Human Nature (Book 4): Human Nature IV by Borthwick, Finlay (book recommendations website .TXT) 📗

my friends,” Nate answered, “I’m up here because of them. I want to fight for them both.”

Michelle and Rob looked at each other and grinned.

“Alright kid,” Rob put his arm around Nate’s shoulder, “Stick with us, and you’ll save those lovely ladies in no time.”

Complying with Mac’s request, Dawn had indeed gone to take a nap underneath the nearby tree, swapping places with Rylie.

“Mac,” Rylie addressed him as they noticed his bloodshot eyes, “You should go get your head down as well. I’ll summon you if anything changes.”

“No—I’m staying.” Mac bluntly refuted, again letting out a huge yawn as he did so.

But then, a mechanical noise resonated out from around the corner of the tunnel on the other side of the gate, causing Mac to now fully awake.

“We’ve got incoming!” Rylie carelessly yelled out to the rest of the fighters, who all raised their weapons in preparation.

“Rylie! What the hell?” Mac groaned to them.

“What?” Rylie rebutted as they primed their own rifle, “Better to be alert, aware and alive than disarmed and dead, right?”

“Yes, but we don’t what’s coming around the corner!” Mac was not entirely convinced that this would be the beginning of The Bandits’ attack.

Ignoring Mac’s concerns, Rylie rested the barrel of their rifle through the gate bars.

Quickly thereafter, a minibus came zooming into view from around the corner.

‘PEW! PEW!’

Rylie fired two shots at the oncoming vehicle.

“Rylie, stop!” Mac put his hand on Rylie’s shoulder, causing them to cease firing.

Seconds later, the minibus had stopped halfway up the tunnel. There were two bullet holes in the windshield, though the driver could very clearly be seen to be alive and well in the front seat.

Hearing the motor rumbling out through the tunnel, Michelle, Rob, Nate, Sandra, and Kieran all traced their weapons on the gate as well.

The side door of the minibus aggressively slid open as Nolan jumped out and marched onwards towards the gate.

“Did you seriously just shoot my fucking van?!” He bellowed out aggressively towards Rylie, who was still firmly resting their rifle through the gate bars.

“No,” Rylie retorted, “I shot your fucking minibus. There’s a difference.”

Upon hearing this quip, Nolan’s aggressive expression lightened up into an eerie scowl, “Very funny. Very funny indeed—I’ll be sure to write that joke down as your epitaph.”

 “And I’ll be sure to write your mislabelling of your own vehicle as yours.” Rylie was equally as cocky.

In another life, if things were not as tense as they were here, there could’ve been great and humorous chemistry between Nolan and Rylie.

“Let me tell you all how this is gonna go,” Nolan spoke louder this time, addressing the crowd that was growing around the other side of the gate, “Originally, the plan was to bust your gate down and kill every single one of you and make your abandoned territory a part of Kyle’s lands.” He admitted to the plan that everyone was expecting. “But now, I only want one thing from you: Gwen.”

Baffled and uneased, all of the fighters at the gate looked to and from each other.

“What do you want with her?” Mac questioned back.

“She’s the one who killed Kyle.” Nolan revealed, causing several of the fighters to gasp, for this was not well-known information. “You bring her to this gate, we’ll execute her, and then our paths never have to cross again, what do you think of that?”

Mac laughed this request off, “Why on earth would we bow to your demands when you can fit your entire force in a fucking minibus?”

Rylie snickered as well, as Mac’s pointed this fact out.

“Well, you’ve got me there,” Nolan professed, “All of The Bandits that are still alive can indeed fit on this bus,” he pointed to the vehicle behind him, “But do you know what else we’ve got room for?”

Mac tittered with a raised brow, playing right into Nolan’s little game, feeling completely unthreatened by him, “No idea. What else?”

“Big, big, guns.” Nolan sneered malevolently as he stepped aside, revealing another bandit stood behind him who had a bazooka over their shoulder.

Unexpectedly, Mac and Rylie’s faces quickly flooded with fear.

“Everybody run!” Mac declared as he fled from the gate flailing his arms about desperately.

As the fighters all noticed the bazooka wielder through the gate, they too scattered and meandered in various directions to avoid the upcoming explosion.

“Blow it open!!” Nolan bellowed his order to his subordinate.

Instantly conforming, the bandit pulled the trigger on the bazooka and sent the rocket within hurtling towards the gate…

Almost instantly, a safe zone-wide gunfight had broken out as The Bandits poured in past the blown-off-its’-hinges front gate.

Rob, Michelle, and Nate had taken cover behind an upturned car – the vehicle being this way due to the recent storm – down the street which led directly into the tunnel.

They would take turns at leaning over the underside of the boot and the underside of the bonnet as they returned fire at the attackers.

“God dammit!” Rob exclaimed. “I swear there’s more of those fuckers than would fit on that minibus.” He was absolutely right, for many of The Bandits had actually been lagging behind the vehicle as a sort of ‘second wave’ to throw the safe zone residents off.

“I can’t get a shot!” Nate professed, for each time that he tried to peer up over the underside of the bonnet, a bullet ricocheted off of the cover.

“We’ve just got to bide our time, okay?” Michelle calmed her two comrades, “We’re not the only ones fighting these assholes, remember? They’ll get distracted soon enough and then we’ll have our chance to shoot back at them efficiently!”

Taking a deep and impatient breath, Nate took a chance. “Motherfuckers--!”

As he jumped out from behind the underside of the bonnet and proclaimed this expletive, a bullet had instantly ripped through