Free Root of Unity by SL Huang Page B

the inside out. Oh, and my left hand was in a lot of pain. Blistered. Some dermal trauma. Because it had been on fire. Right.
    I kept my eyes and ears open—at least, as much as I could, through the tearing and the ringing—but the street was calm, and apart from the soft whoosh of the flames continuing to burn, I heard nothing. Good. I wasn’t inclined to investigate until I’d definitely given the gentlemen I’d shot in the legs enough time to bleed out. There was still a chance one of them would have enough strength to pull a trigger, and why tempt fate?
    I dug out a fresh magazine and reloaded my Colt. The metal was heavy. My fingers fumbled on it before managing to click the new mag home.
    From here I could see the two men I’d shot last. The bodies were still, a pool of red gleaming around them, their rifles fallen across their chests. AK-47s, I noticed. Cheap and reliable, like a Molotov cocktail. I wondered what they’d put in the bottles to add the explosion—that was a neat trick.
    Of course, it hadn’t worked out terribly well for them.
    I waited a few minutes longer than I had to. I told myself it was just to be safe, but getting up also seemed a little bit difficult right now. Finally I pushed myself to my feet using the wall and led cautiously with the barrel of the Colt as I came around the back of the van.
    The carnage was gruesome, even by my standards. The corpses who’d been hit by the napalm had been blackened into an inhuman mess. Most of them were still burning. The stench in the air gagged me.
    Around them, the area between the van and the SUVs had become a blood slick, the crimson gleaming in the low light under the overpass. One of the men I’d shot in the leg had attempted to tourniquet himself. It hadn’t worked. One of the other men I’d shot had caught on fire after falling. I couldn’t tell if he’d been dead already when it happened.
    I gave the massacre a wide berth.
    One of the men twitched. It was hard to believe he could still be alive; his whole lower body was curdled and black, small flames still licking against him. I shot him in the head as I went past. It was the most merciful thing I’d done all day.
    The van was still half on fire, as was the closest SUV. The vehicle next to it had a .45-inch hole spider webbing the windshield, and the driver slumped against the wheel in his own spatter pattern of red—the first man I’d shot. The third SUV was behind the other two, and had escaped more or less intact.
    I thought about searching the other two vehicles, but I hadn’t done great with the van, and even as isolated as this place was, we’d made a lot of noise. The cops might be on their way. I’d dallied here too long already.
    I pushed my Colt back into my belt, got into the third SUV, and drove away.

Chapter 8
    The bad guys—whoever they were—had put a tracker on their own van. They could probably find the SUV I was in, too. I stopped five streets over in a run-down residential area and stole a rusted junkpot from in front of a house that had grass that was far too long and cement blocks scattered in the yard. Then I hit the freeway, jumped down three exits, pulled off in a strip mall, and grabbed an inconspicuous Honda.
    I was a long way out of LA proper and far from any of my bolt holes. I stopped at a drugstore and bought gauze, antiseptic, and a few other random first-aid supplies, using the self-checkout so I didn’t get any nosy questions from a cashier. Then I went back to the Honda, sat in the driver’s seat, and patched myself up, taping a dressing over the wound on my shoulder and wrapping the burned hand. The burn was an odd sort of discomfort—half pain and half numbness, with a stinging sensation underneath. I put it out of my head.
    I’d picked up a new phone along with the medical supplies, having dropped mine somewhere in the fray and forgotten to go back for it. Idiot. I texted Arthur the new digits and then dialed Checker while I snugged the