The man was yelling and my brain wasn't thinking straight. I stepped out and pleaded, "Please — don't shoot me." He glanced at me and sneered, "What an unlucky day you got."
For a moment I wanted nothing more than to end him — get it over with once and for all. But then he said, "Since you saw something you shouldn't have, I have no choice. I'll kill you now. No hard feelings, boy — it's just part of the job."
He finished and raised his gun, ready to shoot. Before he could fire, the soldier squeezed the trigger. The bullet tore into the man's hand. The gun dropped from his fingers and his palm was bleeding. He stared at the soldier with bloodshot eyes and spat without even looking at me, "If you try to run or do anything stupid, I'll do something a thousand times worse. You're already dead."
My whole body shook with fear. I couldn't move.
The man limped toward the soldier and began beating him, raining punches down on the wounded officer's face while snarling, "You couldn't stay down, could you?"
While the man was attacking, something hit me — the realization that the injured soldier had just saved my life, even while he himself was barely able to stand. I wanted to help. I saw the man's gun on the ground, crawled over, picked it up, and aimed it at him.
From behind the man I shouted, "Stop now, or I'll shoot."
He was already bleeding from the soldier's shot. He turned toward me with an even more dangerous look — like a starving predator. He saw how shaken I was and mocked me, "Come on. I want to see you try."
As he advanced, a strange survival instinct surged through me. Everything tunneled. Darkness took over my vision. I didn't know what happened next.
When my sight returned ten or twenty seconds later, the man lay on the ground with two or three holes in his chest. I was still holding the gun. He wasn't moving. I grabbed his dropped weapon, ran to the soldier, helped him up, and dragged him toward my house with every ounce of strength I had left.
At home I stripped off his clothes, bandaged his wounds as best as I could, and let him rest for the moment.