“What the hell were you thinkin’?”
“I was… coverin’ our backtrail. I was buyin’… a chance to escape and… maybe take out a few of Karch’s hunters, too.” Jimmy was talkin’ between gulps of breath. We hadn’t stopped hustlin’ for almost an hour, pushin’ our way through the woods parallel to the Camp Cypress road as fast as we could.
“That ain’t coverin’ anything,” I said and pointed at the thick column of black smoke risin’ into the sky behind us. “You think whoever owned that gasoline’s gonna part with it peacefully?”
Jimmy looked at his feet, his skinny chest heavin’, long hair drippin’ sweat. “I’m sor-–“ He didn’t finish the word. He dropped to the ground as a bullet tore through the leaves between our heads. I pulled him up and he ran in a crouch. “Shit shit shit,” Jimmy hissed. “Fuckers won’t give up.” Karch’s men were still on our trail.
We changed direction and trudged up a steep embankment that had a big metal culvert jutting out of it. That meant the road was just above us. Halfway up the incline, my chest was achin’ and my knees wanted to give out.
A man suddenly leaned out over the lip of the embankment above us. That’s when I became aware of the sound of car engines on the road above. The man raised a shotgun to his shoulder and took aim at me and –the side of his head exploded with a pop and a cloud of blood, followed by the echoing sound of a distant rifle shot.
I froze for half-a-second. Thought my number was up right then and there. I owed somebody somewhere a beer. Karch’s men were coming out of the woods now. I grabbed Jimmy and pulled him deep into the darkness of the culvert as the men on the road above us opened fire and cut Karch’s men to pieces.
