by Jones, K. J.
“Ty?” Brandon yelled from his position.
“Stay. Fine.”
“Gonna kill you, motherfuckers,” a voice yelled through the gunpowder-smelling cloud. “Turn over them blond girls. We know they here. We gonna trade ‘em. And we goddamn hungry, motherfuckers.”
Another voice, “You motherfuckers ain’t aligning with them niggers up north.”
Brandon used the smoke cover to run to Tyler. He yanked him up by the good side. Ty kept hold of his beloved riffle as he was pulled up into a run. Brandon headed to the nearest house across the street with the intend of using the back laneway to the Star Gate House. Tyler needed medical help. Blood seeped through his shirt.
The stinky men crossed the street diagonally and headed towards the Star Gate House.
The front windows of the house were ajar. Dre and the others pointed their rifles out.
“We just gonna walk right up on them?” a stinky man said.
“They snipers not here our buddies said.”
“But don’t they got some kind of other people? Why ain’t they shooting at us?”
A bullet rang out from the ajar shutters. It struck the man in the face. Dead before he hit the pavement. A Zom fighter hit.
A bottle with a fire-lit rag stuck out of its mouth. It flew out of the third-floor piazza balcony.
“Aw, shit. Run!”
The Molotov shattered behind one man’s feet, exploding onto his legs with a burst of flames. He screamed in terror and ran.
The others broke into chaos and ran. Shots fired at them from the windows of multiple houses.
Another bottle flew directly at the back of one. Jayce showed off his good throwing arm. Peter wasn’t the only one to play baseball. He yelled, “We got an M249 SAW machine gun aimed right at your white trash backs, aimed by a real mean big redneck who’ll like nothing more than to shred y’all. So, stop where you are.”
“My buddy burning up.”
“Nobody cares, motherfucka,” Jayce said with a purposeful gangsta sound to it. “You know how us armed niggas are.”
“Down on your knees,” Brandon ordered from the alley, using his Marine Corps authoritative voice.
Mazy stepped out from another neighboring house. She backed him up, using her cop voice. “Hands on your head. Interlace your fingers.”
“Fuck, y’all. They everywhere.”
“Ya know how we niggers get.” Mazy moved in on them. “We all over the place.”
“Fuck. You shouldn’t have the N-word, you idiot. Got ‘em pissed off.”
Mazy and Brandon closed in. M4s aimed at faces.
The remainder of stinky men did as they were told.
Another had run to the dock and jumped into the water to put himself out. His screams told the Big Moe tribe was at him.
Curtain ties were good enough to use as binds. Eyes watered. Their stench mixed with that of burning flesh and hair from the ones hit with Jayce’s Molotov.
“I ain’t never got to shoot.” Chris walked out to the street as he complained.
The sticky men’s eyes followed the massive SAW he carried.
Emily raced out in a rage. “Coming for me!”
Mullen grabbed her around the waist.
“Trade me to the fucking Nazis. I’ll kill all of you!”
Chris leaned in towards her. “Hide that necklace of yours. They don’t need to know nothing more about us.”
Mullen snapped the necklace chain off her neck to hide the Star of David. He moved her towards the house, where Nia awaited, armed, by the door.
Where Dr. Jenkins was, nobody knew. He probably hid Karen in a vacant armoire.
“Take the boy in,” Chris ordered. “Emily, get your head outta your angry ass and take the boy in. He bleeding over there.”
“I’m fine.” Tyler favored his bleeding side as he walked.
“Shut the fuck up and do as you told, boy.”
“Yes, sarnt.”
Tied up on the street, Mazy and Brandon stood guard over their POWs, aiming at their heads and ready to kill them at a moment’s notice.
Even Brandon, the Take-Prisoners-Marine, was ready to kill unarmed men. Target his girlfriend, things had grown personal.
“What’s the plan, sergeant?” he asked.
“Fuck. Can’t use the radios.” Chris looked north, worried about Phebe. “I’m all kinds of pissed off. Somebody hit them. If I do, I gonna kill their white trash dumbasses.”
