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It's Dolly's Birthday
Chapter 17.
Drummond never learns...
Drummond heard the shots and lost all patience with the masquerade. "Fuck this!" he shouted and began battering the door.
"Chief," Pete asked for his attention. "Chief. It's just a padlock. I think I can..."
"Not now, Pete. That could have been Dolly." He took a couple of steps and delivered a flying kick to the door that made it rattle in its frame, but did little else.
"Look, Chief, just stand back..."
Drummond ignored her and took a couple steps back to take another run at it. Pete just sighed and raised her H&K, squeezing off two shots which shattered the hasp and the door frame.
Drummond's foot came up and struck just as the lock disintegrated, bursting the door open with a dull scraping sound as it dragged along the floor. He lost his balance and fell on his ass with a comic squawk.
Pete stepped over him and stalked into the interior, grinning like a madwoman as she let the muzzle of her H&K orbit the sanctuary. The rest of the Trolls followed her, spreading out across the floor and heading toward the back of the building. They did their best to school their expressions to seriousness, but there were grins exchanged between and among them as they went.
Drummond picked himself up off the floor and called after Pete, "We gotta move fast. The cops will be here in less than no time."
Pete nodded and moved off into the dim interior of the church.
#
Dolly heard Pete's two rounds shatter the front door lock and decided hastily that discretion was the better part of valor. She picked up the aliens' guns, slinging one from her shoulder, carrying the other at the ready as she passed through the door at the rear of the vestry and onto a steep, narrow staircase. The stairs went only downward so, taking a deep breath to steady herself, she plunged down them.
When she reached the bottom, she found herself in a dark corridor that ran the width of the church under the altar. The light fixtures overhead had no bulbs in them, and Dolly suspected that the electricity was off anyway. There were rooms on either side and at both ends of the hallway. On the left side of the corridor, near the far end, she found a door that looked like it led outside, into a cramped niche let into the outer wall of the church. It was the back door.
The door was solid steel below and glass above and set in a steel frame that was firmly cemented into the thick brick and masonry walls of the church. The glass had been broken out and replaced with a sheet of plywood strapped to three two-by-fours that bridged the gap from side to side across the empty window frame. The door was padlocked from the inside. The plywood sheet bore the evidence of many attempts on it.
There were holes cut, drilled, and just plain worn all around its perimeter and in many places across its surface. One of these was at just the right height for her to peek through. Dolly knew better than to get too close, but she drew as close as she dared and peered through the hole, squinting to see what lay beyond.
All she could see was a concrete defile, narrow and high-walled. It did not, however, look as though there was anyone watching the door directly, although they were probably watching the other end of the passage where it issued onto what she hoped would be more open ground.
Then there was the problem of the padlock. Moving cautiously, quietly, she slid over to the door and inspected the lock. It was of a type she recognized and knew she had no hope of picking. She stifled her immediate impulse to blast away at it and its hasp with the assault rifle in her hands and studied the situation.
She leaned the rifle in her hands against the wall, then unslung the second one from her shoulder and set it beside the first. Taking great pains to remain silent, she grasped the lock in her hand and pulled on it, testing the strength of its mount. It was firmly and solidly mounted on the door and the ring and plate were likewise attached to the steel door frame, which was in turn solidly mortared to the walls.
She breathed a faint sigh and let her eye wander over the door frame, stroking its painted surface with a meditative motion.
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