Page 34 of Trusted Instinct
That noise triggered both reporters to sprint for the trees to their left and hide behind the hardwood.
While a human brain isn’t built to process events that unfold at the speed of a flying bullet, a human’s preservation doesn’t need that much to make out the sound of a bullet zingingpast and then throw their body out of the way of any follow-up shots.
Auralia’s gaze immediately scanned for Creed and Gator, knowing that they were trained to do the opposite.
They’d be running toward the danger.
Chapter Nine
Creed
It was a single shot that rang out.
A crack of fire power rode the wind. The bullet hit the speaker that screeched and sizzled, filling the air with a painful cacophony of noise mere feet from the people who had gathered on the stage.
Even as Creed jumped into action, his brain was assessing.
His first thought was for Auralia.
From his security post, he had kept an eye on the reporting team and knew that they had stood up to record when the speeches began.
When the shot rang out, the women, seasoned in battle conditions, didn’t play around. They were there filming,CRACK, and they slipped seamlessly behind the broad trunk of a hardwood.
Was that gunfire caused by something Rou had missed?
Creed and Rou had spent their time stationed at the security table, where the local sheriff’s deputy continued to check the bags of any stragglers as they arrived.
Then Rougarou gave them a sniff.
Creed had felt certain that Rou had been on her game. The search had turned up three ankle holsters, a few kidney holsters, an interesting garter holster, and a bra holster. Rou had one hit that wasn’t a weapon, but the woman said she’d just been at the range, so she had gun smoke residue on her clothes.
Creed told Rou, "Good hit," and Rou got her tug-of-war game.
When Creed asked the folks to lock their weapons in their vehicles, he had anticipated pushback from the attendees, but Rou had that handled. With her puppy charm and sweet affection, her whole body was wagging with excitement each time she got a hit and alerted to the scent of ammunition; folks didn’t get bent out of shape. Generally, they’d chuckled as they returned to their trucks to lock up their guns and then came back to present themselves to Rou for a sniff test that cleared them.
Creed had documented Rou’s good work and had been looking forward to reporting their success.
He had no idea where that shot had originated.
Now that he and Rue had found cover, Creed waited for Striker to assign roles to each of the operators as they facilitated the situation.
Creed had his eyes on the stage. Interesting what happened: Mayor Early and Representative Braxton curved their arms over their heads and curled over. They were older men, in their seventies, and probably had limited experience being fired upon. They started to jog left, then turned and jogged right, then left again and off into the wings.
The cooler head was Morrison, though Auralia had said he had never been in the military. He simply held his arms wide to herd the women and walked off the stage.
Training or not, everyone at the scene assessed the situation, and by design or by the insistence of their limbic system, everyone acted in survival mode.
There was a clear demarcation in the audience.
Those who went to school after the Columbine shooting followed their live-shooter training.
Older generations startled, cast their gazes about; then they did the lemming thing, which was good. If you didn’t know, follow behind someone who did. Many of them, though, couldn’tget off the ground, so they rolled to their stomachs and covered their heads with their hands.
Babies were dragged from strollers. Parents threw their bodies over their children.
Some lay flat, others ran for the back of the stage, where the tree line would afford them concealment and some cover.
Creed bet that a lot of the stage-runner group were remembering the Las Vegas mass shooting when survival was much more likely behind the scaffolding.
