Once John had Dwight’s shirt removed, he was still unable to locate Dwight’s wound. He pulled out a bottle of water and poured it over Dwight’s chest, causing the man to lurch as the cold water contacted his exposed flesh. When the water cleaned the blood away, everyone in the room saw the two small tears in Dwight’s neck and armpit. He’d been hit with two pellets from the shotgun. The projectiles from the shotgun were roughly the size of .32-caliber bullets, and both entered areas of Dwight’s body that contained substantially vital organs or major circulatory components.
No one else was hit, which Jared was thankful for, but still he stared in stunned disbelief as John worked on the dying man on the floor. John pulled out more medical supplies and began packing the two wounds. He had no other means with which to treat Dwight’s wounds.
“Fucking Dwight, Goddamn it, man, stay with me, brother. We’re gonna get you back to the ranch house, and Shannon is gonna fix you right up,” John said through clinched teeth as he worked to stop the wounds from donating any more of Dwight’s blood to the carpeted floor of the living room.
Jared couldn’t remember if any of them mentioned to Dwight the bit of trivia that Shannon was a schoolteacher and not a doctor. The fact that John was telling Dwight Shannon was going to fix him told Jared Dwight was a dead man.
Dwight rolled his head to stare at John. His eyes looked lucid at best as he swallowed hard, his mouth appearing to gulp although he wasn’t drinking. He held his head for a moment as if studying John’s face for any sign the man was being untruthful about Shannon and the ranch house; then his head slumped back to one side, and he continued the gulping motion. To Jared it looked like a trout he’d caught many years ago with his father. After taking the fish from its lake home, the trout had appeared to gulp at the air until it was dead.
John had seen men in this condition and knew full well Dwight was going to die on the floor of a stranger’s house in front of people he barely knew. The shotgun pellets undoubtedly damaged something vital when they’d ripped into his body. John was fairly sure the armpit shot caught the poor man’s heart or one of the large arteries attached to it. When John looked up, he saw the two women standing in the doorway, faces ashen white, while the rest of the men along with Devon stood deeper in the house, looking at him as if they expected John to somehow perform a miracle.
John reached out and touched Dwight’s neck, feeling for a pulse. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he felt a weak pulse for the first couple of seconds, and then it was gone. Dwight passed on to greener pastures, John hoped. He withdrew his hand and slowly shook his head without looking at a single member of the group.
“He’s the guy we came for,” Barry blurted.
John was on his knees, his butt resting on the heels of his boots. He turned his face to the ceiling and covered it with his hands for a full ten seconds before dragging his hands downward, stopping only when his fingertips reached his mouth. He curled his hands into fists, covering his mouth. “Jared, can you keep an eye out front? We made a lot of noise a minute ago,” John suggested in a soft, tired voice, completely ignoring Barry’s statement of the obvious.
Without hesitation, Jared moved to a window and scanned outside. He saw nothing, but remained focused on both ends of the street in the event anyone came to investigate all the racket induced by their ambush.
John slowly dropped his hands and looked to Barry. “We need to move him into a bedroom and at least cover him with a blanket.” Before Barry could argue about a burial, John continued in an almost pleading tone, “We don’t have the time or resources to bury him, man.”
Barry stood for a second, unbelieving of their situation, which had seemed to be about to get better, but now suddenly was worse than before they’d left the ranch. Still stunned by the events of the past few minutes, Barry shuffled forward, and together he and John hefted Dwight’s lifeless body off the floor, moving the dead man to the first bedroom they found. Inside was a full-size bed complete with blankets and sheets. They laid Dwight on the floor so John could draw back the bedding. The men then placed their fallen comrade on the bed and pulled the bedding over the top of Dwight, covering him entirely.
“How did this happen?” Barry gulped after Dwight was covered.
“Bro, shitty things happen when people don’t act right. Especially when two forces start trading rounds,” John answered, wishing he had been able to kill all four men quicker so this hadn’t happened. John grimaced to himself, remembering his threat assessment had placed the man who’d killed Dwight as the least likely to have an impact in the fight, and therefore he’d chosen to go after him last. John didn’t think about Dwight’s death the same as the rest of the group due to his experience with losing friends in combat in the past. To John, Dwight’s death was something to shake his head at and chalk it up to the violent unpredictability of force-on-force conflict.
Barry shook his lowered head and walked out of the bedroom, with John on his tail.
