Cornered [2]

Xiajun looked around himself in haste. The only escape was to go back the way he had come, but now it was blocked by a line of these thugs.

A bead of sweat ran down Xiajun's temple as he stepped back and held the umbrella in front of him like a weapon. More men dressed in black came forward, adorned with Kalashnikov's around their shoulders and guns that could only be the 1937 Tokarev TT-33 pistols .A quick assessment revealed that there were almost 12 men in total, and not a single one unarmed.

They sneered.

"You alright, man?" one of them laughed. "This guy looks like a deer caught in the headlights. Just look at him shaking!" Everyone around him laughed like a pack of hyenas. Xiajun tightened his jaw.

Relax, he reminded himself. Relax, Jun.

Xiajun felt with his other hand the mini-pistol in his waist band. From what he recalled, his Glock G43 only had six rounds in it before he was all out, and in a moment like this, he needed each bullet to count.

"Don't shoot!" Xiajun cried, hoping his voice sounded pitiful enough to stall him some time. "Y-You've mistaken me for someone else! I'm an innocent resident!"

"Like hell you are!" someone from the back called, his voice as scratchy as sandpaper. "Nobody lives in this dump. Hey, I say we kill him."

"Don't! Please spare me!" Xiajun knew that he had only one thing on his side right now, and that was the Element of Surprise. The men were talking to each other and laughing as if Xiajun had held no degree of threat, and he saw that their guns were lowered and some of them still had their safety locks on.

With a single movement, before anyone could figure out what was going on, Xiajun plunged the pointy end of his umbrella into the nearest man's chest, causing him to yelp in pain and drop his gun. At the same time, Xiajun pulled out the pistol from his waist band and swooped the man's dropped gun up with his umbrella, hooking the pointy end into the trigger ring.

Someone started to say, "What the f-" but even before their sentence had finished, Xiajun shot into the crowd, managing to receive several cries of surprise. He dropped the umbrella and with a swoop of his leg, Xiajun managed to sweep the man to his right on his face as his knees buckled from the impact. Xiajun unarmed him and threw his gun over the wall behind him. Then stomped on his head and shot the pair of men who charged at Xiajun, their arms outstretched in rage.

Their blood sprayed Xiajun's face as they fell on the rough gravel, their eyes going blank the moment bullets pumped their head. Xiajun looked to his left just in time to see another man aiming at his head. He ducked just as the bullet came flying and shot at the man's foot. He cried in pain but still managed to shoot another round at Xiajun before Xiajun punched him in the jaw, making him lose balance and dropping to the ground.

Just as he was about to shoot him, Xiajun felt a bullet penetrate his shoulder.

"SH*T!" he cried and dodged to the side just in time to avoid another bullet. In such moments of desperation, his mind went back to when he was just 18 and being trained by his uncle in self defense.

"Remember, Xiajun," he recalled his uncle saying as he pointed a mock gun between Xiajun's eyes. "The best way to disarm a man carrying a gun is by using the 'Slap Technique'. Do you follow?"

"Yes, Uncle."

"Keep this in mind since it's very important," he said while demonstrating, "if someone holds you at gunpoint like this," Zhang Long flicked the safety off the pistol, "try to dodge and use both hands to smack the gun away from the other person. Use your right hand to slap the other person's wrist and with your left hand," he said, putting Xiajun's left hand on the gun, "you slap the pistol away as hard as you can. Do you understand?"

Fast forward, Xiajun put this knowledge to good use and with a hard smack that made his palm sting, he slapped the inside of the man's wrist and bit his gun between his teeth before freeing his hand and using it to slap the gun away. With a satisfying crackle, it flung from his fingers and fell between a heap of dead bodies.

Before the man processed what was being done, Xiajun unhooked the pistol from between his teeth and pulled the trigger, aiming straight at his head. Just like that, his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell to join several other comrades.