Knife

The old wound is aching again, so this time I'll be a little brief, if you excuse me.

The soldiers had us surrounded, I guess it's better to keep the stock and take the poor bastard's stuff, right? They were heavily armed, and well trained. It wasn't like the looters in my house, any move I did would result in all of us getting killed.

There were at least seven of them, most of them armed with the typical assault rifles of the mexican army (what we used to call H&K G3), and only whom he seemed the superior carried a fancy Xiuhcoatl assault rifle, battered up but still usable, from the looks of it. They all shouted that I raised my hands, and I complied.

The girls started to cry, or at least whimper a bit, as one of the soldiers approached. I quickly grabbed him and used him as a shield. Didn't matter much to the soldiers, as they still fired away, killing him. I fired a couple of shots with my beretta while the girls ran. Two soldiers went after them, but I killed one with a shot to the neck, and injured the other in his knee. I still had to deal with five pissed off soldiers, so I took cover quickly. Now instead of couting five, I saw two, not good. I looked back, only to find a soldier about to stab me in the neck with his knife. I shot him three times before he fell to the ground, his blood in my face. I ran to look for better cover, as bullets flew over my head. I took the other beretta and, with some cover, shot back. I would've busted his head wide open, but I only managed to make the soldier's helmet fly. Then, a soldier tried to sneak through me with his Xiuhcoatl, using his rifle butt to hit me. We strugled for a minuted, but I managed to take his rifle and shoot him a couple of times with the beretta.

Three down, four more to go.

I looked over again, and the other three soldiers were, from the looks of it, returning to campus. I could not let that fly.

The rifle felt smoothly as I fired it, but I had a problem with the recoil. I managed to hit two soldiers, one in the back, the other in the neck. The third one was hit, but not by me, but shrapnel. That one, I'd take down with my knife, at close distance.

Didn't took much, but there's a difference between killing a man with a gun, and killing him with a knife. Much more visceral, more primal. Not a very enoyable thing to do. I hid quickly, and tried to look for my friends. I saw the blood of the soldier I shot in the knee, only to find him in a house, hitting poor Alex. He overcame her.

I grabbed him from the back and slit his throat, looking at him as he tried to gasp for air. Alex thanked me and hugged me. I dropped the knife for a moment and held her tight. We looked for the others, but with no luck, they splitted. She told me we needed to find them, but I knew it was not gonna be an option, not while there's still looters around. But I told her I'd try, that I needed to go back to look for the rest of my things.

We came back, my dogs we slightly happy, wagging their tails and doing little whimpers, as if I was gone for years. Alex was drawn to them, and my dogs like to meet new people. The sniffed her around and welcomed her to the pack (which I was graceful enough to belong to, heheh), I told her we needed to rest a bit, but she was still worried.

That would be my first experience with settlements, and more importantly, answers to what happened the days I was in the panic room.