Do or Die 5

5

Trina decided that caution would be her best friend now especially since she realized with those shots just how relaxed she had become; her front door wasn’t even locked anymore! The bike ride to town only took about five minutes and there were sporadic gunshots every few minutes by her estimation and they seemed to be coming from the grocery store.

Trina hid her bike in the alley between two shops about a half of a block away from the store that the shots were still coming from; and carefully made her way towards the sounds. She had her rifle up and ready for anything and her fanny pack had extra ammo in it. She carefully peeked around the corner and took in the sight of someone taking shots at the dog pack that had him or her trapped by the front doors.

Trina had used chains and padlocks on all the doors to the shops so that the winter weather couldn’t open them and to keep critters out. It looked like the person had a pair of bolt cutters and had been in the process of cutting their way into the store when the dogs attacked.

She could see five dead dogs but there seemed to be at least ten more. Quickly she came around the corner and started shooting the dogs.

The person jerked and shot at Trina.

“Hey, I’m trying to help you” she shouted “and you just shot me! I ought to let these mongrels fix you good!”

“I’m sorry, you startled me and I thought you were another dog. Are you gonna be ok?” the person tossed back.

“Just shoot the darn dogs!” Trina shouted back as she took out another dog.

In ten minutes it was all over. A total of twelve dogs lay dead or almost dead and three had run off.

It was then that Trina realized how much she was bleeding as she gazed at the blood that was soaking her light jacket and shirt. “Crap!” she said.

The person ran over to her apologizing profusely and Trina realized that it was a guy just as she passed out cold.

“Crap” Timothy said as he caught the girl that had just saved his hide and he had shot! He managed to get her jacket off and found out that he had shot her in the left arm and it was a flesh wound, the bullet had badly scraped her arm just below the shoulder on the outside part of the arm. The cold, wet ground was not the place to clean and dress the wounds so began to look around for someplace to clean her up at or on.

Just then she began to come around. Trina looked up into the deepest and sexiest blue eyes she had ever seen and she immediately thought she had died and gone to heaven.

“So I’m dead am I.” she stated.

Timothy laughed and said “not yet you aren’t. You passed out. Is there someplace I can take you to get your wound cleaned up and bandaged?”

“We can go into the store there. I have the key in my fanny pack” she returned as she began to get to her feet.

“Hey, you shouldn’t be getting up yet, it looks like you’ve lost a lot of blood.”

“I’ll survive. Just give me a hand will ya?”

Timothy helped Trina to her feet and let her hold on to him while she finished swaying and got a grip on herself. Timothy still had one of his hands on her jacket and it was pressing against her wound to try to slow or even stop the bleeding. Trina used her free arm to dig out the keys and pick up her rifle.

They slowly walked to the door of the store. Since each key was labeled, it only took a moment to open the doors and go inside.

Timothy picked up Trina and sat her on one of the places where they sacked the groceries and told her “keep pressure on that arm, I’m going to go find what I need to clean it up!” And then was off with a cart down the aisles looking for the first aid area.

“You’re going to the wrong way” she shouted “It’s all on aisle 3”. He only hollered once to ask where the bottled water was.

“Aisle 10 with the soda” she replied.

It wasn’t long before he was back with all kinds of things in the cart. Trina kept her eyes closed during the cleaning and bandaging and was very proud of herself for not fainting again.

“My name is Timothy, by the way. And I truly am sorry for shooting you. I tried to pull the gun up once I realized that you were not another dog but just wasn’t quick enough.”

“Well, I guess it could have been worse and I know I’m glad you didn’t kill me.
I’ve been trying to work up the guts to take care of those dogs for awhile now. I simply was forced to take action today. Besides, I think I’ll live.”
She held out her right hand and said “my name is Trina and this is my town”.

Timothy wasn’t sure just how she meant that last part so wasn’t sure if he should stay or move on.

“Well, do you mind if I gather a few supplies before I move on? I don’t want to be anywhere I am not wanted.”

Trina began to laugh. “I didn’t mean that you are not welcome here. I just meant that I live here; this is my town as in this is where I live.”

“Oh, ok. But I don’t live here so I feel I should ask, since you are here and seem to be the only one here, if I can maybe trade for some supplies.”

“Why don’t we eat some dinner and you can tell me where you are coming from, where you are going, and if you’ve seen any other people. Then in exchange for that news, if you want to move on; I’ll make sure you have has much supplies as you can carry. How does that sound?” She asked.

“Dinner sounds good to me!” He exclaimed.

There was no way that Trina was going to take him to her house. After all, she didn’t know him and besides, he had shot her! And since she had taken a couple Tylenol, she was feeling better. It looked like the bleeding had stopped and her arm was only slightly throbbing now.

Together they scavenged around and found enough food for dinner. A couple cans of Dinty Moore beef stew and some canned brown bread with a can of fruit cocktail to top it all off. They drank a couple bottles of water to wash it all down.

Heating up the stew wasn’t a problem since they simply set up one of the cheap grills that the store had and used some of the charcoal. They did this outside of course. After they finished eating and cleaned up, Trina suggested that they walk over to the small city park that was about two blocks away. She made sure the chains and lock were secure on the doors of the store before they began their way over to the park.

Along the way, Timothy began to tell her about himself.