Excerpt:

“Bryant!” Eva screamed, and the traveler instinctually looked over at her with wide eyes. She had finally made her way down the other side of the fence, and was now clinging to the cold metal wires so tight her knuckles were white. She stared in fear at something behind Bryant, and when he realized this, he spun around.

There, behind him, was a second Captain – and this one also had a gun.

He felt the weight of Eva’s shouts and the chill of the air as time seemed to stand still. The loud bang began to ring in his ears even before the weapon had been fired. Propelled by something other than himself, for he had not thought, he had not moved, but he was suddenly flying towards the ground on his left, he wasn’t sure that any of this was happening. Forced by instinct to roll and pop back up, he had barely enough time to turn and face his enemy before that mind-numbing noise was throbbing through the air once more, sticking to his skin like the sickly sweat of a nightmare that he could never remember.

He probably wouldn’t remember this, either.

The bullet penetrated his left shoulder, throwing him backwards through the fog that wasn’t in his mind, nor was it in the air. There was a grunting sound, and whatever it was that had forced him to move out of the way of the first shot told him that the noise he heard was only himself.

There was a screaming, and then his shirt was wet. And it had only been a matter of seconds, this lifetime of noises and feelings. He hadn’t even fallen, but he was stumbling backwards, rewinding himself and trying to regain his thoughts.

Eva. The young man who had fallen. The officer with the gun…

His bright blue eyes suddenly became aware again, and he saw the brown-clad soldier only about five feet away. The man hadn’t fired a third time, perhaps being as overconfident as the other Captain had seemed to be—one bullet should have been enough.

With a primal roar, Bryant launched himself at the gun-wielding devil, as no enemy had ever bested him before. The tackle took the officer by surprise, and they both went down, hard, into the soft ground that would soon freeze for the night.

This time, it wasn’t Bryant that was grunting his breath into the cool air.

He landed a stiff punch to the officer’s temple, using his other hand to press the man’s gun arm to the ground and away from him. A second punch, for good measure, and then he slammed the gun-hand against the earth until it loosed its grip on the weapon.

It was then that he saw the young Asian man, on his feet and hugging the ladder for support, a palm-sized rock in his other hand. He was being rushed by another officer, who had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. The escapee swung the rock at his offender, nearly throwing himself off balance as he hobbled on his uninjured leg. The officer grabbed him by his collar and threw him to the ground, immediately jumping on top of the hapless individual.

Bryant threw himself at the gun that had fallen only a foot away from his own opponent’s hand, using the momentum to propel himself to his feet once more. The Captain he had been fighting attempted to stand as well, but with the butt of the pistol Bryant smacked him in the back of his head, and the officer crumpled.

Ignoring the fire in his shoulder, he braced the weapon with both hands and aimed it at the guard on top of the injured young man. The guard was laying into his captive, beating him with both fists as the victim tried to fend him off with his weak arms.

“Freeze!” Bryant shouted, and the officer did, with both fists still in the air. “Get off of him! Now!”

After only a moment’s hesitation, the perpetrator complied, his hands remaining in the air. Bryant motioned with the gun for the man to move away from the injured captive on the ground, who now rolled over onto his stomach and pushed himself shakily to his feet. As Bryant continued to lead the officer away, the Asian man hobbled over to the ladder to steady himself against once more.

Bryant’s cold eyes were hard and penetrating. He did not have a very high opinion of this military group, whoever they thought they were; so far, all he had to associate with the so-called National Army was blood.

“Why are you here?” He asked, his voice trickling through the air and falling flat before the officer.

The guard just glared, not saying a word.

“I said, why are you here?” The traveler took a step towards the man, thrusting the pistol forward a little as he did so.

“Why are you here?” The guard spat, as if the very words left a bad taste in his mouth.

“I asked you first.”

“I think it’s obvious what we’re doing here.”

Bryant shook his head. “Kidnapping people to sell as slaves in the south, so that you have funds for your little play group?”

A cold hard stare from beyond a dull brown uniform. “Yes.”

“You’re lying.”

The words hung in the air, even thicker than the sickly bright liquid oozing from Bryant’s shoulder.

The soldier did not reply.

Bryant’s trigger finger tingled; it had been a long time since he had held a pistol in his hand. The image of the man beating the life out of a helpless victim danced in his mind, as did the possibility of squeezing a bullet out of the cool metal object in his palms. He shook his head. There would be no more of that.

Instead, he took two steps forward and smashed the gun against the side of the man’s face, who then joined his friends in a heap on the trampled ground.