As John raced past, Jared leaped to his feet and followed, only looking back for a split second to ensure the rest were following suit. They were, and the women were in the lead. Devon was directly behind them, with Dwight and Barry being just a tad slower to realize they were all possibly in a life-and-death situation. Nowadays you met people, and some were nice and others would try to kill you for whatever you were carrying on your back or in your pockets.
Jared knew if someone was whistling from their rear, and John was racing back towards the whistler, the two forces were presumably working together, and John didn’t want to tangle with the four men he’d seen at the cars. Jared also remembered the women’s story of being kidnapped and watching as other women were traded for what amounted to be camping gear much of the time. It occurred to Jared that his little collection of friends probably looked worth a fight to most people left in the city.
Chapter 25
As Jared moved along behind John, he stopped; Jared had to ensure everyone was between John and himself. They could not afford to lose anyone during a panic-driven retreat. Jared halted next to a car and ushered everyone past before bringing up the rear. He swept the rifle back and forth, searching for a threat behind, but saw nothing.
John was up front, moving fast, but not so fast he wasn’t able to digest his surroundings. His rifle was up and scanned for any sign of a person in need of shooting. John figured at this point anyone he saw would be trying to kill him. His plan was to move fast to the next intersection, then turn left, which would take him in the direction they needed to go. This would parallel the street the men in the two vehicles had been on, allowing them access to John and company only through an intersection ahead or by climbing fences and cutting through backyards. This would also take them away from the direction John heard the whistle emanate from.
John was trying desperately to avoid being herded or maneuvered on. He wanted to keep moving fast and, at some point, turn this mess into a chase. Once a chase was in progress, John felt this would add to his tactical capital, which he felt was deficient at the present time. There was little chance anyone in this hostile party would have much experience in real-life combat situations beyond playing Call of Duty or Battlefield on some gaming platform, but John needed the scales tipped as far his way as he could get them before things went loud.
If they were not able to shake these men, then John needed to push hard for separation so they could stop and set up an ambush. He would have preferred avoiding the four men back at the vehicles, but somehow, they employed a lookout who’d alerted the would-be ambushers to John’s presence. John was past the point in his combat career of beating himself up when things didn’t go his way; this was just how battles went. Anyone who had ever been a warrior and participated in serious combat operations knew things rarely ever went the way they were drawn up on the whiteboard or sketched out in the sand.
At the front of the ragtag group fleeing up the street, Jared saw John take a left-hand turn and move parallel to the street with the four men. Once Jared made the left turn, he glanced over his shoulder in time to see a single figure peeking out from around the side of an abandoned truck not more than seventy-five yards behind him. Jared thought the figure looked like a male, but the fleeting glance he got wasn’t enough to be sure.
“I have one to our rear, unknown if they’re armed,” Jared hollered up to John, who just gave a thumbs-up without looking back.
Jared ran along the street, looking over his shoulder nearly every second. It was disconcerting to Jared knowing there was a person behind him who, odds were, carried a rifle or some other firearm with the intent of using it on him. Jared physically shook his head trying to rid it of the fearful thoughts. He didn’t want to be overwhelmed with fear should they run headlong into a firefight.
During his brief training with Bart, Jared had learned a great deal about how to handle a weapon, but it was the late-night drinking sessions that really stuck with Jared, helping keep his mind in the right place when things seemed to be coming apart like one of those semi tires on the interstate. Life was all a state of mind, and combat now was part of his life, so he had to configure his mindset to deal with it, sans panic and hysteria.
Jared knew a gunfight even before the solar flare was not an insignificant event. No person wanted to be shot before or after the solar flare. Gunfights seemed less frequent with a higher survival rate before the solar flare than after, making the experience almost like old-school tightrope walkers versus their modern version with all the built-in safety measures. Jared internally likened his situation to those old-time tightrope walkers in that he had no medical net, so to speak, if he were to be shot.
Jared hadn’t known a single soul who had so much as been shot at before the event. Now he’d actually been in several gunfights, been shot, and seen men shot. If he were forced to compare a gunfight now to some event before the solar flare, he would have to place its equivalence in the category of a noninjury vehicle accident. Something that could definitely get your blood pumping, but after it was over, well, you got back to what you’d been doing before the crisis.
“If you see
