Page 63 of What Doesn't Kill Her

The bullet hit so fast it ripped a chunk of hair from her head.

She didn’t take time to absorb the shock but leaped to the opposite side of the trunk and aimed in the direction of the shooter and pulled the trigger.

A low-voiced furious curse.

She zeroed in and shot again.

A scream, long and loud and vicious. High-pitched. A pause. More screams, longer and louder.

Okay. Okay. Two shooters dealt with. It didn’t even the odds, but it helped.

Kellen leaned her back against the tree trunk. She had to raise her voice above the shrieks. “Rae!”

Rae lifted her head. “Mommy?” She sounded calm, but her eyes were dark; the pupil almost swallowed the iris.

“I need you to help me stop the bleeding.” Kellen scooted toward her. “Get one of my socks out of the side pocket of the backpack.”

Rae wrestled with the zipper and found a sock.

“And something to use as a pad to absorb the blood.” What? Kellen needed to figure that out. Rae couldn’t—

Rae extracted the small remaining square of her blankie.

Kellen was surprised at the depth of her own shock. “Not that! That’s your blankie!”

“Mommy. I know what it is.” Rae’s voice trembled. “Now what do I do?” She took Kellen’s wrist and carefully pulled the arm toward her. She was still weeping, leaking tears, but she was ready to help.

Kellen almost choked on some emotion she didn’t understand. But she couldn’t cry, too. She was the adult. No, more than that, she was the mother. Rae looked to her to be strong. “Press the pad on the bleeding part.”

Rae gingerly placed it. “Does it hurt?”

“You bet. When we get to safety, I’ll blubber really loud.” Kellen wanted to urge her to hurry, but she couldn’t. Not when Rae was already trembling in fear. “Now tie the sock around the pad.”

Rae didn’t know how to wrap it, so Kellen showed her, held one side as Rae clumsily wrapped the first stage of a square knot, then helped her tighten it down.

Kellen touched Rae’s cheek. “Thank you. That’s perfect. It feels much better.”

“I’m glad.” Rae’s little hands were balled into fists. “Mommy, I don’t like the screaming.”

“Better him than us.” Callous and probably not what a good mother would say.

But Rae said, “Yes, and the other bad guys can’t hear us while he screams.”

Kellen looked at her daughter. Pine needles tangled in Rae’s blond hair. She had dirt smeared on her face and packed under her fingernails. The sparkle and charm of her pink clothes was lost beneath the forest’s grime. Despite Kellen’s diligence, Rae’s cheeks had lost their plump roundness and her eyes were too big in her face. Most of all, she now knew things no seven-year-old should know, like a wounded man’s screaming can be used as a concealment.

As Kellen stared, Rae’s features rearranged themselves, became that of a brown-skinned girl with big eyes too sad for her young face.

The Afghan mountains. A burned-out house. A melted coil of metal. The stench of desperation and death.

“Mommy.” The child was Rae again. “It’s getting dark.”

“Yes.” Fog was slipping its pale fingers down the mountain, into the gulleys, coming to rescue them. If they could hold out long enough for it to get here, they had a chance of making it up the mountain. “Good. Here. Put on my hoodie.” Kellen pulled it off and wrapped Rae in it, rolled up the sleeves and zipped it up.

“It’s long!” Rae stuck out first one foot, then the other.

“It’ll keep you warm.” More important, the camouflage would conceal her from watching eyes.

Rae peeked around the tree. “There’s smoke!”

---