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It's Dolly's Birthday
Chapter 18.
Dolly busts out...
Dolly had no idea who it was upstairs. It could be somebody who was there to rescue her. Or it could be someone jealous of this particular faction of Meqs -- she remembered vividly Drummond's theory that there were two or more factions among the aliens. She did not consider it much of a stretch to believe that they might engage in internecine warfare against one another. And there might be others -- of whoever -- outside the church in the back. But at least out there, she'd have a chance. In here, she could be trapped, cornered, with no room to move and no chance to defend herself against an armed and alert opponent.
But if she were to break out, she'd need all the time she could get to get clear of the building and find some sort of cover or she was dead meat from the time the door opened. So it meant that the method she used to open the door had to either be stealthy and go unnoticed, or it had to be a loud surprise, creating a diversion for her.
It never occurred to her to wait for discovery or to surrender. If whoever it was upstairs took her out, then... so be it.
But they'd never find her cowering in a corner. She was The Doll. They teased her about the epithet. They used the name to put her down, to imply she was cute because of it... cute and therefore harmless and of no consequence.
Even Drummond, who of all of them should have known better, occasionally trotted out the, "Gotta love her; she's Da Doll," line. Dolly was proud of the sobriquet, and felt it was something to live up to, not something to live down. Gabrielle Fuckin'-A Dolly was Da Doll. She knew it and she was proud of it.
"So. A church basement. What's down here that I can McGyver up an explosive from?" A quick search of the other rooms in the basement revealed the answer... not much. No explosives, no flammables, no cleaning supplies, no... nothing. She was just about ready to admit defeat and give up when she pushed her way into what looked like a closet to discover another door to the outside.
This one, however, still had the glass in the top. Fortunately her opening the door to the corridor had not shone light on the window, giving her away to the inevitable watchers outside. She stood for a moment in the tiny hallway between the two doors shaking with the realization of how near a thing it'd been. If interior light had fallen on the glass, she herself could have been a clear target to anyone outside with a weapon, her figure silhouetted against the window. But she'd lucked out once again.
"Hey!" she said to herself. "Luck is a survival trait. Right?"
Working mostly by feel in the gloom, and careful to avoid exposing herself to the view of anyone outside, she turned her attention to the door itself. It appeared to be simply closed on its own lock, with no padlock or other keying mechanism attached. This then would be the principle means of access to the building.
There was a lever below the door knob by which it seemed a dead bolt would operate. Dolly twisted the doorknob experimentally. It felt like it was a self-locking mechanism that was more latch than anything, and she supposed that the dead bolt was intended to carry the burden of securing the door from intruders.
But she could not be absolutely certain, as she didn't dare twist the doorknob all the way, for fear any noise it might make would be heard outside. No, she would have to trust that she could open it when she made her sally.
Then she scouted the land outside through the glass. The ground beyond the door was in sunlight. It looked like there was a short space of clear ground -- bare dirt and Johnson grass -- to the top of a steep bank that ran down to a body of water about thirty feet distant..
She leaned closer to the door and peered out, intently taking in the scene. She easily identified the Ohio River and even her approximate position based on what she could see of the scenery on the Kentucky shore. She had to be in that church next to the bell foundry on Eastern that was undergoing rehab. That made it more likely that the force upstairs was a rescue. But she didn't want to take the chance of getting shot by accident.
Then her nerves, already stretched tight, jolted her with the recognition of an outside stimulus. She thought she'd heard the scrape of a footstep on the stairs to the upper floor. She bounded out of the enclosed space and froze, listening. The sound did not repeat itself. Even so, Dolly did not lose the tension in her back, the stiffness in her thighs, the shifting, white-knuckled grip she used on every object that came into her hands.
She cross back the length of the corridor and retrieved her guns. Once she had one of them slung and the other locked and loaded in her hands, she stood jittering for a long moment.
Then, her brief indecision over, she raised the M16 and let loose a short burst at the hasp of the padlock which secure the door. The hasp separated almost without protest as it was ripped apart by the .222 slugs, which mushroomed against the steel door frame. Dolly took a step toward the door and swung her right foot up and slammed the heel of her foot against the door. As it grated open, she danced backward, careful to avoid the afternoon sunlight that suddenly poured into the dark basement. Then she ran down the corridor to the other door. A twist of the knob and she burst through and into the back yard of the church.
Dolly had been in many situations where she couldn't have been more naked in a Freudian nightmare, situations where she had to scurry to cover or die in the open. But this was the longest thirty feet she'd ever run. When she tumbled down the sandy bank to the narrow, rocky strip at the water's edge, she breathed a wordless prayer of thanksgiving to the gods.
She got to her feet quickly, staying low by force of habit. She watched the bank above her closely, the muzzle of her captured M16 swinging back and forth, straining to hear the slightest sound from overhead. All she could hear was the sound of traffic on Eastern Avenue.
Then a figure loomed into her view, standing on the lip of the bank. It was a large anthropoid figure dressed in a flame orange toga. She had the assault rifle to her shoulder and was drawing a fast bead when she heard the whispered greeting, "Hey! Baby Troll!"
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