The Final Day (After, #3)(106)

He could sense it was unraveling.

He glared at the woman, who was obviously trying to provoke a reaction.

“Ma’am, this can go one of two ways,” John announced, struggling to control his voice, his emotions still overwhelmed by all that he had learned in the last few minutes. “We’re going to back up to the tunnel entrance. I ask you to tell those folks behind you to get back in the other direction and we wait to let this sort out. We don’t want this to go out of control, so please help me.”

“Get your filthy asses out of here now!” she screamed. “Security, they’re trying to assault me!”

John saw several men pushing their way through the crowd, M4s up and aimed toward him, the crowd parting to let them pass but following in their wake, some shouting obscenities and threats.

“My people, get back!” John shouted even as he unslung the M4 over his shoulder.

“He’s going to shoot me!” the woman screamed. Her scream was picked up by the approaching crowd, most of them scattering or dropping to the hard tarmac floor of Main Street.

It was happening too fast for him now to hope to control. He began to draw back. Forrest was already crouching low, weapon aimed. Grace was out front, crouched low and moving forward, and John could see that she was trying to snatch Laura and knock her down while the girl’s mother remained upright, screaming.

A shot rang out, another, and then another.

Grace tumbled over onto her side, blood spraying out. Forrest, weapon leveled, opened up, aimed shot after aimed shot, dropping those who were firing on them. The crowd behind the action started screaming and running in panic. John stopped his retreat, crouching low, crawling the dozen feet to Grace, and flinging himself over her to protect her with Kevin at his side. Maury had his weapon leveled, shooting as well, while the three troopers who had been guarding the tunnel entry came running forward, weapons at the shoulder, one of them firing several times at a man in civilian clothing who had a short-barrel automatic, catching Maury in the leg.

A well-aimed shot from Forrest dropped that man as well as he tried to dodge behind a barrack.

The firing from down Main Street stopped; John, still prone over Grace, looked up. The street, so crowded but a minute earlier, was empty, the smell of cordite heavy in the air, wisps of smoke being sucked up by a noisy ventilation fan set in the ceiling over the street.

The three troopers pressed forward past where John was, and throughout it all, amazingly, the woman who had provoked it had remained standing, most likely so startled by the frightful onset of violence she had not yet even grasped how to react. Grace was lying prone over Laura, who was gasping for air and trying to crawl out from under her protection. Horrified, John saw that Laura was bleeding, blood leaking out of a wound in her back.

John drew back from his covering of Grace with his body. Her eyes were glazing, going out of focus. She had been hit in the head.

“Laura okay?” she whispered.

Crying, he could only nod. It would be like her to sacrifice all for a child she barely knew.

“She’s okay, sweetie,” John lied.

“Good. Tell my daddy…”

And then she was still.

It was near to painless and all so quick, unlike so many deaths he had witnessed, so many he had held while they were dying. All he could do was gather her into his arms and cry while Forrest knelt by his side, weapon protectively raised, and screamed for a medic. Kevin Malady went forward with the three troopers, reaching the security troops they had just engaged, all of them apparently down. One of them started to rise up, swinging his weapon around and cursing with rage, and Kevin put three more rounds into him.

Only now did the woman who had triggered all of this realize that her daughter was hit as well.

The medic came running up, still crouched low, knelt down by Grace’s side, put a finger to her carotid artery, snapped on a flashlight, and shined it into her eyes.

“I’m sorry, sir, she’s gone.” Without delaying even a second, the medic crawled over to Laura, felt the wound on her back, gently ran a hand underneath her, drawing it back to reveal she had an exit wound in her upper chest, and then frantically went to work. Even as she did so, she looked over at Maury.

“Where you hit?”

“Leg.”

“Where? Upper?”

“No, calf; might have broken my leg, though.”

She glanced at him as if evaluating his injury. “You’ll have to wait!” she cried and then focused her attention back on Laura.

Laura’s mother now started to react, sobbing, squatting down by her daughter, screaming, “All of you murdered her!”

John, still in shock, was still holding Grace, brushing her long, dark hair back from her battered face.

“Sir! Sir!”

He looked up. It was the medic.

“You got to get control of this. Start by getting this damn woman out of here.”

The young medic’s orders snapped him back. John forced himself to focus, to let go of the moment, try to think a minute, five minutes ahead as he was once trained to do, no matter how horrific the situation.

He looked forward. Kevin and the three troopers had pushed forward by fifty yards, Kevin shouting with his booming voice for everyone to stay calm, keep back, to get inside shelter and no one would be hurt. But then he looked back anxiously toward Grace, obviously wanting to go to her side.