The Earth Died Screaming

by Chuck Rogers

  Jesus, Chuck. You almost gave me a hard on.

  "I need every member and every prospect you can spare! You need to put Valhalla in lockdown and you need a perimeter! Frame's gonna crawl through mud and maggots! Recon shit! I need every last hunter and dog we got, a hundred horsemen, and tell that pussy pilot I need his eye in the sky shit and I don't care if Frame shoots at his ass!"

  Yeah, Chuck had to die.

  I froze as a prospect walked past the shack but I failed to appear in his peripheral vision.

  A shadow fell across me from the bridge above. "Hey! You okay?"

  I shot him.

  He fell and slammed into the top of the shack.

  The prospect walking whirled just in time to get a burst center body mass.

  I mentioned a suppressed MP7 is not silent.

  The gate guards had run to secure the camp and find me.

  The bridge guys were still on bridge duty.

  Three of them started shooting but they had to lean over and look for me to do it and they fell like rain on the shack as I reaped them. The MP7 clicked open on empty. I pulled my last frag and tossed it onto the overpass. SOG screamed.

  Chuck roared while I reloaded. His voice tore with emotion.

  "God damn you, Frame! God damn you!"

  Thought you SOG had given up on the Carpenter and his Creator, Chuck.

  Well, I'll tell you what, Fatbody. The Saint of Death owns my soul, her priestess my body, and let their will be done.

  Give Chuck credit, he didn't shoot through the shack. He cared about his people and stray bullets.

  I had no such contraindications.

  I burned thirty rounds through the shack on full auto.

  No idea whether I hit him but I pulled the pin on my last flash-bang and put my fist through the shack window. Now, I told you. A flash-bang in the great outdoors? Not it's exciting best.

  A flash-bang detonating inside a metal shed?

  Priceless.

  The shack shimmied and smoke pulsed out the broken window and the door.

  I jumped on my bike. Bobby McGee started like a champ and I rode.

  I shot a glance into the shack in passing. Chuck was on his back flailing and screaming with his Afro on fire. I was out the gate. I weaved through the car maze. A few shots popped after me but the whole set up was constructed to stop entry not exit.

  Suddenly me and Bobby McGee were free.

  I roared out of the SOG the same way I had come in.

  I geared up and hit the throttle.

  Bobby McGee made a terrible noise. My RPM's screamed as they pegged. At the same time my speedometer dropped like a rock. I ran the gears and the throttle and things only got worse. Bobby McGee had been blown up, burned and dropped.

  Something was terribly wrong with her clutch.

  I downshifted and Bobby McGee howled in second gear doing an engine blowing 50 miles per hour.

  It was okay. All I wanted was another mile and then a hard left turn into the woods and I would be gone-daddy-gone.

  I heard the explosion behind me.

  It wasn't an explosion. It was more the sound of a garbage truck being repeatedly dropped off the Empire State building.

  I looked back.

  It was the SOG narco-rocket tank drawing a straight line through the car maze with its dozer blade. Cars spun. A couple went flying.

  Four motorcycles followed in its wake.

  The SOG chopper came 'Thump-thump-thumping' over the horizon.

  I swear I heard the Saint of Death saying "Frame? I love you. So does Lalli, but you can only cheat my boss so many times . . ."

  My speed kept dropping even while my rev's pegged. I could feel the heat radiating against my legs from the overheating engine.

  Bobbywas dying beneath me.

  I flew beneath the 47B overpass and I knew I had blown it.

  There wasn't another off-ramp for another thousand feet. My speed dropped to thirty and then twenty-five. I could hear the SOG behind me. The Wendy Drive overpass taunted me in the distance.

  I wasn't going to make it. I was going to have to drop Bobby and run for the trees. Except there weren't any. Thousand Oaks had burned and burned bad. Everything was parking lots and building burned down to the foundations. The SOG came screaming up behind me in a line. I twisted in the saddle and held out the MP7 like a handgun and squeezed off bursts. Firing a four and a half pound weapon one handed backwards from a moving motorcycle is problematic at best.

  Thirty rounds wasted.

  Reloading on a moving motorcycle can be a problem as well.

  A streak of bullet strikes stitched the asphalt to starboard.

  My speed dropped to twenty.

  Another line of bullets walked past me to port.

