Short Story: Deserter.

Short Story: Deserter.

I caught her as she fell, her blood smearing the already dirt-caked fatigues I was wearing, and soaking my arm in crimson.

Would she live? I glanced around, wondering where the shot had come from, whilst feeling her neck for a pulse.

Still alive. I laid her gently back on the sacking behind a straw bale, cursing that an innocent had suffered what had been intended for me; then I saw the movement beyond the end of the barn, the careless glint of a watch, under the long black tube of a rifle barrel, swinging up to aim again, and I ducked.

My ammo ran out long ago, and I'd been running ever since. A glance around had shown me enough of the layout of the place to make me feel safe, until she walked in and saw me.

As a bullet thudded into the bale of straw I formulated my strategy. I was pretty sure I could squeeze between the stack of bales to my right and the side of the barn undetected, and I commenced a commando-style wriggle across the bale-strewn floor and the yard or so to the stack, flinging my empty pistol across to the opposite side as I did so.

It's a tired old trick, but it just distracted him enough for me to make the stack unseen. Painfully slowly, so as not to rustle the straw, I eased myself into the smothering gap. I was so slow about it I was face to face with a rat before it knew I was there, and it squeaked its outrage before disappearing between the bales.

Another shot, and I wondered of the rat had betrayed my whereabouts, but silence ensued and I continued the interminable squeeze, now stifled almost into unconsciousness, so very grateful for the one inch gaps at regular intervals. When the bank of straw abruply ended, I was faced with a comfoirtable gap before the end wall, and worried that the man was no longer there, because it meant he'd moved forward and might soon discover the woman.

I was right. He was inching forward, half crouched, as I peered around the corner of the bales. I still had one weapon to hand; my trusty Kris, and I raised it to throw just as he sensed my presence and turned to fire.

A bullet spat into my side as my knife sliced across his throat. "I win!" I muttered, hardly noticing the crease of pain as I sprang forward to forestall any chance of his recovery, but he was finished; blood choking his throat.

The woman seemed barely alive, but I carried her to the side of the nearby road and left her to be discovered by passing traffic, then melted back into the undergrowth... a deserter must not be found...