Robison Wells - Blackout

“The thing is,” Aubrey said, “I’m sorry about everything back home. I probably should be saying this to your face—and I’ve wanted to. You don’t know how much I’ve wanted to. But I’m just so sorry that I ditched you for Nicole. It wasn’t right, and it only led to trouble. Every time I tried to do something good I screwed things up even more. I treated you horribly, and I did horrible things. Nicole wasn’t buying stuff for me all the time. I was stealing it. I was stealing just because I could and because I wanted to be pretty like Nicole. Maybe you already guessed that, but I wanted you to hear it from me. Assuming you’re even listening, which I don’t know if you are.”

She walked to the Space Needle for the tenth time and looked up at the structure. No one was there, doing whatever a terrorist would do.

“You were always there for me,” she continued. “And I turned my back on you. I betrayed a lifetime of friendship for—”

There was a pop, and then three more pops. She knew the sound the instant she heard it. Gunshots. She spun in place, trying to look for the shooter, but it was too much of a bowl—the shots echoed off every building.

“Jack?” she said. “Jack!” She started running for the music museum. Before she got far, she saw Jack running toward her, blood streaming from his head and down his shirt.

She reappeared as she ran, and Jack altered his course to meet her. He seemed to be running fine, but there was blood everywhere.

Aubrey threw out her arms to hug him, but when he reached her, he just grabbed her and kept running.

“They tried to kill us,” he said, panting.

“Are you okay?”

“We have to get out of sight—away from the snipers.”

She tried to look at him as they ran, but her eyes were too blurry to see his wound. He seemed to be bleeding above his right ear, but he was moving too much to be sure.

“Why?” she shouted.

“I don’t know.”

They ran in between two buildings, out of the view of snipers—or at least, she hoped so. It should have been out of the soldiers’ view if they didn’t move. Jack began to stumble, and pulled her behind a Dumpster with him.

“What’s going on?” she asked, her hands on his head, trying to stave off the bleeding. His blood leaked through her fingers and down her arm, dripping from her elbow onto the pavement.

“I don’t know,” he panted. “Everything was fine. It was quiet. We were watching, and Rowley was getting routine checks from the snipers. And then all of a sudden he was pulling the detonator from his pocket, priming it.” Jack paused and wiped blood from his eye.

Aubrey couldn’t get the bleeding to stop. She pulled her sweater up over her head, ignoring the cold, wet Seattle weather in her flimsy military T-shirt. She mashed the sweater against his wound.

“The detonator?” she asked, panicked. “You mean, like, the ankle detonator?”

He nodded, and then winced at the movement. “It was all of a sudden. He didn’t say anything—he just heard something on his radio and pulled it out of his pocket. I swear, he was about to push the button.”

“How did you stop him?”

“Laura did,” Jack said, leaning his back against the filthy Dumpster. “She hit him and took it—she’s so fast—and I think she broke his arm. That’s when the fighting started.”

Aubrey peeked around the edge of the Dumpster toward the way they’d come, and then glanced up at the rooftops. She couldn’t see anyone. But she needed Jack’s eyes. She wouldn’t have been able to see a sniper on a rooftop even if her head wasn’t filled with adrenaline.

“What happened to you?” she asked, turning her attention back to him.

“McKinney tried to shoot me,” he said. “Right as Laura tackled him. I swear, she saved my life. Twice.”

“Where is she?”

She could feel him try to shake his head, but her hands wouldn’t let him. “I don’t know. The captain gave the order to the snipers to take out the Lambdas.”

“What? Why would he do that?” She felt herself starting to cry, and she pushed the feelings down. “Did you know why? You could hear the radio in his ear, couldn’t you?”

Jack smiled weakly. “I blocked it out because I was listening to you.”

“Oh great,” she said, forcing a laugh. “Good job, Aubrey. We have to get out of here.”

“Uncover my ear,” Jack said. “We’ve got to find Laura.”

JACK TRIED TO PUSH EVERYTHINGelse out of his mind—the throbbing in his own head, his labored breathing, Aubrey’s poorly hidden sobs. He closed his eyes.

The pain was unbearable, and he kept trying to turn off the sense of touch—turn off the nerves in his own head. But it was an almost overwhelming task. He felt every shred of torn skin, every scrape against his skull, every broken blood vessel. It was excruciating.

There weren’t any voices, not from the music museum. He could hear one person’s breathing. He didn’t know if it was a soldier or Laura.

It had to be a soldier. None of the Green Berets would have left Laura alive, not after she attacked them so viciously.

But if she was dead, they’d have the detonator. Both he and Aubrey would have lost a leg by now.

He heard the sound of someone on a roof, but he couldn’t pick it out. It was near them—rubber soles on a steel roof. That had to be a sniper, unless Laura was climbing onto roofs now.

He tried to concentrate even more, but it was nearly useless. Every time he moved his head, trying to locate a sound, the rough rubbing of the bloody sweater distracted him.

Jack could hardly believe he was still alive. The bullet had come so close. He’d felt every bit of it, as if time had slowed down. He’d felt it rip through his skin, then skid around his skull. He wondered how much farther it would’ve needed to be to the left to have killed him instead of grazing him—a millimeter? Two? He could have been dead right there. No one would have alerted Aubrey, and she’d have been killed by a sniper.

There was a clatter on a rooftop, the sound of—of a gun? And then quiet. Breathing. Two people had just fought and one of them had beaten the other, and he had no idea who had won.

“We have to get up,” Jack said, looking in Aubrey’s eyes. He moved the sweater from his head—it was now just a soaked rag, and it was stopping him from finding help.

“Why?” she asked, plainly terrified.

“To find Laura. Now.”

Aubrey stared back at him for a moment, and then nodded. She stood, still hunched so she wouldn’t be seen over the Dumpster. She gave him her hand, and he pulled himself to his feet. He felt dizzy and tired, and he wondered if this was the right choice.

The breathing on the rooftop moved, quickly now, faster than a Green Beret could move. It had to be her.

Why was she fighting the snipers? Why weren’t they just getting out of there? Was it rage? Revenge? Did she think they were going to track them all down?

“You stay here,” Aubrey said. She reached into her small bag and pulled out the light pink bottle of Flowerbomb. It was a ridiculous image—she was wearing jeans and T-shirt, both her hands were smeared in his blood, and yet she was spraying herself with perfume.

His nose was immediately filled with the aroma of roses and orchids, mixed with the pungent iron scent of blood.

She smiled at him. “You look terrible.”

“You look like you just murdered me,” he answered.

She kissed him quickly, and then vanished.

She shouldn’t have done that. The smell was on him now, right under his nose. He scrubbed at his face with sticky, red fingers to remove the perfume.

There was so much blood. He was going to pass out.