Hi. I've been gone for a long time but I'm sort of back. This will be a two chapter story and the next chapter will come out sometime early August. At least I hope. I will finish The Aftermath, I promise, it has one more chapter and is in the process of being typed out and will also be posted in the early August timeline. I'm only sort of back because I will be out of town with very little writing time for a while, it is currently finals' week at my school, and I've been dealing with some personal issues that needed to be sorted out before diving back into my writing. And so, I've been incredibly busy and this has been sitting in my google drive for far too long, it's been an idea in my head since November/December and I wrote this during my school's holiday break and never got a chance to revise and edit until now. So here it is. Enjoy.
"If I die-" Chase rasped, wincing as he put pressure on his shoulder to stop the bleeding.
"You're not going to die!" Zuma protested instantly, mentally begging his hovercraft to make it to the dock where Rocky, Marshall, and Ryder were waiting to medivac them to Foggy Bottom.
"I said if, not when." the German Shepherd murmured, his eyes drifting shut for a moment before cracking open again.
"Okay." Zuma matched his tone of voice to Chase's, hoping it would calm his frantically beating heart.
"Tell Ryder that my promotion choice is you." Chase was putting up a good fight against the shock, but Zuma was worried that he had really lost his mind now.
"Are you out of your mind?" he yelped, startled at what Chase was trying to say.
"I might be close to losing consciousness, yes."
"That's not funny!"
"Please. Promise me you'll take it, Zuma."
"I-okay. If-if that's what you want."
"It is. Make me proud."
"You just said you wouldn't die on me!"
"I said if, not when, not I won't, not I will." Chase closed his eyes against the onslaught of pain.
"I really think you're hallucinating right now. Or at least planning your will." Zuma shook his head tiredly as he spoke and checked his fuel gauge.
He radioed the team.
"I don't think it was such a good idea for just us two to go." Chase frowned as he examined the damp limestone that made up the rocks surrounding Seal Island.
"Why is that?" Zuma asked warily. He had long ago learned to trust Chase's instincts.
"I just don't think that the island is as deserted as everyone says it is." The German Shepherd glanced up and met Zuma's eyes for a moment before dropping his nose to the rocks again. "The lighthouse is too far from Adventure Bay to really be helpful to ships."
"And you know this because?" Zuma trailed off, knowing that his intrigue was enough for Chase to continue.
"Rocky and I did an experiment a few months ago. We wondered because Seal Island and the lighthouse is so far away if it was really just a far lighthouse or was it a decoy for some other purpose. The only way to check whether the lighthouse was fake or not was to see if someone could see the light from shore and if it was bright enough to illuminate all of the rocks around the area." Chase recounted, sounding surprisingly grim.
"Was it bright enough?" Zuma asked cautiously. He didn't like the way this was going.
"No." Chase now sounded like he regretted saying anything. "No, it wasn't."
"Oh." was the only thing Zuma could bring himself to say.
"And you, my dear German Shepherd, are too smart for your own good."
Chase's and Zuma's heads snapped up and without missing a beat Chase snarled quietly to Zuma, "Run."
"I'm not leaving you here by yourself!" Zuma retorted, keeping his voice down.
"Oh, but you will if you want to live." A gun was pulled and it didn't waver as he and Chase stared down the barrel.
"I think this guy doesn't know that I'm damn loyal to my friends." Zuma countered, watching Chase out of his peripheral vision, waiting for the signal to move.
Chase shifted to the right so Zuma took that as his cue to split left. Now there was one bad guy, one gun, and two targets. Now they just needed to take the gun out of the equation and it would be fair play.
The two of them had practiced this scenario over and over again: held at gunpoint and without backup.
Chase made the first move and the gun swung towards him but Zuma saw his chance and leaped as well. The next few moments were a blur of flailing limbs, growling dogs, and loud cracks of gunshots.
A strained yelp sounded and Zuma wasn't sure if it had been him, Chase, or the guy they were currently pinning to the ground.
"Chase? Tell me you aren't hurt." Zuma's panicked tone of voice demanded Chase give him an answer.
