Page 8 of Trigger Discipline
GEARDO
Everything was blurry. Blake tried to swallow but his mouth was dry. Blake thought he was shaking his head, but he couldn’t be sure. Had his neck always been rubber? His ears were ringing. Blinking, he tried to get the tinkling to stop. He reached for something, but his hand didn’t move.
Acute pain spread across his ribs. He coughed, agony radiating over his body. His tongue was dry, and his teeth crunched across grit. He tasted blood. Was his mouth bleeding? No. He could feel something dribbling across his face. He touched it.
Oh. There was his hand.
Suddenly, his vision blacked out. Panic began clawing up his chest. He couldn’t do anything about it. Couldn’t move. The blackness shifted. Then realized he had been looking at the top of Tommy’s head. He was shouting something. Mouth opening and closing. His face was pale underall the dirt. Someone had hit him. A bruise was blooming across his smooth cheek.
“-lake! Can you hear me!”
Like his ears had just been turned back on, he could hear again. And it was loud. Someone was screaming. Tommy wasyelling in his face, and he could hear some strange crunching noises. Something boomed in the distance; it felt like the bass on a decent car stereo. It buzzed through his legs.
“You have to get up! It’s coming! Blake move!” Tommy grabbed him by the arm and jerked.
He yelped in pain, curling his free arm around his ribs. Irritation flickered at the back of his mind. Couldn’t Tommy see he needed a minute?
Lifting his head to yell at his partner, he saw what was behind them.
Oh shit.
They didn’t have a minute.
A sedan was coming at them. And it wasn’t being driven. No, it was tossed through the air like a fucking projectile. Blake was hurting, but seeing a Corolla flipping through the air like a football thrown in a perfect spiral was motivation enough.
Scrambling to his feet, he used Tommy’s shoulder to hold himself up. They ran across the street, his blood pumped, and he suddenly remembered what the hell had happened.
They had been heading to the MidSouth Building. Expecting an MCI, they’d almost been killed by a falling telephone pole. Luckily, the brakes on their truck worked and Tommy had managed to keep them from being crushed. They re-routed only to find several injured people outside a gas station. Blake had stopped to help when he was hit.
Literally. A tire had flown out of nowhere and hit him, knocking him into the cement barrier blocking the gas pump.
The car landed behind them in a screech of bending metal. It rolled three times, finally coming to rest on its wheels. If the body didn’t look like a piece of fucked up origami paper, it might have looked like it was just parked.
Tommy dragged him inside the gas station, throwing the lock on the door. They braced, hands on knees, trying to catch their breath.
“The—” he gasped. “—fuck?”
Tommy shook his head, looking out the glass door. “There are explosions everywhere. We can’t stay here.”
Blake nodded, trying to get his brain to catch up. Everything was still fuzzy, and the back of his head ached.
“What about the patients?”
“I didn’t see them after you got hit,” Tommy admitted, looking a little concerned. He climbed onto a shelf with gum, trying to see over all the papers stuck to the window. “Everything’s on fire.”
Blake swallowed, looking out the smudged window.
The shut off.
He jerked up, running around the counter and looking for the shutoff switch. Every gas station had one. Something to keep the gas from pumping up above ground. He wasn’t sure how helpful that would be, but shit was hitting the fan, and the last thing he needed was gasoline getting involved.
“I don’t see it!” he yelled, knocking a display of cheap sunglasses to the floor.
“Do you think it’s terrorists?” Tommy asked nervously, wrapping his arms around himself.
Blake lunged across the counter. It made his ribs scream, but he grabbed Tommy by the collar.
“Fucking focus, tofu! I need you with me!” Tommy blinked at him with big eyes. “Where the hell is the emergency shut off switch for the gas?”