Free Life After: Episode 2 by JJ Holden Page B

seconds before his body
followed suit.
    Clark grabbed his rifle and aimed it down the hill.
“A little help,” he said, hoping Jeff heard him. He fired off two
shots before he heard Jeff’s rifle to his left. One of the soldiers
took a bullet to the chest and fell backward. The other two
crouched and aimed their rifles up the hill. Each fired a shot. The
tree by which Jeff stood took the first bullet. Jeff’s left arm
took the second. Jeff held back his agony and leaned out farther to
get a better aim at the soldiers who were now in a near-prone
position on the incline.
    Jeff squeezed off a shot that hit one of the soldiers
in the temple. The last remaining soldier sat up and fired upon
Jeff, hitting him in the chest.
    Clark screamed out for Jeff but it was too late. He
rose, lifted his rifle and aimed it down the hill at the soldier.
The soldier looked into Clark’s eyes a split second before reacting
to the imminent danger. He turned to aim, but it was too late.
Clark had fired the first shot with such precision, even Jeff would
have been proud. The bullet careened through the moist air beneath
the forest canopy and into the right eye of the soldier.
    Clark rushed over to Jeff, but there was nothing he
could do to save him.
    “Jeff!” Clark screamed.
    Clark stared at Jeff as he lay motionless on the
blood-stained soil and realized that he had lost his last remaining
friend.
     
     
    * * *
     
    The boy stood at the bottom of the hill, still
shaking. Still horrified by what had transpired. He had just
witnessed the death of his father and brother at the hands of the
soldiers that now lay in bloody messes all over the forest
floor.
    Up the steep incline, he saw one remaining soldier
standing over a body, perhaps the body of the person who attempted
to intervene. After a few minutes, the soldier, with a rifle by his
side, descended the hill. The boy’s heart pounded even faster.
    The boy ran away from the carnage and away from the
man who pursued him.
    He heard the man’s voice ring out. “Wait!”
    The boy did not hesitate to run faster.
    “I’m trying to help you!”
    Faster yet, away from the calls of the man. The man
who probably wanted him dead.
    The boy thought of his short life. He wasn’t ready to
die. Not more than ten minutes prior, he was facing death. His life
flashed through his mind then and now again with the solider in hot
pursuit.
    As he ran, he tried to keep his footing, avoiding the
large roots that jutted out from the loose soil. He successfully
dodged a few particularly large roots as he sprinted towards an
unknown destination. Towards an unknown everything.
    Just as he thought he’d have a chance at getting
away, a root seemed to almost grab him by the ankles and drag him
down. Like the time his older brother pulled him into the deep end
of the pool as a silly prank, only this time, he knew it wouldn’t
be a silly prank. It would be the end of him.
    He didn’t think of the days he spent in school before
the collapse. Several years had passed since he stopped going to
school, so his mind was littered with memories of the recent past.
Instead of thinking of his past life, he thought of the day he lost
his mother a few months prior. Then he thought of his father and
brother. He closed his eyes and wished upon everything that it was
all a nightmare, but when he reopened them, he was still on the
soggy ground. Still at the mercy of his oncoming adversary.
    Then he heard a pair of boots pressing into the soggy
soil. He lay still, hoping the monster would take after the T-Rex
he remembered reading about. Don’t move and he won’t see you! Don’t
move and you’ll live!
    The sound of boots stopped, and a voice took over the
silence. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
    Then he heard another voice, that of a boy around his
age. “He won’t.”
    The boy looked back and saw the soldier, a man in
civilian clothing, and a young boy. He had beaten death for the
time being, but as he found out over the