Survivor: Prologue

Tavish needed to get this loan. His car was on its last cylinder and he had three hundred fifty-seven dollars to his name until the next paycheck. He'd known he wasn't going to get rich being a police officer, but sometimes the paycheck he got from the Lexington Police Department was a little underwhelming.

As he pushed through the glass doors of the 5/3 bank, he heard a man yell something and looked up just in time to see a ski mask and the flash of a pistol being fired. The glass door behind his head shattered and he dove for the floor as a second masked man spun and opened fire.

He bounced a bit when his belly hit the ground. Scrambling to his hands and knees, he scurried forward and looked for cover as pistols cracked and the masked men shot wildly over his head. For a second he hid behind a sofa in the little carpeted area outside the manager’s cubicle, but it became obvious that wasn’t going to do him much good when a shotgun blast took of a corner.

He  scrambled for the manager's cubicle as two pistol rounds punched through the sofa behind him. He reached it and was clambering behind the desk when a second shotgun blast roared through the bank. A blinding pain seared through his left leg, but momentum carried him out of the shooters’ line of sight.

He was finally able to clear his pistol from its holster and he sat with his back to the wooden cabinet which formed one leg of the desk. There was nowhere else to go. At least the shooters seemed to think the desk would stop their bullets. Tavish had no such illusions. He looked around for someplae else to run or anything which he might use to stay alive and his eyes focused on the monitor the manager had on the shelf next to his desk.

The picture on the monitor changed every half second or so from the cashiers cowering behind their counter, to a man slumped in front of the bank vault, to a picture of the building exterior where a black and white unit had just pulled up and was waiting for backup. Then a brief flash of the lobby showed Tavish three armed men. The three shooters had gathered behind the island in the lobby with deposit slips and envelopes on it and they were standing with their pistols and shotgun pointed over its top.

The two pistols barked again and both rounds hit the top of the desk. They punched through and the bad guys realized how thin a pressboard desk was. They started firing in earnest.

Tavish rolled to his right, going as flat to the floor as his gut allowed and firing under the island. He hit one man straight in the shin and another in the ankle. As they fell, he put as many bullets as he could into them. The third man bolted for the door, shotgun still in his right hand. He was incredibly fast, but not nearly so much as the last four bullets in Tavish’s pistol. Two shots missed entirely, but two knocked the man through the shattered glass door leaving him lying in a heap in the entryway.

The danger gone, Tavish slumped on the ground as the pain in his left leg hit him. The next thing he remembered was someone yelling “Officer down!” as six of Lexington’s finest came storming in the front door. One of them kicked the shotgun away from the body in the doorway and just before he passed out Tavish realized the shooter's hand was deformed.