"I'm hit." The German Shepherd said stiffly, fighting back a pup-like yip of pain that would really give away how much pain he was in as he locked handcuffs and ankle cuffs on the person under them.
"Come on. We can leave him here with cuffs on, go back to Adventure Bay, get you fixed up, and tell Ryder that he's here." Zuma said quickly, padding across the slick ground to support Chase who was wavering where he stood.
Chase slumped against him, blood loss making him dizzy and the pain wasn't helping either. "All in a day's work, yeah?" he muttered.
"Everything except where you get shot, because we sure didn't plan that on happening." Zuma said flatly. "Can you walk? We need to get back to my hovercraft to go back to Adventure Bay."
"Not for long. But it'll be enough."
Zuma could see the dock from where his hovercraft was, but to his dismay, his vehicle's fuel was completely gone. He activated his comms, hoping that they were close enough to the satellites on land for Ryder and Rocky, his intended targets, to receive his signal.
"Rocky, Ryder, come in please. Chase is down and my fuel tanks are empty."
"How bad is he?" Rocky's voice crackled over the comms.
"I'm fine-" Chase started but Zuma interrupted him calmly.
"No, he's not fine. Left shoulder."
"Alright. Rocky, Marshall, and I are on the way. Zuma, if you can get your buoy close to the dock, Rocky is going to use the winch on Chase's vehicle to hook onto the buoy and bring the hovercraft closer to the dock. Zuma, you and Rocky will take the vehicles back to the Lookout and Marshall and I will bring Chase to Foggy Bottom; their tech is more advanced when it concerns injuries like the one I'm assuming Chase has." Ryder said tiredly. It was, after all, almost ten at night.
"Copy that, Ryder." Zuma agreed and he heard the mixed breed and dalmatian give an affirmative as well, but his attention was diverted by Chase letting a low whine pass his throat.
"You shouldn't have moved." Zuma warned, adrenaline finally draining from his body, leaving him tired and unwilling to move.
Chase snarled softly in response to Zuma's rebuke, but the Labrador wasn't intimidated.
A few minutes passed by and Zuma was keeping a close eye on Chase's injury and his mental state when he heard his name being called.
"Zuma!"
He turned to see Rocky, Ryder, and Marshall on the dock.
"Release the buoy, Zuma." Ryder commed in through his pup-tag and guided him through the process.
"When should I throw the winch?" Rocky asked, and Ryder just made out his words that were muffled by the piece of metal in his mouth.
"Now." Marshall said quickly. "Before the buoy floats away and we have to try again. I don't think Chase can hold on much longer if he's lost the amount of blood I think he has."
Rocky made short work of hooking the winch onto the buoy and gave the order to retract. Together they pulled the rope connecting the buoy to Zuma's hovercraft and piled it on the dock. Thankfully, the waves weren't too bad and the hovercraft came in easily. Ryder knelt to help Chase up onto the dock, but the shepherd was evidently too exhausted and in pain to do it on his own power, so Ryder got in the hovercraft and carried him out.
"Easy, buddy." Ryder soothed to a clearly agitated Chase. "I got you."
Marshall whined seeing his friend in such clear distress and bounded to his truck to get a stretcher.
Ryder shook his head and simply carried Chase all the way to the truck where the stretcher was waiting.
"Zuma, Rocky, be careful getting the vehicles back to the Lookout. Don't try to hurry it up and damage something." Ryder warned them as he snapped his helmet on for the trip to Foggy Bottom. "I'll call if something happens, but try not to worry, okay?"
"Yes sir." Both the Labrador and the mixed breed snapped off a very Chase-esque salute then turned to look at each other as Ryder and Marshall roared away into the distance.
"Try not to worry, he says, when our leader and friend was shot thirty minutes ago." Zuma huffed.
"Yeah." Rocky said tiredly. "Come on, let's get the vehicles back to the Lookout, sleep, then tomorrow we can tell the rest of the team the news and maybe go to Foggy Bottom to visit Chase if Ryder gives us the okay."
"Sounds like a plan."
Constructive criticism or grammar suggestions are very much welcomed, especially if it's something that I don't catch in my editing process. Reviews welcome!
-Mafiapartner2