He took a deep breath and turned the corner, gun up and arms straight, finger on the trigger. When he saw the short, pudgy man with long, graying hair in front of him, his brain did a quick calculation—older man, not Bubba, didn’t match the description of any of the people in town—and pulled the trigger twice.
The man’s knees collapsed and he folded to the ground, finished.
Not pausing to catch his breath, Garrett grabbed the rifle the man had been using—reprimanding himself now for not having taken Lance’s gun as well—and rushed back out into the street. Now he did have time to look at the bodies lying there, and he gulped heavily when he recognized one of them as Alan. The other two looked to be bikers, though, and he rushed to them, rifled through their clothing for clips, guns, and grenades, and shoved all the new weaponry into the pants of his pockets.
His sister had always made fun of him for wearing carpenter pants that included at least five pockets, but they’d been incredibly useful in his line of work, where he always needed to carry pencils, papers, screwdrivers, rulers, a calculator, sometimes a tablet, and almost always some sort of hammer. He’d never in a million years dreamed that he’d be shoving extra guns—safety on—and grenades—pins safely turned to the locked position—into those pockets.
Kady would have had a fit if she’d been able to see him now. She would have been lecturing him about the danger. And he would have told her that he would take on as much danger as it took if it meant keeping her safe. If it meant keeping anyone safe.
He yanked a handgun off the last biker in the road, still dodging and weaving in an attempt to avoid bullets, and sprinted for cover in another alleyway. He had to figure out where everyone was, and how to get them to safety.
Slipping to the ground in the shadows of the alley, he tried to force himself to breathe normally for a second—and think. There had been so many people in the square when the shooting started, and he hadn’t seen many of them since then. He knew where Shane and Manny were, and he’d assumed that Alice was close, but aside from the dead man in the street…
That was when the screaming started.
It was far away, toward the front of town, and he couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman with the pitch. Whoever it was, though, they needed help. And quickly.
Jumping to his feet, he turned down the alley and sprinted away from the main street and the square in front of the schoolhouse. This alley connected to one of the smaller streets in the town, and that street ran parallel to Main Street. If he was lucky, he’d be able to get down it with less exposure. The bikers had probably gone right for where the people were—and at the moment, that was Main Street.
Hopefully they hadn’t even considered looking at the other streets.
When he hit Ash, he veered left and increased his speed on the sidewalk, dodging around long-defunct light posts and leaping over the trash the people had left there. A bench had been knocked into the way of his sprint, but he soared over it, barely stopping to notice it. The screaming was still going on in the distance, and he needed to get there now.
Suddenly someone tore out of the alley to his left, nearly colliding with him, and Garrett veered to the right and directly into the street, shouting in surprise. But when he looked over, already trying to get his gun up to fire, he realized that it was Alice.
“What are you doing here?” he huffed, increasing his pace again.
She snorted. “Same thing as you, I suspect.”
Garrett dodged a pile of furniture—one of their now-useless barricades—and nodded, though he realized she wouldn’t be looking at him to see it. “Do you know where everyone went?”
“They’ve all gathered in the houses,” she answered quickly. “I sent them back there for both shelter and their guns. You were right; no one had their weapons with them. At least half of them should be armed by now, though, and fighting back. If we’re lucky. If they’re still alive. If the bikers didn’t trap them in the houses.”
“You’re a real ray of sunlight, Alice, have I ever told you that?” Garrett quipped. “Get back to wherever they are and get them the hell out of town. Give them the directions to that cave.”
“Due east from here, one mile, group of about one hundred cacti, hole in the middle that leads down into an underground rock cavern,” she repeated.
“Right,” Garrett muttered.
It wasn’t the map he’d planned on drawing for everyone, and the directions had a lot less detail than he wanted. Ideally, he would have sent Greyson with them to direct them. But that was no longer an option.
“Think they’ll even make it?” Alice asked, reading his hesitation correctly. “Those aren’t exactly detailed directions, and we’re not sending out the most… organized group.”
No, he wasn’t sure they’d make it. But he didn’t exactly have a choice.
“Doesn’t matter,” Garrett said bluntly. “Whether they do or not, they’ll be safer out of town. And enough of them have been out in the desert that they’ll be able to navigate it—or find another town. The only thing I know for sure is that they can’t stay here. Stay here and they’ll die for certain. At least out there they have a fighting chance.”
“And you?” Alice asked, her voice quieter now.
“I’m not leaving this fight until it’s finished,” he answered grimly.
She didn’t ask anything else, just veered into the next alleyway and was gone, and Garrett pressed forward on his own, refusing to think about the fact that Alice might be telling the townspeople to go out into the desert to their deaths. Refusing to think about the fact that he might never see her again. He didn’t have time for sentimentality right now. The screaming was starting to waver, and he could hear shouts coming from behind him.
Shouts that came from men. And if what Alice said was right about the placement of the townsfolk, then the men behind him were the bikers. Not friends.
