The Last Roman (Praetorian Series - Book One) (16 page)

“Give me a second!” She snapped back.

My map showed we were just past the middle claymore,
when Helena blew the first one, then the middle one, and a few
seconds later, the final one. Each one going off in succession was
enough to shake the town awake. We’d taken care of the trucks in
pursuit, but not seconds later, the town’s civilian population
apparently decided now was a good time to file out of their homes
and into the streets, probably wondering what was happening so
early in the goddamn morning.

Then I saw him. A man. No more than thirty years
old, standing in the middle of the street. I know McDougal had said
civilians were to be considered expendable, but this man had a baby
cradled in his arms.

In the seconds it took to close the gap between us,
our eyes met, and I instantly knew I couldn’t run him down. His
face was awash in sheer terror and with my eyes widening, I tried
to swerve down another street, managing to do the worst possible
thing instead.

I flipped the truck, and we started to roll. By the
time our truck rolled three times, my vision had already flashed
brightly behind my eyes before going completely black when my
forehead smashed into the steering wheel.

***

Pain induced hallucinations were a bitch. They were
the ones that hit deeply, stung like hell, and were just subtle
enough that they left you questioning the experience. Then the pain
smashed into you like a boulder falling on your head. My particular
hallucination this time around was of my father’s disapproving
eyes, staring deep into the recesses of my lost soul, before
combusting into flames.

Yeah. Real subtle.

Just as my head started to clear and my vision
return, I felt immense pressure building in my skull. It took me a
moment to realize we had flipped upside down, and that I was
hanging in my seat, suspended by my seatbelt. Looking over, I could
see Wang, similarly dangling and still unconscious. Abdullah was
slumped on the roof, bleeding from a gash across his temple. His
chest rose and fell, so at least he was still alive.

Placing one hand against the roof of the truck, I
unbuckled my seatbelt and roughly tumbled to the ground. I shook
Wang awake, and indicated that he get Abdullah out of the truck. He
responded groggily, mumbling something about how he thought Duran
Duran really wasn’t that bad. It took him a few more seconds to
come around. When he did, I saw him take out his frustration and
pain on Abdullah as he roughly tried to eject the unconscious
terrorist from the truck.

Crawling out of where the front windshield had been,
I hoped everyone in back had managed to jump away before we’d begun
to roll. The first troops I saw were Santino and Vincent running
towards my position as I crawled to my feet. They seemed fine.

“Are you all right?” Santino asked.

“Yeah,” I replied, smacking my head to clear it.
“Help Wang with Abdullah. Where’s everyone else?”

That’s when I noticed Bordeaux hurrying over with a
slight limp. It wasn’t until he reached the light given off by the
overturned truck’s headlights that I noticed he was carrying
McDougal over his shoulders.

“He’s hurt badly.” Bordeaux said. “He’s unconscious,
and from what I can tell has some broken bones and is bleeding from
numerous wounds. We need Wang.”

I nodded, turned around, and knelt to look inside
the cab. I saw Wang hauling Abdullah forcibly out the passenger
side window. He handed him off to Vincent and Santino and
immediately went to work on McDougal.

I looked around, surveying the damage, waiting for
Helena to arrive.

“Where’s Strauss?” Wang asked as he started checking
McDougal’s vital signs and shining a small flashlight in his
eyes.

Everyone looked around, but each shook their head in
turn, unable to locate her.

“Stay here with McDougal,” I said. “I’ll find
her.”

I tried to determine her position via her GPS
locator beacon, but where it indicated she should be she wasn’t. It
wasn’t until I saw a leg, clad in the rubbery material of a dive
suit hanging out of a window that I found her.

I ran to the window praying to God I hadn’t killed
her. Fearing the worst, I found her sprawled on a wooden table, the
leg dangling from the window thankfully still attached. She must
have been thrown from the truck, lucky she hadn’t hit the wall, not
to mention the fact that the window didn’t have any glass.

