Bad Company

Dead (Wo)Man Walking

Sirens screamed in the night, and bright red lights cast jagged shadows on the forest floor, the sharp and curling vines of the underbrush seemingly resembling tattling fingers pointing into the night towards the shooter. This way, they seemed to cruelly taunt. As the emergency vehicles passed, though, the guiding shadows receded before vanishing altogether.

The ambulance sailed into the parking lot, spewing pebbles and dust in a low cloud as the tires locked and skidded a few feet along the loose rock. As the EMTs finally emerged from the vehicle, two of the three responders threw open the back doors and unloaded the gurney as the third sprinted towards the prone figure on the ground, Greg's pallor unnervingly matching freshly bleached sheets.

Colt loyally remained stationed by his side, and I couldn't help but continuously churn his words over in my mind. It could have been you. I understood that he wasn't stating that it was good that Greg had been shot. No, that was one of the farthest things from it, but his words had sent heat flushing through my body nonetheless. He was glad I was safe, and, just maybe, he was also asking for something a little more out of the teasing relationship than we had previously established.

My eyes slipped closed as mental weariness flushed through my bones at those thoughts, gravity jerking on my exhausted body. Greg had fallen unconscious a few minutes ago, so Colt had suggested I go sit down and rest while he waited with Greg for the EMTs and police officers, but I found that extremely difficult and chose instead to hover on the fringe of activity and keep a careful watch over things.

"Your eyebrows are practically a unibrow right now, E. What's go you thinking so hard?" Dannie murmured, her stressed tone ladened with undue guilt. My eyes snapped open, and I relaxed my worried expression at her observation before I took note of her appearance. Dannie's skin was almost as pale as Greg's, and I stood a little straighter, stepping towards my friend who looked as if she might pass out at any moment. Dannie waved me off before I could speak up, though, and she pressed her back against the sun blistered paint of the bar. "I'll be alright. I'm just...shaken up is all. I mean, you read about these things in the news, but you never really think that it could possibly happen to you, that it could happen to someone you've known for so long. It's devastating."

Tears pooled in her hazel eyes, and I offered her a comforting hug, wrapping my arms around her shoulders as she burrowed into my embrace. I carded my fingers soothingly through her hair while rubbing my other hand across the expanse of her back. "Dannie, you can't do this to yourself. Greg chose to push us out of the way of that bullet; nobody made him do it. Besides, the shooter was very obviously aiming for anyone at that point. It very well could have been me instead, or even Colt. I feel like that's how life works sometimes; whoever reaches that point in time first experiences that event."

"But why did it have to be Bean? He's nineteen for God's sake! Why couldn't it have been me? I was the one who had run out into the night even though y'all were telling me not to. I didn't listen, and now an innocent kid is going to die," Dannie sobbed, a hiccup interrupting the already staggered breaths she was gasping for.

There was an odd sound of springs being released, and I peered over Dannie's shoulder to see the emergency responders lifting the gurney up to its full height and securing Greg to the board. He remained unmoving, a detail that had Colt lacing his fingers behind his neck in defeat. I could tell he was trying so hard to be brave, but I saw those flashes of fear and pain in the oceanic depths of his eyes. He had lost a brother, and now a young boy was bleeding to death in his arms once again. I couldn't even imagine what he was experiencing right then.