4) Hope?

They had been running all day, even all night. They were getting used to hearing shots at any moment; luckily they did not to be worried about that because those shots were far away, until there.
The sun was getting up, and they were still walking; shots hadn’t stopped yet, but they decreased their frequency. They were 5 like in the beginning; Alan could notice their faces; they had changed from the first happy and cheerful faces that Alan could see, at that moment they were like old people who had been in a concentration camp; they looked like they had been walking during all their lives. Abruptly he felt a liquid substance in his face, it was red, it was… blood? … But… why? He didn’t hear anything; he looked next to him and one of his friends had a big hole in his chest, he was still walking, but after a moment his knees got bent, his hand went up to touch the hole, his face got disfigured touching it, his ayes looked at sky, trying to find something, but at the end their just found the ground and dust.
Young started to run faster than before, Alan could see that there were around 5 or 6 mercenaries in their behind. One by one, their group got smaller Clark, Uther and even peter, who looked like a great sportsman who could live more than Alan, died. They split out to have more options to live, but when Alan saw that Gary had fallen and one mercenary was about to kill him, he came back to help Gary. The mercenary was a cold blooded psycho; he wanted to kill Gary with a knife. Alan took a thick stick with him, and he was about to hit the mercenary, this killer realized that so he dodged the big branch falling and charged against Alan; from the ground Gary took the mercenary’s right calf to floor him, the mercenary fell down at the same time that Alan hit him in the head. It was the very first time that he killed something, and this was a man … a man!!! He just could think of that. If when he saw the bodies he was petrified, at that moment his own soul had gone away out of him. He lifted Gary from the ground and they try to run; it was difficult because Gary had broken his right ankle, but they could take a good distance from the “mercenary hunter group”.
Their adrenalin levels were high; this ran through their veins to inject with energy their muscles, including the brain that made them think in the worst ways to die. Was that mercenary the most psycho one? Were they going to die fast or slowly? Were their families going to know their deaths? At that moment Alan remembered that all those things was being recording; he tried to find a camera, a microphone or something, until finally, up in a tree, he could see a camouflaged camera that was recording all that he was doing. He did several things, thinking that somebody could bring help if they could watch them on TV, or the internet. Unexpectedly they heard a shot; it was close. They started to run frantically to a place with a lot of trees. After that they were running for a long time, until Gary said:
-Wait!!! Wait!!! I could hear something over there- Gary said
-What? - Asked Alan- are you kidding man? We must rush now!!!


Alan continued running, ignoring what Billy had said to him. Suddenly when Alan passed through some shrubs getting out to an open place, he heard the sound of a sniper shooting. When the bullet was almost touching him, Gary was screaming, and Alan thought that was the end, but like a tiger, Billy went out from nowhere and tackled Alan down; the bullet grazed his hair and just pierced the air around them. They stayed down and dragged to a safe place; from there they could notice that a second shot killed Gary; they woke up and ran; they got to a wall of rock where they could hide, like in a hole.
-Are you ok? - Billy asked
- Yeah, thanks, I owe you one- Alan answered pleased
- Wait, wait, -
-What?-
-shhhhh, they are close up here- Billy said


Although Alan felt more confident with Billy next to him, supporting him, Alan could not stop to think that they were going to die there. “Why did I do this?” Is what he asked to himself and at the same time he remembered his house and friends. Up there in the top of the wall, a group of mercenaries could be heard; they used their radios to communicate each other. “10-4, the bird is gone, daddy is red” are phrases that they used as a code. Alan felt afraid, anxious, but on the other hand he wanted to get up and fight. At that moment one of them touched a stone that fell to the ocean. “Wait, I could hear something”, that was like a sword entering in their chests. He want to scream, run, escape from there, his muscles contract, his eyes couldn’t see sharply, his heart was beating like it was going to explode, and his survivor instinct say to him: “don’t scream, don’t scream”, the mercenary was approaching and in his mind he just had “don´t scream, don´t scream”.