Deadfall: Hunters by Richard Flunker

though. As easy as Blevin was willing to give me this burden, he was just as quick to tell us exactly how we could take care of him without any major risk. It turned out that Cain, while wildly paranoid of the other mercenaries he had expelled from the island, seemed completely certain that no others would show up here, just as we had. Blevin assured us that we could surprise him completely if we could sneak into his resort, especially at night. Cain had his one loyal guard, a man everyone called Hammond, who, according to Blevin, was just as clueless to the guarding of their island as Cain was. Both men were trained killers, but had gone soft in their new kingdom.
    I asked him why the mothers never rose up against him and the answer was obvious before he even answered. Cain threatened to harm, or worse, their daughters if they did anything. Just as the daughters wouldn’t escape, so were the mothers trapped by the fear of what might happen to their children. When it came down to it, that’s the only reason I was willing to do this.
    That and these people are really starting to make me angry. I'm never surprised that humans decide to act with such barbarity, especially when there is no check to their power, but it makes me no less angry.
    So we hid out the rest of that day. Janine became our contact point with the rest of the girls and even took it upon herself to go over to the resort to spy under the guise of picking up some supplies. She assured us that Cain and Hammond were just as clueless as they had expected. She had told no one, not even any of the women that a possible rescue was at hand, just to be sure of complete surprise, but did leave a specific back door propped open.
    I will admit, looking back, that once again, there was just too much luck on our hand that night. We did have the element of surprise, but really, that was it. Had Tague and I really thought about it, we were going up against trained mercenaries. It was virtually a suicide mission. But at the time, the thought never really crossed our minds, certainly not in any fashion that would throw up red flags in my mind as they would have in most cases. The main reason for that was the lack of zombies.
    On board of the boat, we had grown accustomed to sleeping with ease and just living with far less caution as opposed to what we had endured while on land. We had arrived here at this island, firm ground, and had yet to see a single zombie, and the attitude we had enjoyed on the boat stayed with us here. I'm not saying that having zombies around was better for us, just that, being on our toes was not entirely a bad thing.
    On to that evening. Tague and I headed out after sunset and headed over to the resort with the girl, Janine, guiding us. She got us close enough for us to see where the open door was. Along the way, she explained to us how to get up to the top floors where Cain was believed to be, using a maintenance stairwell. She was confident we could reach the top without being seen by anyone. Once we were up there it was up to us to do what we were going to do.
    To that point, she was right. We entered the resort and walked down the dark hallways up to where Janine had indicated the staircase was. We headed up the thirteen stories until we reached the top floor, the penthouse floor. We could have sworn we heard voices in the floor just under that one when we had come up to it, but saw no one and had seen no lights shining through the small window in the doors. There were lights on the top floor though. We pulled out our guns, oblivious, really, to what we would do next.
    Tague glanced through the window on the door and saw nothing, so we popped it open as quietly as we could, and stepped through into a hallway. The light was coming from floodlights that had at one time been the emergency lighting. The hallway was shaped like an L, going down in one direction, and turning left shortly after the staircase exit. I peered down the corner and saw nothing.