Ben approached quietly, unsettled at how easily he was now falling into this routine. He had some combat training, yes, but he never imagined he would be using it this much. He had originally gotten into prepping to weather the little storms: economic recession, natural disaster, political unrest, but the idea behind prepping was to act as a stopgap. He never imagined having to live in a world so unsettled as this, and he never wanted to have killed so many people as he had done and was about to do now.
Ben waited in the brush, finger on the trigger as he brought one of the gunmen into his crosshairs. He was anxious, waiting for Jackson to pull the trigger, and he suddenly wished that he had been the one to start the fight.
Waiting to pull the trigger to kill a man was one of the most anxious experiences of Ben’s life. But he wasn’t sure if it was the actual act of killing the man or the fact that he was doing it so covertly. It made him wonder how many crosshairs he would find himself in the coming days.
The men continued to talk and chat, and one of them burst out laughing, and then all hell broke loose as Jackson fired from the other side of the camp.
Ben didn’t pause to see the reactions from the other men, and instead, he just pulled the trigger, putting a bullet through the side of the head of the man who’d been sitting down, engaged in conversation with the rest of his comrades.
Jackson managed to bring down one more before the rest of the group found cover, but Ben missed his next target as he ducked behind a tree.
“Where the hell are they coming from?” One of the men shouted.
“They’re fucking everywhere! Just shoot!”
When the men started spraying the forest with bullets from their automatic weapons, Ben flattened himself to the dirt, waiting for a lull in the gunfire. He felt his heartbeat against the soft soil of the earth, and each quick breath brought with the scent of dirt, leaves, and grass. And despite the violence and chaos surrounding him, he had a flash of his childhood appear to him. It surprised him, but he was suddenly in the woods, playing hide and seek with Mark. It was before their parents had died, before everything had turned to shit.
The gunfire ended, and Ben propped himself back up on his elbows. He peered into the scope of his rifle and found the man he’d followed earlier. Only elbows and a piece of the man’s shoulder were visible from behind the tree, not enough for a clean shot. Ben remained patient, using the same tactics he used in hunting. Let the prey lull themselves into a trap of their own making.
Ben then saw the fighter look back at the campsite. He was searching for something, and Ben realized that the enemy had left the nuclear device with the rest of the gear.
The enemy exchanged hand signals between them. Ben couldn’t see what was signed, but he figured one of them would be making a move toward the package.
Another minute passed, with sporadic gunfire exchange between Jackson and the gunmen who were trapped on his side of the battle. And then a heavy wall of fire erupted as the man Ben was watching sprinted from the cover of his tree toward the camp.
Ben was a pretty good shot, and he easily tracked the runner and kept him in his line site. Once Ben had a good bead on him, he pulled the trigger and shot the man in the stomach. The man collapsed and rolled forward a few cycles before laying completely still.
Ben looked to the bag where the man had been heading toward and figured that’s where the piece of the nuclear device was located. Ben needed to get to it before someone else beat him to it.
With three of the other gunmen now dead, the odds were shifting into Ben and Jackson’s favor. But with the device so close, it was growing harder to wait for an opening.
Ben couldn’t stop shaking. And it wasn’t from adrenaline or fear but from hesitation. He didn’t think his body could take killing another person. He had lost track of the number of men he had killed, and he was becoming numb to the act of it. He was haunted by the faces of the dead, and he wasn’t sure how much longer he would be able to hold it together.
Unable to wait any longer, Ben glanced over to the other shooters and saw that most of their attention was focused on Jackson in the woods. Now was his opening.
Ben quickly got up from the dirt and headed toward the duffle bag next to the man on the ground. He sprinted as fast as he could, but he still felt slow. By the time he reached the halfway mark, the other shooters had noticed, and Ben was suddenly under fire. But he was too close to turn back now, and he reached for the duffle bag, snagging it on the run as he never broke his stride and headed back toward the woods.
Ben’s heart skipped from the amount of gunfire that chased him, but he never stopped as he made his way down the hill. He headed for the horses, suddenly in-flight mode and wanting to get out of this place as fast as he could move.
Ben was moving too quickly down the side of the hill, and he lost his footing. He tripped and tumbled head over feet into the water, which helped soften the blow, but not by much.
Ben landed on a few rocks stuck in the soft sediment of the riverbed, one of them cutting his arm. But his body was still so loaded up from the adrenaline that he popped back up as if nothing had happened and looked
