Page 113 of Duty Preserved

The room was small. Concrete floor, a metal ring bolted into the center. Sarah was on the floor beside it, her wrists zip-tied in front of her and tethered to the ring by a short length of cord. Her chin was on her chest. A plate with half-eaten food sat on the floor within reach. No silverware.

I crossed the room and dropped to my knees in front of her. Her head came up. Her right eye found mine, and her whole face changed. The composure she’d been keeping collapsed.

I put my hand over her mouth before she could make a sound. Leaned close.

“I’m here. Stay quiet.”

She nodded against my palm. I pulled the knife from my vest and cut the zip ties. Her arms slowly dropped to her sides, stiff and trembling. I pulled her to her feet and moved her toward the back window.

The front door opened.

Fuck.

The man with the dinner tray from before. He’d come back to collect the plate. He stepped inside, and for half a second, we looked at each other across the room.

Without thinking, I grabbed my rifle and brought the muzzle up toward him. His hands reached for his back, where his own rifle was slung.

My finger squeezed the trigger instinctively. But even if I’d had the time to think about it, I could not have crossed that distance to the front door before he either sounded the alarm or shot me.

The sound completely ruptured the silence of the night. The front guard started shouting, just in time to see his comrade fall to the ground in the threshold with significantly less of a face than before. The guard must have still had courage, though, because I saw him whip around the corner of the door. Having seen his friend’s newly expired condition, he at least had his weapon ready.

It did him little good. I shot him dead too.

Doors banged open on the lit buildings, and men poured into the compound.

I spun to the window. “We won’t have time to navigate this window. Fall back to a firing position so you can support us exiting from the front. And keep yourself alive, brother.”

“Roger that. Moving.”

Andrew took off across the field to create distance and circle wide. He stopped, turned, and, from a kneeling position, fired several rounds toward the lit buildings. Then he was up and moving again.

I turned to grab Sarah and head for the front door.

Through the window, I saw Andrew fall.

No. No-no-no-no. These motherfuckers.

Sarah grabbed my arm. I looked at her. “Follow me.”

We advanced to the front door. I brought my rifle up and moved in a circle before crossing the threshold, scanning the compound. Men were pouring out of the other buildings. Some were already moving on where Andrew had gone down.

I opened fire. I had fired my weapon in hate before. Several of them dropped, and the others quickly reoriented their weapons toward us. The hail of incoming rounds forced me to grab Sarah and pull her deeper into the building.

I set my back to the wall next to the doorframe. Sarah was pressed against the opposite wall, her hands over her ears, her eyes on me. Outside, the gunfire was concentrated and closing.

Andrew was somewhere in the field bleeding out.

Sarah was in here with me.

The walls were at least concrete, which gave us some cover, but it wouldn’t hold up forever under sustained fire. I tried to peek around the doorframe and squeeze off a few more shots but was met with a hail of bullets that shredded even the frame of the door.

I couldn’t get to Andrew. I couldn’t move Sarah across open ground. And staying here was a countdown.

We are going to die here. Just like Owen. I’d made another wrong decision, and it had gotten Andrew killed. Now Sarah and I were going to be overrun, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

I slid over and tried to peek above a window to get another shot off. The glass exploded inward as a barrage of bullets answered.

Then something changed that made no sense.