Buddy System (Honeybee Hollow #1)
Chapter 1
Chapter
One
Skyler
I don’t know if I was shivering more because of the freezing cold or nerves. As I faced the open doorway, heart pounding, I tensed at the sound of incoming bullets and saw the silhouette of a small advancing form. Before I could grab my firearm, a heavy, bellowing body nearly flattened me by flinging itself onto me facing outward.
“What are you doing, Levi?” I shouted at him over the sounds of rapid fire and agonized screams. The lousy intel on this place had led us into a trap. I was immobilized for a moment both by his weight and by the shock of having him cover me in such a way. Levi fired off a series of shots at our intruder, and the shooter fell. Just a kid. My heart felt heavy, and I fought the urge to be sick, but then Levi moaned in pain and his body shook. I felt a warm wetness and knew it had to be Levi’s blood. His rifle dropped out of his grip and onto the dirt floor of our crude refuge.
I mentally prepared to die with my best buddy in a spray of bullets. There had to be more gunmen on the way—or a smarter, more efficient attacker with a grenade. Afghanistan was filled with people who’d like to see us dead. We were sitting ducks now that we’d been erroneously sent into this deathtrap.
Just then, an explosion shattered the area somewhere outside of the hovel that sheltered us, and its reverberation thundered through my body as pieces of debris shook loose and fell from the ceiling. It was a wonder we weren’t crushed, but the roof and walls held. The shooting stopped; the attack was over. I smelled gunpowder and dirt. And blood.
I had to get Levi off me to assess his state. Carefully, I shoved him to the side, mightily relieved to hear him scream in pain. He was alive! For now, anyway.
“Don’t you fucking dare die on me Levi Spencer, you hear me?” I shouted at him. He had taken some painful shots to the chest where he was protected by body armor, but below the armor, he was bleeding profusely. I did my best to apply pressure. I shouted over and over for medical assistance, but it was like the world had gone deaf. Finally, finally , someone squawked in my headphone and requested our location. After rattling it off, the answer I got was grim.
“We’re fifteen minutes out. We’ll do our best. Anyone else hurt or…?”
I looked around and saw that I was the only one left in one piece. “All dead except for me and Sergeant Spencer,” I answered, trying to keep my emotions under control. All dead . They had been my friends, the guys I counted on and joked with. I knew about their wives and kids, their pretty girlfriends and the beloved dogs they’d left at home so they could serve our country. All of them were gone just like that. I continued into my headpiece with a badly shaking voice, “And I don’t know how much longer he’ll be able to hang on. We need you ten minutes ago!”
“We’ll do our best.”
“Do better than that, or he’ll bleed to death!”
“Roger that.”
In the middle of crabbing to myself about how shitty it was that we were both supposed to be getting out of the Army when we got sent on this fucked-up mission, I heard a sickening noise. With an ungodly screech, the roof collapsed on us, driving a splintered timber nearly through my shoulder. The crushing pain was so intense, I could barely breathe. Terror washed through me that our rescuers would show up and find nothing but a pile of rubble and dead bodies. Then I wondered what it would be like to live with one arm if we made it out somehow. It would be better than if the wooden beam had landed on my neck. No one lives without their head, but an arm was doable. My last ridiculous thought before passing out was, “Raise high the roofbeam, Carpenters.” I always was a Salinger fan—ever since our Honeybee Hollow librarian Mrs. Lassiter introduced me to his books.