now he was certain that the US government was going to get involved. That was just a whole new can of worms.

There were a few pockets of civilians that were scattered around the place, unable to get out, they formed into groups and were now waiting to be rescued. Dmitri imagined that if he came across as just another scared person, he could easily get out with them. He had made sure to take out the cameras that were watching the areas where he took out a few Inquisition fools, so there would be no evidence indicating that he was involved in any way. He would be able to go free.

It wasn't hard to find a small group of people who were hiding in the bathroom.

"Stay back." A woman yelled at Dmitri as he walked into the bathroom. She held onto a group of children tightly as several others stepped forward though they looked uncertain as they came up to the large Russian.

Dmitri put up his hands in an unthreatening manner. "Whoa." He said in the most innocent voice he could muster which just came out as a slightly less rough Russian accent. "I'm just trying to find a way out. This whole place is going crazy."

The people relaxed. They had been cooped up there for an hour with no way of knowing what was going on and the scream from earlier didn't help. Seeing someone that wasn't going to shoot them was a welcome relief.

"We're sorry." A man rubbed the back of his head. "We hear about shootings all the time and what we should do in the event of one, but..."

"We never expect to be in one." Dmitri finished the sentence and the man nodded. It was too easy. They wanted to trust someone and who better to trust than a big, strong man with a friendly face. "Have you thought about making your way to the exit?"

The looked at each other. "It's come up, but we've decided to wait for the police."

Not good enough. "That could be hours." Dmitri protested. "Or even tomorrow."

"They have guns." It was the argument that had been brought up initially when they had first though about making a run for it. "We can't do anything about that."

"Yes, and what happens if they come in here." Dmitri pointed at the only entrance and exit to the place. "I've seen them." He tried to sound genuinely concerned, though he knew that they posed no threat to him. Though, this group of people didn't know that.

"I agree." One of the women near the back said and stepped up. "If we get out, we're safe. If we stay here, anything can happen until the police reach us."

"The police always say that we should remain where we are." Another countered.

Dmitri watched as the group circled up and picked sides. It soon became obvious that most wanted to get out and despite their worried state, they put it to a vote which impressed Dmitri.

"Six against and thirteen for." A man tallied the votes and sighed. He had voted to stay. "I guess we're going."

"I know the way out." Dmitri said and everyone slowly got up and followed him.