The Unknown - Chapter 14d - by nova

Instead Miller hustled over to me, took a quick look, and started cutting away my shirt. "Give me your bandage. He fished out his, and yelled the same thing at Rodriquez. I fished mine out and handed it to him. Rodriguez got close enough to check out the damage, shot the look at Miller, tossed him his wound dressing, and started moving kids.

He yelled, "Single file, inside voices, oldest at the rear. Lets go people!"

"We got to go Miller."

"Shut up Gardener."

That set me back. I felt the anger flare, then I laughed an asked him, "That bad?"

He ignored that. "Hang on. Almost done." He cut away part of his left leg trouser and used the fabric to bind the wound bandages in place.

"Okay Gardener. I got morphine. You want?"

"No."

You think you're going to go into shock let me know."

"Yeah. Lets go."

He took the lead after grabbing the AK, slinging it, and pulling a magazine from the asshole that shot me.

Sweet Jesus, the pain was talking to me. I ran my pain routines, I had a high tolerance for it, having experienced more then my share, but this was bad.

We made it about 10 paces when I yelled to Miller, "Take drag. I'm going up front with Rodriquez."

He started to say something, changed his mind, and scowled at me as I went past.

As I passed the kids I checked them out. Some of them looked scared but most of them looked bored. One of the boys, maybe 12, quietly called out to me, "Give me a gun mister. I can shoot."

"Later kid."

I saw Rodriguez drop to a knee, look around the corner, then let rip with a full auto burst. He ducked back, grinned at me, pulled a grenade, twisted the bottom, and tossed skittering along the floor. It made for a nice satisfying scream a couple of beats later.

He jumped out, let go with one three round burst and moved out. I caught up and took the other side of the hall. If going into the gym was messy this was a lot worse. No body parts blown off but the four Apaches in the hallway were leaking blood from a lot of different places. Mixed in with the blood on the floor were nickel sized pieces of metal. I heard the kids murmuring and thought my hearing had been scrambled until I realized it was Dine they were speaking.