This is a short story I wrote a while back. Just looking for feedback on flow and readability. Thanks for any and all!
The hum of a high electrical current buzzing low through the razor wire could be heard as the two men stood opposed to each other. The fence was between them, one man wearing fatigues and carrying a dirty assault rifle, and the other in striped prison garb.
“I need the snips” one man said.
“I understand. Things take time and we’re searched before every shift”.
“Well, be quicker!”
The man with the rifle shifted his stance. “It’s not that I’m not trying to help. I can’t be caught, you understand? If they knew that I was helping you I would be shot on the spot”.
The man in the stripes sighed. “I know, I know. I’m sorry. I’m desperate. I’ve been in this camp for 14 years. Either it’ll be my patience that wears out or my will to live”. He looked down at the mud below him.
The man with the rifle chuckled. “Well if you go batshit just don’t take it out on me.”
The man in the stripes looked back up, the faint glimmer of a forced smile upon his dirty face.
“Fuck off Tonto. You’ll be the first.”
“I need to get back up to the tower. Give me a week and I’ll get those snips. I promise.”
“We’ll see wont we?”
“I promise Marv.”
The man with the rifle turned around and marched off in the direction of a distant guard tower, just a painted black smear in the gloom of the night. Mosquitos buzzed around as birds called from their perches in unseeable treetops.
Marv turned around headed back to his shack when gunfire erupted, drowning out the wildlife and projecting bursts of light on the ground below him.
“What the f—“ He started, but was cut off by the sound of heavy feet coming his way. Tonto burst through the brush, one hand holding a small round object and the other, a smoking gun.
“MOVE MARV! WE NEED TO GET OUT”.
Marv jumped back as Tonto threw the round object in his hand at the fence. Two seconds after he did there was an explosion and Marv, still standing too close, got hit with the grenade’s shockwave and fell back, stunned.
“THEY FUCKIN SAW ME MARV! THEY SAW ME TALKING TO YOU!”
Tonto rushed over and picked up the still downed and dazed Marv.
“LET’S GO, LET’S GO!”
The two men shot out of the mangled hole in the fance and ran toward the bush. Bullets whizzed over their shoulders hitting leaves and cracking limbs as men yelled obscured obscenities and orders in the distance.
“FUCKIN GO MARV! WERE NOT GONNA MAK—“
A bullet slammed into the back of Tonto’s head splattering Marv in the face with blood and brain matter.
Marv stopped and looked at his friend’s corpse as it fell in slow motion to the ground, his limbs twisted, the place where his head had been now a mindless meat volcano spraying hot red liquid.
Tears welled in Marv’s eyes. He wanted to stay, as if he could help his friend, but the sound of gunfire even closer snapped him back to reality.
Marv ran and ran. After what seemed like an eternity the gushing of a waterfall could be heard before him as the human sounds behind him faded out and eventually died.
He burst through the trees to the welcoming sight of a large river with a small town of wooden houses built on stilts near the bank. He didn’t know where to go but the town seemed as good of a place as any. Better than what awaited him from where he had come. He thought of his friend and how he was now free because of him and cried, large droplets splashed tiny craters on the ground below.
He had to get out, he had to honor his friend; his death would not be for nothing.
He would live.