The yelling in Arabic became more clear as a man in a thawb and gutral and ogal came out with a rifle, shooting blindly into the air to assert his dominance as two more men twice the size as he came out with matching weapons.

"You are ordered to drop your weapons and release any others in your possession!" Ramirez yelled. Despite the smoke his gun with trained on Hussein's chest.

"هذا هو بيتي! هذا هو بلدي!" He yelled back, pointing his gun back at Ramirez and taking courageous steps forward. "أنت واحد الذي يهددنا!"

Blind to Iraqi men, an ally sneaked away from the unforgiving smoke to clearer air. Emma covered for him as he ducked around the back of the house to a boarded up window and used the butt of his rifle to bring it in. What he was met with was a rifle to his face as the metal collided with his nose and brought him to the ground.

"We need to move," Khali grunted beside Emma as the bulking mass rolled off the roof and landed on his feet as gracefully as a cat.

She followed as an eastern light flashed, and the five men from the east left their position and moved closer, strategically keeping to the shelters. But then something happened that Emma hadn't expected.

Doors began opening up, and where Emma had thought citizens were boarding up for the evening, several houses lit up to reveal men in similar attire with machetes or machine guns in their grasps. A feminine voice cried out as she pleaded to her husband to come back inside but with a careless swat she was silenced as the men ran swiftly to the center house.

As quick as they had appeared, some men had dropped one by one as the western team remained hidden, shooting down the threat as they approached. Hussein yelled out, and without warning or hesitation, he put a bullet in Ramirez's shoulder.

Emma wished the next moments had been a blur within the utter chaos, but as she followed Khali, with Kennedy, Fred, and Neal behind her, through the streets of the village, she could hear the faintest sounds of female voices in their various homes joined together in prayer and children crying out in confusion.

As soon as Ramirez fell, Hussein and his two accomplices retreated into the home as the other attackers who hadn't fallen prey to the overhead gunfire continued on their way. For a moment, it was as if Emma was back in her dream where she was the lone soldier destined to fight off a swarm of enemy, but this time when she opened her eyes, it didn't go away. She blinked and blinked, but every single time she opened her eyes, the screams got louder and the yelling grew angrier. Gunshots continued ringing in her ears as dust and rock erupted around them from bullets landing too close, either from their side or the other it was hard to tell.

Bullets were unforgiving that way.

As they reared to the side, they saw the door to house open once more and a bottle with fluid and a burning rag was tossed out the door.

"Take cover!" Khali yelled. The team ducked behind the buildings, grateful for the stone of the structure as a boom resounded throughout the town. The shock was so strong Emma thought the ground might split in two and she'd drop down into the center of the earth.

Rubble, sand, dirt, and Emma didn't want to think what else rained down on her as the distinct smell of gasoline and smoke filled her lungs. She coughed harshly but still managed to get her bearings as she shook off the soot from her helmet. In her peripherals she could see the north recovering from the blast. Fred and Neal emerged from behind a wagon. Khali, he was lying face down in the dirt. Suddenly the monster man didn't look so fearsome.

The once darkened night sky brightened with the heat of the fire as the surrounding houses burned. The thatched wooden roofs lit up like beacons signalling a ship to shore, but the only witness to this spectacular devastation was whatever entity anyone here believed in. God. Allah. Nothing could stop the inevitable of the night. They were drowning in a sea of fire and metal during high tide, and the shore line was further and further away.

But the screaming. The locals could only remain ignorant for so long before it was complete and utter chaos at the sound of the more deadly explosion. Nearly all doors were ripped open as they retreated from the attack. Mothers were clutching their babies to their breasts. Fathers had their children slung on their back. Elderly limped through the crowds. Deciphering between innocent and threat would have been a shot in the dark, and even Emma wasn't confident enough in her deductive reasoning to make that call.

Hussein exited the house once more, his men leaving his side to shoot up to where the western team was still hidden, but this time, the shadows that Emma had seen in the windows, a woman and a little boy not much older than six, were pressed against Hussein's front as he shouted out orders.

