Looking Back Through Ash - Wade Ebeling Page 0,157

were almost in.

Daniel shook his head hard, trying to clear his thoughts. He couldn’t shoot the girl, but he couldn’t let those bastards have her, either.

He spun away from Leslie, snatching up the combat vest and rifle. He put the vest on, shoving a new magazine into the rifle afterward.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

“Get up!” Daniel shouted, shoving the sea bag into her hands. “Get ready to run! Stay right behind me, alright? You have to stay close!”

He stood Leslie up, but the weight of the bag was obviously too much for her.

Boom! Crack! Thump! The door was yielding.

“Just leave it! Stay right by my side!”

The door burst open, and three men stumbled inside, dropping a length of the crane arm.

It was point blank range, and Daniel could hardly miss. Eight rapid fire rounds had the men down and dying. Daniel did not stop there, however, and he charged out of the doorway, firing even as he stumbled over an arm, nearly rolling his ankle.

Now outside, Daniel snapped shots off at the scattering men. Several were trapped within the ring of concrete piles with him, making for easy targets, but many more had made it to cover. He stopped to see if Leslie was close enough to keep moving, when a deep ‘thud!’ shook the ground after something very large sailed past his ear. A chuck of concrete, hurled from the roof of the building, and big enough to cave his skull in, had narrowly missed ending him.

He fired twice at whoever was up there, just to make them take cover. Grabbing Leslie by the arm, he yanked her out of range of the stones. Running up the path to the pond, which was on flat ground closer to the road, Daniel encountered two men who had taken cover within the path’s steep walls. The men threw their hands up. Daniel had no time to slow down, so he shot them both.

He let Leslie move up the path ahead of him, shooting a few times to give any pursuers something to think about. Daniel caught up with her at the pond, quickly slinging the rifle and picking her up to run. Within seconds they had made it to the fence. Daniel pushed Leslie up, where she clung to the top rail. When he made it to the top of the fence, Daniel braced his legs painfully against the three strands of barbed wire, and grabbed Leslie’s wrists, heaving her up to him. He then hung her over the other side and dropped her.

Trying to awkwardly hop over the barbed wire, Daniel’s pant leg caught, flipping him upside down as cleanly as a rug pulled out from underneath him would have.

“Uncle Danny?”

“Uncle Danny! There is someone coming!”

Daniel wondered why he had been sleeping, dreaming of saving his daughter.

“There’s a car coming! It’s almost here!” Rebecca yelled.

No, not Rebecca, Leslie.

Daniel sat up, finding that he was on the hard driveway of the concrete plant. He must have knocked himself out cold falling over the top of the fence. What was Leslie talking about? A car? That couldn’t be right.

Headlights caught his eye, as the girl moved away from the road. She appeared to want to get back over the fence. The vehicle was almost on top of them. Certainly they had been spotted by now.

The car turned into the strip mall across the street from them, and then quickly drove around to the back corner. Just as the headlights had gone behind the building, Daniel got a glimpse of the vehicle. It looked identical to his.

Groaning, Daniel stood up and groggily checked the rifle. Leslie had come back over to him, as she had just spotted some men over by the pond. “You’re bleeding,” she said worryingly, “and those guys are coming back…”

The cut over his eye had opened back up, and blood coursed down his face, dripping from his chin. “It’s fine…Be quiet and follow me,” he whispered.

Unable to jog, Daniel walked as fast as he could across the street and parking lot. Worried that people would still be able to see them, he led them around the far side of the strip mall from where the truck had gone. Hiding behind a wheeled dumpster, Daniel saw his truck parked just past the back alley, behind a brown brick, Tudor-style house. As he watched, two policemen still in uniform, appeared from a hole in the back retaining wall. They stacked some heavy looking crates in the back of the truck, before heading through