Aftermath (Book 1): Only The Head Will Take Them Down (27 page)

On arrival, the sound of further shots scattered across the truck, the clang of metal on metal roaring into the air, before numerous stray bullets instead came crashing through what little glass remained at the hotel’s front entrance. John ducked down briefly, before resuming his descent, quickly throwing himself down multiple steps, and onto the first floor, only to be greeted yet again by the sound of gunfire. This time however it was Donald that had fired, judging by the heavy boom of what John knew to be the sound of an AK47. Looking out of the window, John confirmed his suspicions, at the sight of Donald leaning over the bed of the truck, his rifle firing multiple shots at the trunks of trees John could now catch a slight glimpse of, their bases finally exposed from the lower angle he was now viewing from.

Once more the attackers fired back, sending Donald ducking behind the truck as he waited for the storm of gunfire to stop. This time however, things went differently. John could only watch as the series of shots clattered against the trucks body, until eventually, a single bullet was sent low enough to fit underneath the huge truck, sending it directly between the Toyota’s wheels, and into the foot of Donald’s already injured right leg. The bullet immediately and very visibly ripped through the fleshy top section of the foot, a splatter of blood careering out of its left side, and sprawling across the floor leading up the lobby. To John’s surprise, Donald said nothing, his face clearly contorted with pain, his arms clutching downwards towards his foot, but himself apparently in too much agony to react vocally, or to think logically, something that worried John more and more every second that Donald stayed in his clearly vulnerable position.

Eventually, John’s concern grew too large, and he couldn’t help but sacrifice his hidden position in an attempt to help.
“Behind the wheel”, he yelled through the window, “Use it as cover!”.
Looking up, clearly having only barely heard John’s words, Donald attempted furiously to understand John’s accompanying hand gestures, realising his intentions mere milliseconds before the next set of bullets came flying over. This time however, the shots landed in a smattering around the first floor window, the window which John had only barely pried open, now shattered across the ground in front of which it had stood, a series of bullet holes strewn around it, embedded into the building’s brickwork.

John hazarded a look once more, this time seeing to his relief that Donald had understood his message, and was now shimmying over to the wheel, the dense rubber of which would at least prevent a similarly placed shot making contact again. Knowing that his companion was now at least somewhat safer, John ducked back against the wall, and once more rolled over to the stairs, keeping as low to the ground as possible as he did. Soon enough, several more shots made their way through the open window, accompanied by the sound of the truck being hit yet more times, the attackers clearly targeting both John and Donald separately now. Whoever this was, they had both men pinned down very tight.

John paused for a moment at the top of the stairs, knowing that they led into the completely exposed lobby, an area where subtlety and slowness were simply not an option. But if John was to get to Donald in time, there was nothing else for it, and so in a matter of seconds, John stood up tall, sprinted down the stairs as quickly as he could manage, and headed straight across the lobby to the front door. The sound of crunching glass beneath his feat accompanied his every step, until he eventually reached the front of the hotel, now ready to launch some kind of rescue effort on Donald.

At this point, John knew he had used up every last second of the break between shots, and so ducked once more against a side wall, mere moments before yet another series of bullets made contact with the truck and now the wall which John stood behind, the attackers apparently having seen John’s movement, and thus now able to concentrate their shots to a much smaller area.
“Donald”, John called out, unsure as to whether or not Donald had seen his latest position change.
Looking up at first, before then noticing his companion just thirty or so feet from where he sat, Donald eventually saw John, a feeling of relief spreading across him as he realised he now at least had somebody nearby.
“Stay over there!”, John yelled, “I’ll do what I can from here, I’ll get you out of there!”.
“Fuck that!”, Donald yelled back, “Put some shots down, now!”, he ordered, as he slowly got to his feet.
“NO!”, John screamed, knowing as the word left his mouth that it would do nothing in terms of convincing the incredibly stubborn man, now stood alongside the Hilux.

