Page 100 of Viral Justice

Had they killed all the bad guys?

Ali moved in to search the bodies on the ground and the remaining civilians. Her two soldiers did the same.

When she reached the teen she put her hand out and asked in Arabic, “Are you hurt?”

For a moment he stared at her with round, blank eyes. He blinked, shook his head, then grabbed her hand and allowed her to help him to his feet. Pain radiated through her chest, but she ignored it. “Is your home close by?”

He nodded, then said in a shaky voice, “Everyone is dead.” He glanced at one of the bodies that had been shot in the back of the head. “That was my father.”

“Shit,” she muttered.

One of the crying women came over to him. “Nephew, come with me. Your cousins are dead, but we have each other.”

Relief eased the tension on his face so that he looked his age again and not like an old, worn-out man who’s seen too much. He went to his aunt and hugged her, but after they’d taken a few steps away, he turned around and ran back to hug Ali too.

“Thank you. You saved me.”

“Be safe,” she whispered back to him.

This time when he walked away with his aunt, he didn’t turn around.

Some of the women were trying to carry their dead away while others just wept over a body.

“You need to go back to your homes and stay out of sight,” Ali told them.

“Our homes aren’t safe,” one woman shouted at her. “These animals broke in and forced us to come here. Forced us to watch as they murdered our husbands and sons. They would have forced us and our daughters into marriage.”

“These men can never hurt anyone ever again,” Ali said to her.

The woman stared at Ali, then turned and spit on one of the gunman’s bodies. She grabbed the hand of a young woman and rushed away.

The rest of the villagers followed her example, herding children with them and grabbing weapons off of the dead men as they went.

Her two guys joined her in watching for the return of any of the bad guys who chased after Nolan and his buddy while the villagers dispersed.

“Hey, Stone,” one of her men asked. “Are you okay?”

“Well, other than tired, yeah, why?”

“’Cause you have a bullet hole in your clothes right over your heart.”

She glanced down in surprise and discovered that she did, indeed, have a hole through every layer of clothing she wore right down to the body armor. The slug was buried in it. “Shit.”

“Did it penetrate?”

She touched the area around the bullet, probing for pain. “I don’t think so. It hurts, but not enough.”

“Living up to your name again?” the other soldier asked rhetorically. “The colonel is going to have a few words to say about that.”

“Shit, do we have to tell him? He’ll have kittens.”

Both soldiers grinned and tried not to laugh.

“Come on, assholes,” she said rolling her eyes. “The civilians are gone. Let’s find Nolan.”

They headed off in the direction Nolan and his wingmen had run in. It wasn’t a hard trail to follow. There were bodies of bad guys every so often.

Then they found the body of one of Nolan’s wingmen, and all the energy she had seemed to flow right out of her.

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