Gunfire is like music to us

  The distinct metallic balloon-popping gss-breaking sound of a car crash drew Gradie’s attention to the front of the SUV. They were ing over the bridge and the cars ahead of them screeched to a stop in a flutter of brake lights.

  “Hey yo, what’s up?” Luke pulled his rifle up to his shoulder.

  EP’s shrill yell cracked in their ears.

  “Car crashed into Ashley! Move up!”

  “Shit!” Sam whipped the wheel around and started to pull into the turn ne. Luke stopped her with a bark.

  “Bikes, right! Engaging!” He pulled his mask down, kicked open his door, and leaned out with one foot on the running board. He opened fire through the front door jam and shells bounced off the inside of the passenger window.

  Out across the river, five dirt bikes zoomed down the sidewalks that ran alongside the berm. One of the riders wiped out in a cloud of dirt, and the other four tore ass back up and over the berm. They dropped down out of sight as rounds kicked up dirt around them and sparked off their bikes.

  Gradie’s attention had been drawn by the crash and held by Luke’s gunpy, so he almost missed the other SUV swerve into the far oning ne just behind them. It parked at an ah its front bumper even with theirs, and something moved from around the driver's side before it had finished rog. A helmeted head with gring sungsses and an AR barrel swiveling into pext to it.

  Gradie jerked in his seat and frantically tried to get his gun shouldered while searg for words to tell the team what he was seeing. All he got out was:

  “Hey! Hey!”

  Sam did a better job of it.

  “tact left, oning ne!”

  The man Gradie had been watg fired off a burst into Sam’s window and she flinched back as three white circles the size of fists clouded the gss. Gradie got his rifle up and kicked the door-open lever.

  All the doors in the SUV had bee up with kick trols so they could be opened without the operators having to take their hands off their ons. Though it had seemed strange during training, he was grateful for it now. The door opened about a foot and Gradie put the end of his suppressor on the hiween the door frame and the t-post and started firing.

  The first round caught the guy square in the chest and ripped apart his jacket, exposing the armor pte beh. His wo shots went high and hit nothing but blue sky as the shooter ducked back behind the engine block. The sound of the shell gs cttering in the cab reminded him of dropping things in the car a million times throughout his life, and his mind had trouble squaring the two sensations.

  The window in his open door went white in big splotches and the air filled with gunfire as someoher ihe SUV or oher side of it shot through their ter windows at Gradie. Instinctively he ducked down. In the same instant, he saw through the open side of his door that another shooter had stepped around the bad of the other SUV. The sudden, unavoidable knowledge that he was about to get shot racked him like arical charge as he twisted and pulled his rifle toward the gunman. It felt like he was dragging it through mosses, bullpup be damned.

  Luckily, the gunman hardly had time to raise his rifle at Gradie before his head exploded. Luke had whipped around and shot the guy over the roof of their SUV, responding to a scream from Sam that Gradie only heard seds afterward like an artifact his ears had plucked out of the air but his brain had had trouble immediately identifying.

  “Fug thank you!” Gradie yelled, still crouched down and fag the crumpling body.

  “No shit! Let’s go!” Luke said, letting loose at the other vehicle and sending gs cttering onto the roof of their SUV. Gradie dove baside, and realized with a shobarrassment more electrifying than the near-death moments before, that he had do again. He had go on his own in a fsh of instinct. Luckily, the team seemed to have more pressing s.

  “Close the fug door!” Sam screamed. Gradie smmed it shut and looked up in time to see a form, partially obscured by the frosty disks and cracks in the window, step out from behind the other SUV.

  “Fuck him. Drive.” Luke said as he got in, like Sam had spaced out at a light on the way to the park. Munfire cracked down the road and Luke ged magazines.

  “Shooters on Ashley,” EP said.

  “ing!” Sam shot the SUV into the ter turn ne and revved the ehe other SUV roared behind them.

  “Yeah and fuck you too.” Sam pressed a button in the dash. Something ged oreet behind them and a sed ter the other SUV screeched to a stop on bare rims and smashed into a parked car.

  Through the windshield, Gradie saw four men in bat gear and face masks cirg the Beetle with ons raised, their muzzles fshing haphazardly, turning the windows white but uo do much else.

