Page 50 of Break For Me
The silence stretches out.
It is heavy, suffocating. The wind pushes against the thin walls, making the wood groan. Snow slides off the corrugated metal roof with a soft, dry hiss. My heart thuds against my ribs, a slow, heavy drumbeat.
Then the first round hits.
The shot comes from the east. It’s a suppressedcrack—flat, clinical, almost polite.
The bullet punches through the plywood six inches above Garrett’s head. Splinters spray across the small room. A second round follows immediately, lower. It punches through the wall at waist height and buries itself in the opposite side of the shack with a dullthwack.
"Contact!" Garrett yells.
He fires. The shotgun blast is enormous in the small space—a percussive wave that rattles the cans on the shelf and sends a pressure spike through my eardrums. The shot pattern shreds the plywood around his port and tears into the tree line.
I hear a sound from outside—a wet, surprised grunt, then a heavy body hitting the snow. First blood.
The north line opens up.
The wall disintegrates. Rifle rounds come in a staggered, rhythmic pattern—two shooters, maybe three, walking their fire across the face of the shack in a pattern designed to suppress and penetrate.
The plywood isn't a wall anymore—it’s a screen, and the screen is coming apart. Holes appear in tight clusters. Daylight punches through in jagged, dusty beams. Wood fragments fill the air like sawdust. A round passes so close to my head that I feel the pressure wave against my ear, a physical slap of displaced air that leaves a high-pitched whine in its wake.
I fire through the door gap. Once. The Makarov barks. Through the gap, I see movement—a figure in white winter camouflage darting between trees, closing the distance. I don't know if I hit him. I can't afford to care.
Garrett fires again. Racks the slide.Chk-chack.Fires again. The shotgun is devastating at this range. Each blast is a concussive announcement that this shack has teeth.
A round comes through the window.
It hits Garrett in the shoulder.
The impact spins him like a top. The shotgun drops from his hands. He hits the wall and slides down it, his left hand clamping over the wound. Blood runs between his fingers, dark and fast. The round punched through the plywood barricade and through the meat of his deltoid muscle. The entry wound is a dark hole in his flannel shirt that’s already soaking through.
"Garrett—"
"I’m up."
He grunts, his face a sickly grey. He reaches for the shotgun with his right hand. His left arm hangs uselessly at his side. The blood is steady, arterial. The bright red of a compromised vessel.
He picks up the shotgun, braces it against his hip, and fires one-handed through the port. The heavy recoil nearly takes him off his feet, slamming him back hard against the wall.
Adrian is moving.
He’s across the room before I can say anything. His medical bag is open. His hands are already pulling out gauze and hemostatic packing. He drops to his knees beside Garrett, staying below the window line. He presses the packing deep into the wound.
Garrett hisses through his clenched teeth. Adrian doesn't flinch.
"Apply pressure," Adrian orders. "Hold this."
"I need to shoot."
"You need to not bleed to death. Hold the gauze."
Garrett holds the gauze. His hand is shaking.
Adrian picks up the shotgun.
He looks at it. It’s heavy, alien in his hands. He looks at me.
"How does this work?"