  They intended to take me alive.

  The Sons of Ged were going to make me pay for my sins.

  I believe this was the first time in my life I was ever genuinely happy to see the police.

  Marshal Miles' khaki-lackeys boiled down the on and off ramps facing east on the 47B in their armored pursuit vehicles. Including that Chevy Tahoe mounting that sweet 90mm recoilless rifle. Their lights and sirens came on in full show of force.

  "HALT YOUR VEHICLES! DISMOUNT AND SURRENDER! THIS WILL BE YOUR ONLY WARNING!"

  I complied.

  I spun the Bobby McGee to a stop. I got to my knees facing away and put my hands behind my head.

  This gave me an excellent view of the Road Warrior SOG wedge barreling down on me.

  I don't know what they were thinking.

  Clearly they didn't recognize the weapon mounted on the Tahoe.

  Clearly they didn't care.

  Maybe they actually thought they were in a tank.

  They were in a semi-truck sheathed in boilerplate.

  The M67 recoilless rifle was designed to cut through a foot and change of armor steel.

  I cared about this because they were getting way to close to me.

  The report of the 90mm blasting fire out of both ends rang off the Conejo Valley walls. I just managed to shove my thumbs in my ears, and, despite the goggles I covered my eyes and pinched my nose shut like I had been trained to. No use getting my lungs sucked out.

  That was Lalli's job.

  I don't know what the SOG was using for fuel or what they were using for warheads on their roll-your-own assault rockets, but it all went up big. The pressure wave bowled me over and sent me violently ass-over-teakettle. The wall of overpressure tumbled me over my bike and left me prone. That probably saved my life. I lay on the hot cement and held my breath. Then like a dumbass I remembered I had a mask and slapped it against my face as the smoke pulsed all around me.

  I caught a whiff as I masked. It wasn't high explosive. It smelled like brimstone, sulfur and fireworks. The SOG was manufacturing black powder.

  Then bits of narco-tank large and small rained down all around me.

  I cringed fetal and covered my head. I unplugged my ears and stuff hitting the cement went from pitter-patters to crunches to metal gong sounds. I opened my eyes. Not much was burning. The narco-tank had literally been blown to bits. I saw a big nasty shard of black armor stuck in my motorcycle's bleeding fuel tank. Bobby had saved my life.

  Again.

  I rolled onto my back.

  I'd been blown up before. It was the reason I had left Recon and become an MP. My eyes, ears and lungs were fine. I felt a little flash-burned. The real question was shock wave injuries. The blast wave doesn't just hit you. A great deal of the energy goes through you in ways subtle and overt. My entire body felt hammered and wrong. I'd had concussions before. Pretty sure Marshal Miles had given me one. Didn't know if I had one now. Other internal injuries would declare themselves presently.

  I gave up on the self-assessments and focused on breathing.

  A gunshot rang out.

  I looked over. One of the boys in blue walked away from a SOG lying on the ground. A lady cop I didn't know walked up to a motorcycle SOG pin
ned beneath his bike and popped his grape with her AR.

  A shadow fell across me.

  I blinked upward and mumbled through my mask.

  "Hey! I complied!"

  I stared up into the twin barrels of a full-on 'Mad Max' sawed off shotgun.

  My executioner wore mirrored sunglasses. He also wore his right arm in a sling. I recognized the little-mustache-that-could on his upper lip. Maybe I did have a concussion because I was so happy to see him alive and upright I didn't know what to do. I pulled down mask and grinned like an idiot.

  "Hello, Larry!"

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Electric Larry Land

  LARRY BROUGHT THE ELECTORLARYNX TO HIS THROAT and spoke like a robot. "Hang-the-son-of-bitch."

  I was behind bars again. "Are you still mad?"

  "Fuck-you-ass-hole."

  "No, fuck you, Larry. You were going to hang me. I let you live. Hell, I even took the time to save your life."

  The Sphinx-like Ramirez finally spoke. "He kinda did."

  Thank you Officer Ramirez.

  Larry was wearing my MP7. It was just him, Jeannie and Ramirez. They didn't want me to see anyone else's faces or pick up any clues about their organization. Couldn't blame them. We hadn't exactly left on good terms and I had returned wearing the wrong uniform.

