Edge of Fear: An EMP Post-Apocalyptic Survival Prepper Series (American Fallout Book 3) by Alex Gunwick (rooftoppers .txt) 📕

As the echo of his shot faded away, a piercing scream issued from within the cabin. Derek was up and sprinting across the field in an instant. He kicked in the front door and rushed inside.

18

The first man came crashing forward, chopping down at him with a hatchet. Luke dove out of the way. The blade sliced into the couch where his head had been a second earlier. The man wasted no time, swinging the hatchet backhanded in a wide arc. Luke sprang to the side, but the hatchet clipped him as it whooshed past his midsection.

He grunted in pain, instinctively grabbing at his stomach. His hand came away bloody, though he was pretty sure it was just a flesh wound.

The other man lacked training and discipline, but he was fast and bold. Fortunately for Luke, that also made him reckless.

The man raised the hatchet again, preparing for another downward chop. Luke lunged forward, grabbing the arm holding the hatchet with both hands and driving his shoulder into the man’s chest.

A shot sounded from somewhere outside, but Luke figured if anyone was shooting at him, they were just as likely to hit their own men. Not much he could do about them at the moment, anyway.

He shifted his weight, placing his right leg in front of the other man’s legs and thrusting his hips out and back. As he did this, he yanked the man’s arm forward and down violently, flipping him over his hips. The man landed with an awful crunch, his lower back impacting the sharp edge of the raised brick hearth in front of the fireplace. The hatchet skidded across the room. The man screamed in pain, rolling and thrashing on the ground.

Luke drew his pistol to finish the man writhing on the ground. But before he could get a shot off, he sensed movement behind him. Luke spun as the second man rushed forward, thrusting a large hunting knife toward him.

Luke swung his pistol around, but the man rushed at him again, swinging the knife wildly and forcing Luke to defend and dodge. Luke dropped his pistol back into its holster to free both hands for close-quarters combat.

He dodged a few more wild swings from the man’s knife, waiting for his opening. The attacks slowed as the man tired. As he cut at Luke with a great backhanded chop, Luke grabbed the man’s wrist to stop the attack.

The man punched him hard in the jaw with his free hand. Luke’s ears rang. He instinctively brought his knee up hard into the man’s groin. The guy grunted in pain. The first man was still howling and writhing on the floor near the fireplace.

Luke drove his forehead into his attacker’s nose. It hit with a loud thud, and blood poured out of his opponent’s face. The cultist swung his free hand at him, but Luke ducked under the punch. He countered with a punch of his own. It unbalanced the man, but he maintained his grip on the knife. Luke drew his knife from the sheath on his belt. He drove it up into the man’s chest, under his rib cage. It punched into him with a terrible thunk. The man grunted. His eyes went wide. The man’s grip on his knife weakened. Luke twisted his wrist violently, tearing up the man’s guts. His opponent’s knife clattered to the floor.

The man’s eyes were wide with panic. His gaze darted around the room, looking for a way out. He tried to scramble back, but he lacked the strength to move more than a few inches. His breath came in ragged rasps. Blood gurgled from his mouth as he coughed, probably a punctured lung.

Luke slid his knife out of the man’s chest. Blood poured out of the deep wound and dripped off the blade. Luke drew his pistol from its holster and pointed it at the center of the man’s chest. The cultist raised his hands in surrender.

“Please,” he rasped, the sound barely audible over the groans and sobs of the other man still writhing in pain near the fireplace.

Luke fired twice into the man’s chest, blood spitting up as the bullets tore into him. The cultist’s arms sagged to the ground next to him. He went still. His eyes glazed over.

As Luke swung his pistol toward the other man near the fireplace, searing pain shot through his shoulder. He glanced down, surprised to find the black graphite shaft of an arrow protruding from it, the green and orange fletching still quivering at the end.

He followed the flight path back from the nock and saw a young man on the other side of the cabin. The man glanced up at Luke as he struggled to fit another arrow onto his crossbow with his trembling fingers.

Luke, somewhat amused, looked back to the arrow in his shoulder. “Huh, that’s funny. Never been shot with an arrow before.”

He trained his pistol on the man. Luke’s hand was still a little shaky from the pain and adrenaline, but it was steady enough. When the man saw the pistol aimed at him, his eyes flared with fear. He hurried to reload his weapon, but his hands were shaking violently as his nerves failed him.

“When you find yourself in a live combat situation, your brain tends to fire a lot of mixed signals,” Luke said casually, amused by the younger man’s total incompetence. “It happens to everyone at first. What you need to have is a mechanism already in place to deal with those nerves. That’s why we, Navy SEALS, spent a lot of time in what we called ‘simulated, high-stress environments’. We learned breathing exercises to help us maintain our composure under intense pressure.”

The young man frowned while still struggling furiously with his weapon.

“Boy, I can’t tell you how many times we broke down and reassembled our weapons with sirens blaring in our ears, sergeants screaming insults