“I’m not gonna say it again, you chicken-shit little motherfuckers,” the first biker said, his voice a lot more aggressive now. “This is your last chance to come out from under there in one piece. I’ve got a grenade in my hand, and I’m about to pull the fucking pin.”
Up ahead, Phil could hear a heated yelling exchange going on between the bikers and the men guarding the store. He had no doubt that these bikers were at best opportunistic raiders and, at worst, terrorists who were part of the group that had orchestrated the whole attack. There was no time to think or to hesitate. If they wanted to escape, they would have to act immediately.
Phil turned to shoot an intense gaze at Wyatt, and the army veteran knew exactly what this look meant: start shooting. Just as both of them were about to squeeze their respective triggers, though, a firefight broke out outside the big-box store. The crackling gunfire behind them provided the perfect impetus for Phil and Wyatt to act. Each of them fired their weapons simultaneously, and at point-blank range like this, there was no chance of missing. Phil’s blast from his shotgun took both of the man’s feet off, blowing his flesh and bone to shreds, while Wyatt’s .357 round smashed a destructive passage through both of his adversary’s ankles. Both bikers fell, screaming to the ground, but they didn’t scream for very long. The moment their torsos hit the ground, Phil and Wyatt pumped them full of bullets. The men were dead in the blink of an eye, and Phil knew that now was the time to move.
“Out, out, hurry, move it, damn it!” he roared at Alice and David. His heart was pounding, and his blood was charged with the energy of combat. He scurried out from under the truck and jumped to his feet, his shotgun at the ready.
The rest of the bikers were engaged in a fierce battle with the store defenders down the road and were so focused on their own fight that they hadn’t noticed the gunshots from Phil and Wyatt—or, at least, Phil was praying that was the case.
“Take his headlamp!” Phil instructed, looking over the hood of the truck at Wyatt, who had just scrambled out from under the truck. He snatched the headlamp off the helmet of the dead biker at his feet. He looked down and saw an AK-47 on the ground, the firearm the dead biker had dropped. His combat shotgun was almost out of ammo now, and he had no more shotgun ammunition on him, so he discarded it and picked up the AK instead. He also took a spare ammunition clip for the AK from the dead man and tucked it under his belt. “Davey, get over here, move it!” he yelled.
They could now see the firefight happening a hundred or so yards behind them. The bikers had parked their dirt bikes around the rear of an abandoned eighteen-wheeler, and they were using it and some other abandoned vehicles for cover. Most of the defenders had been killed, and only two men were still returning fire at the bikers from behind some bags of cement they were using as makeshift sandbags. Phil watched, both fascinated and horrified, as one of the bikers unclipped a grenade from his belt, pulled the pin and threw it. His aim was true. It cleared the cement bag barrier and exploded with a devastating bang a half-second later before the defenders could even think of reacting. Their fire fell silent; they were all dead now. The bikers stopped shooting and whooped out harsh cheers and shouts of triumph. It was only a matter of seconds before they realized that two of their number were missing, and since the bikes were still standing with their motors running next to the truck, they’d know exactly where they were.
“Davey, take this and get on the bike,” Phil said, his tone urgent as he shoved the headlamp into David’s hands. “You’re gonna drive your mother, and Wyatt’s gonna drive me. We’re not going to the river down that way; we have to outrun the bikers first. Take a right at the end of this street, okay, go one block and then turn left. Go into the park and take a right onto the cycling path that runs along the river. Keep going as fast as you safely can until you pass a footbridge on your left. If there are people guarding the bridge, keep going, do you understand? If not, stop there, but if there are guards, keep going until you get to the statue of a man on horseback, and wait for us there. If we don’t get there in ten minutes, you and your mom need to get across the river yourselves.”
“Dad, I—”
“There’s no time, Davey!” Phil yelled. “Get on the bike and go! Now!”
David was too overwhelmed to do anything but what his father told him, so he slipped the headlamp on and hopped onto the bike.