  I looked to Jeannie. "Where's Mitzie? Isn't she supposed in charge?"

  "How did you know about that?"

  "Because Miles said put Mitzie in charge while I'm gone. I don't think he cared if I heard because fucking Larry was going hang me in the morning."

  "Hang-him."

  My just-blown-up-but-happy-to-see-you-alive-and-standing Larry love?

  Gone, Mr. Roboto talking motherfucker.

  Ramirez's stone face went stonier. "Mitzie's dead."

  "So who's in charge?"

  Jeannie's face turned to stone, too. "It's down to me."

  "Listen--"

  "You bear the mark."

  Everyone stared at my shoulder in revulsion.

  "I do."

  "You took the sacrament."

  God damn it.

  All I had was the truth.

  It hadn't set me free the last time I was sitting in this cell.

  "I told you exactly what I intended to do! Join up and fuck 'em up, and I almost succeeded!"

  "What do you mean almost?"

  "Maybe you heard some explosions in the last day or two? Maybe you noticed they were chasing me?"

  "You ate human flesh."

  I stared Jeannie in the eye. "They shot a girl in the head and tossed her liver on the Weber. It was a pass/fail situation."

  They stared at me like I was a spider the size of a VW Bug with only the bars between them and me.

  "Hang-him."

  They were going to hang me.

  "Listen, Jeannie--"

  She stopped short of baring her teeth. "Officer Tallman."

  Ramirez spoke. "Commander Tallman to you and everyone in this room, Frame."

  I stood up and guns cleared leather. I stood at parade ground attention. Why not, my hands were already handcuffed behind me. "Commander, Marshal Miles is alive."

  That was good for Commander Jeannie Tallman to nearly buckle and take a step back. Then her face flushed. "Oh, fuck you."

  "No, really. He is. I met Marshal Miles in camp. We were both provisionals." I tilted my head and rolled my eyes up the nasty scar developing over my left eyebrow. "He gave me this. Then we came to an understanding."

  Commander Tallman wasn't buying it. "You and Roman teamed up?"

  Roman.

  "No, but we came to an understanding. I was going to fuck up the SOG my way and he was going to do it his, but we'd share intel when possible."

  Jeannie stared at the broken world brand on my arm in sudden fear. "Has he . . ."

  "Naw, the SOG is fast-tracking him but he was still a prospect last I saw. He hadn't eaten anyone yet. Oh, and speaking of eating people, I asked Miles for a recognition sign that would not occur to most people." I leered at Commander Tallman's crotch. "He told me to tell you that you taste like peaches."

  Larry's face fell.

  Ramirez's eyebrow rose with interest.

  Commander Tallman blushed to the roots of her hair.

  I went back to the well. "So, you guys want to hear a story?"

  Ramirez nodded. "I do."

  I didn't wait for Commander Tallman's permission. I launched into the mighty saga. I gave them all of it, and I mean all of it. Benjamin Allen Frame, minefield of information. I gave them what I knew of the SOG's culture, numbers, camps and home base Valhalla and everything I had done. Jeannie's face ran the gamut of emotions as I described everything from dropping Marshal Miles in the latrine trench to our epic battle at Fight Night.

  Ramirez nodded. "Miles is pretty badass."

  Jeannie almost cracked a smile when I described the "arrangement" I had made between Miles and Jaiden.

  I shrugged as my tale ended. "Then I was laying in the middle of the freeway staring up the barrels of Larry's shotgun. That's my story and I'm sticking to it."

  There was a protracted period of silence.

  They were going to hang me.

  Ramirez spoke. "Well."

  Larry brought the electrolarynx to his throat. "Holy-shit."

  Aww, the Tin Man had a heart beneath that tin star of his.

  I laid it all out.

  "I'm a criminal. I'm incorrigible. Miles smelled it the moment he met me. The world is never going to go back to the way it was. But I'm willing to fight for a new one. I'm willing to fight for a brave new world even if in the end there's no place for me in it. I picked a side, and on my side there's a girl, a dog and people I care about in Malibu. I blew up Agoura, and I blew up the west gate. That may have stalled the SOG a little but they are on the march and the battle for Malibu and the entire Ventura Corridor is on. I'm going to try and turn Malibu Park and the canyons into Afghanistan. If you can turn the heat up on them in any way on your end that would be awesome."