  “Fug easy mode,” Luke said softly as he she bolt release.

  The one on top of the car leaped off like he was on fire and the other ones backed up quickly.

  “What—” Sam started.

  Something twinkled and for a moment Gradie thought the stoplight had exploded, then the rounds smmed into the beetle, and the most terrifying roar he had ever heard echoed from down the road.

  ****

  EP watched the gunmen circle the car, fire off rounds and yell, saw Celeste gre at them like a cheetah being taunted in a zoo, and through the cars outside mic heard the dipshits with guns try to figure something out.

  “Get the fuck out!” one barked at the windows, voice crag.

  “Its fug armored!” another one whined.

  “Move! Move! He’s gonna hit it with the emgee!”

  They scattered like rats, and sure enough the PKM in the back of the pickup had opened up like a mae that had learned one humaion; hate. Whoever was origger was lightyears ahead of these uys. The rounds all nded on the driver’s side of the windshield in a group just over a foot wide.

  “PKM!” She yelled at the same time as Luke, who actually said ‘jinx’ with a smile on his face. She tabbed tun drone and watched its elevation ter drop drastically. The camera view looked like World War two dive bomber footage.

  “Cease fire! Hold up, Target in danger!” One of the dipshits screamed into his radio, eg from two sources in her ears. She gnced over at the feed from the beetle’s interior camera, and gasped.

  “Aww.”

  Cooper had thrown himself on top of Celeste with his back to the widening mass of white in the windshield. The PKM paused.

  “I’ll be damned,” EP whispered.

  “Car!” one of the dipshits yelled, but the PKM gunner had already seen them. Red tracers zipped towards the team’s SUV as he corrected his fire.

  ****

  “Cut left! There!” Luke screamed at Sam. EP saw him point wildly in the SUV feed out of the er of her eye. The SUV swerved off the road and into the lot of a small, siory red brick office building, where live oaks cast harsh midday shadows. The PKM found its mark at st, and turned half the windshield white and ghe entire driver’s side fnk into ripped metal and bursts of polycarbonate as it turned desperately into the lot. Sam zig-zagged as a trio of oak trees sed them momentarily, but it didn’t stop the gunner from ying into the trigger. Car windows exploded all around them and the live oaks broke open in bursts of bark and wood and sprays of shredded leaves.

  “Get uhe covered parking!” EP screamed.

  “April, move up behind the mae gun position and look for an opening,” Michael said, like he was teag her to dance.

  “I’ve got it!” EP yelled. Her drone was about to drop into the bed of the truck. They had popped the vas top off and one man rone in the bed firing the PKM, while another, crouched down at his feet, shooting a 16-inch AR loaded entirely with tracers, directed his fire and, at times, spped him on the legs in some kind of code.

  She he drone on the bed right o the gunner. He looked over, and she saw the pitiless lens of the camera and the 5.7 barrel o it reflected in his sungsses just before she fired.

  Two rounds of AP 5.7 tore into his forehead and the bst sent the drone flying backward until it smmed into the steel pte they had pced behind the sandbags lining the edge of the truck bed.

  “Drones! Fuck you!” The spotter put three tracers through the drone, and one of them ricocheted and stuck, glowing, in the bicep of the dead gunner before the camera feed died.

  Her un drone was less than 20 meters above the truck when it got taken out. She backed the other nearby drones off in evasion paths as more rounds zipped past them.

  So, the truck team were the real operators.

  “Gunners down!” she told the team, but her pride was out of it. She hadn’t fielded near enough gun drones, and the ones she had were built from frames that were too big for any real surprise. All eyes and no bite, she watched from a distant drone as tracer guy threw his rifle to one of the meo the truck. The hacked phone mics told the rest of the story.

  “Ja, spot me!”

  He rolled the corpse to the side of the bed in a perfect dead-man roll, then scampered back over and snapped down into a prone position. His hands started moving over the PKM like the feelers of some horrible i. The gunmahe truck sed the sky while Ja shouldered the tracer rifle and climbed into the bed.

  She growled through her teeth.

  “PKM’s ing back up, look out!”

  The things we do for love. ime, some dare, some die, and some fall. episode, Near Death.