He was bowled off his feet by one skinny and then another. They clawed at him, and he held the rifle stock across his chest to hold them away. Their jaws snapped closed as they nipped at his bare arms. A third skinny joined them and scratched at Dwayne’s eyes in an effort to blind him. The weight of the three held him pinned, and he released his grip on the rifle to drive two fast punches into the face of one of his attackers. Blood jetted down his arm, and the skinny dropped away. Another sank teeth into the flesh of his leg above the knee, and the pain was nearly unbearable. Dwayne could hear more feet pounding down the slope to join the fight.
Dwayne felt a warm shower cover him. Two skinnies fell convulsing away from him, their heads spraying blood and gobbets of brain matter. Double-tap head shots. Dwayne kicked the leg-biter in the face, driving the skinny’s jaw out of place. He rolled to his rifle as the night filled with thunder and light.
Hammond was standing over him pumping round after round uphill with the calm assuredness of a day at the range. Targets left. Targets right. He gave them all hell.
“Am I gonna have to do all the ass-saving or are you gonna help?” he called out, and Dwayne slapped a fresh mag home in the M4 and fired into the dark.
“Good to see you too, asshole,” Dwayne shouted back.
“Where’s the woman?”
“Back on the trail.”
“Lead me back and I’ll cover you,” Hammond called and hammered two charging skinnies, dropping them to the ground in a spray of blood and bone. “No more half-ass tactics. It’s shoot and scoot all the way to evac.”
Dwayne raced along the slope of the hill back the way he came. Lee stayed tight on his six. He doubled his pace as the discharge of a pistol boomed again and again ahead of him.
The Browning.
16
Fight Or Flee
The wounded man by Caroline lay still on his back. His breathing came in weak, rattling gasps. She heard him called Jimbo by the other men. He made choking sounds in his throat.
Caroline put down the handgun to push him over on his side, and he breathed a bit easier.
Gunfire exploded to her right. It had to be the one named Dwayne. He rushed off the trail ahead of her a few moments ago and vanished into the woods, with a mob of aborigines close behind him throwing stones and clubs.
She gripped the pistol and sat listening and watching. The weapon was unfamiliar and alien in her hands. Was she holding it right? She was imitating actors she saw on TV. Was that all bullshit? What about safeties? She knew guns had safeties. Was the one on this pistol in the on or off position? She examined the strange black steel object in her hands but could make no sense of the tabs and levers above the handle.
There were shouts and answering calls from unseen aborigines that sounded close all around. She fought down shivers as she trained the gun up the trail where she expected an armed hunter to appear any second rushing down from the crest of the hill.
A thrashing sound came from the brush behind and below her, and she dropped back on her side and twisted around to see two males from the village stumble across the trail below her. They appeared panicked, and one of them had dark streaks of blood running from his shoulder. The larger of the two looked around wildly, and his eyes quickly found her lying prone on the trail just above him. He grinned and stalked forward, a flint ax held tight in his fist.
Her first shot missed, and she was surprised at the weight of the handgun as it jumped back in her fist. The bright muzzle blast took away her night vision. Her next shot went off by accident when she jerked her hand closed to keep a grip on the butt of the handgun. She was scrabbling to her feet, and a body hit her and drove her down on her back.
Caroline bucked and kicked as a filthy thumb jabbed at her face to tear at the corner of her mouth while another hand pressed her head to the ground. His weight pinned the handgun between them, and she strained to pull it free.
The heavy body stank of grease and feces. The huffing male made sounds like braying laughter as he panted with the exertion of trying to hold her still and tear at her face. She pulled hard and yanked her gun hand free from between their bodies. The barrel pressed tight to the ribs of her attacker, she squeezed the trigger twice, and the hands released her with a jerk.
The weight of the still body was shoved off her. The man the others called Jimbo had braced himself against a bank along the trail and kicked the male away. He looked dazed but was smiling weakly.
“That was badass, lady,” he said.
Her attacker lay across the trail. The two rounds had torn his back open as they exited. If it was possible, he smelled even worse now. Farther down the trail, the other male lay unmoving from a mortal wound where one of her wild shots struck him. Caroline looked at herself. She was sticky with blood, but at least it was not her own. Her cheek and jaw hurt where the savage tried to rip the skin off her face. She spat again and again to get the taste of that filthy thumb out her mouth.
She held the gun out to Jimbo butt-first. “Naw.” He shook his head with a slow,
