What runs through the minds of solitary runners?

 

The old man clutched the old service rifle as the trotted up the dog-legs and hair-pin turns on the steeply up-thrust shelf of gneiss 400 meters from his neighbor's compound. He had only paused to grab the bolt-action rifle and four stripper-clips as he had dashed out of his small cottage some five kilometers away.

The sporadic crackle of gunfire occasionally interrupted the sound of his gasping for air, telling him that the attackers had yet to breach the final defenses.

The chill morning air made encountering venomous creatures an improbability although the old man constantly scanned the ground in front of him to avoid the sketchiest footing. Where the ground sloped upward most steeply the bare rock was exposed but it was flatter, a relative term, the ground was littered with flakes of sun-shattered flakes of hard, slippery igneous rock.

Memories of long, happy meals shared with the young family filled his mind and took his mind off the painful stitch in his side. Those memories were shattered by the boom of a grenade.

In another context, that sound would have been most unwelcome, but it meant that the outer wall had not been breached and that the wire netting over the windows was still deflecting the hand-thrown explosives. Had the grenade been inside the house, the sound would have been far more muffled.

The old man reached deeply inside of himself. If the attackers were still outside the main wall then there would be many targets. Perhaps he could end the attack before any of his neighbors were killed.

Rounding the final, steepest grade he dropped down to a walk and slowed his breathing. There was always a chance that the attackers had posted guards on salients on their flanks. But not today.

The old man took a calculated risk and breathed deeply for thirty seconds to slow his heart rate. While breathing he pulled out a battered pair of field glasses and scanned the scene of the skirmish. He would only have one good chance to identify and neutralize the command-and-control element.

*

Unlocking the door to his house, the old man dragged himself over to the refrigerator and opened a bottle of lemon-flavored electrolyte.

As yet, he had been unable to convince his wife to let him put up a shooting range in the back-yard. It didn't need to be elaborate. It could be as simple as bottle caps at various ranges and a "springer" air-gun.

Until that happened, the story would not progress much farther.

He was at an impasse. The good news was that the story was getting shorter. His times were now fast enough that he was arriving before the defenses were breached and the attackers had slaughtered the family and the buildings torched.