Chapter 3.2
1075 Words
Cleo was gone. He’d disappeared from Taylor’s mind the moment he saw the helicopter and the gunshots had rained down upon them all. Now as he looked around the deserted bridge, he saw only the bodies of their fallen. Cleo had run the moment the helicopter showed up.
It couldn’t have been a coincidence. It wasn’t below Cleo to hire in an extra hand if he knew Taylor was going to be here. The bigger question was why the feds were involved in the first place. The Eastcliffs sure as hell didn’t have that kind of money to pay off government officials and neither did Cleo. He barely had any power inside his respecting gang.
None of what he’d seen tonight was making any sense. But the night wasn’t over. The helicopter was making its way back to him and either he could wait for them to shoot him out or he could make a run for it.
Where he hid now was between the bridge and a built-in safety net that hadn’t been completed. It was just a piece of metal welded to the side of the cement and the screws and nails were rusty. Any wrong move could send him down into the rushing river below. In this kind of weather, he would either freeze to death before he made it to shore or be swept away by the current. And if the water didn’t kill him, they would find him.
The helicopter had flown back around. The beaming light landed close to where Taylor was hunched down. The two feds on the side of the helicopter turned their guns around, aiming down at the empty bridge. They aimed at the small clearing Taylor was kneeling at.
His eyes went wide and his breath caught in his throat.
He jumped back into the safety net just in time to miss the first bullets shot from the helicopter.
“Motherfucker!”
The bullets came faster and harder. They were shooting all around him and he couldn’t hear his own thoughts. He threw his hands up to cover his ears, his gun cold as ice against his burning skin. He fell into the metal piping, screaming until his throat burned. There was blood falling down on the metal and cement from his face. He didn’t know where his wounds were, couldn’t tell where the pain was. He was completely out of it and as he heard the gunshots and his own screams, his mind snapped.
He slapped his hands down onto the metal net. If he didn’t get out of there now, he was going to die here. And that wasn’t going to f*****g happen.
The fire in his veins pushed him to crawl on his hands and knees. The gun was held tight in his hand, but he wasn’t thinking about using it. They would know where he was if he shot at them and there was no way he would be able to hit anything now. His eyesight was shot, completely useless.
He clutched his side. When he brought his hand back, it was soaked in black liquid. It was his blood.
The pain was fading and so was his vision. For some god awful reason, he took a look over the edge of the net. The water was pulling tides, a crazy whirlwind of currents that would kill him if he fell.
He wasn’t afraid of heights, never had been. But as he stared down in the water, he had the crippling realization that this might be his last day.
Everywhere he looked, he saw only death.
The next few crawls he made were agonizing. The searing pain spread through his entire body. The air was fading and the bright lights kept zooming over the small space between the bridge and the metal net.
He stopped, pressing his hand on his open wound to see how bad it was. The flesh had been torn to bits. He’d been hit with an electric lazor bullet and it was eating away at his flesh. With the last of his strength, he ripped a piece of his shirt off and blotted as much blood he could. The area was scabbing though the surrounding flesh had been fried. The problem was how deep he’d been hit. Without high medic equipment, he would bleed to death.
He ripped more of his shirt and tied the pieces together to form one long strip of cloth. He wrapped it around his waist, securely over the wound, and pulled it tight. He hissed, biting his tongue, but didn’t let up the pressure. The pain was fine. Pain was better than dying.
Or letting these motherfuckers kill him.
The mind did strange things when on the brink of death. Taylor never thought of himself as a person who relied on religion or spirituality. He’d seen the damage it could do to a person. They were crazy people who would stand on the corner and yell about how judgment would fall upon them all in due time.
Strange that they didn’t think it was already here.
But what was stranger, was the feeling of complete peace that fell over him.
He crawled forward, blood trailing behind him. Ryan, the person who tired him down, gave him a reason to even try, needed him. How could he be at peace when the one he loved would be exposed to the awful world without his protection?
The blood slid between his hands and the metal. Each inch forward sent shockwaves of pain through his body, but he bit his tongue to not make a noise. The flapping of the helicopter’s wings sent gushes of wind over him and the bridge. The cement shook and the metal clinked. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the city lights reflected in the currents of water below.
He made it a few feet away from the end of the bridge. The lights were brighter now, but his eyesight was blurry. He could barely see a foot in front of him. The helicopter sounded like it was right above him. The blinding white light crept over his body.
They could see him.
- Writer