He rounded a slight turn in the road and found Elisa there. To his surprise, she was alone—not in the middle of being terrorized by bikers. She was, however, trapped against the side of a building, bullets flying through the intersection she’d found her way into. He’d never envisioned her to be a screamer, but she was frozen in horror, her eyes too big for her face and her skin devoid of color.
He jerked to a stop next to her, grabbed her arm, and clapped a hand over her mouth.
“You’re going to draw them right to you if you don’t shut up,” he hissed. “They’re all over the place. The last thing you want is to tell them where you are.”
She managed to focus her eyes on him and nodded slowly, indicating that she understood. Whatever had taken hold of her and led to the screaming, she seemed to have it under control now. He took his hand away from her mouth and brought her closer so he could whisper in her ear.
“Everyone else is back at the houses and Alice is marshaling them to move out. Get back to your house. If no one is there, head to Alice’s, or the place Greyson was staying. Anyone who recognizes you will call out to you and bring you in. Go with the rest of the people, do you understand me?”
“But I—” she started.
He drew back from her and stared down into her face. “I know you want to help,” he said, knowing her well enough to realize what it was she was going to ask him—and knowing now that she was absolutely unprepared for the battle that was to come. “But I need you safe. I need to know that you’re getting out of this town and away from the fighting. We’ll regroup after I’ve got these men taken care of, understand? But I need you to get to the cave and hide, and from there to a safe town. One where you’ll have better protection. I need you to convince all the people to do that. To lead them. Can you do that for me, Elisa?”
She shut her mouth and nodded again, once, and he nodded as well, then pressed a kiss to her forehead.
“Go. Stay in the alleys and stick to the smaller roads. And take this.” He fished one of the spare guns out of his pocket and handed it to her. “Shoot anyone you don’t
recognize. Can you do that?”
“I-I think so,” she stuttered.
He put his hand over hers on the gun. “You can. Remember the target practice we did? You hit the middle of the target every single time. Just think of them as targets.”
She nodded, then turned and dashed into the alley, just as he’d told her to. He watched her go for a moment, sending a fleeting prayer after her that she would be safe and find the others. That they would manage to get out into the desert and find the cave. And that they would find a safer place to go after that.
He had just turned to keep running toward the edge of town—to do what, he still didn’t know—when a bullet pierced his thigh. Garrett went to the ground, holding his breath at the fire rushing through his blood and the absolute agony in his thigh, his eyes squeezed shut against the pain. But a moment later the adrenaline kicked in and his body began to burn with a different fire. The fire of needing to get up and go.
He allowed himself to breathe heavily for a few more moments, summoning his strength, and then got to his feet and pushed himself forward. Bullets were still flying around him, but they were starting to slow, he was sure. The bikers were losing their numbers.
He pulled out one of the guns and began firing randomly behind him, only half-caring if he was hitting anyone. If he slowed the bikers down, that was good enough for him. Honestly, if it kept the bikers on his trail, and kept them from following the rest of the group as they escaped into the desert, he would count his life well spent.
And that wasn’t his only goal. Somewhere here, Kraken was leading the charge. Garrett was sure of it. And if he could just find that man, take him down, that would be the end of it.
Garrett didn’t know the bikers well, and had only spent a little bit of time observing them, but he thought he could say with confidence that Kraken had them all following him like a bunch of ducklings. The rest of the crew might not be good people—Lance was the prime example of that—but they also weren’t extremely driven people. Men like that never were. They needed a leader. Someone telling them what to do, when to shoot, and when to get the hell out of there.
He still didn’t know what Kraken’s ultimate goal was, but he did know what thing for sure: take Kraken out and the rest of the gang would crumble.
Take Kraken out, and this whole thing would be finished.
So along with running and returning fire at the bikers shooting at him, his new goal became finding Kraken himself. And with that in mind, he took a right at the next alleyway, then a right at the next small street, and a right into one alley back. There, right where the alley met Ash again, he paused, breathing heavily. The bikers had been behind him. He didn’t know how many there were, but if they thought they were chasing the leader of Trinity Ranch, then maybe it meant they’d called their own leader in. Maybe Kraken had been right behind him that whole time.
Maybe he could end everything right here. Right now.
He ducked out into the intersection, just enough so that he could look to the left where the bikers should be coming from, and saw a cloud of dust coming from that direction. That had to be them. And if they were so close—
A sharp pain right behind his left ear took him to his knees, and another followed, sending his own gun clattering to the pavement in front of him before he could spin around to see who was attacking him. When he finally got his legs to obey him and turn him around, rotating on his knees, he saw one of the bikers—and he was holding a gun in Garrett’s face.
Garrett took one look at the biker himself—a man who was built like a linebacker—and went for the man’s knees. He shoved himself off of his own knees, moving straight toward the biker’s legs. Garrett gasped in pain as he hit the man, his gunshot wound feeling as if it was exploding with fire. A moment later, they were both on the ground, wrestling for control of the one gun left to them—the one the biker had brought into the fight—and doing their best to knock each other out with their fists.
