Running From the Devil

A snippet from OPERATION ZOMBIE, in progress:

I knew if I tried yelling to Gnorfank from here, my words would come out as auditory mush. I still hadn’t got my breath back from my sprint to beat the sniper’s bullet.

“Huh?” said Pruitt, whose self-preservation instinct was underdeveloped, on account of his deprived youth. Being a Lucky Man, he’d never really been in danger, not even in Jersey traffic at high noon during a gang war in a thunderstorm.

Martini, well, he was gone, leaving a man-shaped hole in the air where he’d crouched. Rabbitting from danger was one of his primary skills.

I shook Pruitt’s shoulder to break the barnacles loose and cupped my other hand to my mouth.

“Dave! Grace! HAUL ASS!” I roared, emptying my lungs through a burning throat.

 But it got the job done; they boogied. Dave kept his BAR trained on the sniper’s hide, just in case, his head aligned diagonally between his direction of travel and his direction of aim, so he could sorta-kinda see a little bit in both directions. War is compromise.