Phil gave Alice a quick, tight hug and a kiss. “Go on, honey, get on the back of the bike. You know Davey’s a great rider. You’ll be safe with him.”
With tears in her eyes, she nodded and hurried over to the motorcycle and climbed onto the back.
“Tony, Jake! What the fuck are you clowns doing down there?” one of the bikers yelled from up the street. They still hadn’t noticed that their friends were dead. “Y’all ain’t gettin’ shit from this store, motherfuckers! We did the shootin’, so we do the lootin’. You assholes can keep watch! Get over here. What the fuck are y’all doing down there?”
“Wyatt, you’re driving!” Phil said.
Alice, meanwhile, had gotten onto the back of David’s bike. In the gloom, the bikers couldn’t see what was going on, but they’d know something was up as soon as the group took off in the opposite direction. Phil knew they had to get as much of a head start on them as possible if they wanted to have any hope of escape.
“I’m ready,” Wyatt said. He was seated on the bike, his guns holstered.
Phil climbed onto the back of Wyatt’s bike but sat back-to-back with him, facing backward, with the AK-47 in his hands so he could shoot at the bikers if they started pursuing them. It was now or never; they had to flee while the window of opportunity for escape was still open.
“Davey, go!” Phil yelled. “And don’t stop until you get to the bridge or the statue! Go, go, go!”
David clicked the bike into gear and took off at speed, spinning the rear wheel as he launched.
“Stay close behind him, brother,” Phil said to Wyatt. “You go, too. Go, go!”
Wyatt grunted wordlessly, and then took off, racing into the darkness with his headlamp lighting the way. Behind them, the bikers yelled out shouts of confusion, and a few of them hopped onto their bikes and raced over to the truck, where they saw the dead bodies of their comrades and realized what had happened.
“Some sons of bitches killed Tony and Jake and took their rides!” one biker yelled. “There they go, get those motherfuckers!”
The other bikers roared out howls of fury and jumped on their bikes, racing down the street in pursuit of Phil and his group. The chase was on.
19
Phil watched grimly as a dozen bright headlamps came charging down the street behind him. He and his group had gotten a good head start on the bikers, but because they were two to a bike, the extra weight would slow them down and the bikers wouldn’t take long to catch up. Phil’s only hope was that he could shoot enough of his pursuers off their bikes to deter the rest from continuing the chase.
While the extremely bright headlamps made it easy for the bikers to navigate the pitch-black streets, it also meant that they became easy targets. All Phil had to do was aim for the piercing lights and fire. Of course, seeing as he was being bounced around on the back of the bike and squeezing his thighs to the point of burning pain just to hang on, this was a lot easier said than done. Digging his knees into the tail end of the bike to try to stabilize himself, he raised the AK to his shoulder and tried to take aim at the closest of the headlamps as the bikers gained on them.
The combination of moving like this and being shrouded in thick darkness made zeroing in on the bikers nigh on impossible, but Phil could at least get a vague sense of aim in, and when he thought he was as on target as he could be, he squeezed off a few rounds at the leading biker. The AK chattered in his hands, the muzzle flare bright against the gloom, but his shots missed, and the bikers kept coming.
“Shit,” Phil muttered, clenching his jaw and squeezing his thighs and knees tight as he tried to better stabili
ze himself.
Before he could unleash another burst of fire, though, some of the bikers started shooting, firing pistols with their left hands while keeping their right on their throttles. Their view of Phil and his group was a lot murkier than the view Phil had of them, so they were mostly just firing into the dark and hoping they got a lucky shot in. Even so, the danger of one of those bullets hitting home was there, and Phil and Alice—on the backs of the bikes—were in most danger of being hit.
Driven by the urgency of being shot at, Phil did his best to up his concentration and fired off another few rounds at the bikers. This time one of his shots hit home, and he saw one of the leading bikers’ headlamps jerk up and back and then tumble wildly into the darkness as the man ragdolled across the street, while his bike went down and skidded along the road in a spectacular shower of orange sparks.
