Chapter 21 #2
I still can’t breathe, but I can hold a knife. I thrust the blade up and into the neck of whoever is on my left. I don’t care who it is. I’m absolutely positive it’s not an innocent bystander. The best that money can buy, that’s who I’ll be up against today.
Like the expensive assassin we killed.
The bloody knife comes in handy for slicing through my seat belt, it’s that sharp. I stumble up to my feet, choking on my own blood. Disoriented from the crash.
There are a dozen men emerging from vehicles all around me. The Chevelle isn’t going anywhere either, stuck in a massive mud rut with several deflated tires and plenty of body damage. Hitching my undead soul to Scarlett comes with endless benefits, Bastian as a mechanic included.
I start running. Still can’t breathe, but need to run.
So many guns. I get shot several times before I gain enough space from the men that a pursuit becomes necessary.
I know what I can and can’t do. Fighting off twelve men with guns while I’m bleeding and suffocating from a car accident is not something I can manage right now.
Idiot. I’m chastising myself as I run, bleeding everywhere and giving away my own trail.
How fucking frustrating! If I could have, I’d have run back up the hill to Scarlett, Widow, Ash, and Alexei.
That would be my best bet, the easiest way to survive.
I don’t think I can climb the exposed muddy hill without being pumped full of bullets. The woods it is.
I’m weaving through the trees, trying to assess my wounds.
My chest feels like it’s been wrapped in plastic, strangling me.
No phone. We’re all carrying GPS trackers on us, so at least the others will have my location.
Unless…I can’t reach into my shirt to see if the tracker was destroyed during the crash.
Ah. Probably.
I press a hand against the wound on my leg, losing blood at such a rapid rate that I know something is horribly wrong.
I might’ve taken a fatal shot. At least three of those bullets found their targets.
I can feel one in my shoulder, unimportant.
Another in my forearm. Also fine. It’s the one in my leg that’s slowing me down, causing me to stumble.
Pursuit, Kellin. They’re in pursuit. I can hear the men behind me at the same time that I can feel my mind shutting down from the loss of blood. Should I climb a tree and wait for Scarlett to find me? I’m not sure if I can climb a tree right now.
I keep running.
The woods thin out and then disappear altogether, leaving me at the edge of Ferndale Hill Cemetery.
My mind is addled from the crash, but not so much that I forgot about the mausoleum. As a renegade, it’s important to have safe houses all over town. Just in case.
I slip through a hole in the fence and stumble behind an obelisk, taking off my tie and using it to make a tourniquet around my upper thigh.
The pain makes me clench my teeth so hard that my eyes water with tears of rage.
Can’t be helped though. I need to stop the bleeding long enough to get inside and shut the door.
My pursuers stumble into the foggy, rain-slick graveyard, slowing down.
They split into groups, weaving into the cemetery to look for me.
The first thing I do is grab onto the edge of the nearest mausoleum and haul myself up to lie on the roof.
I barely make it, rolling onto my back and fighting the urge to black out.
If I close my eyes here, I may never open them again.
Move Bohnes. Move. There must be blood on the ground, maybe smeared on the side of the structure. I need to get out of here.
I turn back to my stomach, gritting my teeth against the pain, and then I slither across the cement roof.
At the edge, I peer over, taking note of the positions of as many men as I can see from that vantage.
The burial plot I purchased for me and Scarlett is just up ahead, not even forty feet away. I chose that one for a reason.
It’s still hard to breathe when I push up into a crouch, waiting for a spare moment to leap from the top of one grave to the next.
On my belly again. Slithering. Still bleeding but not enough to drip down the sides of the next mausoleum.
I’ve lost my hearing and my vision is white at the edges. Bad sign.
If I can get into the safe house, I’ve got emergency bandages that’ll stop the bleeding. If I can get into the safe house, there’s a satellite phone down there. If. If. If.
Crouch. Leap. Belly. Slither.
I make it to where I need to go, dropping down to the grass and finding that I suddenly don’t have the strength in my knees to stand.
Fuck was right. I’m not a man though. I’m a ghoul.
A ghoul. I dig my fingers into the mud, dragging myself along with my hands.
This is fine. I’m buried in overgrown weeds and hiding among the headstones.
The door is right there. Right there. I use the iron grating to pull myself up, wishing I still had use of my ears.
It’s hard to know where my enemies are when my sight lines are so poor.
Not that my vision is much better. Sucking the blood from my thumb, I push a small decorative urn aside to find the keypad. Can’t leave any blood to mark my trail.
What’s the code again? I wonder, swaying dangerously.
My mind is slipping away from me. Muscle memory is all that gets me through it, pressing the numbers in.
The letter ‘S’ in binary code, in honor of Scarlett.
Zero-one-zero-one-zero-zero-one-one. My love.
My Nightmare. Put the urn back. Hide the keypad.
I push the door open, unconcerned with the creak of it. There’s nothing more I can do. Either I can get inside now and shut it behind me or I’m fucked. It takes everything I have to drag my useless corpse inside, leaning my body weight against the door to close it. Snick. It’s locked.
I’ve bought myself a few minutes and nothing more.
Bloody and crawling, I move past the altar where I held Scarlett’s leather leg straps and fucked her into oblivion on our date. I’ve never cared about dying before. It was more of an I refuse to lie down and die and allow this filthy horrible world to win. But now? I can’t leave Scarlett.
The trapdoor opens easily if you know where the mechanism is.
I roll down the steps because I have no strength to walk or even crawl.
Can’t even summon the energy to close it behind me.
That’s a mistake. On the floor in front of me, there’s a chest full of basic medical supplies, my bandages included.
I fumble it open, smearing red across everything.
It’s not just my leg that’s bleeding. Red is coming from my head wound, too.
It’s a monumental effort to shove my pants down enough to expose the wound in my leg.
Even my flaccid cock is covered in blood.
The first bandage is messy, but effective. The second is adequate.
I have zero fucking memory of applying the third.