Beside the Dying Fire

Kai's POV

"Dammit," I told Sarah, Savannah, Danny, Antonio, and Gavin. "They got caught. What do we do?"

The radio stopped transmitting feedback, probably because Yaaseen must have turned it off.

"We give it up," Savannah said. "No place is worth losing so many people."

"I guess she's right," Sarah backed her up.

I leaned against the wall, thinking of what to do. We had no other choice.

"Okay," I told them. "We'll give it up. However if one of them is hurt, I will make sure Yaaseen dies."

"Seems legit," Sarah smiled.

"I'm sorry," Shane spoke up from the other side of the room, "but this isn't our fight. We can't go with you."

"It's fine," Antonio told him.

"If we end up living," Gavin piped up, "we'll probably end up going to this sanctuary in San Diego."

"Thank you," Shane and his friends waved us goodbye as the left the building.

"Now," I got back into focus, "it's time to end this. Let's move."

As we exited the building, I noticed a familiar hatchet in a dead body's belt. I whistled to Savannah, he seemed giddy about being reunited with her favorite weapon. She stuck it in her belt and kicked the body who possessed it. We found an SUV in the building's garage and made our way to the base.

When the base was in sight, I relayed the plan again.

"Savannah, you take Danny and Antonio inside of the walls and find big guns, large enough to stop the army as a last resort. Gavin will be at the chopper, ready to take off. In that event, we all hop in and leave for San Diego. I'll go and meet with Yaaseen and Sarah will join me to force him to play fairly. Once I get all of the hostages, we will go and this entire thing will be over. Gucci?"

Everyone nodded. Danny drove us all through the wide open gate. We passed several corpses of bandits on the outside, but I thought nothing of it.

Bang!

Bang!

Bang!

The gunshots came as a surprise to us. We each flew out of the car and into our positions. Sarah and I walked towards the hangar where the shots were fired from. I was about to knock on the door and end this peacefully, but I peered through the window. Yaaseen had killed Joe, Kevin and Riddley, but had his gun up to the head of 1 crying Cameron. No more peace. No more of us dying. Just no more.

"YAASEEN!" I screeched. The hangar doors slowly opened. Yaaseen smiled like a madman at me. "Don't kill them. I'll let you have the base, if you can beat me, hand to hand."

Yaaseen let out a clearly fake laugh.

"Challenge accepted! But know, every fight that I'm in has 1 rule. Wanna guess?"

I was about to guess something completely stupid, but luckily Sarah gave the correct answer before I could speak, "To the death."

"Bingo," Yaaseen pointed at her with both hands.

"The base will stay ours. I don't plan on dying today," I played the intimidation card.

"You should have learned this from when I betrayed you, Kai: plans change."

As Yaaseen took off his pistol holster and knife sheathe, I did the exact same. This had to be a clean fight. Yaaseen whistled and a guard came up behind Sarah and grabbed her by the arm so that she wouldn't intervene. She looked at him with a face that clearly made the man fear for his life. While I was looking over at her, Yaaseen began charging at me. He landed a punch to my abdomen, but I counteracted with a jab to his groin. He hunched over in pain, but got right back up and smacked me in the nose. It hurt like hell. I brought my hand up to the injury to see if my nose was bleeding. It surely was. I kicked Yaaseen in the kneecap, which began to make him fall to the ground. I grabbed the back of his skull and forced his head into my rising knee. Once he hit the ground, he spat out a bloody tooth. He snatched my ankle and tripped me to the earth. I landed on the gravel on my back in a flurry of pain.

"This has gotten out of hand," Yaaseen coughed as I heard a knife being unsheathed.

I looked up at him just as he stabbed a blade into my gut. The pain was excruciating. I clutched the wound and rolled over onto my side in pain. Yaaseen yanked out the weapon. My line of sight was fixed on Sarah. The man forced her to the ground after an escape attempt, but that wouldn't stop her. She gripped a rock with her 4-fingered hand and bashed the man's skull with it while he was still on top of her. The dent in the guy's head told me that he was a goner. Yaaseen was so focused on me that he didn't see Sarah incoming. She kicked him off of me and snatched the knife from his hands.

Meanwhile, Danny was helping the injured inside the hangar get to the chopper.

Anyways, back to the fighting. Yaaseen lay next to me with Sarah hanging over him, knife in hand. She injected the knife into his chest, and did something so smart. Sarah twisted the blade while in his body, to that the wound couldn't be healed.

"This d-didn't go as plan," Yaaseen coughed up blood.

"Plans change, bitch," Sarah spat on him.

Yaaseen very quickly pulled out a walkie-talkie and said, "Light it up."

Little did we know, there was a small group of bandits beyond the gate equipped with RPG's. Danny had gotten everyone out of the hangar, but he had come back to make sure that we were all okay. However, the hangar that Danny stood in was the first to be blown up.

"DANNY!!!" Sarah and I cried out simultaneously.

In the fire blaze, 1 item came out. The explosion had blasted the Desert Eagle that had once belonged to Sarah. The pistol slid across the concrete and stopped it's movement near where we sat. More explosions came, but with every aching second my wound hurt worse. Sarah clutched the gun between her hands and flared it at Yaaseen with tears in here eyes.

"Tell your men to call off the attack," she demanded.

She pointed the gun at Yaaseen's leg.

Bang!

He screamed in pain from the bullet. He wouldn't give it up. An engine rumbling caught my attention. The helicopter was taking off. As fast as it could, the chopper flew far away. Walkers were scrambling through the gate.

"Sarah, we have to go!" I yelled at her.

She put her gun down and helped me up. She crouched down so that I could put my arm around her for physical support. I used my other hand to hold hers for emotional support. Danny... he was such a good person. Sarah used her free hand to hold the gun that she had been reunited with.

"WHERE ARE YOU GOING?!" Yaaseen yelled. "YOU CAN'T JUST WALK AWAY FROM A FIGHT!"

We didn't listen and just kept going.

"WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?! GET BACK HERE AND FIGHT ME!"

Sarah aimed her gun at incoming walkers as we escaped through the gate.

Bang!

Bang!

Bang!

Bang!

Bang!

Bang!-click

"GET BACK HERE AND FINISH ME! DON'T LEAVE ME LIKE THIS, FINISH ME! FINISH ME!!!!!!!" Yaaseen said his last words before the walkers tore him apart. "DAMN YOU, SARAH. DAMN YOU TO HELL!"

We were no longer being followed by walkers. We reached the nearby forest where the cover could keep us safe. I was intensely bleeding out.

"S-Sarah," I stuttered. "I'm dying, help me."

"You're going to be okay, I'll get you help," she tightened her grip on my hand. "We just escaped that battle, do you know how lucky we are?"

"Danny wasn't as lucky as us."

"We will survive, Kai," she kept me moving. "We aren't dead...

...at least not yet, anyway."