Max walked over to him, pointing the Glock at his head.
The only humane thing to do was to put him out of his misery. He wouldn’t recover from the wound he had. He’d only suffer.
Max’s face was grim when he squeezed the trigger.
There wasn’t any time to waste. Max headed back out the way he’d come. He was in more pain than when he’d come in. Three lives had been lost. And all for what? To get out of a backyard? It was crazy.
But Max didn’t think about that. He had a long way to go, and more battles to fight. He looked down the street, his vision fuzzy.
It looked clear. But Max knew better than to make assumptions. Things weren’t always the way they seemed. They hadn’t been in a long time.
10
The night was only getting colder.
Cynthia was close by, maybe a foot away. John could hear her breathing.
The forest was completely silent, except for the moans of pain of the man that John had shot.
It hadn’t been a good shot. He’d only had the flashlight to go by.
John and Cynthia knew there were more people out there. But they didn’t know how many. They didn’t dare turn on their own flashlights. It would give away their position immediately.
They didn’t even speak now, unless they had to.
Kiki seemed to understand, in some instinctual way, the gravity of the situation. She was nearby, probably up against Cynthia, keeping very quiet.
John’s pulse was racing. He felt an intense fear running through him, and it didn’t leave him. He’d felt fear plenty of times since leaving his apartment in Center City Philadelphia, and there was always that subtle fear in the background of all his thoughts.
But this was different. Maybe it was the intensity of the darkness, of the night that seemed to close in on them. Maybe it was the thought of being hunted. Maybe it was the uncertainty, not knowing how many people were out there, after them. Maybe it was the knowledge that the compound, somehow, must be involved in this.
This was true fear. John knew that for certain.
Had that man they’d met, who’d told him about Max, betrayed them? Had anything he’d told them been true? Maybe he’d told John what he’d wanted to hear, and then promptly alerted his friends back at the compound.
Maybe some of it had been true. Who knew what to think.
John wanted to say something reassuring to Cynthia. He knew she must have been terrified, practically petrified. But there was nothing to say. Nothing that could make it all better. Anything he said would have been a lie.
It was so dark that sound was all they had. And John didn’t know whether they’d be able to hear someone approaching or not.
His mind raced through a series of horrible possibilities. What if those pursuing them had night vision goggles? Would those have survived the EMP? What if they had something else, something John couldn’t even think of?
Then again, if that was the case, they’d already be dead.
Suddenly, a voice called out in the silent darkness.
A woman’s voice.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” came the voice.
Cynthia’s hand clutched John. Neither she nor John spoke.
There was silence again.
Finally, John spoke.
“What do you want?”
“I know you have a woman in your party.”
John didn’t dare speak again. There was the danger of giving away their position.
The woman’s voice sounded fairly far away. But it was hard to tell. She was yelling, and her voice seemed to ricochet around the unseen trees.
“We want the woman, and nothing else. Hand her over, and we’ll let the rest of you go.”
There was a lot of information in that sentence. The woman was claiming she was a member of a larger party, but John had his doubts. If she really had others with her, aside from the ones who’d already been killed, then she probably would have wanted to downplay their numbers for purely strategic reasons. But if she was by herself, then it might be to her advantage to exaggerate the numbers.
The unseen voice also seemed to think that there were more people than just John and Cynthia.
“What do we do?” came Cynthia’s voice, as she dared to whisper.
“We fight.”
They waited in the silence for what felt like an hour. In reality, probably only minutes had passed.
Kiki growled, a deep and intense sound that rumbled out of her.
A flurry of sound, movement in the darkness. Kiki dashed forward, growling.
A scream. A woman’s scream, high-pitched and terrified.
John dashed forward to where the sound came from.
He ran, unable to see where he was headed, not knowing what he was about to face. But he knew he had to do it. This was the chance. Kiki had made the first move. The woman was close. Too close.
John tripped, falling forward.
He still couldn’t see. He fell against a body.
A flashlight switched on, nearly blinding his darkness-adjusted eyes.
He looked away.
Something smashed into his torso. A rock, or something hard. Or the butt of a handgun.
John hit back, punching in front of him, unable to see. The flashlight fell, the cylinder of light rolling across the forest floor.
John grabbed the flashlight, scrambling off of the body and rushing towards it. He took it, groping in the darkness, and when he finally had it in his hand, he shone it towards his attacker.
Kiki was still growling. The flashlight illuminated her head first. She had her jaws sunk into a human leg.
John turned the flashlight more, illuminating a woman lying there.
She was attractive, and her long hair had come undone and hung around her face.
But she had the most intense look on her face, both of pain and pure fury.
The wound on her leg looked terrible. Kiki was tearing away, doing everything she could to stop the woman.
She had a gun in her hand. She pointed it at John, but she was squinting intensely. She was blinded by the flashlight that John now held.
It was all happening so fast. There were just seconds to act.
John had his own gun trained on her. He squeezed the trigger just as her gun went off.
She missed, the bullet lodging itself into the trunk of a tree. The splinters of wood exploded outward, hitting John in the back of the head.
John’s round hit her in the shoulder.
Cynthia appeared in the light. She came suddenly, out of the darkness. Her hands went right for the gun.
“Drop the gun,” snarled Cynthia, as she pressed her own handgun into the woman’s head. The woman’s long hair fell around the gun’s metal.
She dropped the gun. Cynthia took it.
“Kiki,” said John. “Enough.”
Kiki looked up at him, but didn’t release her grip.
“Kiki!”
Kiki released her grip.
The woman didn’t speak. She glared up at John, probably unable to see him because of the brightness of the flashlight.
“There might be more,” said Cynthia.
“Kiki will let us know. She’ll smell them.”
“They’ll have rifles,” said Cynthia.
John switched off his flashlight. He felt like an idiot, realizing his own error. It had all happened too fast. There hadn’t been time to think of the consequences of holding the flashlight. He’d been fighting for his life, in the immediate sense.
“Let me go,” said the woman. Her words came out harsh and vicious. “Or my men will kill you.”
“You know,” said John, “I don’t think there are any others. I think we killed the ones who came with you already. Otherwise, I’d already be dead from holding that flashlight, as my friend here pointed out.”
“That’s what you’d like to think.”