  5-O stared at me.

  "So." I gave Jeannie a hopeful look. "Can I go now?"

  "Let him out."

  Ramirez opened the door and un-cuffed me. I stepped out of the cell and Jeannie and Larry tensed.

  I was a cannibalistic SOG traitor who blew shit up and handed out tracheotomies.

  I looked to Larry.

  "Can I have my weapon back?"

  "Fuck-you-I'm-keeping-it."

  God damn it. Just when I was starting to like you again, Larry.

  "You-took-mine. I'm-taking-yours."

  Well, that was fucked up, but fair. I guess.

  I looked to Jeannie.

  "Orcas? The burned and turned? The SOG? You remember that story I told you about Winnie the Penis? You're really just going to release me into the wild with my dick in my hand?"

  Larry of all people went to his desk. He took out his sawed off and set it before me. I broke it open. It was loaded. He added an olive drab US military, twelve round, 12 gauge ammo pouch. I opened it. Eight rounds of buckshot. Four slugs.

  "All-I-can-spare. Good-luck."

  Good on you, Larry.

  "Thank you."

  Ramirez went to a locker and got my backpack. He added an expandable baton. "We have a carton full of them."

  I pushed my luck. "Can I have a vehicle?"

  Jeannie shook her head. "No. It's been months since the beam. Unless it's in a storage tank gasoline is starting to oxidize. We can't spare any of our vehicles that are running or any fuel."

  I looked at Jeannie, Larry and Ramirez and my instincts spoke to me.

  "You had a sweet Highway Patrol Electra Glide last time I was here. Do you still?"

  Ramirez nodded. "Yup."

  "Do any of you know how to ride it?"

  Ramirez shook his head. "Nope."

  "Can I have it?"

  Jeannie stared at me.

  Ramirez shrugged. "We're not using it."

  I wa
s falling in love with Officer Ramirez.

  I eyed his cheekbones. "You Human Being?"

  "Little bit. Kawaiisu."

  I thought so.

  "Me too."

  "I know."

  "Commander, may I go now?"

  "Not just yet."

  They let me sit in on a mid-day meal of huevos rancheros that included a beer. I was pretty sure the eggs and avocados were locally sourced. While I ate I marked up a map with the locales of A, B and C camp. We shook hands all around. Even Larry, left-handed.

  "Good-luck."

  "Suerte, amigo."

  Called him amigo.

  They let me go.

  * * *

  I DON'T KNOW HOW MUCH YOU KNOW about motorcycles, but if you like cruisers? The Harley Davidson Police Electra Glide? That is one sweet ride. Plus being a career criminal, I'll admit it. Riding a police hog gave me a perverted thrill. As a long-time Angeleno, having the Ventura Freeway all to myself just wasn't getting old any time soon.

  I named her Po Po Go-Go.

  Trouble was I needed to get back to Malibu and I was going the wrong way. If I summited the Conejo Ridge I would drop down into the Oxnard Plains, and there were conflicting stories about what was going on down there. I was driving on the wrong side of the freeway so I just took a left up an off-ramp and headed up into the hills. Jeannie gave me a couple of maps but after the Deathstar and the floods I had no clue what would get me anywhere, and the Santa Monica Mountains were a rat's nest of back roads, fire roads and dead ends.

  It was the long way and it was a risk, but I had to avoid SOG dogs, hunters and helicopters. Malibu Creek Park was infested.

  I had to get to my girl.

  I was nervous as I went into the hills. I was on an Electra Glide and Harleys are not quiet. The saying amongst bikers is 'Loud pipes save lives.'

  They also boldly announce your presence in the post-apocalypse.

  Po Po Go-Go ?

  I should have named her Loudy McLoudy.

  Speed was my ally.

  If I ran into a roadblock I was fucked.

  I looked down on Hidden Valley as I took a fire road. I'd never been there. I'd heard it's nice. Nearly all large equestrian ranches. Armed people spilled out of two of the ranch houses I could see. I stopped and watched them through my binoculars. Some were raising optics and scanning for me. I heard triangle dinner bells raising the alarm across the valley. They'd heard my pipes. I'm sure Colin and his dad knew all of these people. We needed to get in touch with these cowboys, but not today, and not me on a police cruiser wearing SOG colors.