Hey guys, I know the chapters are kinda shorter than I've been doing. Life keeps happening. In other news, we are wrapping up. The next chapter is the last. It's been a ride! It may also be a week later. Because life. And I'd like it not to suck.
Lena had always thought if this happened again it would have happened back in Afghanistan two years ago. Here, she'd expected bullets.
The world is oscillating back and forth, not spinning exactly, just rocking unevenly, gyrating. Closing her eyes doesn't do much to help the roiling in her stomach. Something else hurts too. Or maybe a lot of her hurts and she just can't zero in on any one thing. Lena wonders when the bullets are coming. Last time had been an explosion and then bullets. Fighting her stomach's insistent need to heave distracts momentarily from the 'and then'. It's all tumbling together and swirling around, the bang, being tossed, her stomach, the anticipation and dread…
Lena opens her eyes again. Had she been unconscious? No. Maybe? Shit. Crap.
Suddenly there's a hand gripping her leg, and she startles, jumping, more of a convulsion. Beset by a surprise attack on a new front, Lena loses the battle with her stomach. Some of the puke runs back towards her face, and for the first time she realizes that her head is lying against the cold glass of the side window.
"Lena! Move!" Suki?
The hand scrabbles at her waist, and Lena scrabbles against the hand before she realizes that it's Sayeed's hands and if anyone is planning on murdering her, it's not him.
His hands are on her face, turning her head this way and that. Her stomach doesn't appreciate the attention. He probably doesn't appreciate the vomit on his fingers. "Lena!" The 'a' in her name is lost at the sound of a bullet, the expected 'and then'. This gets her up. Or rather this gets her brain to send out a 'get the fuck up and run' impulse. Her body doesn't quite rally how her brain had hoped, and even then she's still in a heap against the window, which now serves as the ground.
Together they manage to get her out of her seatbelt and reoriented, but the sound of bullets thwacking into the armored exterior doesn't leave them with many options. They sound like they're coming from multiple directions, and Lena sits frozen in place, no way out, dazed and panicked, waiting to be struck. They're trapped. Another grenade or rocket or whatever it was could be coming their way any minute, but they'd both die before they even managed to get out.
She forgets to breathe, clenching her stomach muscles instead, and dry heaves.
A muffled groan and some shuffling that sounds like crunching glass comes from the front seat. Lena's ability to concentrate, limited by the crash to the immediate present, snaps forward. "Dave?" and following the association train, "Aaron?" Aaron was driving. Now neither of them are visible. Suki shoulders her way over Lena and under and between the front seats.
A shadow moving overhead grabs her attention, and suddenly there's a barrage of gunfire up close and loud enough to further muddle the foggy haze of adrenaline controlling her mind. The sensation of being cornered and need to run become immediately overwhelming, but there's nowhere for her body to go, and all she can do is hunker down further, not caring that her right side is covered in her own puke.
Light comes back to the sound of wrenching metal, and the person leaning in the open door above them barks a short, no-nonsense, "Let's go!" in a twangy Kentucky drawl that sends a flood of relief ricocheting through her system.
Raylan pulls Sayeed out first before hauling Lena up and over the side. Suki, Dave, and Aaron crawl out the front windshield. Dave's nose is very crooked and his face is covered in blood, but the moment he's out his weapon is too, all three of them firing up at a rooftop to the right, and Lena wonders how in the hell any of them even know who or where to aim at.
Her wondering is cut short with Raylan's hand around her bicep steering her forcefully into the back of the second SUV. With all of them in one it's a tight squeeze. The displaced occupants of the first car have been put in the way-back behind the back seat, and Lena thinks it's a terrible idea for so many people to be crammed in without a seatbelt because if this one flips too, they're going to be pulling out bodies instead of people. Pieces of bodies. Mangled bodies. She edges over to the side where she can grip a handle. Whoever's driving must have the same idea because they turn on sirens and press the gas pedal flat to the floor, and nothing short of a cruise missile could catch up with them. A sharp turn rattles her stomach causing her to throw up again. She glances around apologetically. At least it wasn't very much.
A firm hand grips her jaw and pulls her head around. "Follow my finger." The only sign of Sayeed's worry is his starting out in Pashto rather than English.
"Lena?" A different drawl is speaking over the back seat, and Lena tries to turn towards it.
Sayeed's hand holds firm. "Not now deputy."
"Is she ok?"
"Dave's nose is broken," Lena points out, both literally and figuratively.
"She has a concussion," Sayeed replies in his ever-calm rhythm, and to Lena, "I am not going to try to push his nose into place until we are stopped." Lena wonders for a moment at his lack of fluster, at how steady his finger is as it moves back and forth across her field of vision. He's too used to this, she realizes.
"I'm fine," she murmurs, suddenly feeling intensely guilty.
Sayeed ignores her and moves his finger up and down and then around in a circle. "Someone give me a phone." Serious mode Sayeed, she thinks, issuing orders. It's comforting in its own way. It also helps her focus. He's focused, and as his protector it is her responsibility to be even more so. Game face, dollface, put on your game face.
There's some grumbling from the back seat. "If only I had a phone."
"Stop being a little bitch, Raylan."
One is eventually passed back, and Lena squints and flinches when Sayeed flips on the flashlight and shines it in her eyes. "Don't drink alcohol, and don't sleep for the next six hours. Understand?"
"Yes."
"You should see a doctor tomorrow."
"You're a doctor." He pulls a face, but there's a hint of smile under it all.
"Is she ok?" Tim's leaning over the back seat still, annoyed.
Lena says, "yes," at the same time Sayeed repeats his instructions in English. Tim continues to stare, searching, and Lena puts on a smile. It's semi-convincing. Her head hurts.
"Are you carrying?"
"Yes."
"It doesn't come out of your holster unless I say."
She nods.
With Sayeed's examination over, Lena lets her head rest against the back of the back seat. It's not terribly soft, but it beats holding her head up on her own steam. Focus.
Whoever's driving is good. That turn was jarring, but the tires barely skidded, and there was no fishtailing. Whenever they get where they're going she's…
"Hey, where are we going?"
No one answers. Sirens that aren't theirs, accompanied by blue and red flashing lights that also aren't theirs drown the question when they abruptly pull out behind their SUV.