Urban Waite - Far Cry - Absolution

He reached Drew and, with the adrenaline still coursing, Will brought Drew up over his shoulder and he pumped up the rise beyond with his thighs feeling like they had caught on fire. It was then, almost as the truck was on them, that the little house blew, the light seen in the forest boughs, and the sound following soon after.

Will turned. He had thought that the house would not go. He had thought that if it was to go that the gas would have ignited already. And that the little house was not there and the cloud of fire and smoke now rose above it all was to him almost as much of a shock as he could now see it was to those back at Eden’s Gate and to the remaining men who followed him in the truck.

The last truck veered. He watched the driver shift and look behind as if the fireball might be heading out across the land to get them. Will paused only for a second, recognizing this was the time he needed to make the bluff and the dense trees and forest that clung to the rocks there.

He took off running again. His feet feeling like two pieces of stone pulled along behind his body. His heart felt inside his chest like it was pumping something that was half acid through his bloodstream. And though he had been cutting a fairly straight path before, he moved down from atop the nearest rise and went running in the depression, keeping hidden from the truck behind, following the curve between the two rises that he could see now would lead him directly to the bluff.

He reached the bluff in the same moment the truck came blaring over the edge of the rise, the engine heard slipping down through the gears as the driver pulled the wheel around. Tires and engine ate up the same tracks Will had left only moments before as he had cut his own path across the sparse forest floor. Drew grunted with each step as Will labored toward the steep incline of the bluff, the truck coming on fast, running over the thin underbrush that grew everywhere beneath the trees.

The gunman in the passenger seat now leaned out and began firing a submachine gun from the window. The bullets raking through the trees. Will slipped then righted himself, one hand holding tight to Drew’s legs and the other held out against the hillside. He was trying now to move upwards on the slope, and he fell beneath his weight and that of Drew’s. He slipped nearly five feet before he could get his toes dug in somewhere and then reach and try to stop Drew who had come rolling after him.

Now Will turned and brought the rifle around. He saw the truck pull sideways down below, the gunman in the passenger seat still. Will put the scope on him and fired. The shot caught the man in the right bicep. He spun a bit with the force then fell out of the door, scrambling now to get around the back of the bed and find some cover.

Both driver and passenger wore flak jackets and Will sighted what he could, seeing how each had taken up a place behind the body of the truck. He had only one cartridge left and he levered it down within the chamber. He was exposed there on the hillside. He had wedged his heels into the loose soil and dried pine needles that lay everywhere beneath the trees, and he braced his back against Drew.

When the submachine gun came up over the body of the truck and fired wildly into the trees and shrubs about them, Will watched through the scope, waiting as the man came into view. Will fired just as the man turned to run for the trees and the slope on which he sat. The bullet entered the side of the man’s ribs, just between the two plates within the vest. The man went down immediately and the gun lay a foot ahead of him in the grass, but he did not move to get it and as Will put the scope across him, he could see the man’s unmoving eyes.

There were no bullets left and Will gave the truck and the driver who hid behind it one last look before he moved and brought Drew to his feet. Drew stood awkwardly on the slope. Now, weak as he was from carrying Drew this far, Will used that same slope to get a little below Drew and placed his shoulder into Drew’s stomach and bent and lifted. He felt his muscles fighting to keep their hold as he went up the hill again, hoping for both their sakes that Mary May had made it to Jerome.

He was almost at the top of the bluff when he looked behind and saw the driver now climbing upward through the trees. The driver, like all the rest, wore a protective vest and Will could see the butt of a shotgun where it emerged above his shoulder. The gun bobbing along behind him as he climbed.

Will had nothing left. He looked ahead of him through the trees. A low spine of rock ran atop the bluff and beyond. Looking past the smooth surface of rock—seen between shrubs and trees—there were patches of dirt and gravel Will thought might be the road. He moved on, his own heart and the scuff of his boots across the ground the only thing to hear. He was running on empty and he knew it. No sweat now felt across his skin and a desperate need felt in the bowels of his stomach and on his tongue for liquid. Each footfall he took feeling like it would be his last.

He came to the top of the rock. He could see now the double track of the road about fifty feet on, down a little gully and across an opening in the trees. Will looked behind him. The driver could not be seen and the idea now of even trying to bring Drew down the gully to where the road sat below was like trying to convince him to climb Everest without rope or oxygen of any kind.

Will slumped and brought his knees down upon the earth. He levered Drew off onto the ground and now he straightened. The effort of carrying Drew through the forest and up the bluff felt as if it had compounded and fused each of Will’s vertebrae into a rigid growth of bone. Not wanting to ever lift the man again, Will met Drew’s waiting eyes then put a foot out and sent the man rolling down the incline toward the road and the bottom of the gully where Will could see in wetter months a stream would flow.

Will was up again just as he saw the driver come through the trees a couple hundred feet behind. Without another thought, Will went over the side and down, sending bits of rock and pebble out ahead of him as he went. At the bottom, he wrestled the gun from his shoulder then scrambled upward toward a gnarled growth of tree roots that had come exposed at one point from the soil. Climbing up, he wedged himself as far under the grip of these roots as possible. With the rifle off his shoulder and no bullets to load it with, Will now took the hunting knife from his belt. He held it in his hand and looked down toward the bottom of the gully where Drew lay watching him.

There was a sound now of the driver coming through the trees. Will heard how his steps changed as he moved from the forest floor onto the smoothness of the rock. Will leaned out a little. He could see the man move cautiously to the edge of rock, the shotgun now held before him as his eyes caught sight of Drew there at the bottom of the incline. The driver came over the edge and down the incline, moving toward Drew.

Will waited as long as he could. The man was no more than ten feet from him now. With knife in one hand and bits of gravel and dirt held within the other palm, Will stood from his hiding place. Drew’s eyes were open wide, looking past the driver to Will, and by the time the driver caught wind of what was happening and turned Will had already thrown the dirt, blinding the driver then shoving the knife upward through his neck.

They went to the ground together. The driver making the small dying sounds that Will had come to know so well when he’d been twenty years of age and in another country far across the world. Blood welled from the windpipe of the man and the gurgle of breath could be heard as the driver struggled to fill his lungs. Will had heard this sound both from men he’d killed, and from friends who had lain dying in his arms, and he had liked it then no more than he did now.