close quarters

[Dream]

'Blood, gunshots, blood.'

______

My eyes snapped open, and I inhaled a lung full of air.

The lights overhead were again bright, making me blink a few times to readjust to it.

Lifting my hand to rub at my eyes, I was confused.

Something was restraining me.

Slowly I lifted my head from my pillow, and looked down at myself.

I was in the standard hospital bed, covered in a thin light blue blanket, and had my arms handcuffed to the hospital beds railings.

Yanking a few times, I was confused at everything that was happening.

Looking around the room I was in, I saw a window to one side of the room.

Outside was dark, meaning it was night.

'How long have I been out?' I thought.

'Did anyone else survive the crash?'

Leaning my head back down to the pillow, I let out a long sigh.

'There's no way anyone else survived. We went into a nosedive at full speed, hell, I should be dead right now.'

As I thought of the myriad of reasons why I should be dead.

A warmth started to fill me. Starting at my chest, the warmth slowly crept out, until it covered me, from head to toe.

The warmth wasn't hot, more like a comfortable heat, that you would feel under a good blanket, in a cold room.

Closing my eyes, I enjoyed it.

But after about 20 seconds of this I opened my eyes again.

'That doesn't feel like a drug warmth?' I thought.

I had been to the doctors before.

Once when I was taking judo, and over extended a leg, and quite a few times when I was younger and they were trying to figure out why I needed to eat so much food.

On the trips to figure out why I ate so much, I was put under a lot of tests, but that's it. They would draw some of my blood and test it, as well as some skin samples.

But when I was 7 and hurt my leg, I was taken to the hospital in an ambulance, where they gave me some meds for the pain, which gave me the warm fuzzy feeling I was experiencing now, or that's what I thought.

What was different about this warmth was it pulsed, originating from the center of my chest, between my pectoral muscles, it would shoot out in waves.

And after a few minutes of that feeling, it started to feel odd, then annoying, mainly because it was out of sync with my heart beat. That added with the fact I couldn't move, made it all the worse.

As I was thinking this, the door to my room was forced open.

Turning my head, I watched as five tactically dressed men barged in.

As they filed in, my eyes picked up on everything about them, from the squeaking of their combat boots, to the slight jingle of their blacked out gear, the pistols strapped to their legs, as well as the pissed off faces that finished off the ensemble that started to fill my hospital room.

One gruff middle aged man, who was obviously the leader of the team, stopped right next to my hospital bed, and stared down at me.

"Lance corporal Andrew Cole?" The man said, in a gravely smokers voice.

Looking up at him, I raised an eyebrow.

"Yes, and who are you?" I asked, hesitantly.

"Richard Dickerson, specialized fast reaction team." He said, pulling out a set of keys from his pocket.

As he brought the keys up to unlock my cuffs, they glinted off the overhead light, drawing my attention to them.

They had blood splattered all over them.

'Why would they be bloody?' I thought, then something in the back of my head made me ask.

"You never said which branch you were from…Dick Dickerson?" I said, looking the man in the eyes.

His squinted, and angry, while mine were cool, and jovial, as I made a subtle joke about his name.

Of course there was the chance I was pissing off a superior officer, which could get me in trouble, but a lot of stuff was starting to seem off, and send alarms off in my head.

The man scowled at me, as the words left my mouth.

"Your right, I didn't." he said, as he turned the key in the cuff on my left arm.

As soon as those words left his mouth, I became certain that this guy was no officer in the US military, and they wanted to take me.

Time seemed to slow as the key was turned, and my brain went into combat mode.

As the cuff was undone on my left hand, I didn't move. Instead I waited until both of my hands would be free.

This seemed to surprise some of the men, who looked to be ready to pull out their weapons and start shooting at me.

Dick Dickerson, slowly walked around my bed, until he was on my right side, and started to do the same.

He brought the bloody keys up, and turned them, until a soft "clink" could be heard.

For me, that "clink" was a loud "GO".

I brought both my hands up in a flash, and grabbed this Mister Dickerson by the straps of his bullet proof vest, and pulled him to me.

As I pulled him to me, I twisted my body to the side, keeping Dickerson on my chest the whole time, so he would be my own little meat shield.