There was nothing else for it, John raised his M14 and fired off a series of shots, only roughly knowing where the attackers even were, something he compensated for by firing at a variety of potential locations. As he did, the figure of an injured man limped across the car-park in front of him, his right leg unusable at this point, something that was at least somewhat fixed by the use of an AK47 as a makeshift crutch. But Donald’s pace was excruciatingly slow, and his large mass, now not at all covered by the bulk of the truck, made for an easy target. All John could do was to keep the fire going, doing whatever he could to try and keep anybody from being able to come out from their cover.

Before long however, it became apparent that it was no good, as a series of muzzle flashes appeared from behind a tree John knew he had only barely covered. The sounds roared quickly across the car-park, the first bullet narrowly missing Donald’s good leg before cascading through a variety of objects in the hotel lobby, coming to rest in the wooden bulk of the front desk. The second was a little further off, curving off into the brickwork above the front entrance, no doubt hastily taken and poorly measured. John reacted as quickly as he could, taking aim at the tree where a third muzzle flash now appeared, and putting three rounds into what small amount of body John could make out, the scope of his rifle just barely able to see such a small target. Seemingly however, it was enough to at least send the attacker back behind their tree, apparently temporarily scared off by the suddenly accurate fire on their position. John lowered his rifle, looking back over to Donald, who still stood just a few feet from his previous position behind the truck.

Something had changed though, something John swore he’d heard when scoping out the shooter, but had hoped to God was not the case. If there was one noise John had had the unfortunate pleasure of becoming accustomed to in his time in service, it was the sound of a bullet tearing through the more fleshy areas of the body, and as John noted a sudden lack of progress in Donald’s movement, he realised just exactly what that third muzzle flash had resulted in. A splatter of blood crashed down onto the tarmac around Donald, his eyes now wide as his posture slumped down onto one knee, the sight of immense streams of red suddenly emerging from underneath his chin. The shot had made near perfect contact, ripping through the flesh of Donald’s neck.

“DONALD!?”, John called out, as he watched his companion rock from one knee to the floor, unable to hold himself up any longer, “DONALD!?”, he called out again, knowing only too well what Donald’s lack of response meant, “GOD DAMN IT!”, he screamed.
John raised his weapon, knowing the exact location of one shooter, and the rough one of another. Immediately he began firing rapidly into each spot, the bark of trees splintering around each target area, not a single shot making contact from what John could tell, but doing enough to keep both men in their respective covers, whilst John quickly moved over to Donald’s position.

Arriving at Donald’s shaking body, he knew he had to at least get him into cover, even if it meant resorting to the nearest cover possible, the truck. John dropped everything, grabbing instead his injured companion underneath each of his shoulders – trying to cause as little trauma to Donald’s already gushing neck as possible – and pulled him quickly over to the truck, slumping him against the huge front wheel as he arrived.

“Talk to me Donald!”, he screamed at his companions near lifeless face.
Donald replied with little more than a gargled mess, his throat so filled with blood that the simplest of words had become an impossibility, something John knew, but refused to accept.
“Where are they!?”, John screamed, “Where are my family? Please!?”.
Donald tried once more to speak, but again managed no conceivable words, as it became apparent he was not long for this world.
“NO! This doesn’t end here, not like this, you tell me, please, mime it, write it, do something!”, John yelled, at this point showing complete disregard for the attackers, who were presumably devising their next move.
But it was no use, and as Donald’s eyes began to close, disturbed only briefly by John’s shaking of his body, John knew that his time with Donald was up, and that the last link he had to his family had just been broken.

John stared at the now lifeless body in front of him, a pool of blood forming around the wheel of the truck it leant against. What little chance John had at a family reunion lay in the now defunct brain of the man in front of him, and every chance of finding them outside of that had left the moment the first few bullets had ripped through the trucks engine bay. John was stranded, helpless, near defenceless, and most importantly, alone.

Thoughts of his next move began to surface, the most prominent of which quickly became clear, giving up.

