"President who?"
Okay, that didn't work.
Guns up.
My hands itching for the flashbang on my belt.
Tackle the Mayor, drop the flashbang, run like hell for the bunker door.
"I am led to believe that this guy, I mean skeleton in this bunker-"
"What bunker?"
Safeties click off. I find it odd how time slows down and you hear the darndest things like metal clicks and sharp breaths as heart speed up in slow motion. Details, damn details.
Tackle the mayor, throw the flashbang, running like hell for-
"Frank?"
"What?"
"Stop calculating whether you can tackle my brother, throw that grenade and run to safety at the same time."
Becky is grinning at me. She stands calmly before me, one hand on her left hip cocked out, the other held loosely near her gun. The mayor eyes are trying to track me and the two other men and everyone behind me who has their guns out..
"It'd never work anyway. Robert, is a bit to heavy to haul around and beside grabbing him would push you away from the building rather than towards it. You'd be dead before the grenade went off."
Well, at least she doesn't know it's a short fuse flashbang.
"Besides I am your better target, no one likes shooting a woman and I am a lot lighter than Robert."
Robert to his credit only gapes at his sister as the weight of her words hit him like a series of face slaps one after another.
I try to relax, forcing tense muscles to ease, then I hear the audible click of a trigger pull.
The world freezes in place as I move, praying the flack armor can take the shot, right hand drops in an outward arc as the flashbang is snatched and flung backwards in release. my feet take up strides as the hammer explodes onto the shell and gunfire erupts in the space before the bunker. my left hand catches becky's right hand mid-draw pulling the pistol free from her hand.
Her eyes looks so calm as if she is saying oh, as I pass her right before the bullet catch my left shoulder guard shattering the ceramic plate and ricocheting upward while driving me forward and down. I roll with the impact onto my feet before she collides with me and we both go down onto the paving stones in a tangle of bodies.
Her eyes look into mine.
"Hi." I say as she comes out on top of the heap. I drop her pistol.
"Hey." She says as she breaths my air, so close that her smell fills my lungs and nostrils as the shouting begins.
Then the flashbang goes off 2 seconds later.
We are alone in the moment. Her face against the light, the deafening bang obliterating everything but her kiss, her lips pressing into mine- well that's what I imagine as she buries her head into my neck as all hell breaks loose above and beyond us.
Someone is crying.
There are moans.
They go in and out of my hearing.
I carefully sit up to find Becky crouching next to me, inspecting her pistol while blinking furiously as tears flood her eyes.
I speak but there is no sound only silence.
I check the scene.
The Mayor is a few yards away with the two other men... Sparks and Ander-something. They all look dazed. My escort is decimated. Several of them lying curled up holding their eyes or ears making moaning gestures while a young woman is being held by a new person. She is the one crying.
I guess this was their first flashbang.
Begin log
March 2222
Kathy Jarvis, Mayor of Benton Harbor.
The raiders came today.
That's all we can call them. They came and they shot bullets and took away a fair amount of Jim and Lana's food supplies before killing them. They were the nicest people. Cody, our sheriff, thinks that Jim and Lana had welcomed them in not suspecting their evil intentions until it was too late. The rest of us caught the five of them as they tried to make a run for the outskirts. We ended up killing three of them as they shot at us while fleeing. The last two escaped out into the wastes carrying a small amount of the foods that they had killed for. Bill Wyatts said that those might have been some boys who ran with a some survivors that he had seen last year. He said that they looked liked some biker gang from before the war. He said they were surprisingly well armed.
I am afraid.
Richard said we would need to pull everyone back into the main town and build a barricade- a wall.
A wall around Benton Harbor.
end log.
I think I am dead.
or soon will be.
I made it into the bunker, at least.
I am in a small cell, stripped down to my shorts, all my gear stacked outside on a table as they debate on whether to shoot me and go through my stuff for the keys to their bunker or let me go and ask me to explain why I would suddenly provoke an attack like that.
I am 22 years old. I have spent the better part of 10 years learning to survive the hard way. The only thing I have never lost is my will to survive. My body bears the scars and marks of all my mistakes and bad decisions.
If they think I will be led out like a lamb to the slaughter, then they are sadly mistaken.
I have enough plastic explosive in the waistband of my shorts to blow a hole through their cell wall, the detonator wires are in my ponytail, the blasting caps and matches are in my crotch, as well as a few other things squirrelled away for escaping cells like these.
I will survive
if I can.
