Page 68 of Beacon

The end is closing in on me now, so it will have to be enough.

13

I’m so lockedin a blurred zone of shooting and ducking and so overwhelmed with the reality of my approaching death that it takes me a couple of minutes to register that something in the air has shifted.

The sounds around me are different now. The bullets whizzing at us are now angled in a new direction. And there’s a murmur rising. A shocked, excited one.

When I finally process the change, I glance over to Jimmy beside me. He’s lifted himself higher on his knees so he can see over the AC unit, and for some reason, he’s not immediately getting shot down.

I risk straightening my back and stretching up on my knees too so I can find out what’s happening.

Nothing could have prepared me for what I see.

A group of ATVs are accelerating out of the wooded area, having come from behind the criminals andevidently caught them off guard. A couple of military-grade Humvees are skirting the edge of the woods, and there are shooters hanging off the sides, taking care of the rest of the bad guys.

And on the quad bike at the front of the roughly triangular formation is Mack.

Mack.

He somehow brought an army with him.

As I watch, he drives through the open area between the building and the trees, heading around a group of men fleeing so he can block their retreat.

He doesn’t shoot them down when they drop their guns, but his intimidating presence is an obstacle they can’t overcome.

Now it’s over for real. Cal is standing up, leaning over to help Rachel to her feet. Jimmy jumps up too and runs over to the opposite side of the building where I see Greta kneeling beside her husband’s body on the ground.

Scanning the newcomers, I finally realize where Mack managed to find the extra guns and manpower. Logan has just jumped out of one of the Humvees. He’s shouting out orders to his people with the brisk professionalism I remember from when we met him before. His long hair is still pulled back at the nape of his neck, but strands have come loose and are blowing around his face. In this moment he looks vaguely like a commander from the Revolutionary War.

Mack called in the favor Logan owed us.

My eyes once more search for Mack. He’s still on the quad, standing up now instead of sitting on the seat. He’s corralling the retreaters with his rifle, but his gaze shifts over to me, meeting mine over the distance.

Everything inside me wants to run to him, and I actually start to do just that. But when I almost trip over a pair of legs on the ground, I jerk to an abrupt stop.

It’s Rose, still lying where she fell when the tide turned against us. Her shirt is soaked with blood.

I kneel down beside her, feeling for the gunshot that brought her down.

I squeak in surprise when she suddenly shifts beneath my hands. “I’m okay,” she mumbles. “I think I’m okay.”

“Oh my God, Rose.” I find the wound, relieved to see it’s in her shoulder and not her chest. “I thought you were dead.”

“Me too.” With a groan, she actually manages to sit up. “Damn bullet wound hurts like hell.”

I’m holding both hands against the torn flesh, trying to stop some of the blood loss. “I bet it does. Oh, here’s Heather. She can fix you up.”

Heather is one of Maria’s crew, and she was a paramedic back before Impact, so she always helps with first aid. She takes my place beside Rose, and I stand up to get out of the way.

I then hurry over to where Greta and Jimmy are kneeling beside Ben. He’s still alive too, but I gulp at the sight of his leg and have to look away quickly so that mystomach doesn’t turn. Jimmy and his mom are in the midst of applying a tourniquet just above his knee, so I don’t linger to distract them.

Maria is on her feet and pacing around, supervising the aftermath the way she always does. And she doesn’t appear even remotely concerned about the blood on the upper sleeve of her left arm.

There are a lot of dead bodies around, but most of them are the bad guys. I see we lost a couple of Maria’s women, but none I was close to. I try not to be overly relieved by this fact, but I am.

When I spot Aidan and Breanna leaning against the side of the building, I head over to check in with them. There’s blood on Breanna’s face, and Aidan is gently wiping it off.

“I’m fine,” Breanna says with a smile when she sees my concern. “I just got scratched up when Aidan flung me to the ground.”

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