Page 21 of Marked for Execution

The air chilled, and I knew we were close. Adjusting my long-sleeved shirt, my legs started shaking with anticipation.What would we run across? Would we find anything good on this trip?

A warm handheld my left thigh down, and my head snapped to his face. Eliseo wasn’t looking at me; instead, he stared straight out the front windshield intently.

“We’re going to pull off this road and hide the vehicle behind the cluster of trees,” the driver said.

Eliseo inadvertently squeezed my leg as he responded, “Behind that one. Me and the kid will go do recon ahead of you guys. Wait for our signal.”

“You got it.”

The driver, an older gentleman—even older than Eliseo—pulled the vehicle smoothly to the side. I opened the back passenger door and jumped out with my partner right behind me.

He placed his large hand on my shoulder and moved me forward. There was a field clearing a few paces ahead. Crouching behind an abandoned, rusted-out truck, my eyes tracked everything in front of me. There was an abandoned gas station and shop ahead about a mile out. Eliseo’s body heat was right beside me, keeping the chill at bay.

“We should head around the backside, use the trees as concealment.”

I nodded. Sounded good to me.

We moved quickly from tree to tree until we could see the back of the gas station. There was graffiti all over it, written messages that warned us away from the place.

“It smells like blood,” I told him.

“I’m sure it does. It’s probably old. This place looks to have been abandoned for some time already.”

How did I explain to him that my sense of smell was heightened?The blood didn’t smell old at all.

“Elis—”

“Let’s go.” He moved and placed his back against the wall, his pistol pointed up.

Dammit.I had a bad feeling about this. Something in my gut screamed at me to go back.“Eliseo!”

He was already looking through the clouded windows and opening the backdoor with his gun pointed ahead of him. He lifted his hand and called me to his side. Growling under my breath, I did as he commanded.

We cleared the gas station and the convenience store next door. Heading back to the Humvee, we called the others in the group to come down. When we all made it back, half of us scavenged the gas station and the other half the store.

Eliseo let me choose which I wanted and followed me. The room was still pretty stocked up with useful things. Grabbing the backpacks we brought with us, I began stuffing it with cans of food and other useful necessities like toothbrushes and combs.

Guess that bad feeling from before was a spoof. Maybe some leftover bad taint in the air. Crouched down to the floor, I rummaged through the random items. My ears perked up when the sound of pills in a bottle came from behind the back counter. Turning to look, I saw Eliseo with a full-blown smile on his face right before he shoved it into his pack.

Maybe that was why he was such an ass. He was probably in pain all the time. No one looked at a pill bottle with that much longing.

He saw me looking at him and he smiled again. Electricity shot through my body. It was weird when he wasn’t being an asshole. I wasn’t used to it. It was a weird kind of nice, and I didn’t know if I liked it.

Standing, I dusted off my cargo pants and threw the bag on my back. Eliseo took that as my signal that I was ready to go.

“Two minutes, and we head back to the Humvee!”

The other guys collectively murmured their agreement and zipped up their bags. We met up with the other half and it looked like all our packs were full. I was feeling good about this trip. We were going to come back with a lot more than the last trip we made.

“Alright, men.” Eliseo checked his watch and looked at the sky. “We found a good loot early on. We still have another good hour before we need to head back to the meet spot. You guys want to keep moving forward or go back now?”

One of the random new guys piped in with eyes full of excitement. “I say we check out what else we can find. We’ll just stash this stuff in the Humvee. There’s plenty of room.”

I looked around as Eliseo called for a vote. The majority wanted to try other locations. I really had no say since Eliseo would drag me wherever he went, anyway, like we were stuck at the hip.

He made it back to the vehicle and threw our bags in the back. Grabbing the back passenger handle, Eliseo tapped my shoulder and lifted his head towards the front passenger side. I followed his direction and got in with him getting into the driver's side.

“Alright, let’s head north for another few minutes and see what we find.”