Raven stopped cold.
The man wasn’t getting into the truck, he was reaching in. She immediately
abandoned the taser and reached on her right hip for her firearm. As it cleared the holster, the man
straightened, coming out of the truck cab.
With a shotgun.
“Put it down! Put it
down now!” she screamed.
The shotgun’s barrel was still coming up, still on its way
to sighting on her when she had hers ready to fire. She squeezed the trigger, but the man was
standing sideways to her. He jerked as
she shot him in the shoulder.
His face suffused not with pain, but with rage. It was not a surprising reaction given he
might be psychologically impaired, drunk, high, or all of the above.
Back at the academy when Raven had trained to become a
ranger, she and her fellow students had been shown dash cam footage of officers
caught in similar situations. They’d
been warned how such people might not react to injury, including being
shot. It was real life, not
Hollywood. Single gunshots rarely killed
and often did not incapacitate attackers.
This was the first time Raven had seen it in person,
however. Even footage from real life
altercations held none of the immediacy of being in the middle of the
situation. She lost precious seconds
gaping at the man when he didn’t go down.
Instead he screamed, “Fucking cunt! You can’t shoot me! I’ll kill you, bitch!”
Training kicked in and Raven moved back, hurrying to get
behind her truck. She shot again, but
she was in the grip of tunnel vision, only seeing the black hole of the barrel
sighted on her. She shot at that instead
of at the man who was now running towards her, bringing that deadly maw closer
and closer.
A spark of fire emitted from that immense cavern. An instant later something kicked Raven in
the center of her chest, knocking her backwards. There was a thunderous blast that echoed all
around. It was followed by a horrible,
high-pitched scream splitting the air, the screech of a terrified rabbit facing
a coyote. It came from her own throat,
shredding the tissues as unspeakable agony burst through the center of her
body.
