Under Fire

319 days until extinction.

Jackson wanted to scream but did not have enough air in his lungs to do so. And it didn’t help that Harper was pressing her entire weight down on top of him as if she were trying for both of them to become part of the landscape.

As the second shot scattered the dirt near where they were laying he realized exactly what she was trying to do.

“Jackson…are you okay?” Her voice was slightly strained as if the words themselves caused pain.

“I…am.” He managed to gasp. “Your arm.”

She glanced at the arm before her eyes focused on the horizon, catching the faintest glint of fading sunlight off metal. And a moment later a crack of the rifle being fired followed by the dirt kicking up near where they were hiding.

“We’ve got to move.”

“What!? But your arm!”

“We can worry about that after,” Jackson opened his mouth to protest but the cold seriousness of Harper’s face ended that desire. “As soon as the next shot gets fired, we get up and run to those nearby trees.” She gestured over the faint hill to a small outcropping nearby with a few sparse trees and a sizable collection of rocks to hide behind.

He tried his hardest to make his voice sound less terrified as he uttered, "okay."

There was silence after as Jackson held his breath waiting for the shot to come. His mind briefly hung on the thought that the next shot could be one that ended his life, that the entirety of his life could end without it having meant anything.

Birdsong came from nearby, followed by the crack of a rifle shot.

“Go!”

Harper seized his wrist as the two leaped to their feet and raced for the small copse of trees. Jackson’s legs had never before felt so unstable, each one was like moving with elastic tubing instead of legs and he nearly collapsed under his own weight within the first few steps. After a heart-pounding few seconds he fell behind one of the larger rocks with Harper sitting next to him, her arm gushing more blood than before.

The crack of the rifle came a moment later as the bark from some of the trees exploded onto the dirt.

“Okay, perfect. Now we can worry about my arm.”

“Which is bleeding even worse!”

“It’s fine, you’re gonna seal it up for me.” Harper tore some of her shirt to quickly tie a knot around her upper shoulder.

“What!? I don’t even know how to sew!”

"You're not gonna sew."

Harper pulled a knife from the sheath on the small of her back and rested it on her knee as she fished for something in her bag. Moments later she pulled out a small tuna can and a lighter.

“Okay, we don’t have a lot of time. You’ve got to pull the lid off this.” She was glad to see Jackson immediately comply. “Okay, now light the rag in there. The flame will get pretty big so be careful.”

Once the flame was lit she offered the hilt of her knife to Jackson, who begrudgingly took it before glancing at her with a look of slow understanding horror.

“Now hold the knife over the flame until it’s red hot.”

“No…no you can’t mean.”

“It’s the only way.” She stared at Jackson then not merely as someone she needed to protect, but an equal member of this group excursion, as an adult.

Nodding slowly he held the knife to the flame, closely so that the heat spread more evenly throughout the metal. There was another crack from the rifle but he held firm and kept his hands as steady as he could.

“Okay, perfect. Now you’ve got to do exactly what you think you do.” She leaned back slightly and held her arm out as much as she could, while still maintaining a vice-like grip above that to stem the bleeding.

“Okay…I can do this.” Reaching his arm out with the knife he put it to Harper’s wound and heard the unpleasant sizzling of skin, and muscle. It was a disgusting smell, perhaps made even more so by it’s familiarity in both scent and smell to a steak frying in a pan.

After what seemed to be minutes but was likely only a few seconds Jackson pulled the knife away and was thankful to see it had stemmed the tide of bleeding, at least for the time being. It was only then that he let out a breath he didn’t even realize he had been holding, his vision beginning to blur as panic finally began to sink in.

“Holy shit…holy shit…holy shit.”

Harper put a comforting hand on Jackson’s shoulder before reaching into her bag to retrieve her most trusted companion; a 92F Beretta that her father had given her when she first began service.

“It’s going to be okay Jackson. I’ve got it from here.”

The words were cold comfort, but a comfort nonetheless. But all Jackson could manage was a shaky nod of acknowledgement.

Harper seemed to almost fall into a rhythm, like a robot following its carefully calculated program. She clung to the rock and dirt as if she were a part of it, putting only the tiniest part of herself at risk as she glanced over it in search of the shooter.

Whoever they were they had moved in the time since then, the shots were coming from further east and so she assumed they were moving in between shots. She would only have a few attempts to spot them before they had a perfect shot at the both of them.

A glint of metal, the crack of a rifle, and nothing. A repetition nearly thirty seconds later, only this time the glint came from even more eastward. And then finally she saw it.

The shift in the grass of movement, and the barest hint of skin.

She aimed in the direction they were running, took a slow breath and releasing it as her finger clenched on the cold metal trigger. This time the crack of a shot was much louder, followed but a strangled sound somewhere between a scream and a gasp. Whoever was shooting at them was dead.

But they waited an additional five minutes to be certain.