Skank - Hostile Takeover

Hostile Takeover - Excerpt from Chapter 1

It was dark; the sky was back-lit from the streetlights of a large metropolitan area nearby. The air was cool and damp filled with the distant hush of city traffic. Around me stretched block after block of deserted warehouses. I wandered through the desolate landscape clinging to the Knights Armaments SR25 as if the killing machine were my only friend, a protector against the unknown attacker I feared would pop from the shadows at any moment to finish what his friends started. Gradually the landscape changed from industrial to residential but looked no less deserted. It was getting more difficult to walk. The light in the sky was now more predawn sun than streetlight. I did not even feel the bullet wound in my side when it happened, now it dominated my existence; intensifying from dull ache to sharp pain. The blood that had run down my pant leg went from warm and wet to cold and sticky. I wanted to hear Cali’s voice one last time, just for the chance to tell her goodbye, but the earwig was still dead silent, like the abandoned streets around me.

It could have been blood loss or shock, but I thought I could see lights up ahead, like a homing beacon, a faint glimmer of hope. As I got closer, I could hear voices; and see a group of people like a mirage before me. The scene looked surreal, men and women dressed in fine clothes and looking towards a young man who was speaking. Was this real, a hallucination, or was I already dead? I could not tell.