“Roger that, sergeant.” Brandon kicked one in the face.
The prisoner fell backward. His nose exploded in blood.
“We just needing food,” the other pleaded. “Water. We ain’t got nothing.”
“Why you so incompetent?” Chris asked.
8.
Ben climbed down a water pipe to reach his sports car. Riffle strap diagonal across his chest. The Porsche 911 stood mere feet away. He opened the door and pulled the strap over his head.
“You need help.” It sounded more of a statement from Mackey than a question. The stocky short man ran up to the Porsche’s drivers side. “I’ll drive. Get in shotgun.”
“I can –”
“My red brother, takes longer to argue. These my roads.”
“Whatever. Fine.”
Both men in seats and doors closed. Ben soon realized he should probably pull on the seatbelt. Mackey drove like a lunatic.
“This a nice car,” he said.
“Yeah.” Ben held on.
The route used to get to the central North Charleston tribe’s compound now sped by at an unsafe speed. That was one thing. Mackey’s casual weaving around things at high speed, a whole other.
“I stole one like this once.”
“You’re a car thief?”
“Ain’t no angels survived, unless they had a devil protecting ‘em. Just the way it goes.”
Ben thought of Tyler. “That may be true.” He listened to the radio for any more information regarding Phebe and Vi. But there was nothing from them. Only Peter demanding a sitrep with panic in his voice.
“All we needing is a blunt and some honeys.” Mackey raucously laughed.
Ben felt an inner surge of judgmentalism. He shoved it down and placed a mental Post-It note in his memory about this guy. What someone was in the Before didn’t matter anymore, providing they left the nasty bits behind for a new identity, loyalty, and honor.
The trip to the bridge took what felt like thirty seconds at the speed Mackey drove.
The Porsche crested the highest point of the bridge.
There they were.
The BMW sped back towards the north, towards the Porsche.
“What the fuck?” Mackey exclaimed.
“Shit. There’s a barricade.”
Ben rolled down his window.
“What you doing?”
“Something entirely insane. Slow down.”
“Okay.”
“More.”
“Okay.”
“Slow to a stop. Don’t throw my ass.”
“Huh?”
Ben climbed out of the window.
“Shit. Bro, what … okay.”
The Porsche slowed to a stop. Ben aimed the riffle and scanned the barricade through the high powered scope.
“You can see something?” Mackey asked from inside.
Ben’s guts told him something needed immediate attention. He found it. A riffle aimed right at the BMW.
“Tell them to jump outta the car. Do it now.”
Mackey’s face scrunched up in dislike and confusion. He nonetheless obeyed and said the order into the radio.
Ben climbed onto the rooftop and dropped as prone as he could manage on the small roof. His legs laid on the back window. He used his left arm as the barrel stabilizer.
“Guide my bullet, ancestors. Syanna, our girl needs help.”
He fired.
In his mind’s eyes, he could see his bullet passing the other guy’s.
Through the scope, he had no peripheral vision
to see if the women had jumped.
His bullet entered the man’s riffle barrel and blew the gun up in his face.
Ben smiled. That was a miraculous shot. The kind a sniper could brag about forever.
With that hostile’s riffle defunct, he moved the scope to see what else was happening, then lowered it to use his eyes.
The women had jumped. The hostile’s bullet had hit the back tire. The BMW flipped and lay on its side. Banged up. Steam piping out of it’s mangled hood. But they had jumped out ahead of the roll.
Ben slipped back in through the window, legs first. “Go, go, go.”
“Yes ’sum.” A cocky smile. Mackey had the casualness in high-stress situations of an experienced Zone Fighter. No foul. Most of his own group had it, too.
9.
Banged and bruised, Phebe had rolled out of the car in a manner to protect her abdomen. That placental displacement thing Matt talked about paramount on her mind during the terrifying jump out of a speeding vehicle. The tarmac was merciless. Bruises and bleeding. But as she got to her feet, her abdomen felt fine. Not so much could be said for her elbow and the side of her face.
Engine sounds grew closer. The hostiles were being tenacious as hell.