Seeing their comrade go down like this didn’t stop the other bikers, though; instead, it simply made them madder, and they fired off angry bursts of shots from their pistols, while steadily getting closer to their quarry.
Up ahead of Phil, David reached the end of the street and veered around the corner in a fast turn that had Alice shrieking with fright and got the right foot peg of the bike dragging along the street in a spray of bright sparks.
“Hang on, Phil!” Wyatt yelled over his shoulder as he entered the turn, sweeping through it at speed, leaning the bike over low.
As Wyatt straightened up the bike, the first couple of bikers swooped through the curve as well. They were illuminated by the blazing inferno of a nearby building on fire, and Phil took this opportunity, seeing the men in bright light like this, to fire at them again, unleashing a long, hammering burst of fire in a deathly arc. He was getting more accustomed to shooting from the back of the bike like this, and this time his aim was better. Two more of them went down, their bikes sliding and cartwheeling in eruptions of sparks, their bodies tumbling and bouncing across the unyielding surface of the street.
As more of them sped through the corner, Phil fired off another burst of rounds at them and took out another one. Even then, though, the bikers didn’t halt their pursuit; they only became more enraged.
Before Phil could shoot again, Wyatt grunted a warning from behind him. “Hold on, another corner coming up!” This time the speeding motorcycle tipped over to the other side, and then they were into the park.
Ahead of them, David veered around a dead body—someone who had been shot and robbed of their bicycle during the earlier chaos of the day—lying across the bicycle path, but Wyatt didn’t see the corpse until too late, and he ran right over it. He managed to keep the bike upright, but the cadaver served as a ramp, launching the bike into the air, and it came down with such a violent jolt that Phil was almost hurled off the back. The AK flew out of his hands and clattered off the path into the bushes, but Phil couldn’t draw his pistol because he was flailing too desperately with his arms, trying to find a secure part of the bike he could grab onto to stabilize himself before he fell off.
He managed to get his fingers around a section of the subframe, and for a few terrifying seconds, it was all he could do to hold on for dear life, as Wyatt sped along the winding bicycle path, weaving and zooming around obstacles in the dark. Finally, however, Phil managed to stabilize himself enough that he was able to sit upright again, and he saw the ominous lights of his pursuers coming after them through the park.
Cursing himself for dropping the AK-47, he drew his .45 and squeezed off a few shots in the direction of the bikers, but none hit home. He had extra ammo clips for the .45, but they were all in the backpack, and there would be no way of getting them out without stopping and getting off the bike—and stopping now would mean certain death. Phil prayed that the footbridge would be open; it might be their only way out.
He fired off a couple more shots at the bikers, who were getting steadily closer. Again his shots hit nothing but air, and he was desperately aware of the fact that he now only had two or three bullets left in the gun.
“The bridge is open!” David yelled from up ahead, his voice only barely audible over the rushing wind. “It’s open, Dad. It’s open!”
“Go over it and wait on the other side!” Phil yelled. Now that he knew the bridge was open, a plan began to come together in his mind, but it would have to be speedily enacted if it were to work.
The footbridge was a strongly curved, elegant structure of iron and wood, and it was very narrow so that only two people walking abreast could cross it at a time. David rode the motorcycle up the steps and onto the bridge and then navigated it as quickly as he could.
“Stop the bike halfway across the bridge, then get off and run!” Phil yelled at Wyatt.
“What? Why?”
“Just do it. It’s our only chance!”
Wyatt rode up the stairs and then got onto the bridge, and when he got halfway across—the highest point of the arch of the bridge—he slammed on the brakes, getting the bike’s tires squealing as he brought it to a sudden stop. As Phil had instructed, he kicked out the kickstand, hopped off the bike and sprinted the rest of the way, leaving the bike running in the middle of the footbridge.
