Day 24

At least a large number of them cleared out today so we took the initiative and moved in thinking there couldn't be many left and we could easily evade them.

It was about midday when we got to the officer entrance as it were. But we stopped. We heard movement and turned to see one man opening the back door of a riot van. How could we have been so stupid to miss or overlook that?
He turned to face us and a smile crept across his face, mainly from looking at Sam.
I raised the rifle at him ready, and he just laughed

"You going to use that on me boy?"
I didn't respond. He moved closer and I raised it to his head and he backed off a moment.
"How about you hand over the lady and I let you go" His hand reached behind his back slowly.
"How about you stop moving else I'll blow your face off" My heart was pounding so hard I found myself breathing slower
He laughed some more and went to move his hand sharply from behind him, I pulled the trigger blindly, then re-cocked in an instant and pulled again. He went down screaming in pain.
I had hit his neck and had taken a reasonable chunk out of it. In his hand lay a knife at least 10inches long. I wondered if it was still classified as a knife at that length. I moved forward and Sam swung low with a golf club changing his screaming to whimpering.
I immediately went to the van and success. Half a dozen stab vests, 4 riot shields, a couple of tazers and a box of batons.
I grabbed the tazers and threw one to Sam, unspeaking. Then she came round so she could have a better look at what was on show as well as keeping an eye on him and the building. The shot would definitely attract someone. So in haste I grabbed four stab vests, two riot shields (passing one to Sam) and I shoved a few batons into my belt. As I began to move off Sam also grabbed what looked like webbing for putting things in. She went to move towards the path we came from, but I had decided to run down to the fire station. Or at least make it look like we had. As we reached the end of the road, we doubled back along St Owens street. Racing past the town hall then Shire Hall.
As we ran I think it dawned on Sam we were returning to Woolworths for another night. We raced there and secured ourselves like before. We arranged our items out. I discarded a few batons. We only needed one each, but we decided on two just in case as they weren't too heavy as to make us struggle. We also kept all the stab vests. Not only would they help us. If we found anyone else it would be useful for them. We practised gearing ourselves up using the webbing to store things like the batons, as well as threading the riot shields through them, decreasing carry weight as well as covering our backs. We practised taking them off quickly for emergencies until a couple hours later we rested; updating all batteries and checking our supplies.

"Jesus Pete" Sam spoke after a while of resting "What have we done"
"He had a knife, I thought he had worse" I had instinctively felt bad that I had shot a man, let alone one who couldn't have hurt me that instant "In my defence, he would have held us there until his mates came you know that"
"Yeah, but we left him to die"
I hadn't thought of that "We can't think like that now, I know it makes me a bad person, but if we go back we'll die. Most likely his friends or the Rani will find him. Anyway I'm pretty sure I missed the artery in his neck else it would have pumped out a lot more"
She just looked at me and sighed
There was silence again, which I cut, "Look; I don't like it. If you really want we can go back..." She shook her head "Then we got to stay here tonight. Tomorrow we'll plan to go to the SAS camp and start our journey"
It's a cold night again tonight, so we're under a cover and nestled together. Damn this day didn't go well.

I hope you make another day