Ryan Westfield - Getting Home

But Rob knew he was gone anyway.

And then it happened.

He didn’t hear the gunshot. There was too much gunfire. Too much chaos and too much noise.

He didn’t see the bullet slam into the torso. But he saw the result. He saw the woman falling, and he saw the bullet wound.

They were shooting.

What he’d done had mattered. He accomplished what he’d set out to do.

Another one fell. Another bullet wound.

Something slammed into his head again.

His vision went black.

“Max!”

But it was too late.

He wasn’t stopping.

“Max! Stop!” called out Mandy, as loud as she could. Her voice sounded frantic and she didn’t care.

Max was sprinting towards the car. Sprinting towards the group that had surrounded Rob.

Mandy hadn’t seen it until it was too late. She’d been busy with the other side.

When she’d finally turned, Max had already been running across the dirt. He carried only his Glock. His coat and pants were torn. His gait was uneven because of his leg.

She couldn’t see his face. But she knew what expression she would have seen.

Mandy didn’t know who the man in the car was. And neither did Max.

But he was still risking his life for him.

Mandy trained her rifle on one of the men who was beating the stranger on the ground. It looked like they were about to kill him. Or maybe they already had.

Mandy could make it easier for Max.

She pulled the trigger.

But nothing happened. It seemed like it was jammed.

Mandy’s brain was a mess. She couldn’t remember what she was supposed to do. She slammed her fist into the rifle in frustration and tossed it to the side.

All around her, her friends were still fighting.

The mob had been thinned considerably. They’d almost made it. But those who were left were still coming.

Georgia was picking them off one by one with machine-like precision and control.

John and Cynthia had ventured into the fray, into the scattered mob. They were shooting them at closer range.

Some of the mob were lying on the ground, half alive. Some had given up, and were simply sitting in place.

Others were still fighting, still rushing the van.

The mob was a broken mess. Disorganized and destroyed.

But still dangerous.

Max, off in the opposite direction of Cynthia and John, was firing as he ran. His Glock was held outstretched in front of him.

Mandy grabbed her own handgun and dashed off towards Max.

A hand reached out for her. It was a man in his twenties, wearing no shirt and nothing but tattered underwear. He held a meat cleaver in his other hand.

The cleaver swung towards Mandy.

She shot him with her handgun. It was almost all automatic. She barely had to think about it.

She took aim and pulled the trigger and the young man fell, his cleaver falling with him in his clenched fist to the ground.

Mandy sprinted away from the body, towards Max.

Someone was running behind her. She checked over her shoulder. It was a kid with a gun in his hand. He wasn’t part of the mob.

She ran on.

She didn’t fire as she ran. She didn’t want to hit Max.

She heard the Glock discharging.

She reached Max as he was plunging his knife into someone’s stomach.

There was someone coming for Max, two hands on a stone that swung towards his head.

Mandy raised her gun, took aim at the woman’s head, and pulled the trigger.

The bullet struck the woman in the arm. She didn’t collapse, but the rock smashed into the ground rather than Max’s head.

Max spun and, without hesitation, plunged his knife right into the woman’s stomach.

The kid reached them, panting and out of breath, his gun raised.

The man who’d driven the car lay on the ground, bleeding from his head.

Mandy looked around. The mob was scattered. Most of them lay on the ground. Many of them were dead. The rest were injured, moaning and screaming and crying.

Mandy’s ears were ringing. She was partially deaf.

The kid got down on the ground, dropping his gun into the dirt. He got both his hands on the stranger and started shaking him, as if he was trying to revive him. He was saying something, but Mandy couldn’t hear what it was.

Max put his hands on the crying kid and pulled him away.

Mandy saw him open his mouth, but she heard nothing.

As Mandy looked around, her heart sank.

They were alive. Mandy and Max. John and Cynthia. James and Sadie.

But she didn’t feel joy or triumph.

Her body was so weak she felt like she might collapse to the ground at any moment.

The carnage around them was horrible. Terrifying. And completely real. She could close her eyes, but it would never go away.

This was the world she lived in now.

Max woke up with a headache. His leg hurt and his entire body was sore from yesterday. He’d pushed it harder than he had in who knew how long. Maybe ever.

But he was alive. They were all alive. Except for Rob, who Max had barely met.

“You awake?” said Mandy, who lay beside him.

Max nodded.

“How’d you sleep?”

“Not good,” said Max.

He didn’t elaborate, but his dreams had been filled with nightmarish images of the carnage from yesterday.

“Me neither,” said Mandy.

Max closed his eyes again, remembering yesterday.

It had seemed more like a series of days than a single day. The reality was, he didn’t know how long it had all taken. His automatic watch, which had proven so durable on countless misadventures, had finally broken. The acrylic crystal hadn’t cracked, and there were no marks on the stainless steel case, but the watch had finally stopped ticking. No matter how much he shook it or wound it, the red seconds hand didn’t move.

The battle hadn’t felt like it had really ever ended. There’d been no final victory to celebrate. There’d been no decisive moment that they had all seen.

Sure, Rob, whose name Max had finally learned, had helped turn the tide of the rushing mob. But the battle had continued after that.

The battle had simply continued to wind down, further and further.

Max and the others had split up into groups of two. They’d wandered the battlefield, walking between the corpses and the injured. For those that weren’t yet completely dead, but lay bleeding out onto the dirt, Max and the others had shot them in the head. Usually point-blank range.

The images were still in Max’s head. He’d shot more than the others. Mandy could barely stomach it. She’d shot one woman in the head, whose arm had almost been torn off, and then she’d thrown up. Mandy had been able to keep it together in the battle, but then the horror of the whole thing had come crashing down on her like a tidal wave.

The adrenaline of the battle had gradually worn off and they’d all been left exhausted, with the task of finishing the mob off.

It didn’t seem like many of the mob had gotten away. When things had gotten bad, they’d started attacking each other.

Max remembered finding two men fighting each other. They’d been slashing at each other with axes, anger and rage on their faces. By the time Max had gotten to them, they were on the ground, both of them bleeding. They’d been lying on their backs, too injured to get back on their feet. They’d both been dying, bleeding rapidly out onto the dirt. But they’d still been slashing at each other, picking their arms up and letting them fall with the weight of the axe in their hand, hoping to strike one final blow.

It had been senseless. Senseless violence just for the sake of expressing frustration and anger.