Families First: A Post-Apocalyptic Next-World Series Volume 6 Battle Grounds by Lance Ewing (ereader for comics .txt) 📕

“Okay, buddy. This is it; we’re almost there…20 more yards, Jake. On the count of one-two...” but it wasn’t slugs holding me down. It was a man on my back, and he wasn’t moving.

“Jake, let’s go!” I shouted, slipping out from underneath him.

His body fell to the side and onto the hard earth. I looked into his open eyes and the same lady-killer shade of blue they had always been, but something was missing. Life was missing.

“Jake!” I yelled, as if he could hear me better. “Jake!” I cried again, begging him to stand up or crawl or something…anything!

* * * *

Looking up toward the now thundering sky, I saw airplanes and helicopters crisscrossing the Valley and recognized the Black Hawks from a run-in with the Colonel and Ronna that seemed years ago now.

Gunfire filled the Valley from high above, but I couldn’t hear it… It was just a loud humming sound—like an air conditioning unit in a large warehouse—drowning out the sound of men yelling for me to get under cover. Two ran out and grabbed me by the arms, pulling me towards the relative safety of the fire engine. I didn’t let go…wouldn’t let go…of Jake, with both hands now on the collar of his Flak jacket.

“Leave him; he’s gone,” said one man.

“No!” I screamed out, refusing to let go.

Only out of the corner of my eye could I see planes and helicopters zig-zagging across the Valley, with one occasionally leaving a trail of smoke behind.

“We take him, or you can leave me,” I yelled to the men on our side, not loosening my grip.

Without another word, they helped me drag my new, old friend—one I would count among my best—underneath the truck. I checked his pulse and breathing, finding none.

The bullets—at least three, maybe more—looked through and through from the back, creating wounds I felt no man could survive. Still, I started CPR compressions. “One and two and three,” I called out robotically, giving a breath after five and repeating the next set over and over again.

Next to me, the men looked on without a word, looking out from underneath the truck every few seconds to check the skies.

I called it out loud some time later, as I had seen in the movies, I guess—“Time of death, 12:38 p.m.”

Closing his eyes, I put my face to his.

“I’m sorry, my friend. I brought you here, and we almost had it; we almost had freedom. You are the reason we made it home. From the first time we met, you watched out for me, and now I will go home only because you chose not to. I’ll never forget that, not ever,” I added, with tears streaming down my dirty face.

The next faces forefront in my mind were Nancy and little Danny, who had already both been through so much.

“I’m sorry, Nancy,” I choked out loud. “You saved one of mine back on the trailer, but I couldn’t save yours.”

The Boom! overhead knocked me back to reality, as a biplane crashed into the earth not more than thirty feet from us, spitting out fire and chunks of metal and engine, crashing against the truck just above our heads. There was more of the same across the Valley over the next maybe thirty minutes, with two fire planes dropping the red slurry mix on any new fires.

I couldn’t see the Rimrock fire anymore but saw a few hundred people walking across from south to north, thinking it must be Ronna’s group. Random gunfire from no doubt small skirmishes came from over the Rimrock, and the thought of Baker had me seething.

“What happened?” I asked the two men with us under the truck. “What happened when we were running?” I added, checking my pack for bullet holes where I felt the impact. Sure enough, there were three, with two holes halfway through my Bible Joy had given me just last night.

“He fell on you,” said one man.

“Like tripped?” I asked.

“No. Like he knocked you down when the gunfire was coming at you both, and he covered you, taking the hits.”

“But I felt the thump of the bullets. Here is where they hit,” I said, pulling the Good Book out.

“Yes, a few did after going through your friend here,” said another.

I knew what he was saying but couldn’t compute it in my brain. Like I was stuck in a Jeopardy game live on TV and about to win the biggest cash prize in the history of the game, and the question was, “What’s your wife’s middle name?”

“What are you saying?!” I cried.

“I’m saying he sacrificed himself for you. If he hadn’t, you would both be dead right now.”

Hearing it spoken out loud was a sucker punch in the gut. “Why me?” I asked aloud. “He’s the one who told us to run. Why didn’t he head to safety first? Why?!”

“We don’t know,” answered one quietly. “He just didn’t.”

“Get your mind right,” I heard in my head, like the very first time in the Albertson’s grocery store parking lot near my clinic on the very first day. This time it wasn’t my voice, but his…

“Get your mind right and get home to your family!” I heard him say again.

“But what about yours?” I asked aloud.

I looked out and up, seeing only smoke in the sky—some old and some new. Our people were walking about, looking in the air and on the Rimrock.

“Is it over?” asked one man near me.

“I think so,” said another.

The Rimrock fire had apparently burned out on its own somewhere on the other side. I was pretty sure because the smoke was no worse over the hill than here in the Valley.

I looked at my friend, my best friend after Joy and our boys, and promised