Phil scrambled off the bike just as his pursuers got to the foot of the bridge. He took aim with the .45…but not at the bikers. He shot a hole clean through the bike’s fuel tank, and gasoline started pouring out of both the entry and exit holes. He jogged a short distance away as the first of the bikers rode up onto the bridge in pursuit, dropping down onto his hands and knees and fumbling in his pocket, until finally, his fingers curled triumphantly around what they’d been seeking: his Zippo.
The trail of gasoline reached him, and he lit it up with the Zippo. With a whoosh, the gasoline caught fire, and the flame raced back along the gas trail toward its source, the bike’s leaking fuel tank. The biker reached the bike just as the flame got into the tank. The motorcycle exploded into a fireball, and the biker was engulfed by flames. The screaming man ran around on fire for a few moments before leaping off the bridge into the black water twenty feet below to douse the flames, while his companions gathered on the city side of the bridge, shooting blindly into the darkness and screaming insults at Phil and the group, who were now hiding behind the large concrete pillars on the suburban side of the river, with the headlamps turned off.
The bikers wouldn’t be able to cross the bridge until the flaming motorcycle had burned out, and Phil guessed that that would be at least another fifteen or twenty minutes, enough time to get away from the bikers.
They waited in silence for the bikers to stop shooting, which they did after a while.
“Come on, everybody,” Phil whispered to them. “Let’s go, nice and quiet now, nice and quiet.”
They tiptoed away and melted into the inky shadows of the trees. They had finally made it out of the city, but they were nowhere near safety just yet.
20
Phil didn’t know whether the bikers would come after them, or whether they’d give up and return to the city to continue raiding, but he had to assume that they’d continue their pursuit.
“Come on, everyone. We have to move fast,” he said, jogging along the path through the trees. He kept the headlamps off, for the lights would act as beacons to their enemies. It was difficult and somewhat dangerous to jog along the path in almost complete darkness, and he hoped he wouldn’t trip over anything and hurt himself. As risky as moving with speed through the dense darkness was, though, the consequences of not moving fast enough and getting caught by the bikers were far worse. “Let’s go, come on, move, move!” he urged.
The others didn’t need to be told twice. Adrenalin was racing through their veins after the drama of the bike chase, and their hearts were pounding. Alice’s wound was hurting, and she suspected that some of the stitches might have broken during the chaos of the motorcycle chase, but she couldn’t stop now. She bit her lip and forced herself to stay silent, despite the stabbing pains in her midriff.
After ten minute
s of hasty blundering through the shadows, they emerged from the park onto one of the main streets of the northern suburbs.
“Which way from here?” Wyatt asked.
“The truck’s at least a two, two-and-a-half-hour walk from here if we take the shortest route,” Phil answered, “but that route will put us on some of the main streets, which we obviously want to stay off. In fact, we want to keep off anything even resembling a street if we can help it.”
“Don’t you think the bikers will expect us to keep off the main streets, though, Dad?” David asked. “Maybe by taking the shortest and most obvious route, we can use, like, what’s it called, reverse psychology on them. They wouldn’t imagine we’d do something that obvious, so they’ll be looking for us on the backroads.”
“You might be right, but if they catch us on a main street, we’re gonna be in a world of trouble. And there are other dangers besides those bikers that we might run into on a main street. I don’t think it’s worth taking that kind of risk, even if it might fool the bikers for a while.”
“Who do you think they were?” Alice asked. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard the sound of working motors and saw those LED headlamps. Do you think they were the ones who orchestrated the attack?”
Phil shook his head. “I doubt it. They seemed too stupid and thuggish to have masterminded anything like that. They may have been part of a cell connected to a far larger and more sinister terrorist group, though. They seemed like grunts, on the ground, doing the dirty work of their masters. Or they may have just been preppers with an inclination toward evil. Not all of us who prepared for the downfall of organized society are good people. Some people have been waiting for this day like hungry wolves, and those scumbags may have just been some people like that. It doesn’t matter, though. The fact is that such people are out there, and they’re extremely dangerous. We have to be hyper-alert and prepared.”
EMP Survival In A Powerless World | Book 19 | EMP Ranch Page 10