Despite the ringing, the gunfire, the screams, that little boy's whimpering was the only sound Emma could hear. His face was tucked into his mother's neck as he gripped the front of her abayah tightly. The woman was crying, her face pulled away from her husband's grasp as he pressed the gun to her waist. The boy's whimpers were like a grounding force for Emma. He was shaken and scared, and all his mother could do was hold him tight to her, using her body as a shield though she herself was in danger.

Emma snapped.

She broke from her team, avoiding the confused and terrified crowd. Every bump into an innocent erupted into a horrified scream, but she pushed past them, weaving behind buildings until she was to the east of the house, crouched low behind a barrel of water. The eastern team replaced the north where two of the men were shielding Ramirez, bloody and burned, while the other two were laying fire.

Emma was hidden behind them all. She shouldered her rifle and lined up her shot. A wooden awning pillar was obstructing her view as Hussein gestured wildly with his gun. A part of her was nervous, his wife was too close, she was holding her son. It took a millimeter of a step in the wrong direction for her to kill the mother and son. She could miss and cause him to turn around as put a bullet in her own brain. But she had to try.

She inhaled once, squinted through the eyepiece, and the second he was centered she fired. The woman screamed from his grasp as he pushed forward away from the entrance, releasing his grip on his wife and child. His gun went off toward the sky, but the woman and the boy were safe from him. They didn't look back as they got lost in the crowd. So relieved with the rescue she didn't see another man come up behind her with a giant piece of stone in his hand. Feeling the presence at the absolute last second, Emma turned her head to stare up at the tall lanky man. Without thinking she shifted her gun lengthwise and shoved up just as the rubble came down hard against it. With his momentum and gravity working against her, Emma barely had time to think that had he connected, he would have surely knocked Emma out or worse.

Another explosion nearly had Emma ducking, but luckily for her, it was enough to make her attacker flinch. Stone and metal and fire fell from the heavens in the western part of the village as Emma took advantage of his distraction and stood halfway and used the balls of her feet to spring herself forward and tackle the man to the ground. He struggled against her as she pinned him down with a forearm across his larynx, but his right hand loosened enough for him to swing, fist and stone connecting sickly with Emma's temple.

Her vision blackened for a long moment as she stilled and fell to the side, her already bleeding head connecting with the rock hard ground. When her sight returned, hazy, blurry, watery images appeared before her. The orange and red of distorted flames. People running in all directions, merciless to those who had fallen as they trampled over them. And then a dark shadow stood over her, the tall lanky man with a bloody stone in one hand and her gun in the other as he trained it right in the middle of her forehead.

Noise drowned out as she stared down the barrel of her gun. She had always thought that near-death experiences were accompanied by freak flashes of your life, but as she saw his finger move to the trigger, all she could think in that one split paralyzed second was Regina and Henry sitting on top of that damn horse as they sang that lullaby that never failed to calm Emma down. She stared the man down nearly daring him to do it. It'd be quick, and she'd be anywhere but here. His finger twitched and a gun shot, but then blood trickled down the middle of his forehead as a bullet lodged itself there. He fell to his knees, dropping the M16 before falling limply to the ground.

Her head started to pound nimbly like a heartbeat as if the organ itself had traveled through her chest and up her lungs to shield her brain from damage. Her mind slowly returned to her enough that she was able to turn herself over onto her stomach and slide across the sand and stone toward her gun. Before her fingers could even touch it, a final bomb so close that the heat from the blast felt like it would melt Emma's flesh went off. And then another. And another.

Each explosion coming closer and closer as if they were heading straight for her like she was their only target. One by one, buildings fell around her like dominoes. She curled her body inward, tucking her head into her chest as stones buried her under the ashes and flames and bodies.

Arrorró mi niño, arrorró mi amor, arrorró pedazo de mi corazón.


October 26, 2004 – Storybrooke, Maine