“Fucking bastards.”
She looked for Vi and spotted her moving towards the BMW for cover. Phebe ran, ignoring throbbing spots, and slid in beside her.
“My shoulder feels dislocated,” Vi informed her immediately. She had jumped with her riffle and probably protected it while she rolled, like a good sniper.
Phebe hadn’t grabbed her hunting riffle. She had sidearms, a knife, and strapped to her back in a homemade sheath, the machete.
Sounds on the other side of the wrecked BMW told at least one vehicle had stopped.
“Just go get her,” a male voice yelled. “Kill the nigger bitch if she’s alive.”
Phebe awaited the hostile’s arrival around the BMW. Heart racing. Her mind sprinted over potential strategies, but what to do was based on what the hostiles did next.
She smirked as she saw what the “Go get her” assigned guy did. Muzzle first, he came. A stupid move, as it told her where to expect his face. She aimed her sidearms. As soon as a face emerged, she squeezed the trigger. He lurched backward.
“Fuck!” a voice yelled. “Bitch shot him.”
The purr of a sports car engine approached. Pings of bullets hitting the nearby vehicle. A chorus of cursing and movement.
“Stay here,” she told Vi.
“Fuck no. I got one working arm.”
“Tough girl, huh?”
A smile exchanged.
Phebe rose up to get eyes on the hostiles. They were ducked down for cover. Ben’s Porsche approached with Ben hanging out of the window.
A hostile covered by the vehicle closest to the BMW took aim at Ben.
“Be back.” Phebe unsheathed the machete and ran in a bent, ducked down posture. Around the BMW, she moved in.
He didn’t see it coming.
This time, the sharpened machete blade went all the way through, cutting between vertebrae where the material was soft. His head came clean off and rolled onto the tarmac.
A man a yard away saw it. His jaw dropped. Eyes widened. He swerved his riffle towards her. A bullet entered his face. Vi shot him.
A glance over at Vi. She shot around the front of the mangled BMW’s nose.
“Thanks.”
“Anytime, girlfriend.”
The hostiles took fire from two directions. And the rest did not pay attention to what came up at their backs. They hadn’t seen what Phebe had done to their comrade, and they did not know to be watching for her as they fired at either the Porsche and at Vi.
It would take too much time to behead them all at first strike. Another tactic would be needed.
Machete in the right hand. Combat knife in the other. Phebe snuck up on their backs.
Knife blade shoved into the side of one guy’s neck. The machete shoved into his partner’s side.
She withdrew her blades and moved on.
* * *
“Are you for real?” Mackey watched Phebe through a bullet-spider webbed windshield. “You cannot be for real.” He laughed in his scrunched down position.
Surviving hostiles – some holding bleeding bullet wounds – hurried to their remaining working vehicle. Their other vehicles had flat tires from bullet hits.
Tires screeched and smoked. Their vehicle bucked into gear and the nose end turned hard towards south. Ben semi fired a three bullet burst at the side windows as it turned. Glass shattered.
The action inside told him he hit the driver. The guy beside him reached over for the wheel. Blood on the inside of the vehicle.
Ben hit a back tire. But the vehicle kept going, riding the rim once the tire fully deflated. They kept going down the highway bridge.
An SUV from behind screeched to a stop. Ben looked back. Peter got out. His riffle raised. He raced around, checking each segment of the scene.
Mad Maxed vehicles sped forward in pursuit of the fleeing hostiles.
“Where is she?” Peter yelled.
“There.” Ben pointed. “She’s okay.”
Shoulders high and tense, Peter hurried to where Phebe chopped off dead men’s heads.
“Get in the car,” he bellowed at her.
“Hello to you, too. I have to get heads.”
“No. Get the fuck in the car.”
“It’s over. And these are mine.”
Seeing the immediate situation secure, he yelled louder at her. “Get the fuck in the car, Phebe. Right now. Get in the fucking car.”
“Calm yourself.” She lifted a dead man by his hair.
“Get in the fucking car. Stop chopping off heads. Get in the fucking car.”
