POV ESMERAY
The world outside the trailer had devolved into a symphony of mechanical roars and the sharp, rhythmic percussion of gunfire. I stayed pressed against the floor, the cold linoleum biting into my skin, exactly as Ruan had ordered. But as the minutes ticked by, the screams changed. They were no longer the war cries of men looking for a fight; they were the guttural, agonized wails of men who had found one and were losing.
My nursing instincts, honed by years of ER shifts where every second was a currency of life, began to scream louder than the fear. I could hear the wet, ragged cough of a punctured lung and the frantic shouts for a medic that didn't exist in this desert wasteland.
Ruan was out there fighting for me. His brothers were bleeding for a woman they barely k
