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I hunched like a linebacker, lowered my shoulders and ran. I was fast. I was going to win this fucking race. Dad’s car drove away but not this time. This time, I would catch it…
Connor, still running, reached his left arm out to the boy, shouted at him to Get down! Get down!
He was almost to the kid, but I was faster. The fastest. Always.
I won. I fucking won…
I barreled into Connor, knocked him clear off his feet, both of us flying through the air as the grenade exploded. The concussion blasted a crater of dust, dirt, shrapnel and blood.
For a single airborne moment, I only heard the air blowing past my ears. My arms gripped Connor hard. We were floating. We were flying.
Connor landed first, striking the ground hard. Our helmets cracked together as I landed on top of him and all the sounds of the world rushed in. Gunfire, explosions, shouts and screams. The rasp of my own sucking breath. Connor lay beneath me, unmoving. Eyes half-open, mouth ajar, his face streaked with blood and grime. Blood poured from his left arm, a piece of metal shrapnel protruding from the elbow joint.
“Connor?” I said, my voice torn and ragged, dust-choked.
He’s dead.
I reached my hand that was shaking as if we were in subzero temperatures instead of the merciless desert heat, toward his face.
Fucking God no. Please. Hell no, he can’t be dead. This isn’t how it’s supposed to happen.
I slapped at his cheek. “Connor, man… Come on…”
Another hail of gunfire, like stones pelting around us. I covered Connor’s head, shielding him, screaming at him to wake the fuck up and not be dead.
Pain exploded across my back like a string of firecrackers. It slipped under my body armor and my words choked off in a gurgle. Molten bolts of agony pierced my side, my waist, and hip. Bones ground together in my trembling body. My breath grew ragged as I started to hyperventilate.
In a mindless panic, I tried to escape. To crawl away and take Connor with me—Christ, he wasn’t breathing—but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t crawl, couldn’t stand, couldn’t run. I craned my head to look at my legs splayed out behind me. Blood poured from a gunshot wound on the back of my thigh.
But there was no pain.
Nothing.
Below the howling agony that wrapped around my waist, nothing was there.
“Connor… Please.”
My vision began to gray out. So dark. The agony was subsiding, growing distant, running ahead down the track and leaving me behind.
I rested my head on Connor’s chest, my eyes drifting closed.
Stars filtered across the black nothingness. I smiled.
I’d give them all to you, Autumn. My love. For you…
For you, I would
bring down the stars,
wreath their fire
around your neck
like diamonds,
and watch them
pulse
