Restoration: Book 2/3

Chapter 38

-Matsuri's POV-

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to keep my breathing as quiet as possible, praying the men searching for me wouldn't hear it. Our group was ambushed by no less than ten inhabited people, most of them male. We'd been split in two while trying to both outrun them and dodge any bullets they were shooting our way.

Kankuro and I were hiding in the closet of one of the abandoned houses at the edge of the residential area of Oto. We've been on the run for at least two hours now. It was hard to tell exactly how many people were chasing us, but it was at least four men.

I pressed my hand over my mouth when my breath picked up in panic. We have no idea if Kiba and Gaara are okay. They were in a similar state as us when we last saw them, but that was over an hour ago and we had to focus on surviving so we couldn't focus on their whereabouts.

Kankuro and I only had a pocket knife as a weapon and we'd been forced to abandon our backpacks because we couldn't run as fast with them. I glanced over at my hiding partner and could barely make out the outline of his body in the dark closet.

He was in bad shape.

Multiple bullets had grazed him and he was undoubtedly bleeding freely from the wounds because we haven't had a chance to rest. By the time we found this hiding spot, he looked shockingly pale and looked like he was dead on his feet. As annoying as the tall man could be and how much I used to hate him for how he'd abandoned Gaara, I still didn't want him to die.

I, too, had some cuts and grazes, but they were nothing compared to his so it was up to me to take control of the situation. It'd been multiple minutes since I heard any sounds outside the room, so I silently reached over to touch his hand. It was cold and he didn't react in the slightest.

I followed his arm up to his face as I turned my body to face him, heart beating more quickly when he still didn't react. My fingers trembled as I frantically searched for the pulse at his neck. It was slower than it should be, but it was there. If I didn't act quickly, he was surely going to die here.

Terrified but determined, I fished the knife out of his coat pocket and listened for sounds outside the door as I came up with a plan in my head. The backpacks had a decent amount of first aid products in each, so if I could just snag one it'd likely be enough. The problem was that the closest one was down the street. Kankuro'd kept his much longer than me and only dropped it because his injuries were wearing him down.

No sounds came even after I counted to a hundred so I slowly got up into a crouch and opened the door, being extremely cautious not to make any sudden movements. My limbs shook with fear as I crept toward the front door with my eyes peeled for even the slightest distraction. I surprised myself the day I located and confronted Konohamaru when he was inhabited, so I just kept trying to tell myself that I could do it again this time.

It took nearly ten minutes to sneak outside and get down the road far enough that the bag was in sight. I wanted to be even more cautious, but Kankuro didn't have time for that. To my dismay, there was a man hiding nearby with his eyes trained on my target. They likely left him behind in case we came back for it, a smart idea since that's exactly what I was doing. There wasn't any possible way of sneaking into the middle of the road, so I didn't have a choice but to disable him.

My grip tightened around the hilt of the knife and I swallowed nervously as I got closer and closer, coming up behind where he was crouched at the side of a car. It was going to be my very last resort to kill him. My goal is to immediately get him in a choke hold and then hold on for dear life until he passes out, then I'll snatch the bag and hurry back to Kankuro.