Over the last few weeks, she had managed to cultivate some kind of order in her life out of the chaos. But this, this…
This was pure chaos.
And Luke. Poor Luke. Lying out there on the road. Bleeding. Dying. Maybe already dead. She couldn’t tell from this distance, though she could see his dark shape lying motionless on the road 200 yards away. She couldn’t make out any details, and maybe that was for the best.
She focused on the wall of trees along the right side of the road instead, where Will told them to concentrate. She moved the sight farther up the woods, even as gunfire made her jump each time it rang out. They were much louder than when she was shooting the M4A1 even on full-auto. It had to be the different caliber.
She almost laughed.
Bullets. Calibers. When the hell did words like that enter her vocabulary?
She tried not to swing the sight back to Will, to make sure he was still alive as he continued up the road. She needed to find the shooters, locate them within the green and gray and brown of the woods and—
There.
She saw it — the flash of a rifle firing among the trees. Will was right, they were in there. Hidden like cowards. Kate saw only one muzzle flash, though she was sure there was more than one person firing. There had to be. They were using hunting rifles like the one Ted carried, and those could only fire one shot at a time. And from the sounds of it, they were firing constantly at Will and Danny.
She stopped the pointless, random thoughts, and taking a breath, fired off three quick rounds from her M4A1.
She didn’t know if she hit anyone, or even came close, but she quickly adjusted herself and standing up, fired another three rounds into the same general vicinity. Somewhere behind her, she heard the thunderous boom of Ted’s rifle. It was so loud she almost jumped, but she gathered herself and squeezed off another burst into the trees.
Kate swiveled her rifle down the road and picked up Will and Danny, no longer on their ATVs, but on their knees next to Luke. Will was in a shooting position with his M4A1 and was calmly firing shot after shot into the wall of trees. Danny did the same before quickly slinging his rifle, grabbing Luke, and throwing the teenager over his shoulder then carrying him back to his vehicle.
She watched where Will was firing, then swiveled her rifle to the same spot and fired in that direction, squeezing off round after round until she was empty.
Kate quickly took out the magazine and pushed in a new one as Ted fired next to her into the trees, in the same direction that she had been shooting. She took aim and joined him, fighting the urge to switch the fire selector to full-auto and just unleash the entire magazine.
Will’s words flashed in her head: “One at a time. In a gunfight, your best asset is your ability to aim and fire.”
So she fired two shots, stopped, waited a second, then fired two more, stopped, waited and fired again.
She swung her rifle back to Will. He was walking calmly to the ATVs, firing into the trees. He hopped onto his vehicle at the same time Danny took off on his, Luke’s body thrown across the seat like some freshly killed deer. The image made her almost vomit.
She followed Danny’s progress back to them when the gunfire led her back to reality. The ambushers were shooting at Will and Danny again.
She scanned the wall of trees, looking for a muzzle flash…
There!
She emptied the magazine into the general vicinity she thought the flash came from, squeezing the trigger again and again and again, without pausing this time. The rifle bucked with every shot and it was like getting kicked in the shoulder by a mule. But she had prepared her body for it and absorbed the impacts, never taking her eye off the sight and the red dot at the center.
Then Will and Danny were there, a loud squeal as they jammed on their brakes and their tires slid along the highway road.
Suddenly it was quiet.
The ambushers had stopped firing. Maybe it was the distance, maybe they realized they had lost the advantage, but the world seemed to instantly shut down around them, all except for the chirping of birds and insects buzzing in the woods.
Will hopped off his ATV and began hitching the trailers back into place. He worked and talked, calmly — always calmly. “That roadside place about three klicks back. We’re going to use that for now.”
Kate, like Ted and Carly, was in a daze as she stared at Luke’s body, slumped over Danny’s ATV. His white shirt was now a ghastly purple color, his face covered in a sheen of sweat that dripped down onto the hot asphalt. He didn’t look alive, and Kate wasn’t sure if he was still breathing. She wanted to reach out and feel for a pulse, but she was frozen, unable to move, and could only stare dumbly.
Will was suddenly next to her. Slowly, she heard his voice: “Kate, we have to go.”
She swam through a haze and tried to focus on him, standing in the sun, sweat dripping from his face despite the December weather. She might have answered. Or nodded. Or moved. She didn’t remember.
Her next memory was wind against her face, because they were moving, riding back down the road they had traveled only minutes ago. She was barely aware of climbing onto the ATV behind Will, or wrapping her arms tightly around his waist. Her eyes focused up the road at Danny, riding up front with Luke still slumped across his vehicle.
He’s dead. I know he’s dead.
Carly and Vera rode double behind Ted, the little girl squeezed between the two adults, looking uncomfortable but not complaining. She never complained. She was such a good soldier. Better than her.
They reached their destination after what seemed like hours of riding against the wind, though it was probably just minutes. Her sense of time and space was out of balance, and it was hard to keep track of where she was.
They turned off the road and onto a patch of dirt in front of two old buildings, with nothing but trees behind them. A small diner on the left and an auto body shop on the right made up the roadside establishment, surrounded by something that didn’t even vaguely resemble a parking lot.
They stopped the ATVs in front of the diner, and Danny hopped off. Carly got there quickly, and together they lifted Luke off as Will, M4A1 in hand, led the way, pushing into the diner’s door.
Kate sat numbly on the ATV, unsure what to do, or even if she could move if she wanted to. She watched Will through the dust-caked diner windows as he disappeared into the back of the building, before re-emerging seconds later and slinging his rifle. Danny and Carly had laid Luke down on the counter, and even through the window, Kate could see blood dripping onto the polished countertop, roll off the side, and fall to the floor. The blood seemed to have an oddly pale color, but maybe that was due to the dust on the windows.
She was vaguely aware of Ted standing next to her, talking. “Come on, Kate, it’s not safe out here. We need to go in with the others.”
She followed him inside the diner. She was moving on automatic pilot, barely noticing the steps she was taking or the thick whiff of abandonment that surged out of the diner when Ted opened the door.
She wished she hadn’t followed him inside. Seeing Luke lying on the countertop, bleeding, was worse up close. At least through the window she couldn’t tell how miserably pale he looked, how much he was sweating and bleeding. He didn’t move at all. Carly was holding a rag against Luke’s belly where the bullet had pierced, but it didn’t seem to be helping. Luke was still bleeding.