“Thank God!” Bishop whirled and gestured to Jonas, who crouched behind him. “Send runners! Tell those with radios to pass it on. The Guard is on our side. Everyone take cover!”
Jonas and two others leapt to their feet and took off. Bishop returned to the radio to alert everyone else. “Friendlies on the way! Fire mission inbound!”
A minute later, there was an abrupt pause in the relentless barrage. As if the air itself had inhaled a startled intake of breath.
And then everything exploded.
A cacophony of high-powered firepower ripped through the night. Blast after blast. Rockets screamed overhead. Artillery fire. Louder than she’d ever heard. So loud it thrummed through her cells.
Quinn risked a glance over the sandbags through the window.
From behind them came the roar of a hundred engines. Military vehicles poured into Main Street and gunned toward the bridge.
Armored Humvees and a couple of Bradleys. Gunners behind turret-mounted guns as big as she was, sending blitzes of anti-tank missile fire past them, ripping into the enemy strongholds.
Streams of artillery arced overhead like brilliant shooting stars. Like the most beautiful and lethal fireworks she’d ever seen.
The National Guard.
Fighting for them, not against them.
Salvos screamed overhead. The ground shook as mortars detonated one after another.
A truck exploded. Then another and another.
The enemy scattered like ants before the sudden explosive onslaught.
“They came,” Quinn whispered, dazed, still half in shock. “Hannah did it. Help is here.”
70
Quinn
Day One Hundred and Fifteen
There’s something about the moments after your first battle that they fail to tell you.
You’ve won. The bad guys are defeated. You should feel thrilled, elated, joyous. Everyone around you weak with relief as they lower their weapons, cheering and jubilant.
You stand there, rifle hanging at your side, arms limp, dust caking your face, your mouth, grit in your eyes. Your muscles trembling with exhaustion and nerves. You can’t hear over the ringing inside your head.
Relieved, yes. And more than a little sick.
You lived. God rolled the dice, and you made it. A thousand bullets fired at you, and not one stuck its landing.
The town that you love still stands. The buildings, the roads, the house you grew up in. Still here.
But something is missing.
The adrenaline dump leaves you dizzy, your stomach queasy, and you sink down right there on the curb, blinking up at the sky that you can still see, the clouds and the sun and same old trees, with the breeze that you can still feel.
Because you’re alive. Because you made it.
You search through the crowd and see the people you love and care for, but not the one you most want to see.
Because they’re gone forever.
Because they’re dead.
No matter how much you long for it or how often you dream it. No matter how many times you squeeze that trigger or how many bad guys you put in the ground.
They’re gone, and you can’t bring them back.
There will be other fights. Other battles.
You will lose more people that you love.
That is the truth that roots you in place, that pulses in beat with your heart. No matter how strong you are, no matter what you do.
You can’t stop it.
The Earth spins round and round, and the Sun rises and the Sun sets. And even now there are evil men who plot to tear down everything you will ever build.
It never ends. It’s never over.
And you know, sitting there, dirty and sweaty and spent, that you will not let that fact stop you from trying.
You stood when it was time to stand and you fought when it was time to fight. You were scared to death, but you showed up.
And when your friends need you again, you’ll be there. Every time, you will stand. And you will fight. Even knowing that you may lose everything and everyone.
Because you are a warrior.
It has changed you. Broken you and remade you. You are scarred but not defeated. Wounded but not irreparable.
This you still believe. You must believe.
Through the swirling smoke and dust a figure appears, almost recognizable through the soot and grime on his face, his blond hair gray with dust, his eyes still so blue.
A flash of white teeth as he smiles. Shell-shocked but moving, on his feet.
You know him, this boy. Your friend. Maybe more than that.
Coming toward you. Coming to find you. To bring you back.
You can still go home.
You will live with the nightmares, haunted by blood and the screams of the dying. Both diminished and more than you are, a part of something larger and greater.