Page 131 of Viral Justice

More men suddenly piled into the room through the windows. They looked familiar, but hazy, as if someone had put a pane of warped glass between him and the rest of the world.

He couldn’t get that scream out of his head.

A surge of gunfire rocketed through the room and seemed to echo inside his head for minutes, hours.

His sight narrowed and went dark, and for a moment, all he knew was the sound of his own breathing, then...nothing at all.

* * *

The world came backin a hazy gray. At first Max thought he was dreaming, but his head and body hurt so bad it couldn’t be a dream.

Things came into better focus after a few seconds, but what he saw made no sense.

Bodies, several of them. Adult men covered in blood were piled around him. Local people, from their dress. Smoke curled around the room. A room with windows empty of glass.

A crash from deeper inside the building fractured the eerie silence, then more smoke billowed out in a dark wave that threatened to suck everything in.

Memory returned in bursts.

Ali, Akbar, a confusing fight.

Up, he needed to getup.

Max put his hand down on the dirty floor to push into a sitting position and looked down at himself. He was covered in blood. His left side hurt and he had a horrible headache.

He wiped his face with one hand and it came away smeared with blood. His injuries would have to wait. The smoke was becoming denser with every second.

He struggled to his feet, but was immediately driven back to his knees by an intense wave of dizziness. He’d suffered some kind of head wound, and between that and the smoke, walking was out. He crawled toward the door leading outside.

When he crossed the threshold, he found more bodies. He recognized two of them as Special Forces soldiers. Tom and Bird.

The madman’s name triggered a rush of memory. Akbar holding Ali’s arm and pointing a gun at her head. Akbar demanding information on the flu virus. Akbar ordering Ali to be raped and Max gelded.

Where was Akbar now?

Where was Ali?

He turned and scanned the bodies inside the building, but she wasn’t there. She wasn’t one of the bodies in front of the building either.

He attempted to get to his feet again, but was forced down by extreme dizziness. He wasn’t going to find her crawling on the ground. He needed to getup.

Movement at the corner of his vision grabbed his attention and he lifted his head to see Coban and Berez running toward him.

They reached him and their small hands tugged on his clothing.

“Hurry, hurry,” they said in Arabic. “We must run!”

He glanced at the building behind him. Flames had burned a hole in the roof and were dancing in the empty windows.

All his equipment...gone.

His people...gone.

“Where is Ali?” he asked the boys, holding on to them like they were his lifelines.

“The bad man took her and the others away. We snuck out.” Coban put his hand on Max’s head. It came away bloody. “You’re bleeding.”

Max looked at the bodies on the ground. He shuffled over to grab a rifle from one and a scarf from another.

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