Instinct: A Chess Team Adventure - By Jeremy Robinson Page 0,25
abandonment and a side effect of the regenerative formula coursing through his veins. For a moment, the advancing soldiers on either side paused. Bishop stood tall above the reeds, his new, XM312 .50-caliber machine gun loaded and ready. The weapon, normally only usable from atop a tripod, had been lightened and modified to hold a drum magazine, rather than a chain of bullets, which also allowed for a faster, eight-hundred-round-per-minute firing rate. The portable killing machine was one of a kind and dubbed the XM312-B by the designer. He pulled the trigger with no delay and laid down a swath of waist-height lead. Men gurgled and fell. Reeds exploded into the air. In fifteen seconds, Bishop’s weapon had belched two hundred .50-caliber rounds in a 360-degree area. A jagged thirty-foot clearing, with Bishop at its center, had been mowed down when he took his finger off the trigger. Writhing bodies of injured combatants lined the east and west of the new clearing. King and crew, now visible, were arranged single file down the middle from north to south, with Knight in the lead and King at the back end.
For a moment, silence returned to the field as both sides tried to determine what had happened and who was left alive.
In that blessed silence, Sara’s mind returned and took in the world. King rose off her and pulled her up. With both ears free to hear and the night returned to an obsidian fog, sounds that most people tune out as background noise—the gentle northward breeze, the rubbing of reeds—entered her ears and through some neurological crosswire became physical sensation. She felt the attacker coming and reacted.
“King, behind you!” Her voice ripped through the silence like tearing flesh, violent and shrill.
King reacted fast, spinning and firing a three-round burst with his M4 assault rifle. A body stumbled out of the reeds and crumpled to the ground close enough for them to see in the moonlight . . . close enough for them to make out the red and white checkered scarf covering his head. King recognized it as the calling card for one of the region’s most notorious fighting forces, but they were supposed to be relics of a bloody past.
“That’s just great,” King said before jumping to his feet, grabbing Sara by the arm, and yanking her violently behind him. The others were already charging for the forest and they were lagging behind. Sara felt positive that King could easily catch up to the others, but his obligation to protect her kept him rooted to her side. She focused on the task and picked up her pace.
King noticed Sara had found her footing and let go of her arm. They’d move faster separately. He hoped she knew enough to stay close and keep her head down. The moment both sides of this confrontation discovered their men were dead, they would assume that the other side had won and unleash hell on their position, and King did not want to be around when that happened. The new clearing would become a very large target. As King and Sara entered the reeds and made for the trees, a barrage of bullets fired from both forces descended on the clearing. The injured men left in the reeds began shouting for their forces to cease fire, but were soon reduced to pulp.
The rain of bullets widened as both forces sought to cut down any fleeing survivors. The bullets hissed in pursuit as they ate through the reeds, seeking flesh. But the hiss of bullets through vegetation turned to woody clunks as she and King entered the dense forest, leaving the killing field behind.
King’s hand on her chest told her to stop moving. Panicked beyond comprehension, Sara froze. Her mind spun, trying to catch up with her senses, which had been pounded during the battle. In that still moment, she thought about her parents, her friends, and the children she wanted to have someday. She wondered if her body somehow knew it was about to die and was instinctually flashing her life before her eyes. She ducked without realizing it, but King took her arm and pulled her back up straight.
“Settle down. You’re safe.” Moving quickly, King opened her backpack, extricated her night vision goggles, and put them on her head.
“Can you see?” he asked.
The world came into high-contrast green focus as the goggles absorbed what tiny fraction of light entered the forest through the thick canopy and amplified it.