He was a mercenary. In what felt like one millisecond after our collision, he decked me across the jaw, hard. I recoiled backward. If Mr. SUV Driver was a dangerous man, this second guy was a nuclear war.
You could see it in his eyes: this wasn’t a person, this was a professional killer. He was dressed for attacking things—soldier pants, Kevlar vest, handgun, hiking boots.
I was on my back. I’d never been hit before. Not even my older sister, Valentina, would punch me. We were slappers and that ended at age nine.
I had surprised him, but well-trained instinct enabled him to regain the upper hand. I would’ve assumed, prior to this moment of my life, that it would hurt to get hit; but it actually was too shocking. I hadn’t read the “So You’re About to Be Punched in the Jaw” orientation brochure, but it might explain that with the hit, your grasp on reality vaporizes. You get stupider.
So there I was, on the dirt, catching up with my current reality. He was slowly approaching me but I was too cloudy to even scoot myself backward. I just stayed there. Done.
And then my enemy noticed something, at the same moment that I did.
He stopped in his tracks, a bewildered expression now on his face, replacing the steel of a moment before. He was looking down at his left hand, palm-up as if checking for raindrops. The raindrop was red, and it had come from his shoulder.
He had been shot. By me.