Re: Jack and Louis: warzone - No. 17
Jack wished he hadn't noticed. He would have liked it if he hadn't. He was very fond of Louis at present as the stoicism made itself more and more apparent - the man didn't go to pieces, didn't howl, didn't dissolve in panic, he just bloody walked and he didn't object to the macabre plan to secure their escape from whatever it was.
But that kiss of bright light into the gloom was too sharp for eyes adjusted to the darkness not to notice and faint regret settled like white ash-flakes over the detritus of Jack's emotional state, centered entirely on prehistoric determination to keep himself safe.
Because that hadn't occurred via any means Jack could see. Even the befuddlement of the surroundings: real, but lacking all external stimulus save the ever-present awareness of the man at their back. No taste, no smell exactly. Just touch and sight.
He didn't care. Not nearly enough in the present moment but Jack's face turned toward Louis, and the pale-washed blue eyes were sharp, a narrow focus entirely on getting beyond the door - relief, then.
But what lay behind the door? Jack stared in stark disbelief. The space beyond the door, far from being a place of refuge and safety, yawned out into scarred mud, and thin barbed-wire fences a tracery of arterial line through it all. The faint pop-pop-pop of what was unmistakably fire, and then a rattle and more of it, less faint, more clear-cut.
He took no spare second to back up out of the door: he couldn't see the bloody doorframe anymore. He yanked Louis by the sleeve, and then a hand around his upper bicep and drew them both immediately to the ground as the deep sonorous hum of something whistled overhead and the impact thudded a few hundred yards away and sprayed dense, wet mud over the both of them.