Lucky or not, she was still bleeding from a head
wound and had an extremely nasty gash on the leg sticking out the
window. The wound wrapped a third of the way up and around her
thigh, circling from the front of her leg, around the outside, and
up near her hamstring, but at least it didn’t seem too deep.
Looking back to call for Wang, I saw he was still working on
McDougal.

We didn’t have time for this. We needed to get the
hell out of here. Our best bet was to get to that equipment cache
and regroup.

Moans from inside drew my attention back to Helena.
She was regaining consciousness, and started mumbling a name. I
couldn’t make it out, but it sounded distinctly masculine. I put my
hand behind her neck, propping her head up, and snapped my fingers
in front of her face.

“Helena. Wake up. We’ve got to get out of here,” I
offered before lightly smacking her cheek, again to little affect.
“Wake up.”

She wasn’t responding, which was probably a good
thing considering what I was about to do to her leg. Pulling out my
knife, I tore open more of her wetsuit around the wound to make
room for a battle dressing. I retrieved a packet of QuikClot from
my pack, a powdery like substance that helped open wounds clot so
the patient didn’t bleed out. She’d have a scar, but at least she
wouldn’t bleed to death, and Wang could properly stitch it
later.

Unfortunately for her, the stuff stung like
hell.

I paused just before dumping it on the wound.

“I’m sorry, Helena,” I said to her unknowing form,
“but this is going to hurt. A lot.”

Her reaction was as expected. The jolt of pain
snapped her awake as though she were struck by lightning. She sat
up involuntarily and threw her arms around my neck, shaking
uncontrollably.

“It’s okay. It’s just a scratch. Just hang on while
I dress the wound,” I told her while pulling out a bandage

“Th-thank you, Jacob.”

“Hey. Rescuing damsels in distress is part of the
job.”

I thought I felt her slug me in the arm, but I
couldn’t be sure. If she hadn’t, it wasn’t a good sign.

I attached a few butterfly bandages to keep the
wound closed despite the QuikClot, and wrapped gauze around her leg
several times, tying it off as tightly as I could. She cried out in
pain again, and she buried her head in my neck, trying to force
away the pain

“Sorry, but it’s got to be tight, now hang on.”

She clasped her hands around my shoulders, and
pulled herself in close, keeping her head against my neck.
Determined she was secure, I wrapped my right arm around her waist,
my other under her legs, staying clear of the wound, and gently
extracted her from the window. My adrenaline pumping, she felt as
light as a feather.

Helena in my arms, I made my way to the truck.

“Put me down, Jacob. I can manage.”

I did as I was told, only to have her stumble under
her own weight. I had to scoop her back up into my arms before she
put any more pressure on her cut leg. She must have hurt her other
ankle as well.

She smiled up at me, eyes lulling. “Never mind.
You’re doing a great job.”

“Just don’t get too comfortable. You’re not as light
as you look.”

I waited for her head to turn and glare at me, but
it only slumped against my shoulder instead.

Definitely not a good sign.

Back at the truck, Santino and Vincent had set up a
perimeter at the end of the alley, and were already trading fire
with enemy combatants. It was still dark, so we had the cover of
night and the advantage of our NVGs, but we couldn’t hold out
forever, especially since a third of our squad was combat
ineffective.

“How’s he doing, James?” I asked Wang.

He looked up, and shook his head. “Not well. I’ve
stabilized him, but his neck is very nearly broken and he’s
bleeding internally. We have got to get him some place safe so that
I can perform more extensive repairs.”

Wang didn’t have anything as complete as a field
hospital in his backpack, but his very large bag did have many new
features of modern medicine that would allow him to perform much
more complete first aid than the combat medics of even a decade
ago. All he needed was time.

“Fine,” I said laying Helena on the ground. “She
needs a shot of morphine and a bandage on her head. Bordeaux?”

“I’m okay. Just a sprained ankle.”

I nodded. A sprained ankle could wait.

“Vincent!” I yelled. “We need to get the hell out of
here.”

I saw him look over at me from down the alley, and
nod. He patted Santino on the shoulder and indicated with the flick
of a hand for him to hold the line. He came running over.

“What’s our status?”

