Page 97 of Ride or Die

“I can get it done,” Saint said.

Aaron’s eyes met his, black and fathomless. “At what cost?”

That’s the question.



Saint lay in bed, drifting, when he was picked up and dropped into hell.

The trees smelled wrong, like blood had spilled on the forest floor, under the loam. Saint’s skin itched and crawled, and his chest had been pounding for days. Weeks.

“What the fuck is he doing?” Aaron muttered and pressed binoculars against his sun-darkened face. Saint squinted through the trees, and the helmet dropped out of sight as the soldier cleared the next ridge, far closer to the enemy than they’d discussed.

“Get him back,” Saint snapped, and Aaron immediately put his radio to his mouth. The line crackled, sound distorted and delayed. Aaron tried again.

“Almost there—dark.” The words barely came through, and Aaron swore. Saint plucked the radio out of his hand and jammed the button down. “Return now. That’s an order.”

The radio spat and crackled and emitted one word before going silent.

“No.”

Saint looked at Aaron, and he dropped his gaze first. They’d been sitting in the blind for two days, comms down, out of food, limited water… end of the road.

“We’re leaving in four hours, and he better be fucking back by then,” Saint said, letting the radio drop to his feet.

“He will be,” Aaron promised. Fucking optimist.

They stared into the trees, passing the binoculars back and forth.

A snap in the bushes had them both drawing, and they trained weapons on the figure that appeared.

“Don’t shoot, kids, it’s just me,” Wheeler announced, breathing hard. He raised his hands. As if that would help.

“Where the fuck have you been? It’s been days.” Saint holstered his gun.

Wheeler was covered in mud and sweat and still gave him a blood-stained grin. “Missed you too, boss.”

Aaron had his kit open and hauled Wheeler into the blind.

“Graze, upper arm. Don’t bother with it. We don’t have time.”

Saint didn’t have to tell him to keep talking.

Wheeler’s face was pale under the dirt, his voice unusually quiet. “Pincer manoeuvre, we’re in the middle. Intel was bad.” A shudder rolled over his body, his head twitching last. The entire movement was disjointed. “Got hit by a scout on the way in.”

When? He was thirty-six hours late.

Saint glanced at Aaron and didn’t imagine the fear he saw there.

They had to move Wheeler. Right fucking now.

“They don’t have scouts,” Aaron said as he injected Wheeler with an antibiotic. That was a good sign. Dead men didn’t need rationed meds.

They weren’t dying out here. Saint’d make sure of it.

“Yeah, but their friends sure do. All eighty of them. I barely got to you. I’ve been looking for you for two days. They’re an hour behind me. I don’t think—” Wheeler wheezed out each sentence, breath increasingly laboured. Saint stared at him for a moment, then began moving. “Pack up, we leave in two.”

Aaron jerked the bandage tight, and Wheeler should’ve yelped louder than he did.