Part 12
Later That Same Afternoon.
I shout, “Nepotism!” until he runs out of bullets and pauses to reload.
“Are you hit?” he yells. His head remains below the cover of dirt. I hear metal banging as he reassembles his weapon.
“We’re the only ones shooting!” I’m not yelling, but we’re far enough away I need to raise my voice.
“No dude,” he says. “I definitely heard other weapons discharging.”
“That was me.”
“Pretty sure, dude.”
“We’d be dead right now!” I yell, and a hot shot tears through my sweatshirt, passing a molecule’s breath from my skin and exits the other side. I stumble thinking I’m hit. I shake my fist at the trees and scream, “I bought this yesterday, you fuckbags!”
A machine gun answers, burping a clean line through the air above me. My race to the knoll could be a slow motion film, long, and with a hell of a lot of bullets. I find myself having a hard time understanding the enormous mounds of dirt that were exploding in the air all around me. This guy has really bad aim.
Or...
“Fuck!” I scream, stopping my charge mid-stride and ducking behind the nearest elm. “Get out of the creek bed!”
“Wouldn’t it be a ‘crick’ bed?”
“It’s a trap!”
“Fuck.” He dashes up the embankment, but is greeted by a wall of bullets hitting the ground in front of him. “See!” he cries, backpedaling into cover. “Shooting at us.”
“Why is he aiming so low? He wants to tie us up while they find Eva. These guys have no idea where she is, they can’t kill us.” I brave a short look out of cover, but I can’t see anything that might not be a waving branch.
“I can’t see him,” says. “Is it Kerouac?”
“Kerouac’s dead,” I say. I poke my head out from behind cover. I’m showered in wood-chips as a slug cracks the tree above my head. “We need to cross the water,” I yell.
“What?” Nepotism shouts. “No!”
“If they find her before we do, they are going to fucking kill her!” I yell and dash for the bank, dodging left and right to make a difficult target. I dive and roll, clutching my guns to my chest, land beside Nepotism and pull into a defensive curl to recover my bearings.
“She’s a villain,” he counters. “If they kill her, it’s in our best interest.”
“Maybe kissing my shotgun is your best interest!”
“He he he,” he titters. “You’re in love.”
I immediately draw fire when I pick my head up to see if anyone is closing. “She has my notebook. If they get to her before we do, they have my notebook. If they get my notebook, they know what we’ve been working on.”
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