Noxious

45 | everything wrong

Kyle 

Everything happened in slow motion. 

I had been thrown by the man into the broken crates, and by the time I pulled myself out, his attention was focused somewhere else.

I saw his hand raise, the gunmetal glinting with evil promise. My blood ran freezing cold when I realized who the gun was pointed at. 

I was moving as fast as I could, trying to deflect the path of the bullet, but I felt stuck in slow motion. My feet hardly moved, it seemed. The man pulled the trigger and I wasn't anywhere near being able to hit the gun out of his hands. 

With horror, I watched Rowan's body jerk back. 

He was shot. 

I just watched my little brother get shot. 

Hot, white anger seared my veins, and I charged the man. I took him by surprise, ripping the gun from his hands, and I cracked him across the face with the gun barrel before I dropped everything. My attention went back to Rowan and I reached for him. 

My fingers were outstretched as he stumbled. 

Then, he fell. 

"NO!" 

I couldn't catch him in time. 

His body disappeared from view the moment he fell backward out of the train car. I was left standing at the edge with widened eyes until I saw a blur of blonde hair cross through my peripheral vision. 

Charly didn't think twice as she jumped off the train. 

Everything was happening in seconds. 

Painfully slow seconds. 

I whipped around and sought Tommy. I couldn't leave him alone, but I wanted to go after Rowan with all my heart. He needed me, now more than ever. But, Tommy was my brother, too. 

Tommy knocked one of the men backward into multiple cargo crates and he caught my eye. He must have seen the conflicted emotion in my eyes and understood exactly what I asked. How I begged him to forgive me for what I was about to do.  

"Go!" Tommy shouted, "I'll be fine! Meet me at the bridge!"

The last thing I saw was Tommy ducking below a heavy swing from the other man, and then I was jumping off the train. 

I wasn't prepared for my landing, especially off of a moving train, and I awkwardly smacked against the ground before I rolled multiple times. Pain flared all over my body as stones dug into soft flesh but there was nothing else on my mind but Rowan. 

I scrambled to my feet and started running in the opposite direction of the train. 

I was probably ten feet behind Charly. I ran so hard that my feet went numb from the bulky rocks that created the railroad bed and the soles of my converses were terribly thin. But no amount of physical pain could equal the emotional agony I felt.  

Until I saw Rowan. 

He had fallen and hadn't moved. 

"Rowan!" Charly screamed, running impossibly faster towards his form where he laid a few feet away from the railroad tracks. When she reached him, she dropped to her knees and skidded to his side. Her hands went beneath his head, holding him, "Rowan! Oh, god! There's blood, there's a lot of blood!" 

I finally caught up and dropped down on his other side. His eyes were closed, his skin pale, and his left arm had a strange bump on it. I figured it was broken from the fall. I placed my fingers against the side of his neck and I felt a trembling pulse.