Ever Hayes - Redemption

A couple more minutes passed, and I slowly rotated my head to the right. There was still a man there, and my slight movement caught his attention. I saw him peer closer into the water and then start to swing his gun as he realized what he was seeing. I let go of Danny and switched the gun from my left to right hand in one motion, squeezing three shots off into the man’s head before he even pointed his rifle at me. I then shoved off from the wall of debris, spinning around toward the two men on my left, firing the rest of my clip in their direction. I knew for certain I hit one of the men in the back with two of my shots, but the other man fell as the result of a gunshot from a large figure hidden behind a tree to my right. Eddie . How the hell did he get down here so fast?

Then Eddie was in the water, picking Danny up and carrying him up the hill toward the road. I raced up after them and found Flynn and Blake in a gunfight beside the road with a handful of soldiers on the other side of the river. Ava was huddled beside Blake. She had a gun but wasn’t using it. She sure had changed a lot since the bunker .

“We must go,” Eddie shouted at Blake.

“We can’t,” Blake hollered back. “There’s still three or four guys over there keeping us from the truck.”

“Reload, now,” Eddie ordered. “Then when I say go, you start shooting. You cover me, and I’ll get Danny to the truck. I’ll move the truck away from gunfire and you come to me.”

“Okay,” Blake agreed.

“Ready?”

“Yes,” Flynn replied, and Blake nodded.

“Go,” Eddie shouted.

Blake and Flynn alternated rounds, buying Eddie the ten or so seconds he needed to scamper up the ditch and toss Danny into the back seat of a Humvee. I scurried in with Danny as Eddie slid behind the wheel. He jammed the truck in reverse and spun us through the dirt out of the line of fire. A minute later, Blake was running toward us with Ava holding his hand and Flynn a few steps behind him. Eddie spun the Humvee around, and I threw open the door. Blake scrambled in and climbed up the turret, cocking the big gun in case we needed it. Flynn hopped into the passenger seat beside Eddie, and Ava slid in beside Danny, lifting his head onto her lap.

“Find his gunshots,” Eddie hollered back at us as he drove.

“How did you know he was shot?” I yelled back.

“We watched him get shot,” Flynn replied. “Craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“What do you mean?”

“After the third arrow missed, Blake was trying to get in a position to take a shot at the dynamite himself, but there wasn’t anywhere he could find where he wouldn’t be seen.”

I glanced at Ava to see if she’d give me any kind of look for missing those shots. She didn’t. “So?” I asked Flynn, who had stopped her story.

“Well, Eddie decided he needed to do something so he told us to follow him to the parking lot on the south side of the dam. We had to take out six guys, and Eddie blew up the one helicopter, but he got the other pilot to fly us down.”

“That was you two?” That’s how they got down so quickly .

“Us three.” Flynn nodded towards Ava. “She saved my life. There was a guy about to shoot me and she killed him.”

Ah. Now it made sense. She’s never killed anyone before . I remembered exactly how that first time felt—during the chemical attacks—the day I met Sam. I remember throwing up. Twice . “Really?”

Flynn nodded. “Anyway, when those last three trucks crossed the bridge, Blake figured he had to move, and he was about to, and then Danny stands up out of the water on the other side of the bridge and blew the thing from about fifty feet away. The explosion slammed him into the river so hard, and then the soldiers that were around started shooting at him.”

Eddie yelled, “Hold on” as he swerved suddenly and turned onto a gravel road.

Flynn glanced out the window and then continued. “So… Eddie, Blake, and I tried to pick them off with the sniper rifles we’d picked up, but there were too many soldiers and too many people firing at him. We knew they had to have hit him.”

The big gun above us suddenly boomed. Thwump, thwump, thwump, thwump . Hot shell cartridges dropped onto the floor beside us, still smoking. We winced and covered our ears as Blake continued to fire at something behind us. When the shooting stopped for a second, I hollered up at him. “We being followed?”

“Negative,” Blake yelled back. “Not anymore.”

Ava was searching Danny for gunshots. “Including his arm from earlier, I’ve found four entry wounds.”

“Four?” Eddie glanced back at Ava.

“Yes, four.”

“Holes both sides?”

“Both sides?”

“Exit wounds,” I translated.

“One second,” Ava answered. She rolled Danny to his side and looked at his back. “Yes, on his stomach. No on the left thigh and no on the second in his left arm.”

“That’s good,” Eddie replied, making another sharp turn.

“That’s good?” Ava asked in bewilderment.

“Yes. Very good. Could be much worse.”

We had to take Eddie’s word for that.

We managed to make our way around the outskirts of Redlands and Riverside without drawing any unwanted attention, and we snuck up to Disneyland’s back door. It was weird being in Anaheim without traffic—without unlicensed tourists almost killing you as they cut across five lanes to get to the carpool lane. I remembered how much that used to drive my dad nuts. “Every single time,” he’d say. I smiled at the memory. I couldn’t wait to see him again.

We parked in what used to be Downtown Disney, and Eddie kicked in a door that read “Emergency Services.” He found a table in there to lay Danny on, as well as some rubbing alcohol, scalpels, and bandages. Blake and I held Danny down as Eddie extracted the bullets from his arm and leg. Danny was too weak to scream, but it was clear he was in pain. Still, Eddie insisted we couldn’t dull the pain without risking losing him altogether. Danny passed out during the second extraction, but that one went much easier. It was almost six o’clock now. Eddie wrapped Danny up and gave him a few shots for the pain. Then he picked him up, and we made our way toward the Disneyland fence.

Blake cut the fence with bolt cutters, and we slid through, careful not to hurt Danny any more in the process. We were behind the Swiss Family style tree house, adjacent the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. We intended to check Pirates out first. To be safe, Blake decided he should climb the tree house and get a look around. I volunteered to go with him, and we hurried to the top.

It was quite a sight to behold. I’d never seen such a big city—or metro area—so absolutely dead silent. The buildings looked straight out of that Will Smith I Am Legend movie—old, crumbled from drone strikes, vines growing everywhere. Stray dogs roamed with coyotes. I glanced at Blake as chills coursed through my body.

“Freaky.” He said it for me.

Disneyland, for its part, was absolutely silent—exactly what we were hoping for. On the other hand, it barely looked like Disneyland at all. Sleeping Beauty’s Castle was a pile of rubble—s omeone must not have had a daughter . Matterhorn Mountain was also gone. I shook my head and was about to tell Blake I was heading back down when a movement below caught my eye.

There was a person—one single person—walking through Adventureland past the old Jungle Cruise ride. I couldn’t tell from here if it was a man or woman, but he or she hadn’t seen us yet. I grabbed Blake and pulled him down, pointing at the pedestrian through the slots in the railing.