All of this happened in one fast motion that caught the other five men in the room off guard, but only for the second it took for me to get my meat shield in front of me.

The group of men went for their pistols,

And as they did so, I started for my shield's own gun that was strapped to his leg.

As I reached down, Mister Dickerson, tried to stop me, by grabbing my arm.

As he grabbed onto my sleeveless arm, I saw over the side of his head, the other men in the room, finally getting their pistols out of their holsters, and aiming them right at us.

Now this is the point where they were supposed to not shoot me, because I have their boss right in front of me as a human shield. Yeah, they didn't even hesitate.

In a group, they all opened fire right at us.

As the first bullet hit my shield, I balled up behind him, to make as small a target as possible, forgetting about the gun I couldn't grab, and just focused on not being shot.

The barrage of bullets only lasted for a few seconds, as they mag dumped us.

As the bullets stopped, I let myself assess the situation I was in.

My shield was now minced meat that had more holes than Swiss cheese. I was covered in blood, brains, and a sprinkling of bone, while the guys that just shot at me were starting to reload, on what they probably believed was a dead target.

Thankfully, Dickerson's bulletproof vest must have been of high rating, because not a bullet reached me through him.

Now with all of that in mind, I went for the gun again.

Again In a flash, I sat up, and grabbed the holstered gun on Dickerson's right leg.

But as soon as my hand touched the metal of the gun's grip, I saw that the gun had been hit a few times by bullets, destroying the rear of the pistols, making it useless.

Thinking fast, I pulled out the useless gun from its holster, and threw it at the closest man.

The gun hit the man on the chest plate, making him flinch away from the flying object, and stopping him from loading his gun.

As the gun hit him, it also made the other four men in the group stutter in their loading.

Using the split second, I had created for myself.

I vaulted over the dead body of their leader, and landed onto the laminate flooring.

But again there was a problem.

The floor where I landed was covered in fresh blood, and I had no shoes on, Making me jerk my body, as I tried to stay upright, and not slip on the blood, Wasting valuable seconds.

Thankfully, my foot caught on one of the roller legs of the hospital bed, which was locked, so it didn't move, allowing me to use it to launch myself at the man in front of me, who was just sliding a mag into his gun.

As I reached him, he was just bringing his gun up to shoot me.

Grabbing the gun by its slide, I pushed back on it hard to keep it from firing.

Not wasting a second, I shoulder checked him, making him stumble and become unbalanced, allowing me to shift him in front of me, right when his other buddy's started to shoot.

The first shot to hit him was a headshot, blowing more brain and skull matter right onto me.

Now with him dead, his body went limp and was about to fall, but using my free hand, I grabbed his vest and held him upright while he leaned mostly on me.

Those shooting at us only managed to get off five or six shots, before I had my new meat shields gun in hand and returning fire.

Bringing the glock around, I didn't aim as I shot.

But instead hoping the small room would make it impossible to miss my shots entirely.

And like I had hoped, it worked…sort of.

All three of them wore chest rigs that had body armor planting underneath.

Each of them were shot at least once in the chest plates, while a few rounds hit them in the limbs, causing one to fall to the ground as one of my bullets hit him in the leg, while the other two, were lucky, and were hit in their arms.

But none of that mattered. What did matter, was they weren't shooting at me anymore, and were instead busy realizing that they had been shot.

Knowing that would only last for a second or two, I dropped the body that was my shield, and head shot the three one after the other.

The two who were standing dropped to the ground, lifeless, and bloody.

The new silence was a shock to me.

One second I was in the middle of a shoot out, then the next complete silence.

My chest heaved, as my brain shifted out of my fighting mind, and back to normal.

'Shit.' I thought, as I looked around, at the dead body's, and the blood splattered room.

After a few seconds, I realized something.

'It's quiet, too quiet.'

Hospitals are busy, and there is a lot of noise In there halls, but there is nothing. Not even the sirens you would hear from the police responding to a massive shootout in a hospital.

Making my way to the single window in my room, I looked down at the ground, and saw no movements.

'What the fuck is going on?' I thought, as I looked around.

Wanting to figure that out, I made my way to the door of my room. making sure not to slip on any of the blood that covered the flooring, and dragged one of the bodies away from the door so I could crack it open and look out.

___________________

Words-2,023