“Geez.”
“Gimme the machete. Gimme it.”
“It’s mine.”
“No, it’s mine. Gimme it, you crazy fucking woman.”
“You’re just pissed you missed it all. Again.”
“Gimme the machete. No more machete for you.”
“But I want my heads. We can put ‘em on this bridge.”
“You are fucking insane. Get in the car. Get in the fucking car!”
Ben looked at the beautiful Porsche. Bullet holes all over it. He looked down at himself, expecting bleeding from somewhere.
“Huh.” He looked up at the sky. “Thank you, ancestors.”
Vi appeared, babying an arm that looked at a bad angle.
Mackey shook his head at her. His back leaned against the Porsche. Very casual, the guy remained.
“You expecting a ride now, ain’t ya?”
“Mac, shut up.”
“Look, you female badass.” He scowled. “You are bleeding, girl.”
“It’s just a scratch.”
“Oh, Lord have mercy. Save me from this woman.”
“You could be a gentleman and carry this riffle for me.”
He laughed. “Gentleman? Me. You got the wrong black man.”
“How about if I shoot you instead?”
“You can’t raise your shit with that arm.”
Ben listened to them, while he heard Peter ranting and raving at Phebe.
“Everyone in the fucking car,” Peter thundered. “You especially!”
“I want my heads.”
“Get in the fucking car. Phebe fucking Teressa! Get the fuck in the car.”
“Don’t use my middle name.”
Peter went to her and took the machete handle out of her blood-drenched hand. “In the car. Right now.”
“Fine. You’re being a dick.”
“Everyone in the fucking car,” he yelled like an exasperated father of bad children.
Ben repressed a smirk. Peter was entirely beside himself with Phebe. He expressed worry for her. And conducted this worried demonstration through yelling and controlling. Phebe would probably not appreciate this for what it was.
Ben couldn’t blame him for it. Or he
r.
Vi headed to the backseat of the SUV. “I finally get myself a nice car and this happens to it.”
“Aw, boohoo,” Mackey mocked.
“You are getting on my nerves.”
“Shaking.”
“I will pop you in the mouth, black man.”
“Nuh-uh. You ain’t my mama.”
“Everyone in the fucking car!”
“Get in,” Mackey said. “Don’t piss off the armed white man.”
“I’m getting in the dang car. Do you not have eyes that work, black man.”
Ben chuckled. Arguments in two directions. Neither of which held too much logic.
Peter held open the front passenger door. “Get your ass in here.”
“My God!” Phebe roared. “You are a serious pain in the ass.” She got in and slammed the door shut.
Everyone got in. Ben squeezed in with Vi and Mackey in the backseat.
“You bleeding,” Mackey said.
“It just a scratch.”
“Y’all, we need to go back to that medic of yours. She bleeding.”
“I’m fine. We’re closer to your tribe territory than ours.”
Ben said, “There’s only a plastic surgeon in our camp right now.”
“Yeah,” Mackey said. “You can get that wide nose of yours fixed. Y’all, we need to go back for her.”
“We ain’t doing that,” Vi protested. “We’re getting her home. She pregnant.”
The mention set Peter off into a new rampage. “You are under house arrest. No more going past the wall.”
“What?” Phebe screeched. “I’m not a Jackson kid.”
“No, no, no.” He slapped the steering wheel with the palm of his hand as he drove towards the Historic area. Then pointed a fierce index finger. “I do the combat. You do the baby-making. That’s it. No more. You stay home and knit.”
“Knit?” Phebe wailed. “I can’t knit.”
“You’ll fucking learn. Get a book on it. And don’t use the knitting needles as a weapon. Learn how to cook or something. For fuck’s sake!”
“You are being massively sexist.”
“Sexist? I can’t have the baby. That makes me the combat fighter and you the baby maker. I didn’t make it that way. I can’t have the baby. If I could, then I’d stay home and knit and you go out and behead the fucking bad guys.”
“I already behead the bad guys.”
“No, no, no. Not anymore. You’re fucking insane. I’m locking you in the house.”