Isolation by Jones, Nathan (the first e reader .TXT) 📗

her rifle to find and shoot whoever the sniper was. The man standing next to her dropped down as well, covering her as he tried to shield her with his body.

The crowd erupted with screams and scattered in every direction, fleeing in terror towards any sort of cover or just directly towards the safety of their homes. The racket made it impossible to hear whether any more gunshots sounded.

She spotted a knot of Darrel's men thundering up onto the walkway, ducking low behind the sandbags and other cover as they ran along it. A few of the patrol leaders shouted desperate orders, demanding to know if anyone had eyes on the sniper.

They were also shouting for everyone still sprawled on the walkway to either get up and fight or get out of the way. With a start Gen realized that meant her; she was only seconds away from either being trampled or holding up the fighters.

The man covering her seemed to realize the same thing. He hastily scrambled up to a crouch, offering her his hand.

Gen hesitated, then shook her head and gripped the side of the walkway instead, clumsily dropping down to the ground below. She felt like a coward, but whatever fantasies she'd had of fighting Jay's thugs had vanished when she saw Darrel and Darby go down.

She hoped they were okay, and that the enemy gunman didn't escape to hurt anyone else. But right now she wasn't interested in anything but getting home to Billy.

At least there she could be more confident that if enemies threatened them, she'd be able to find the courage to defend her son.

Chapter Eight

Too Far

“Fan out!” Nick shouted, motioning to his patrol. “If they've got more snipers hidden out here we need to find them before they can shoot anyone else!”

“What if they shoot us?” Chase muttered, uneasily gripping his rifle.

“Stick to cover, cover each other, and keep your eyes peeled for any movement,” Charlie snapped, holding his own rifle in steady hands. At his side Val nodded her agreement, although she was clutching Lila's shotgun with white knuckles.

“Any sniper that tries to shoot at us has to know he's going to get hunted down and shot,” Nick said. “But keep your guard up. And at this point I think it's safe to say shoot to kill.”

“Isn't that always the rule in a firefight?” Chet asked, tone more harsh than sarcastic.

“Only if they're shooting at us or present a clear threat. If they surrender we'll capture them and bring them back to camp.”

His patrol fanned out to a distance of ten feet apart, moving cautiously from cover to cover northwards from the southwest corner of Stanberry, out at a distance of three hundred yards from the barricade at the center of their line. Nick had a hard time seeing any snipers being farther out than that, unless they were expert marksmen with excellent scopes and large caliber rifles.

Then again, he was going on his own limited experience shooting with Ben's hunting rifle, as an amateur with only a decent scope and average eyesight. Hitting near the bullseye at a hundred yards hadn't been too challenging, but at a hundred and fifty he was at least a foot off, and at two hundred he was all over the place.

Hopefully most of Jay's people were equally inexperienced, and their only real sniper had been on the opposite side of town. He just hoped the search party Denny had swiftly gathered to pursue whoever had shot Darrel and Darby had some luck catching him.

Tense minutes passed as they searched around the spot where the truck bomb had struck the barricade on its southwest end, Nick gripping his gun tight and jumping at every rustle of noise or squirrel scurrying away out of the corner of his eye. He hoped he wasn't making a mistake, spreading his patrol out like this to search for enemies.

But he wasn't about to let any other snipers creep up and take potshots at Stanberry's sentries on the barricade. Gen might be up there right now; while she usually took shifts on the south wall, she'd sometimes taken shifts on the west wall when she knew he was patrolling the area.

He wasn't letting Jay or any of those other psychos get within a mile of her.

After what seemed like forever, they finally passed far enough from the hole in the barricade that Nick doubted even the best sniper could hit anyone. From there they relaxed a bit and picked up their pace, soon reaching the northwest edge of town. At that point they finally stopped at a distance where snipers wouldn't be in range to even target the corner of the barricade.

His patrol abandoned their line and began clumping up at the center, and he waved them into a huddle around him. “All right,” he said grimly. “One last sweep at five hundred yards. It's more risky, so let's all stick together for this one.”

Everyone nodded grimly and followed him as they headed out again.

As they walked Nick slung his rifle and lifted his radio. “Statton here. West side is clear at three hundred yards.”

“Copy that,” Starr snapped. “Keep searching.”

The older man was obviously done with the conversation, but Nick wasn't. “What's going on?” he asked. “Do we have news?”

“Sure we do . . . bad, bad, and more bad. Denny's group found the sniper's nest two hundred or so yards from the east wall, but Jay had already abandoned it and gotten away from them.”

Nick frowned. That wasn't surprising, but it was still disappointing to hear; the sniper didn't deserve to get away after what he'd done. “You sure it was Jay?”

The leader of the camp's fighters hesitated. “Well no. Denny called in to our guys searching in vehicles and they swung around wide of his position. They spotted some gunman running away in the distance, but just before they could surround him a truck picked him up and tore off to safety. Our people didn't want to