Brett Battles - No Return

Dori moaned, then slipped downward.

Wes wrenched her back up, and twisted her around so that she was between him and Dillman, then easily ripped the gun out of her hand. It was then that he realized she’d been hit, too. The bullet must have passed all the way through him and into her.

A rock sailed out from behind some small boulders and clattered on the ground near Dillman’s feet. The big man whipped around to see where it had come from.

Wes had never shot a weapon in his life, but as Dillman raised his pistol in Anna’s direction, Wes squeezed the trigger of Dori’s gun.

Thunder rocked the desert as flames licked out of the end of the barrel.

Dillman fell face-first onto the ground, his gun clattering across the stone surface, then flying off the edge into the darkness.

“Michael!” Dori screamed as she wiggled free of Wes’s grasp. She staggered over to where Dillman lay, and fell to her knees. “Michael.” She put a hand against his motionless face, then let out a wail.

“Dori,” Wes yelled. “It’s over.”

Suddenly she was on her feet again, rushing at Wes, a scream of fury spilling from her mouth.

With one arm wrapped around her side, she used the other to take a swing at Wes. He tried to back out of her range, but she kept coming as blood began to soak her shirt.

“You bastard!” she yelled. “You killed him!”

“Dori, stop,” he said.

“You killed him!”

“I had no choice,” he said.

“You pushed him off, because my goddamn sister told you to. You killed my baby. You bastard!”

It wasn’t Dillman she was talking about. It was Jack.

“Enough!” Wes yelled as another blow hit him on the arm. “Enou-”

A large hand clamped down on his shoulder and spun him around.

Dillman. He was a gut-shot mess, but alive. He pushed Wes into Dori, and made an awkward grab for the gun, but missed.

Wes whipped around and realized they were only a few feet from the edge of the rock. One good shove from Dillman and he and Dori would go over the side.

He tried to duck around the bigger man, but Dillman reached out and grabbed him.

Twisting left and right and left again, he struggled to get out of the man’s grasp. When he turned again, the butt of his gun knocked against Dillman’s hip and popped out of his hand, smacking against the rock.

Dillman let go of him and made a grab for the weapon.

But it was Dori, not her husband, who came up with the gun. She pointed it at Wes.

“You goddamn son of a bitch,” Dori spat. “It is over now.”

She staggered slightly from her wound, then took a step backward for balance. But she had misjudged her position, and her foot landed half on, half off the rock.

Her eyes went wide and her arms flew out as she fought to keep from falling.

Dillman tried to grab her, but instead of connecting with her hand, he knocked into her arm, stealing what little balance she had left.

With a face clouded in disbelief, Dori vanished over the edge.

Dillmanfell to his knees, looked over the drop, then collapsed to the ground.

“Dori!” he cried out. When he said her name again, his voice had weakened. There was no third time.

Wes knelt down and checked Dillman’s pulse. He was still alive. Barely.

His own energy waning, he sat down on the rock.

“You’re bleeding.” It was Anna. Her hand touched the wound on his back, then found similar damage around front. “Oh, God.”

“Went clean through,” he told her, panting a little. “Is that good?”

“We need to get you to a hospital.”

The thought of walking all the way back to the car was not an exciting one. He wasn’t even sure he could do it, but he knew he was going to have to try. Then he remembered …

“Dori’s got the car keys,” he said. “One of us … is going to have to climb down and … get them.”

“You stay here. I’ll do it.”

“Yeah. That’s probably best,” he said, trying to smile. But before she could move, he touched her on the leg. “What about … Forman? Is he dead?”

“I didn’t check.”

She rushed over to where the commander lay. “He’s still breathing. But there’s no way we’re going to be able to get him to the car.”

“Keys first,” Wes said. “We can worry about that … later.”

Maybe there was some old wood around here they could use to make a travois. Worst case, once they were within cellphone range, they could call for help.

As Anna moved off into the darkness, he tried to track her progress, but soon he could hear nothing but his own breathing and the sounds of the breeze in the brush. He considered scooting over to Forman, but he knew he needed to conserve his strength, so the commander was going to have to just hang in there on his own.

A memory came to him, of him and his father camping up at Kennedy Meadows. Just the two of them sitting by the fire while a couple of trout cooked in a pan over the flames.

“What are we going to do tomorrow?” he had asked.

“Whatever you want,” his father told him.

“I want to fish again.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do.”

“I love you, Dad.” Not the Wes of the memory, but the Wes bleeding on the rocks said.

The sound of movement in the brush. It was off in the direction Anna had gone.

“Please tell me you found them,” Wes said, his voice not nearly as strong as he’d thought it would be.

More steps.

“Anna?”

Someone moved into the leveled area. The shadowy form was too tall to be his girlfriend.

Wes looked around for Dori’s pistol, unsure if it had gone over the side with her, but he didn’t see it. Instead, the best he could do was a palm-size stone. He picked it up.

“You don’t seriously think you could hit me with that, do you?”

“Lars?” Wes said.

The moonlight revealed the face of Wes’s old friend.

“I thought you were …? How did you …?”

Lars was about to say something, then he glanced at Dillman’s body.

“That who I think it is?”

“Michael Dillman. Remember him? He … was Dori’s husband. Dori Dillman … Only Dori Dillman was-”

“I know,” Lars said. “Mandy’s sister.”

“How did you know?”

“Later.” Lars paused. “Where’s Commander Forman?”

Wes nodded with his chin toward the dark form lying on the rock. “That’s him. Anna checked him a few … minutes ago. He’s alive.”

Lars jogged over to the commander and did his own check. When he came back, he said, “What about you? Are you okay?”

Wes raised the hand that had been pressed against his wound. “I’ve been better. Anna went down … to get the keys so we could take Dori’s car. Now that you’re here … maybe we can get the commander out, too. Wait, if you have a car, we can just take that.”

Lars shook his head. “I’m on your motorcycle.”

Wes stared at him. “I don’t even want to know how that happened.”

“Where did you say Anna was?”

“Down … there.” Wes looked toward the edge.

Lars walked out to the end of the rock, then knelt down and glanced over.

“No Anna. Unless she’s that body lying down there.”

“Dori,” Wes said.

Sounds in the bushes again, only this time it was Anna who stepped out. She was dangling something in her hand. “Found them. Now let’s get-”

She pulled up short as Lars stood up from where he’d been kneeling.

“Lars?” she said, then brightened. “Great. You can help me get him to the car.”

“You’re not going to need the car,” Lars said.

“What are you talking about?” Wes asked.

Then he heard a noise in the distance, something familiar. It almost sounded like the breeze, but it was growing steadily louder.