Raine licked his lips. The sun felt so incredibly warm. Beads of sweat formed on his brow and rolled down, stinging his eyes. He blinked. After time to adjust, he felt ready. He took a breath and leaned forward, hoping he could steal a look before anyone noticed he had crashed their party.
Just slightly forward… and this was where he knew he had to take his time. He’d seen too many grunts on street patrol take cover, then stick their whole head out too far, too fast.
And he had seen heads disappear.
Closed coffin for sure.
He would tell his squads, then later his squad leaders-the young second lieutenants who thought they could change the world: “Take your damn time.”
At this point, at this… “juncture, gentlemen”… go slow.
One error would be an error too many.
He caught movement, the bandits standing, passing around a liquid. A few with rifles over their shoulders. One with a handgun.
Five.
They were gathered around something; the source of the screaming.
I should back away, Raine thought. He’d seen them here. What Dan wanted to know. Yeah, you got bandits on this road. Armed. Drunk. With a prisoner.
But there was the voice of the girl, the prisoner. Raine couldn’t see her unless he leaned forward. Doing that, he’d be exposed if anyone turned.
In his world-his old world-there were times you backed away, and times you didn’t.
Old Brooklyn street rules. Sometimes you had to stand up.
No matter how bad it looked.
He leaned forward again, taking care that his gun barrel didn’t scrape the stone.
And he saw that the bandits had gathered around a wooden cage. Makeshift. Just some sticks lashed together, enough room to stand up.
Something to transport someone, he thought.
The sun… a steady stream of sweat. He blinked.
Inside, a woman. Though almost of indeterminate sex in her own version of a Wasteland costume. Layers of cloth, a turban-like headgear. Her face smudged with dabs of color, black and red. Different from the bandits that held her.
Might that be the factor? Was she from some other bandit clan?
A prize? A hostage? Something to be bartered?
From the looks of things, they had other ideas for now.
The one with the handgun came close to the cage. He was bare to the chest, his face markings-wild swirls of color-stretched all the way down to his upper torso.
That bandit pointed his gun at the woman-no more than a girl, now that Raine looked closer. Couldn’t be much more than a teen.
“You will die if’n they don’t pay.”
A few others gave out a bellowed, “Yeah, yeah. Die! ”
They laughed.
So funny.
But the girl didn’t blink. Instead, she leaned close to that bandit, her young face, still unburned, and unwrinkled features barely visible through her painted face-and she spat in his face.
Dead on target.
And the man didn’t even pause to wipe the spit off.
He raised his gun at the girl, who, amazingly, didn’t flinch. Her screams replaced with silence, her eyes wide, scanning her captors, as if she were trying to figure if there was any way out of this.
Now, Raine told himself.
Or never.
To help, he would have to come out of his hiding spot, this wedge of stone, and get his guns ready, all in one move. His body still didn’t feel back to normal. It felt like parts were still sleeping.
Goddamn duty.
He pressed down, ready to spring out. Tightened his muscles.
And he moved.
The first shot went wide of its target. He stumbled getting to the level ground of the enclosed area around the fire.
But that shot got the attention of the other bandits, and they turned away from the girl… and right toward him.
The four with rifles started leveling their weapons, as if Raine had turned himself into a shooting gallery.
But they moved slowly, stupidly, getting their guns in position.
Save for the girl’s tormentor with his handgun. Drunk or not, he moved fast.
He fired a shot that Raine thought missed completely.
Until-delayed reaction-he felt a spear of pain on the side of his right leg. He didn’t look down but he felt the wound. And even without looking down, he knew he was dripping blood onto the ground.
Couldn’t let anything else distract him now.
Two guns. One in each hand. Like out of a movie. No aiming. Christ, no getting any cover.
He fired each gun simultaneously, doing his best to target the bandits without raising a gun site to his eyes.
He caught one bandit with a shot to the gut, sending him to his knees. Then another blast took one down in what had to be an amazingly lucky shot to the chest.
Two down.
By then Raine heard bullets ricocheting around him. They, too, were firing quickly now.
The bandit by the cage stuck his arm out and actually took aim with his handgun. And despite the new pain in his right leg, Raine rolled forward. He felt bits of gravel and dirt dig into the wound. A flash of white light exploded in his eyes, only to clear just as his roll ended.
Down on his knees, closer to the bandits.
Raine fired his rifle at the handgun bandit, once, twice-both times hitting. The bandit’s wide, wild eyes turned dull.
Then Raine quickly wheeled to the right, seeing the stupefied expression of another bandit trying to take aim at the moving target he had become.
It was no contest, and Raine fired a shot right between the dumb bastard’s eyes.
Now the last bandit tried to take a bead on Raine as he moved through the dirt, rolling, smearing a blood trail on the sand. Until, popping up from one painful roll, he fired his handgun at the last bandit. A shoulder wound.
All his training helped.
That, and maybe the fact that, unlike the bandits, he hadn’t drunk any of what was in the bottle.
That last bandit, wounded, bleeding, looked at the bodies and started scrambling away.
Always a mistake.
Though he was able to put some distance between him and the mayhem, it now gave Raine a chance to really aim. Too easy: a single shot in the back.
And the five were all dead.
Raine kept kneeling there.
Until he heard the voice. “C’mon. You there. Shooter man. Get me out. Now, now!”
He turned to the girl in the wooden cage, remembering why he had started this melee to begin with. She was urgently waving to him, imploring him to free her. “C’mon! Hurry!”
“You’re welcome.”
FOURTEEN
The girl kept her eyes locked on him. Was it from fear, or just the wild-eyed look that anyone living out here took on as their natural expression? It certainly didn’t look as though she trusted him.
Suddenly, letting her out of the cage didn’t seem like the best of ideas. But Raine checked the rusted lock. One of the bodies around him must have a key.
On the other hand He fired at the lock and it shattered into three pieces.
The girl pushed open the wooden poles that had kept her trapped and then stood there, as if expecting Raine to do something to her.
“You okay?”
She nodded.
“Good. Now, what are you doing here? How’d they capture-”
The girl pointed past him, gesturing over his shoulder. “Look-more of them!”
Raine turned and saw nothing. But he felt the girl touch his back, and in one sleek move she had grabbed his knife. When he turned around, he saw her running away, hugging close to boulders, running as fast as she could, her new prize held tight in her hand.
Could she be going for his buggy?
But she ran in the other direction, farther into the surreal landscape of the Wasteland.
Raine shook his head. If the knife could help her, maybe she should have it.