***
Sunlight assaults me when I next open my eyes. I quickly close them again.
“…see them?”
“…close for my…”
“…she’s dead. Just drive. We’ll sort it out…”
I strain my ears, but their voices simply won’t compute in my brain, so I try to listen in a different way.
“I must have hit them. I fired eight rounds. How did they find this kid so quickly? How did any of them get found?”
Those thoughts don’t make sense.
“I’m starving; stupid ass won’t even stop for a burger. We would have lost whoever it was towns ago…”
I sense a headache coming on and I stop trying to listen altogether. I place my hands gently over myself and find I’m still in one piece. I’m foggy on where I am until I remember the gunshots. I’ve been kidnapped!
Where are Sophie and Nicole? Are they okay? Have they been hurt? Who was shooting?
I move my head and this time open my eyes again. I’m out of the way of the glaring light now and, as I look around at the sides of the van, I discover all the holes I’d noticed just before blacking out look like they’re gunshots. The holes are all round me and scattered randomly about. The van had been heavily hit. Why was someone shooting at us? Sophie and Nicole, are they alive?
My arm knocks something next to me and I turn my head to the side and jolt away when I see that lying next to me is a dead woman. She has on the same clothing as the men that have taken me; she must have been the driver of the van that I hadn’t seen. Blood pools over her chest; she must have been shot. I’m lying next to a dead woman.
Nausea runs through my body and I turn away, trying to resist the urge to vomit. I have seen plenty of fake dead bodies on TV and even some real ones on the news, however nothing comes close to having one right next to me. I try to sit up and it takes all my energy to do so. I move as far away from the dead body as I can get in the back of the van and try to open the side door. It’s locked.
“What is that noise?”
“Do you hear that?” one of the men speaks. I hold my breath, worrying they’ve heard me pulling at the door.
“Who cares. We’re so close to The Windmill and I’m starving. Keep driving.”
“Shut up, kid. I’m in charge here and if I want to bloody stop this van, then I will.”
“ASSHOLE.”
The word screams in my head and I flinch. I hadn’t been expecting that. We keep driving, but I hear the caution from the two men. Even the second one who has been angry seems to suddenly be on edge. What can they see that I can’t? Who is after us?
“Get your gun out.”
“It’s just a woman with a broken down car—”
“Get it out.”
I pull on the handle again. I know something is wrong, and as much as I don’t want to be out there if some crazy person or persons are shooting at me, I definitely don’t want to be in here with a dead body being transported to a place I don’t know, against my will. In my opinion, both options suck.
“Don’t slow down.” Suddenly the second guy sounds nervous.
I pull one last time at the van door, which slides loudly open as shots ring out again. This time, it’s a constant shooting that has me thinking it’s on automatic. I hold onto the inside of the open van when it suddenly swings around in what I assume is an attempt to turn back and head the same way we had been coming from.
During the quick turn I get a full view of a woman who is now aiming a gun that looks half her size directly at me. Everything moves in slow motion then. The van is slowly spinning away from her, she is crying as her eyes take me in and then her finger squeezes the trigger.
The shots echo inside the van and I feel the impact of several bullets hit me. I fall backwards onto the dead woman and gasp for a breath that won’t come. Something is filling up in my lungs almost like water. I’m drowning.
The van slams to a stop and I vaguely hear more gunshots in the distance.
I let my head fall to the side and I get a view outside the van. I witness the woman standing with the gun no longer in her hands and she looks up at the sky as though she has surrendered. Then another shot goes off and she is hit. She falls to the ground and, before my eyes, she disappears. Her body turns to ashes and she is instantly blown into the wind outside.
It’s impossible; that is not real.
I glance down at my own hands which are covered in blood and my heart beat races so fast I think it might be trying to pick up speed to jump up my throat. It’d explain why I can’t appear to breathe at all right now. This can’t possibly be real, right? I mean, I was kidnapped? Shot? Then saw a woman turn to ash? Not real, surely it’s not real.
“Shit! The kid is down.” One of the men stands over me, jumps in the back and takes his jacket off to apply pressure onto my wound. “Go, go, go!” he yells and the van flies forward.
‘How did she find us? How many more of them are there? This kid isn’t going to make it. Agent Goodings is going to kill us.’
“Five minutes!” the one driving yells out.
“Just hold on, kid.” The man pushes his jacket harder onto my wound and I groan further in pain. I know this is bad, that his jacket is already soaked in my blood. There is no way to stop the bleeding now. I’m losing too much blood. It’ll take a miracle to save me.
“Just hold on…”
I close my eyes and my final realization is that this van will be the last thing I’ll ever see.
ZOE HOLLOWAY
Taken By Surprise Page 39