Okay, that didn't work.
Guns up.
My hands itching for the flashbang on my belt.
Tackle the Mayor, drop the flashbang, run like hell for the bunker door.
"I am led to believe that this guy, I mean skeleton in this bunker-"
"What bunker?"
Safeties click off. I find it odd how time slows down and you hear the darndest things like metal clicks and sharp breaths as heart speed up in slow motion. Details, damn details.
Tackle the mayor, throw the flashbang, running like hell for-
"Frank?"
"What?"
"Stop calculating whether you can tackle my brother, throw that grenade and run to safety at the same time."
Becky is grinning at me. She stands calmly before me, one hand on her left hip cocked out, the other held loosely near her gun. The mayor eyes are trying to track me and the two other men and everyone behind me who has their guns out..
"It'd never work anyway. Robert, is a bit to heavy to haul around and beside grabbing him would push you away from the building rather than towards it. You'd be dead before the grenade went off."
Well, at least she doesn't know it's a short fuse flashbang.
"Besides I am your better target, no one likes shooting a woman and I am a lot lighter than Robert."
Robert to his credit only gapes at his sister as the weight of her words hit him like a series of face slaps one after another.
I try to relax, forcing tense muscles to ease, then I hear the audible click of a trigger pull.
The world freezes in place as I move, praying the flack armor can take the shot, right hand drops in an outward arc as the flashbang is snatched and flung backwards in release. my feet take up strides as the hammer explodes onto the shell and gunfire erupts in the space before the bunker. my left hand catches becky's right hand mid-draw pulling the pistol free from her hand.
Her eyes looks so calm as if she is saying oh, as I pass her right before the bullet catch my left shoulder guard shattering the ceramic plate and ricocheting upward while driving me forward and down. I roll with the impact onto my feet before she collides with me and we both go down onto the paving stones in a tangle of bodies.
Her eyes look into mine.
"Hi." I say as she comes out on top of the heap. I drop her pistol.
"Hey." She says as she breaths my air, so close that her smell fills my lungs and nostrils as the shouting begins.
Then the flashbang goes off 2 seconds later.
We are alone in the moment. Her face against the light, the deafening bang obliterating everything but her kiss, her lips pressing into mine- well that's what I imagine as she buries her head into my neck as all hell breaks loose above and beyond us.
Someone is crying.
There are moans.
They go in and out of my hearing.
I carefully sit up to find Becky crouching next to me, inspecting her pistol while blinking furiously as tears flood her eyes.
I speak but there is no sound only silence.
I check the scene.
The Mayor is a few yards away with the two other men... Sparks and Ander-something. They all look dazed. My escort is decimated. Several of them lying curled up holding their eyes or ears making moaning gestures while a young woman is being held by a new person. She is the one crying.
I guess this was their first flashbang.
Begin log
March 2222
Kathy Jarvis, Mayor of Benton Harbor.
The raiders came today.
That's all we can call them. They came and they shot bullets and took away a fair amount of Jim and Lana's food supplies before killing them. They were the nicest people. Cody, our sheriff, thinks that Jim and Lana had welcomed them in not suspecting their evil intentions until it was too late. The rest of us caught the five of them as they tried to make a run for the outskirts. We ended up killing three of them as they shot at us while fleeing. The last two escaped out into the wastes carrying a small amount of the foods that they had killed for. Bill Wyatts said that those might have been some boys who ran with a some survivors that he had seen last year. He said that they looked liked some biker gang from before the war. He said they were surprisingly well armed.
I am afraid.
Richard said we would need to pull everyone back into the main town and build a barricade- a wall.
A wall around Benton Harbor.
end log.
I think I am dead.
or soon will be.
I made it into the bunker, at least.
I am in a small cell, stripped down to my shorts, all my gear stacked outside on a table as they debate on whether to shoot me and go through my stuff for the keys to their bunker or let me go and ask me to explain why I would suddenly provoke an attack like that.
I am 22 years old. I have spent the better part of 10 years learning to survive the hard way. The only thing I have never lost is my will to survive. My body bears the scars and marks of all my mistakes and bad decisions.
If they think I will be led out like a lamb to the slaughter, then they are sadly mistaken.
I have enough plastic explosive in the waistband of my shorts to blow a hole through their cell wall, the detonator wires are in my ponytail, the blasting caps and matches are in my crotch, as well as a few other things squirrelled away for escaping cells like these.
I will survive
if I can.
