Free Ranger (The Bugging Out Series Book 5) by Noah Mann

beyond our position. Behind us, to the west, was Bandon, and an array of checkpoints to provide a more robust defense than the roving patrols could manage. Patrols like the one I was on.
    And Elaine.
    She was somewhere to the north, paired with Private Quincy, doing much the same that Nick and I were—staking a forward position for a while and scanning our slice of the pie. Observing. Searching. Hoping to find nothing, but almost certain that something was out there. Some one was out there.
    A lot of someones.
    Elaine and I had worked every patrol together until now, the luck of assignments catching up with us. Or, maybe, it was Schiavo and Lorenzen deciding that a husband and wife should not be placed together on every occasion. The captain and her sergeant were taking very seriously the needs of the town as a whole, with that paramount over personal wishes and aversions of the residents as individuals. Reluctant as I was, I had to yield to whatever they believed was best.
    Just a few minutes after Nick and I took up our position, I was as thankful as could be that Elaine was not with me when muzzle flashes blazed in the woods to the east and south, bullets whizzing over our head, rounds chewing into the wasting stand of fir and pine that surrounded us.
    “Contact!” I shouted out of habit, though no warning was necessary. “Covering!”
    My AR came up, no suppressor on the muzzle, the sight picture I found in the distance just a mix of vague shapes and hellish incoming. I squeezed off three bursts and rolled to the right to a nearby tree, its trunk more stout than the one I’d chosen before. It was then that I saw Nick huddled against the rocky mound he’d been planted himself at, tucked into a ball as rounds splintered off shards of rock.
    “Nick!”
    He didn’t respond. The twenty-seven year old grease monkey, who was more at ease with a ratchet in hand than the grip of an AK-47, simply shivered, his weapon pulled tight to his chest.
    “Nick!” I shouted his name again. “Lay some fire!”
    The young man’s eyes came up, finding mine, his body trembling, from a cold that was not external. This shiver that afflicted him came from a wave of utter terror that had drenched him, penetrating to the bone. He was nearly catatonic.
    I knelt behind the tree and fired the rest of my mag toward the muzzle flashes, too distant and obscured by the darkening woods to give me any clear sight picture. I dropped the empty and inserted a fresh magazine, chambering the first round and squeezing off a series of single shots before dashing to the rocky covering which shielded Nick. Incoming rounds kicked up dust and dirt a yard or two behind me.
    “Nick, can you hear me?”
    I hunkered down in the shelter of the sharp boulders and grabbed him by the coat collar.
    “Nick!”
    Finally, he showed some response, his gaze angling up at me as a flurry of rounds pecked at the far side of the rocks. I looked into his eyes and saw none of what I needed to at that moment. There was no fight in them. Nearly no life at all. Just a blank window to what the sudden eruption of terror had done to the man.
    He was helpless.
    I leaned left and fired to the east at the extreme north end of the force that was out there, muzzle flashes defining the limit of their line. Or the limit they were allowing me to see. In minutes they could move further north and flank the position we held. There would be no cover from such a move. No tactics to thwart it. We’d be overrun.
    “Nick, we’ve gotta move,” I told the young man, shaking him by the collar. “Due west. You hear me? We’ve got to run. Right through the trees.”
    He didn’t react at all. I grabbed the AK from him and tossed it aside. I was going to have to drag him clear of the attack we were facing, and all his weapon was now was dead weight that I would have to move with us.
    “We’re moving, Nick. Do you understand?”
    Again I shook him, with no effect, then I drew my hand back and