Contracts by Matt Rogers (i like reading txt) 📕

Which gave him confirmation that anyone still standing wasn’t Will Slater.

So he ejected the magazine that had one round left, chambered a fresh one, and let loose.

He aimed and fired, aimed and fired, aimed and fired, aimed and fired.

Four separate times in the tiny window provided by the muzzle flares.

His own bullets shredded the insurgents to pieces, dropping a trio of them where they stood. He saw blood spray and bodies collapse and then the picture cut out like someone yanking a TV cord from the socket.

Back to darkness.

King stayed low, and breathed, and tried not to focus on how badly his ankle hurt.

He stayed where he was, crouched so low his nose was almost touching the dirt, and waited for retaliatory fire.

None came.

Steadily, inch by inch, he rose.

And there was a small silhouette right there in his face, maybe 5’9 in height.

Definitely not Slater.

King panicked and fired twice into the darkness and missed.

He lined up a better aim and pumped the trigger once more.

Nothing.

Ten rounds in the clip.

He was empty.

The figure raised its own weapon. King had just managed to make out a snarling wide-eyed face in the brief flash of his final gunshot.

Animalistic.

Then again, this was an animalistic game.

King battered the gun aside, probably breaking a couple of the guy’s fingers in the process, using his raw strength to his advantage. He figured a hurricane of violence was necessary to ensure he didn’t catch a bullet to the face, so he thundered an uppercut into the guy’s stomach and cocked his other arm at a right-angle and used the elbow as a whip to cut a line across the guy’s forehead. Blood spurted immediately from the wound, blinding the man, and King used the opportunity to stand up and snatch hold of the arm holding the gun with both hands and bring it down on his knee, shattering the bone.

The guy grunted and dropped to his knees, overwhelmed by the pain.

King nearly took the man’s head off his shoulders with a follow-up uppercut.

It probably killed him.

He dropped low and reloaded. But he fumbled with the fresh magazine. His knuckles were aching from the two consecutive uppercuts, and he might have broken a finger in the carnage. So, in a rare moment of weakness, his fingers slipped and he had to lunge to catch it again.

Which gave him away.

The next thing he knew, there were voices all around him, whispering frantically in a foreign language. His hearing was dulled from the repetitive gunshots, but he could make out that much.

He spun and found a silhouette and slammed the fresh magazine home and fired…

Killed one man, but another one shot at him and missed.

Just.

It came horrifically close, and King instinctively spun away as he felt displaced air against the side of his neck. When he put his foot down to steady himself, his swollen ankle screamed for relief.

Sweat beaded across his forehead, and he fought the urge to gasp.

He raised his Sig and took aim at the man who’d shot at him but he found himself reeling, his aim thrown off by the extenuating circumstances, his focus wavering.

He fired twice and missed both times.

In the light of the muzzle flares he saw the twisted grotesque expression on the insurgent’s face, and saw the guy take careful aim, and King found himself staring right down the barrel of the weapon and his heart rate surged through the roof and panic seized him in its cold grip and he fought the urge to cry out in desperation—

And the guy’s head exploded.

The gunshot came from over King’s shoulder and he nearly lost his balance again, but then Will Slater was right beside him, looping a hand around his underarm and wrenching him to his feet.

He got a firm grip on the soil underneath his boots, and regained his composure in an instant.

Then they stood side-by-side and realised in unison that they’d memorised the positions of the remaining insurgents from the last muzzle flash.

So they raised their Sigs and fired simultaneously, and their weapons blared with rage, and—

The final insurgents fell dead into the undergrowth, arteries severed, bleeding from several bullet wounds each.

King dropped to his knees as a final precaution, and heard Slater do the same.

He’d lost count of the number of men he’d killed.

They stayed vigilant, waiting for their hearing to return as the seconds ticked by.

Minutes elapsed.

There was nothing.

Slater muttered, ‘How bad’s your ankle?’

‘Not the best it’s ever been.’

‘Wait here.’

He turned, and his silhouette disappeared. King wasn’t in a hurry — he settled back into the undergrowth, placed his back against the nearest tree, and got his breathing under control. The adrenaline wore off. The stress chemicals dissipated. When Slater finally returned with a headlamp in his palm, King was back to normal.

‘You ready?’ Slater said. ‘In case this kicks everything off again?’

King clutched the Sig Sauer tight in his hand and nodded wordlessly.

‘Here goes,’ Slater said.

He flicked on the torchlight.

The white LED flared, brilliant in the night. It evaporated the darkness, and Slater swung the beam left and right. King tracked it with his weapon, keeping his back to the tree. When everything in a hundred-and-eighty degree radius had been cleared, they shimmied around the trunk and cleared the other side.

No sign of hostility.

A whole lot of corpses.

But no live bodies.

‘Well,’ Slater said, ‘that’s sorted.’

King exhaled properly for the first time and squeezed his eyes shut in relief.

51

Slater knew King was back in the same catastrophic routine.

Walk all day, maintain momentum, and then freeze up at night as the swelling intensifies. King wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry, and the man needed a good night’s sleep if he wanted to be in any way functional tomorrow. So Slater told him to stay where he was, and went to retrieve their belongings.

He gathered both duffel bags and both sleeping bags and carted all the gear up the hillside. Then he dropped it at King’s feet.

‘We sleep here,’ Slater said.

‘Surrounded by bodies?’

‘I’m not letting you walk anywhere.