Army Sgt. Alonzo Lunsford was among those wounded in the mass shooting at Fort Hood Thursday.

DelMundo for News

His wife, Gherri Lunsford, emotionally recounts her husband's face-to-face encounter with the gunman who killed 13.

KILLEEN, Tex. - A survivor of the Fort Hood rampage recalled Friday the chilling moment when he locked eyes with the gunman.

"I looked him right in the eyes, and he looked at me. There was nothing there," Sgt. Alonzo Lunsford, 41, told his girlfriend from his hospital bed.

A moment later, the shooting started.

"I began pushing everyone out of the way when I felt the gunshots," Lunsford said, according to Gherri Westin.

"It all happened so fast."

Lunsford, who was standing three feet away from Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, was shot twice in the stomach and grazed in the head.

His girlfriend got a call from a friend that the sergeant, a 19-year Army vet, had been wounded.

"It was the kind of call that no one ever wants to get," Westin told the Daily News.

"I felt sick. I just kept thinking that I can't lose my husband. I just can't. He can't die."

She said she immediately flew from North Carolina to Texas where her husband had regained consciousness at Scott White Hospital. He tried to allay her fears.

"He said to me, 'Baby, I'm fine. It all happened so fast,'" she said. "They can't kill his spirit. It's a miracle," she added.

"He is a hero. He was shot while pushing one of his brothers out of the line of fire. That's the kind of man Alonzo is," Westin said.

Lunsford is in stable condition at the hospital in Temple, Tex., where hundreds waited in line to give blood for the wounded.

"They spill their blood for us all too often. It feels good to give some back for a change," said Ginger Marie Oates, 41, of Killeen.

mlysiak@nydailynews.com