Garrett took a heavy blow to the nose and heard it crunch, then felt the rush of blood that meant it was definitely broken. He hammered forward with his forehead, using it to break the biker’s nose in response, and heard the man scream. But his vision was now blurry with pain and the man had figured out that Garrett was shot, and was taking advantage of it, kneeing Garrett in the leg as often as he could.
Garrett reached out, doing his best to maintain his focus through the haze of fire, and jabbed his finger into the guy’s eye—bringing on another howl of pain. The man was roughly twice as big as him, and as far as Garrett was concerned, that meant he had every right to play dirty.
He reached over and twisted the guy’s ear with one hand, holding him still, while he used the other to pound away at his face, getting in blow after blow before the biker threw him off his body and into the wall.
Garrett grunted with the impact, but then saw that the biker was, shockingly, seemingly taking a break from the action to try to get his breath back—or his eyes or nose to work again. Instead of following up on his advantage, he’d assumed that Garrett was out for the count and given himself a chance to recover.
His mistake.
Garrett dove for the gun that was now lying between them, sweeping it up and shooting in one smooth, seamless move. He hit the guy in the arm, which only served to anger him more, and the biker flew at Garrett, taking him down to the concrete and knocking the breath out of him. He hadn’t taken the gun into account, though, and Garrett was still holding it against his chest—between himself and the biker. He fought to get the nose turned out and away from him, and then pulled the trigger again, sending up a prayer that he had the nose turned far enough away from his own body as to not fatally damage himself.
The muzzle flash burned him with its heat, but the man on top of him went suddenly still, this second gunshot hitting a more vital area of his body.
Garrett lay there for a moment, trying to get his bearings and force himself to breathe normally. Then he shoved the dead man off his chest, using what felt like every ounce of his power to do so, jumped to his feet, and started to run again. One more down, but that didn’t mean the battle was won. He had to find Kraken and put an end to this once and for all.
He’d gone three steps before the fire overtook his body. It started in his leg, where he’d been shot, and flew to his nose and then his ribs, several of which must have been broken. His knees gave out from under him at the pain and he hit the sidewalk without even attempting to catch himself, half-blind with blood and sweat. Dazed, he looked up to see a figure approaching him quickly—though he couldn’t tell who it might be, or whether they were friend or foe.
He was just closing his eyes, getting ready for the bullet that would end his life, when a familiar voice spoke in his ear.
“Are you freaking crazy? What are you doing, trying to take them all on by yourself?”
“Alice?” he wheezed, too confused to think about how coincidental it was that she was right there when he needed her the most.
She kept speaking, but the world was fading around the edges, now, and though he could see her lips moving, he didn’t hear anything. All he saw was the concern in her eyes—and then the anger as she started speaking more forcefully.
Garrett turned his head to the side to see several of the people from their town gathered around. She gestured to them, still angry, and after a moment they turned and ran off, leaving him there with Alice, the two of them surrounded by bodies that he now recognized as people from his community.
Chapter 12
He felt all the pain before he even opened his eyes, and it made him wish that he didn’t have to open his eyes at all. His leg felt as if it might be missing entirely, and his ribs were on fire. His face was burning, his nose feeling as though it was nearly three times as large as it should be.
The light on the other side of his eyelids was hurting him. His head was pounding. And he hadn’t even started remembering what had happened to him yet.
The idea that the
re were things to be remembered brought a groan to his lips, and Garrett began squirming against the memories as they came back unbidden. Elisa crouched against a wall. Alice running alongside him as they discussed getting the rest of their people out of town. The idea that the townsfolk might not make it out safely. The shooting. The man he’d fought with, and then shot. Steve going to the ground with a scream outside the schoolhouse. Lance shooting Steve in the head.
The blurred, fuzzy picture of Alice standing over him as his vision faded out. The last memory, which had been that death would come as a relief compared to all the pain.
Now that pain was flaring back to life, and he grunted again, trying to wrap his brain around it.
“Stop moving around so much,” a familiar voice snapped. “I’ve just finished the dressing on your leg, but it’s not secure yet. You keep moving like that and I’m going to have to do it all again. And I guarantee it will hurt.”
The last word brought him to an abrupt stillness, and his brain started chugging through the information again, trying to parse it and make sense of what he’d just heard. Whose voice was that? Where was he, and how had he gotten here?
He allowed his eyes to open a slit, grumbling to himself as he did. The only way he was going to get any answers, he supposed, was if he stopped hiding.
To his surprise, once his vision kicked in, he realized he was in the bedroom of his house. There on the floor was the bottle of whiskey he’d been drinking only a couple nights earlier, and there on the floor were his boots and the clothes he’d been wearing when the gunfight started. His pants were shredded, and the shirt looked as though it had been sliced right through the middle. A number of guns and clips were lying next to the pants, and he remembered now that he’d been grabbing weapons off the bodies as he went.
The bodies.
His gaze went directly to the person by the bed, and there he saw Alice, her face screwed up in concentration as she finished tending to his leg. When she was done, she sat back and gave him a triumphant look.
At Any Cost (Book 3): Bleak Horizons Page 8