When a hail of bullets ripped through the air, through their conversation, through their lives — Shannon Johnson didn’t hesitate.

“I’ve got you,” the 45-year-old San Bernardino man calmly told the young co-worker he’d just been chatting with, wrapping his arm around her as they hid behind a chair trying to escape the erupting fusillade.

Just five minutes earlier, Johnson, a health inspector for the county, and 27-year-old Denise Peraza were quipping about the clock, she recalls.

“We were seated next to each other at a table, joking about how we thought the large clock on the wall might be broken because time seemed to be moving so slowly,” she says in a statement released by her family.

“I would have never guessed that…we would be huddled next to each other under that same table, using a fallen chair as a shield from over 60 rounds of bullets being fired across the room.”

A bullet pierced Peraza’s lower back as she huddled with Johnson, who the Los Angeles Times says once worked as a trucker before joining the San Bernardino Public Health Department a decade ago.

“While I cannot recall every single second that played out that morning, I will always remember his left arm wrapped around me, holding me as close as possible next to him behind that chair.

And amidst all the chaos, I’ll always remember him saying these three words, ‘I got you.’ I believe I am still here today because of this amazing man,” Peraza says.

Johnson was one of 14 people killed in Wednesday’s mass shooting by husband-and-wife terrorists Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik inside the Inland Regional Center.

Johnson, who had several tattoos of beloved relatives, loved talking about religion with Farook, another co-worker, his longtime girlfriend told the LA Times.

“He loved the department because he said it was like working in the United Nations,” Mandy Pifer tells the paper.

An on-line fundraiser collecting money to pay for Johnson’s funeral in his native Georgia had nearly met its $35,000 goal in a single day.

Peraza, who was released from the hospital Friday, said Johnson “always brought a smile to everyone’s face in the office with his lively stories about his hometown back in Georgia.

“This is Shannon Johnson, who will be deeply missed by all. This is Shannon Johnson. My friend, my hero,” she writes.