And almost immediately, the gunfire erupted.
The construction nearby provided us a place to take cover, but the cover was nothing like what we had in Afghanistan. It was poorly, not even halfway done, and I could already hear the cries of my friends in the Black Reapers taking wounds or being killed.
“Get down!” Butch yelled as he pulled out a machine gun and laid waste to several Fallen Saints across from him.
I could scarcely believe what I was seeing. Butch wasn’t just laying out fire—he was stepping in front of some of the wounded Reapers to provide cover.Maybe he’s not the spy.
Inspired, I did the same. I stood up, laid down as much fire as I could, and then took cover immediately after. I didn’t know how many Saints I killed, but I did know that this type of battle was unlike anything I had ever experienced outside of war.This isn’t outside of war. This is fucking war.
We traded bullets. Casualties mounted on both sides. I nearly got hit, a bullet whizzing so close to my head I could hear the bullet fly by. Butch took a shot to the shoulder, and Patriot took one in the thigh, but still, we kept on shooting. Red Raven, in the back, used a sniper rifle to take out Saints wherever he could, physically unable to fight as he once had.
But as time went by, as we failed to gain ground, as the Saints lobbed grenades and started to move forward, I began to realize that they weren’t fucking around or content with holding position. They really had come to end us once and for all. They had come to do whatever it took to kill us all.
“Lane!” I shouted. “It would be real nice to have some backup help right now.”
Lane looked at me and dropped his head.
“It would.”
That means it’s not coming.
“Then we’d better damn well clean up this mess before they show up, so we have bragging rights,” I said.
I refused to believe any other possibility. Until I was no longer conscious and my soul had left my body, until everyone around me had perished, until the Fallen Saints could truly declare that they had wiped us all out, I would not accept any other outcome. I had seen too much shit in war and in life to ever believe that things could ever be dead.
I stood up to fire, and a bullet struck me just inches from my heart. I fell.
“I got the boyfriend!” one of the Saints yelled. “Oh, shit! Parker, I’m gonna kill him and his girl, one right after the other!”
Rose...
When she came to mind, the feeling that came was immediate.
Love.
I loved her.
Through all the fighting, through all the madness, through all the arguments we’d had, no one had ever made me feel like she did. No one could comfort me and make my soul at ease like she could.
If that wasn’t love, I didn’t know what was.
“Fuck you!” I roared at the top of my lungs, turning back over my cover.
The bulletproof armor had saved my life. There’d be an ugly bruise on my chest, but a bruise was a sign of the living. It was a gift I could not waste.
With time slowed down, I had a clean shot right at the man who had yelled. I pulled the trigger. He dropped dead.
I turned the gun to his friend. He, too, dropped dead.
I turned the gun.
But this time, there was a Saint about to fire on me. I couldn’t get my gun over in time.
And then the Saint dropped dead.
“The fuck?”
And then I heard chaos on the other side. Screams from the Fallen Saints echoed across everything. The gunfire stopped coming at us, but it kept going to them. I knelt down and stared, stunned at what I saw.
