Impact by Chrissy Peebles

another man in the chest, but he retaliated by bashing her in the head with a bat, knocking her down.
    “Leave her alone!” I shouted. “Just take me! Let the girls go!”
    “Asia!” Jackie screamed.
    “She’s out cold,” the guy said. “Should we just leave her?”
    “No,” answered a redhead. “She fought you, and that’s a good sign. Bring her along. She’ll work out well.”
    I thrashed in the man’s arms, fighting to get away, but the other guy just laughed and pressed the barrel of his gun hard into my neck.
    “Easy now,” the man whispered.
    They took me through the back field of our apartment building. I still continued to fight them, even with a gun at my head. They hadn’t shot me yet so I assumed they must want me alive for the moment.
    “You’re gonna get yourself killed if you keep fighting like that,” a guy said.
    “We’ll see who gets himself killed first,” I whispered.
    “Jackie?” I said.
    “I’m okay,” her voice called out.
    “She won’t be for long if you don’t cooperate,” the man said.
    I was engulfed by rage. “You shot Max. Isn’t that enough bloodshed for one day? Just let us go.”
    “Shut him up,” a man said.
    In a flash, someone shoved a filthy, smelly sock in my mouth and slapped duct tape on me. They threw a burlap sack over my head and forcibly dragged me along. I flailed all the way, but I had no chance of fighting my way out of those handcuffs. My fighting earned me a kick in the gut that doubled me over. As much as that hurt, and as frightened as I was for my own life, all I could think about were my friends and my sister. Is Val out there fighting by herself? Is Asia gonna wake up? Where’s Jackie? Did they let her go? I didn’t hear her scream, so maybe...
    “Walk!” a deep voice commanded.
    They maneuvered me through a scratchy hole in the towering barbwire fence. The hole had never been there before, so I was sure they’d cut it themselves, with wire cutters or hacksaw.
    The truth of my horrible predicament slowly dawned on me : I’m being kidnapped.
    With every second that passed, I was being taken farther from my friends, my family, maybe even led to my death. My stomach clenched. What do they want? A million motives for their crimes crossed my mind. In such a crazy world, it was impossible to apply logic and reason, and nothing ever made sense.
    Max was dead, and I needed to be there for my sister. I couldn’t even imagine the pain she was going through, and I was still in shock and grieving myself. I felt numb and discombobulated, and I had no idea who was kidnapping me or if Jackie and Asia were okay. I had no idea where my brother and sister were. I had no idea where I was being taken, by whom, or why. Worst of all, I wasn’t sure I even wanted to know.
    We walked through the city, and as we trekked along, I tried to memorize my footsteps. It was of little help, because I really had no idea where we were at any given time, and went through many twists and turns on the thirty-minute walk. Suddenly, I felt a kick to my gut.
    “Let the games begin,” said the voice I recognized as the redhead, followed by a sinister, cackling laugh. 
    The sudden pain of the kick made me gasp. I tried to catch my breath as the bag was taken off my head. The gag was taken off. Jackie was still there, wearing a horrified look on her face as they held a gun to her head. She was handcuffed too. We were surrounded by a bunch of armed thugs who looked like they all had been pumping iron at the gym for months. 
    “Let the girls go!” I demanded, as if I had any authority over them. “Just take me.”
    They laughed.
    “Just let me see if Asia’s okay,” I said.
    “She’s fine. If she wasn’t, we wouldn’t have wasted our time carrying her. No sense in hauling dead wait around, is there?”
    My gaze darted to the bullet-pocked walls, and my heart began to pound wildly. I worried that they had led us there to shoot us. What’s with the firing squad? I