“Strauss is immobile, but should be fine. McDougal
is in really bad shape. Abdullah is unconscious. Bordeaux has a
sprained ankle, and Wang and I seem to be okay except for a few
cuts and bruises,” I summed up.

“All right,” he said, rubbing his rough chin.
“Bordeaux, you take McDougal. Hunter, you grab Strauss. Wang, don’t
forget Abdullah. Santino will be on point, and I’ll be on crowd
control in the rear. Let’s move out.”

We gathered up our charges as gently as possible,
except for Wang who had the hardest time with Abdullah. Once we
were organized, we set out deeper into the alley and followed our
map to the safe house. We needed some place to lay low and tend to
our wounded. It was the only viable place we had to regroup.

Santino was the first to head out as he hauled ass
to the front of our rag tag line, and scouted out ahead of us,
leaving stealth as a mere afterthought. We managed to sneak around
pretty quickly and efficiently despite our loads. Most people we
encountered ran back inside immediately after they saw us, but we
kept to the shadows as much as possible anyway, avoiding main
throughways and homes with their lights on.

Along the way, Helena drifted in and out of
consciousness, muttering in gibberish. Only once did she open her
eyes to look at me, brushing my cheek with a hand. I could only
imagine what was going through her dazed and confused mind as she
uttered my name. Her eyes rolled back inside her head and she
slumped into my arms, unconscious once again.

Hallucinations were a bitch.

Fifteen minutes later, we reached the building we
were looking for. Only a few bad guys stumbled on our position
along the way only to be dispatched easily by Vincent. Santino
opened the door to the house, and waved everyone inside. Last in,
he shut the door quietly behind him.

The house was barren, lacking any kind of
furnishing. Its walls were bare, its windowsills dusty, and it
didn’t appear as though anyone had lived here for years. It was
only single story, so we headed down to the basement, the only
other place left to go.

The dark, musty, scary basement.

Wonderful.

The last to descend into the dark cavern, I noticed
the basement door was conveniently equipped with a large wooden
plank to secure it. How thoughtful of the homeowners. That would
hold off the invading horde for about twenty seconds.

Once below, we found a few light bulbs dangling from
the ceiling. Illuminating them revealed a very plain room, as
completely barren as the rooms above except for a few cots and the
half dozen metal containers about the size of queen beds stacked
along the wall. I gave the containers an annoyed look before
heading over to one of the cots.

I lowered Helena gently onto the soft fabric, afraid
almost the slightest impact might break her in half. She looked
peaceful in her drugged state, but I knew she had to be suffering.
I stayed only long enough to check her pulse and brush some stray
locks of hair away from her face. Giving her shoulder a quick
squeeze, I stood to survey my surroundings.

There wasn’t much to see, only a mostly empty
basement, but Santino seem perplexed at what he was seeing.

“What the fuck?” I heard him yell from the rear
wall. “Jacob, get over here.”

My eyebrows creased in suspicion, but I did as I was
told. I passed by Wang along the way who was still working on
McDougal. He had a scalpel out and looked ready to perform an
incision and Vincent was there to assist in any way he could. Not
knowing much about medicine, and always rather squeamish during
medical TV shows, I averted my attention. Bordeaux, meanwhile, was
charged with the duel task of watching Abdullah and the door.

I found Santino rummaging through one of the
containers, already having opened three others.

“What’s up?” I asked “Did they forget your
blankie?”

He glared. He must be getting used to it these
days.

“Funny. Look at this,” he said, opening another one.
“These are filled with enough supplies to last us years. That first
one has nothing but MREs, enough to last a year. There’s
explosives, replacement parts, ammunition out the wazoo, extra
magazines, and even a few rifles, not to mention clothing, cooking
equipment, bottled water, filters, toiletries, survival gear, and
I’ve only opened half of them. Why would they give us enough
supplies to set us up as an independent mercenary force for
years?”

I had no idea.

“Have you tried your radio yet?” I asked, hoping for
some good news.

“Yeah, but all I get is static. These fucking
Ragheads are probably jamming the signal.”

I smirked. Cultural expert indeed.