Page 37 of Flash Bang
Fuck.
When he reached the wall to slide the metal bar and swing the door open, Jamie and Beau were right behind him.
Graham led, melting into the woods and moving silently toward the location of the breach. As soon as he heard voices, he halted, holding up a fist.
“He dead, Mel?”
An icy mantle settled over Graham. The one he donned every time he knew he was about to kill.
“I dunno, Len. Dwayne, check and see,” a man, presumably Mel, grunted. “That fucker shot me in the goddamn shoulder. Twice. He better be fucking dead. You better fucking shoot him in the goddamn head.”
Graham moved soundlessly toward the voices, knowing Beau and Jamie followed directly behind him. He caught sight of three camo-and-flannel-clad figures, one using his shotgun to nudge Alex’s prone form. Blood dripped from Alex’s head—a small puddle had formed in the dirt. Another man was reaching down to check a pulse. The one with a dark spot expanding on the upper right corner of his flannel shirt pulled out a revolver from his waistband.
“Fuck it. I’m shooting him anyway.”
Graham lifted his rifle, and before the man could pull back the hammer, Graham unleashed a spray of bullets. The man dropped where he stood. Another man with scraggily dark hair swung around and lifted the shotgun. Jamie and Graham fired, and he crumpled. The third took off on a dead run, but Graham didn’t give chase. He dropped to his knees beside Alex. Beau was checking his carotid for a pulse.
“He’s alive.”
A burst of rifle fire had Graham whipping his head around, gun at the ready. Nothing. He glanced back to Beau, who was pulling on nitrile gloves and checking for injuries. He unzipped his kit and pulled out a clotting sponge to stop the bleeding from the head wound. Beau carefully lifted Alex’s black t-shirt, and Graham could see the divots where the shot pellets had impacted the body armor. Thank fucking Christ.
Graham turned his attention back to the surrounding forest.
“Why is he unconscious? Why the fuck is he bleeding so damn bad from his head? He got shot in the chest. Where else?” Visions of another man lying bloody in the dirt surged to the forefront of Graham’s memory.
“No gunshot wounds. And I’m not one hundred percent certain, but he might have been diving to miss the shot and cracked his head on this.”
Graham glanced back to see Beau holding up a fist-sized rock. Relief was a tidal wave sweeping through him.
The crunch of boots had the wave evaporating in a millisecond. Graham and Beau raised their M4s. Jamie. The rifles lowered. He was alone. No prisoner in tow.
“Where’s the third one?” Graham demanded. “Dead?”
“Gone, G. I don’t have a fucking clue how he got away from me. I think I winged him, though. It was crazy; he was there, and then he was just fucking gone. The trail just died out.” Jamie shook his head.
“Did you see any signs of anyone else?”
“No, but we need to fix the fence,” Jamie replied.
“He okay?” Ty called, hauling ass toward them. Graham lowered the rifle he’d instinctively sighted in on the man.
“Probably,” Beau replied. “But he’s knocked the fuck out. Let’s get him back to the clinic. Be nice to have someone bring a backboard out.”
Graham nodded. “Ty, get back to your loop. I’ll get Ryan to take Alex’s shift. Let Travis know that he needs to stay on his loop.” Graham lifted his radio. “Ryan, I need you to get out here and take Alex’s shift. And bring a backboard. Zach, give the women the all-clear, but have them stay inside, you copy?”
“Copy that, G. Be there in three with a backboard,” Ryan replied.
Then Jamie asked, “What should we do with the bodies?”
As soon as they’d helped Allison, Grace, Ro, and Lia from the bunker beneath the mess hall, Jonah and Zach took off, but not before reinforcing the order that Graham had given over the radio. They were to stay inside, with the doors locked, until further notice. Ro once again sat on a stool in the kitchen, watching as Allison worked on salvaging breakfast, although they weren’t certain anyone would actually stop to eat it. Grace played with a doll on the floor. Lia sat on the floor next to her, arms wrapped around her knees. The foray into the bunker had been Lia’s first trip out of the infirmary. Cam had broken protocol and left the command post to bundle her up and bring her to the mess hall to be stashed with the other women. Lia was still in rough shape, and shied away from everyone except Grace and Cam. When Jonah had reached a hand out to steady her on the ladder coming out of the bunker, she’d jumped back down to the bunker floor and wouldn’t climb a single rung until he’d backed off.
Zach and Jonah had stayed outside to stand guard when the women had been sealed away in the bunker. Ro couldn’t help feeling like they’d consigned them to a terrible fate when Allison had hit the actuator and lowered the hydraulic hatch. As Ro hadn’t gotten a look at the bunker under the range, she wasn’t certain how it compared as far as size. She had been shocked to see a porthole-style door—the type one would see on a Navy ship—at one end of the large room. According to Allison, when unsealed, it led to a tunnel that linked four underground bunkers together—the ones beneath the gun range and the mess hall, and then one beneath the infirmary, and one beneath the command post. Each had a separate door that sealed it off from the tunnels in the event one of the bunkers was breached. It was mind-boggling even to Ro, and she had grown up with a father who lived and breathed this type of preparedness. He’d love this place. They’d built an underground community that somewhat mirrored the one above. Kitchen, bathrooms, showers, bunkrooms, medical supplies, communications equipment, and every kind of other supply that Ro could imagine. When she asked Allison how and when this had been set up, Allison informed her that the bunker beneath the mess hall had originally been built as a bomb shelter during World War II, and the others had been added during the ‘50s. Graham’s uncle, a WWII and Korea vet, had stumbled upon them when he’d purchased the camp and modernized them. From what Allison had been told, the man may have had a somewhat irrational fear of a nuclear attack on U.S. soil. But having grown up with Rick Callahan, things like that didn’t faze Ro.
The women waited anxiously for a report on Alex. The call for a backboard wasn’t good, but that meant he was alive, right?
Waiting gave Ro time to think back on the night before. And what a night it had been. Her mind had been blown—at least for the ninety-some seconds she’d stayed conscious after the most intense sexual experience of her life. Both Graham and Zach had cleaned her up and then cuddled her between them. She’d fallen asleep with Graham wrapped around her from behind and her head resting on Zach’s chest.
The rude awakening of the radio left something to be desired, but it also saved Rowan from what she figured could have been an awkwardly embarrassing morning. After all, what exactly was proper etiquette for dealing with the guys who’d double-teamed you the night before? In the real world, pre-grid down scenario, if this had happened (and Ro excluded that time it almost had), Ro would have grabbed her clothes, not bothered to search for her panties, and gotten the hell on to the walk of shame. Hopefully avoiding any awkward conversations. But now, well, hell. She didn’t know what this was. It wasn’t a relationship, because it wasn’t going to last, but she also couldn’t just avoid them. The compound was only so big. And she still wasn’t supposed to be walking. But she had been—down in the bunker during that excruciating half-hour of radio silence. Ro was a pacer by nature, and she couldn’t help herself. On the upside, her ankle felt surprisingly good. By tomorrow morning, she should be good to go. Which was great, but also sucked at the same time. She’d like to blame her damn-near instant and unshakeable attachment on the whole end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it vibe, but she wasn’t sure if that was it. She’d never met a guy like Zach or Graham before, and when you put them together, they were unmatched.
