Gone Rogue original not to be finished

Chapter Three

When I woke up the next morning, Nicholas was the only other one up. He was sitting in the dirt, with my jacket on. His eyes had gone back to normal, and although he was pale, he looked fine.

"We need to get going soon. It was stupid, stopping without one of us on guard. Especially when we're recovering," I said, half to him and half to myself. "You wake up Amelia, and I'll wake Lupa up." I shook Lupa's shoulder, until she rolled over and sat up.

"What the hell, Dimi? We've only been here a few hours," she mumbled, trying to slap me in the face.

I smiled groggily. "Exactly. We need to go. Right now." I lowered my voice to a whisper. "There's a man. He's behind a hill. He doesn't know that I've seen him. He has a rifle. We can't let the kids know." Lupa nodded, and jumped to her feet, suddenly awake. By then Amelia was awake, and stretching. Her back cracked, and she relaxed with a sheepish smile.

"C'mon, we need to get going," I announced, and walked around to the other side of the car. Jumping in, I ignored the seat belt and started the car. Nicholas jumped into the seat beside me, and handed my coat back to me. I thanked him, and put on the coat, reveling in how tight the sleeves felt. Flexing my gloved hands, I looked back to make sure Lupa and Amelia were in the car, then started at full speed, trying to get away from that man as fast as possible.

A gun shot rang out. Then another. The back tires! Nicholas screamed, and I slammed on the brakes, jumping as far as I could from the car and rolling on my bad shoulder, grunting in pain. Hopefully everyone else had jumped too, because a moment later the car exploded and I was thrown head over heels into the air. I landed with a thud, and yelled out of pain. Nicholas yelled a moment later, and I heard Lupa and Amelia after that, which calmed my nervousness.

My head throbbed. Great, another injury to worry about. I could almost hear the Western music, then realized that I could. "What the..." The idiot with the gun! I saw him through a cloud of dust and smoke, with a boombox over his shoulder playing some loud music. Walking towards Lupa, with his rifle up. My bandaged eye itched, but I resisted the urge to take the bandage off.

I stood up slowly, sticking to the thickest clouds of dust. When I was only a few feet behind him, I rushed in a crouch and just as he was turning around, landed a fist on his jaw. There was a sharp crack, and my fist came away with blood on it. Then the barrel of the rifle smashed into my own jaw, barely hard enough to make me bite my tongue. The taste of blood filled my mouth, and my eye itched even more. Then Lupa hit the man on the other side of the jaw with a roundhouse kick. He went down, and my boot was on his chest before he could get up and scramble away.

Ten feet away, the broken boom box stuttered to a stop.

Lupa wrenched the rifle away from the man, and aimed it at his face. I pulled the two revolvers from my waist band, and held one in each hand, aiming those at his face two. After a moment Lupa pulled a revolver from her waist band, too. Nicholas and Amelia ran up, but stayed back, like they were scared of us.

"Dimi?" Nicholas whimpered. To answer, I shot him a look that said "Shut up or you'll be getting punched next."

Lupa nudged the side of his jaw that she had kicked, ad the man whimpered. "We're going to leave you out here, okay? We'll leave your gun, but we're taking the bullets. You have to have extra. Hand them over." The man slowly reached into his pocket, and pulled out a box of lead. Lupa leaned over and picked the box up, slipping it into her own coat pocket. "Thank you. Now get away!" she snarled, and I took my boot off of his chest to give the man a final kick in the side. He whimpered again, and I turned away. Nicholas stared wide-eyed and open-mouthed, but this time it was with fear. My eyes softened, but I refused to go soft. Not now. He had more bullets. I knew he did. Hopefully he wouldn't use them.

"Hey! Ro-" the man began to yell, but I whipped around and emptied my gun into him. Blood stained the dirt, and my hands shook. "-gue," he breathed with his last breath. My eye burned, but I had to resist it.

"We're going," I snarled as loud as I could. It came out as more of a yell, and I liked it that way. Lupa knew the drill. When I got pissed off, if someone got in my way I would pump them full of lead.

Nicholas stared at me, and I glared at him. He looked away, at Amelia, and I saw the tears on his face. My eye stopped itching so much.

I began walking. The car was destroyed. But we still had feet. And boots.

I pulled a water bottle out of one of my pockets, and took a drink. I spit out a mouthful of pink water, and continued walking. There was a small town not so far from there. And two hours of completely silent walking later, we came to a small hotel. "Lupa, go in and get us a room. I'll take the kids and get some supplies," I ordered. My eye had stopped itching, which was good, but my temper hadn't gone down.

I pulled out my wallet, and counted to see how much money I had. Only about thirty dollars. I guess that would have to do it. Mentally I went over all that we had to get. A new first-aid kit, some food, some extra rolls of gauze. There were three rolls in that kit, and my shoulder had taken the last one. Lupa and I seemed to get hurt a lot.

"C'mon," I said, softer than before, and set off out of the small parking lot. Nicholas followed instantly, at my heels like a puppy. But Amelia took a second, and even then she stayed behind me.

After ten minutes, I spotted a drug store and walked into it. A huge cork board on one wall was filled with wanted posters, and I spotted two half-hidden posters for Lupa and myself. Going out in public wasn't such a good idea, but it had to be done.

Soon I had a small first-aid kit and three rolls of gauze. I headed up to the front counter to pay, not even trying to steal them. Then I headed out, and made sure the twins were with me when I saw a sheriff ahead, talking to a woman. As far as I knew, no one knew I was with two kids, so if I was with them and they were acting normal I would be safe. But Amelia was looking all huffy, which worried me. The sheriff might be suspicious. But all I had to do was walk like I was a normal person. We passed unnoticed, luckily, but it just served as a reminder that there were sheriffs around.

After going to a grocery store and buying as much food as I could with the remaining twenty dollars, we headed back to the hotel and found Lupa standing in the lobby with her arms crossed.

"Hey! You've been gone for almost an hour. Don't torture them like that," she hissed, and I could see anger in her eyes.

Sheepishly, I looked down at my feet. "Sorry. I didn't mean to," I apologized. Nicholas looked surprised. He probably thought I would snarl right back at her. "Let's just go to the room, okay?"

She looked away, sighed, and began to walk down a dingy hallway. We followed, and soon came to a room on the first floor. A suite, more like it. One bedroom, a living room with a fold-out couch, and a bathroom. Nicholas dashed to the living room, and I followed,after giving Lupa another apologetic look. She snorted, and pulled off her own coat, an aviator's jacket.

I went to the living room to find Nicholas flipping through the channels on an old TV. He somehow found the cartoon we were watching only last night, and settled onto the couch. "Hey, get up. I'm going to fold that out. Unless you want to sleep on the floor?" I joked, and he got up. Soon the bed was folded out, and I was throwing a blanket I had found on it. My hands shook slightly. The twin revolvers seemed to press against my hips, hurting more and more with each passing minute. I took them out of my waistband, reloaded both of them, and set them on the dresser along with my great coat.

"We need to get some sleep. You can watch another episode after that, but I'm sleeping now. Good night." I lied down on the couch, and put my hands behind my head. A few minutes after that, I was snoring.