Read The Remaining: Trust: A Novella for Free Online

could see. He didn’t like it because it left them out in the open, but there weren’t many choices at this point.
    He ran for it.
    The roof around his feet suddenly began to jolt. Black holes began sprouting up, spewing chunks of insulation and plaster into the air like tiny geysers. Abe felt his whole body tighten, like one giant cringe, but he didn’t stop running even as he waited for that bullet to snap up and get him. He planted a hand on the curved rail of the ladder to stop himself, and he looked back.
    In the middle of the roof, one of the soldiers was prone, trailing red across the white roof as he crawled toward them. The bullets kept punching up, closer, and then farther away. Someone underneath them, blindly shooting at noises on the roof. One of the rounds exploded right next to the wounded soldier’s head and he became still, unwilling to move anymore.
    The other two were crammed in close behind Abe at the ladder. The soldier who had been sitting behind Abe on the ride in lurched out like he was going to make a run for his wounded comrade, but Abe grabbed his arm. He wore sergeant’s stripes, Abe noted.
    “Gimme ten seconds!” Abe shouted. “You got a frag?”
    The sergeant produced one from his vest.
    Abe snatched it out of his hand and pointed at the roof. “Keep his head down!” Then he slapped the other soldier’s arm. “You’re with me!”
    The sergeant pointed his rifle at the roof and began letting rounds loose.
    Abe grabbed the side rails of the ladder and simply vaulted over the roof. He didn’t know if the other soldier was behind him, but he wasn’t waiting to find out. He hit the next tier of the roof, and he hit it hard, buckling his knees and nearly putting him on his ass. He recovered, stumbling slightly as he pulled the pin and let the paddle fly off the grenade. For a split second he was terrified that he had no place to throw it, but to his right was a long bank of windows, and the ones closest to him were already blown out. He tossed the grenade like a hot potato through the open window, and then he flattened himself up against the wall and hoped it was more substantial than it felt.
    He waited, waited, waited, then— BOOM —felt it before he heard it.
    Concussion that you could feel in your innards.
    The feeling of a full-body impact.
    The odd sensation of it ripping suddenly over your skin.
    Then he felt a hard slap on his shoulder, and a muffled word came through his ringing, perforated eardrums: “MOVE!”
    And he was moving. Rifle up, through the broken bay windows and onto a desk that rattled unsteadily under his feet. Abe looked at the broken jags of glass passing between his legs as he stepped through and thought about them slicing through his inner thigh and opening up his femoral artery. He got both legs in and then jumped off the desk onto a hard linoleum floor.
    The interior of the building was dark. Hazy. Billows of smoke stampeded for the open windows. He could see the glow of daylight on the other side of the room. Shadows and shapes flashed across the light. If there were sounds to accompany it—footsteps or shouts—Abe couldn’t hear them. He decided that he didn’t care what the shadows and shapes belonged to.
    He was going to shoot them.
    One foot in front of the other. Heart heavy and hard in his chest. Like a palpitating brick. He scanned left as he moved. There were cubicles. They were small. Easily cleared with a passing glance. The walls were thin and would provide nothing in the way of cover. He had to keep moving.
    The shadows flashed again. Abe fired his rifle through the rapidly clearing haze. Thought he saw a figure fall but couldn’t be sure. He saw a muzzle flash, felt something zip past his face like an angered bee. He resisted the urge to dive for the cubicles and the false sense of protection they gave. They didn’t have time for a firefight. Tyler didn’t have time for it. The wounded soldier on the roof didn’t have time for it.