The smoke from the gunfire was burning my eyes. I grabbed the kid and we crouched as low as we could. I looked up for a second and all I see was the Old Man from the treehouse. Fire in his eyes. Rifle spitting lead as fast as he could spin it to chamber another round.
“Merridew!” the kid shouted. There was a skinny, longhaired guy behind the Old Man, firing when the Old Man was reloading. He looked our way and his eyes got wide. The gunfire stopped, but the ringing in my ears continued. The Old Man grabbed my arm, Merridew grabbed the kid, and they pulled us out the door.
“Fancy meetin’ you all here,” the Old Man said to me as we ran, “Ain’t that always the way?” We ran around the side of the next building and crouched for cover in case the rest of the Hunters followed us out.
Merridew wanted to keep going. “We better pull back and wait for the others to show up.” he yelled.
“Where’s Danny?” the kid yelled at him. “We been looking everywhere! Where is he??!”
Merridew tried to get a word out, but the kid kept yelling and started hitting him.
But I didn’t hear anything more from them. Everything just went silent. The Old Man was trying to say something to me, but I could only see his lips move, like my ears were still ringing even though they weren’t. He was putting something in my hands, but — I don’t know what the hell was happening — I could only look at his eyes, into his eyes — the expression on his face. I couldn’t underst– the Old Man unwrapped his hands from mine and I looked down to see what it —
The Bulova with the blue face..? My knees went weak and the Old Man grabbed me before I fell.
Tears poured out of me as I looked back up to his eyes.
“You gotta hold on to things like this, Sarah,” the Old Man said. “I’m not always gonna be here to…”