But giving up wasn’t an option, not for John Parker, not after every mile he had walked, every road he had driven, every tin and bottle he had consumed and every rough night he had barely slept, all with the sole intention of finding his family. All the time he’d spent with the disturbing man that was Donald, the friendship with Andrew he had lost because of this quest. All of it had been reduced to nothing, completely worthless, and why? Most likely because some pathetic bandits wanted some extra beans for the night, and were both too selfish and too lazy to put the effort into finding some themselves. Suddenly all of this began to make sense to John, and the feelings of sadness were all quickly replaced by a white hot rage, a feeling of utter madness that stormed his every bone, transforming John from a man that was ready to give up, to a man that wanted to fight.

Quickly, John got to grips with his surroundings, grabbing Donald’s AK off of the ground and sliding over to the other end of the truck, again taking refuge behind its big, bulky wheels. The beat of John’s heart sounded out loudly all around him, his temperature soaring as every muscle in his body began to tighten, his face growing contorted with rage, and eventually, his legs propelling him up into an upright position. Almost without knowing, John’s mouth opened, a series of sounds that even John couldn’t have identified immediately rushing out of it, like an improvised battle cry at the beginning of a war.

“AAAAARRGGHHHHHH”, John screamed across the open space, the figure of both men quickly coming into view, caught half way through an apparent attempt to cross over the roads separating them. Quickly John raised the AK, the face of the nearest man – who stood not thirty metres away – giving off a look of utter horror, as a barrage of bullets erupted from the fully automatic AK, ripping through the man’s body so many times that his life was lost long before he touched the ground. Before even that though, John turned to the other man, his body narrowly ducking behind a tree just as John swivelled round to face him, his finger holding tight down on the trigger while he did, drawing a line of chaos between each of the attackers. By the time he reached his second target though, the last five bullets of the AK simply slammed into the tree’s heavy wooden exterior, no match for the incredibly dense structure that now separated both men.

Finally, the click of an empty magazine sounded out across the street, and no sooner had the AK been dropped to the floor than John had swiftly pulled out his Ruger and Donald’s M9, unleashing a series of much less powerful – but still very much deadly – shots across the road, all of them penetrating deeper and deeper into the tree’s bark, but none even coming close to the man on the other side. Eventually, the click of the pistols came into earshot, again signifying that the source had run dry, but this time with much more dire consequences. John ducked back behind the tire, dropping the empty magazines to the floor and reaching for his backpack, only to realise that along with both the M14 and his Remington, it sat some twenty metres from the truck, in the wide open area between the lobby of the hotel and the truck he now sat against, the very same route that had seen Donald cut down and murdered right in front of John’s eyes.

John was stranded, with not a bullet to fire, and no more than his knife to defend himself, which even he knew would be no use against whatever weapon the attacker had in his possession. Suddenly he found himself reverting to a sense of defeat, the odds stacked heavily against him. Thoughts turned to the past, his daughter’s first birthday, John’s wedding, his friends both before and after, as suddenly he found his life quite literally flashing before his eyes.

“Seems like you about done!”, yelled a voice from the other side of the truck, the faint sound of footsteps signalling the attackers move away from his beloved tree.
John said and did nothing in response, barely even acknowledging the new voice, content simply to take in the last few moments of life.
“You have any idea what you done to me?”, called out the voice again, “Three of my friends you’ve killed, and I don’t even know your God damn name!”.
Still John did nothing.
“You shot one in this same god damn truck”, the voice yelled, followed by the sound of a gunshot being fired into the now completely ruined Toyota, “Another back at the hospital, and now here too, I got nothing left!”.

Finally John began to move, but not to attempt some kind of attack, nor to respond to any of the stranger’s accusation. In fact, John’s movement was much more conservative, one hand reaching into a pocket to pull out a bruised and battered old diary, and his other grabbing a pencil from behind Donald’s ear.
“But you couldn’t get me could ya’? Ain’t got the balls to take out old Jay-Jay, ohhhh no, not a god damn chance!”, yelped the voice as it got even closer, again firing off a shot into the Hilux’s defeated shell.