Free The Containment Team by Dan Decker

midnight. I couldn’t remember what time it had been when Pete had burst into my room. I knew it had been after ten because that was when I had stopped studying to take a break and eat some microwave chimichangas. Everything that had happened could have taken a couple hours or less than twenty minutes, it was hard to say.
    Several rooms down, a door opened and somebody looked out. I wasn’t exactly the most sociable guy and hadn’t bothered to learn the names of my neighbors, but I thought I recognized the red-haired woman who I’d been scoping out during the course of the last term. Her eyes hesitated on me before the door shut with a bang. I didn’t blame her. I still had my shotgun out and had it ready.
    She probably thought I was a terrorist or something. That wasn’t going to help my chances of getting her to go on a date with me. Hopefully, she didn’t ask about the last woman I tried to take out.
    “Hurry!” Pete hissed, pushing past me and shouldering Madelyn out of the way so that he could get to the stairwell. “This stuff is getting more unstable by the minute. We don’t have long.”
    I checked to see if the blutom was glowing as he passed and was glad to see that it hadn’t yet progressed to that point. My guess was that we’d end up stopping off at a gas station and lighting the sucker up. I didn’t relish the thought of having to undo all the tape, so maybe we’d just burn the whole box.
    Pete was already down a floor before Madelyn and I made it to the door.
    She had stopped awkwardly before it as if waiting for me to open it. With a broad smile, I sat back on my heels. When we’d first started dating I hadn’t been big on doing things that were typically expected. She had pounded it into me that I needed to be opening doors for her and paying for our meals, among other things. I must admit that a part of me had been about to do it on instinct alone, but impish smile or not, I was through letting her manipulate me.
    After she opened it herself and walked through, I couldn’t help but continue to smile as I followed her into the stairwell.
    “What part of hurry don’t you two understand?” Pete called up from below.
    I snorted. “First, he doesn’t want us to go, now he’s saying we’re slowing him down. Wish he’d make up his mind.”
    “You aren’t going to go traipsing around town with your gun in the open like that are you?”
    “Why not? We’re in Texas, after all.”
    “What is it with you and your guns? I swear, I always felt a little jealous when you talked about your weaponry. I didn’t see how I could compete against that.”
    “You can’t.”
    “That’s why I left you.”
    It wasn’t and we both knew it, but I decided not to call her on it. She had created a world for herself that depended on getting men to do things through manipulation. When I had broken into that world and shattered it, she’d been left with the choice of either accepting the change or kicking me to the curb.
    We descended the stairs in silence until we got to the exit on the first floor. I hesitated, not wanting to let Madelyn feel like she’d managed to score a point, but also knowing that it would be pure foolishness for me to not hide my shotgun in my pack. This was the reason I’d opted for my larger backpack. 
    Ignoring Madelyn’s smug look, I shoved my shotgun into the bag. She was probably glad that it was night so that there would be fewer people that would see me with such a large bag. If it had been daytime she might have tried to convince me to leave it behind. I noticed her lips tighten as she took me in.
    I’d put on an old leather jacket I knew she’d hated to cover up the shoulder holster of my SigSauer pistol. That, combined with my combat boots probably was working as a reminder about some of the things I did that she hadn’t liked. It might have been petty of me, but I hadn’t completely forgiven her for dumping me yet. I enjoyed reminding her that she didn’t have