I felt the blast of heat from the back end of the rocket launcher, just six feet off to my right. An earsplitting BLAM! nearly deafened me.

I caught a brief glimpse of a straight line of smoke spewing from the rocket launcher’s mouth –

Then the barn exploded.

You know when you’re watching fireworks on the 4th of July, and you can feel the air thump against your skin as they go off?

It was like that, but about fifty times worse.

We all staggered back as the shockwave slammed into us.

Lou and his cronies threw up their arms to shield themselves from the blast as burning bits of wood rained down from the sky.

“GET DOWN!” the Hazmat suit guy screamed as he flung himself to the ground.

I barely had time to register a single thought:

It already exploded, so why’s he screaming ‘get down’?

A split-second later I found out why.

The second explosion must have been chemicals inside the meth lab. The blast was even bigger than the first. It knocked me and Jack clean off our feet.

A gigantic fireball shot up a hundred feet into the air over the flaming ruins of the barn.

“YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKER!” Lou screamed at Jack. He must have been shouting extremely loud, because I could still make out his words over the ringing in my ears. “KILL THEM!”

The bikers crouched down behind their Harleys.

Gunshots filled the air.

Bam bam bam bam bam bam bam!

Bullets hit our truck like ball peen hammers on metal.

Ding ding ding ding ding!

The tire nearest me blew out.

Shattered glass from the passenger door’s window sprayed all over my hair.

Bullets flew past like angry bees and kicked up dust from the ground.

Kade had escaped the explosion relatively unscathed on the other side of the pickup. He was the first of our group to open fire with his automatic rifle.

BRATTA-TATTA-TATTA-TATTA-TAT!

Hazmat Suit Guy started crawling through the dust towards the bikers as bullets whizzed over his head.

“NOT THE COOK!” Lou bellowed. “DON’T KILL THE COOK, YOU FUCKIN’ IDIOTS!”

I thought about shooting the meth guy in the leg or something, but I didn’t care about him. I only cared about getting out alive.

I stood up and returned fire through the shattered window of the truck’s open passenger door. BAM BAM BAM BAM!

Lou and his four thugs hunched over behind their bikes as they fired back at us.

Benjy lay on the ground covering his head with his arms.

Jack crouched at my feet fumbling with the next rocket, trying to load it in the launcher. “We could use a little more help, old man!” he yelled.

I guess Sid heard, because another CRACK! rang out from up in the hills behind the flaming barn.

The Biker with the Willie Neslon braids toppled onto the ground screaming, hit in the chest.

“One down,” Sid said in my earpiece.

“Shoot Lou!” Jack yelled.

“If you hadn’t put a giant fuckin’ smokestack between me an’ him, I mighta been ABLE to,” Sid snarled.

“Move, then!”

“Why don’t you use that fancy peashooter of yours?”

“I’m workin’ on it!”

The Hazmat suit guy had belly-crawled all the way to the bikers. Lou grabbed his arm and drug him behind the nearest cycle.

As soon as Benjy saw the Hazmat guy move past him, he must have realized he didn’t have to stay put with the bikers, and he started crawling towards us.

I was torn. I wanted to hate him – he had confessed to killing Ali, after all – but I knew that Lou was behind it all. Benjy had been no more than a puppet.

Not only that, but I could see from Benjy’s expression that he was terrified. I was scared to death, so I could imagine how afraid he was right about now. Tears streamed down his face as he crawled through the dust towards us.

Jack finally loaded the rocket launcher.  He sprawled out on the ground, ready to fire – but Benjy was right in his path, fifty feet away.

“God DAMN it!” Jack roared, and swiped the air with his hand. “Get out of the way! GET OUT OF THE WAY!”

Benjy’s face registered shame as well as panic, and he started to crawl off to the side.

He wasn’t exactly in the direct path of the gunfight, but he still had a hell of a long way to go to reach cover.

His best bet to survive was our truck. Otherwise he was probably going to die.

Jack looked up at me. I could see the question in his eyes:

What do you want me to do?

No matter what Benjy had done to Ali – no matter what he’d done to me and my entire family – I didn’t want to see him die right in front of my eyes like an animal. I certainly didn’t want him to get blown to bits by a stray rocket.

I’d killed someone last night, and it had scarred me – probably for life.

Benjy could go to prison for what he did… but I wasn’t going to sign off on his execution, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to participate. I had enough scars.

“Benjy – crawl over here!” I screamed at him as I fired at the bikers.

His face lit up with relief, and he started crawling back towards the truck.

Forty feet…

Thirty feet…

Jack got to his feet and hid behind the truck door, waiting for a lull so he could fire the rocket from a standing position.

“Where is he?!” Jack yelled.

I looked over the door as I returned fire.

Twenty feet away.

“He’s almost here!” I shouted.

Benjy was so close to the truck that I could see the hope in his eyes. The realization that maybe he was going to make it.

Ten feet away –

That was when Lou killed him.