by Akart, Bobby
“Blair, what do you know about graffiti or artwork that looks like a fist holding up a black rose? I saw it in DC and now it’s spray-painted here by the interstate.”
“A black rose? I really don’t know, Hayden. I can ask around. Describe it again.”
Hayden put Blair on speaker and navigated through her iPhone to the camera app. She took several pictures of the graffiti with plans to compare this image to the one seen near her home.
“It’s a fist held straight up, clenching the stem of a black rose. They’ve sprayed red paint to outline the image, almost like the color of blood.”
“And it’s the same in both places?” asked Blair.
Hayden took Blair off the speaker before responding, “Yeah, almost identical. Obviously, two different people did the work, but the design is nearly identical. It has to be related.”
“I agree,” said Blair. “I don’t believe in coincidences. Hey, let me mention one more thing. Like I said, I’ve been monitoring the newscasts and going online to local news websites to get updates for people. You need to be careful going through—”
Hayden never heard Blair say the word Richmond as a cinder block came crashing down on the hood of her Range Rover, startling her and causing her to drop the phone.
This was just the beginning of the onslaught.
Chapter Twenty-One
Interstate 95
Richmond, Virginia
Hayden screamed, and Prowler angrily screeched as another large rock pelted her hood, which protruded just beyond the side of the bridge. Fortunately, her windshield wasn’t exposed to the people throwing the heavy construction materials over the side. The same could not be said for the cars in front of her.
Windshields were shattered, rear windows were broken out, and one man emerged from his car with gashes in his face, causing his vision to be obscured with blood. Other drivers panicked, trying to force themselves forward to get out of harm’s way, or backwards, to gain protection using the overpass as a shield.
The vehicle in front of her, a Mini Cooper, had been utterly destroyed by the blocks of concrete. All the windows, including the sunroof glass, were smashed. The back bumper of the Mini was only a few feet away from Hayden, so she could see the interior clearly. A woman was slumped over the steering wheel with a jagged piece of concrete embedded in her scalp.
Hayden frantically looked in all directions. She was in the far-right lane, having just entered the interstate. This gave her the opportunity to use the hard shoulder to move forward. However, there were several cars already scooting over to make their way past the bridge. Hayden inched backwards and received an angry blare of a horn for her efforts.
“Thanks a lot, buddy!” she shouted, waving her fist in her rearview mirror. She ignored his horn and relied upon the backup camera on her Range Rover’s dashboard to avoid hitting the hostile driver.
She was able to create enough space between her truck and the Mini to turn her steering wheel and navigate toward the shoulder. Now she needed a little polite help from her fellow motorists. She kept inching the front of her truck into the traffic, hoping someone would allow her in. Just as a car slowed, the vehicle that passed by her suddenly veered left and careened into the Mini Cooper, adding insult to injury. The resulting crash caused the sedan to block most of the emergency lane and immediately subjected the driver to a barrage of concrete debris.
“Are they going to run out of crap to throw at us?” A frustrated Hayden yelled her question as she leaned forward to determine if there was sufficient room to squeeze by the wrecked truck. Another chunk of concrete came hurtling down from above and broke out her left headlight. Frustration grew to anger that quickly changed to fear.
Suddenly, a dozen people dressed in black clothing and wearing masks similar to the way the graffiti artists had been dressed the day before appeared at the chain-link fences guarding the interstate from pedestrians. They were using bolt cutters to create openings.
All of them were carrying aluminum baseball bats, tire irons, or large pieces of concrete. Hayden immediately reached into the back of the passenger seat and felt for her loaded handgun, which was stashed in a pouch behind the seat back.
“Prowler, backseat. Now!” The Maine coon sensed danger and jumped into the backseat on top of a duffle bag.
Hayden pulled the slide on her gun to load a round into the chamber but not before one of the attackers smashed the passenger side of her windshield with an aluminum bat. Another crawled onto her hood and jumped into the air, waving a club over his head like a lunatic.
With the cars ahead of her disabled, Hayden was cornered, and her attackers knew it.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Interstate 95
Richmond, Virginia
Tom had sensed danger as he saw chunks of cinder blocks and concrete flying downward from the overpass in front of them. He instinctively looked up through the glass sunroof to determine if he and Donna were in danger of being struck, comforted by the span of steel beams and concrete above their heads. He checked his mirrors and turned in his seat to see if the vehicles behind him were being attacked. They were as well.
“We’re trapped!” he shouted as the blaring of car horns reverberated off the steel and concrete that surrounded them. Tom quickly weighed his options. He didn’t have any.
They were in the far-right lane, and the guardrail pinched the shoulder of the highway, so the oversized Yukon couldn’t fit through. Vehicles succumbed to the debris both in front and in back of their position. In a frantic attempt to escape the barrage of debris, vehicles crashed into one another. Some drivers were badly injured as the rocky materials broke through windshields and sunroofs.
“Tom! There are people running down the hill over there!” Donna shouted and directed his attention to the right side of the overpass, where more than a dozen men raced down the hill, waving a variety of weapons. Tom wished he had one of his battle rifles. This assault would’ve been over in short order.
He glanced in the rearview mirror again beyond the small red KIA tucked under his bumper. He decided that backing out of the perfect choke point created by the bridge abutments and the stalled traffic was not an option. He looked forward again. “I’m gonna squeeze through!”
“Tom, we’re too wide. You won’t fit.”
“We’ll see.” Tom turned the wheel to the right so that the Yukon barely scraped the guardrail.
“You’re gonna tear up the side!” Donna warned him.
“Who cares?” he quickly responded as he forced himself between a Toyota Camry and the guardrail. The driver of the Camry began shaking her fist at him and beating on her horn out of anger as the bumper of the Yukon shoved her to the side. Tom gave the heavy truck gas, and gradually, a path was cleared, allowing him to scoot along the guardrail, with the KIA following his lead.
“Oh no!” shouted Donna, pointing at a masked man flailing away at the passenger window of the car in front of the Camry. The shiny black Range Rover was taking a beating until the man successfully broke out the glass.
In Tom’s military career, he’d seen brutality. He’d seen the deadly toll of war and the bodies of the wounded when they returned home. They were visuals he’d never erase from his mind, nor did he want to. It was a constant reminder that war was hell, and regardless of the methods employed to wage it, the toll on humanity was the same.
The Range Rover shook violently as the attacker fell forward into the front seat. The darkened windows of the four-door sedan obscured his view of what was happening, but when the man freed himself from the passenger door, he fell backwards onto the pavement in a heap, his face ripped to shreds beyond recognition.
Donna screamed as she saw the man’s mangled face.
“Unbelievable,” muttered Tom, aghast at the grotesque appearance of the man’s face.
“Tom, the driver is trying to get your attention.” Donna had noticed as the chaos continued. The other attackers were mercilessly beating the vehicles and som
e of their passengers. The rear passenger window of the Range Rover rolled down, and a woman driver turned towards their truck, waving to get their attention.
Tom glanced around and then rolled down his window. “Are you okay?”
The driver shouted to be heard over the melee. “Yes! Can you scoot back so I can get in front of you? We can make it by the wreckage.”
Tom pointed toward the attackers’ reinforcements. “There are more coming!”
The woman glanced forward and then shouted to him, “I’ve got them. Please make room for me so I can get out.”
Tom gave her a thumbs-up and placed the truck in reverse. The driver of the KIA immediately began to honk his horn at Tom, but he ignored the complaint. He slowly made contact with the KIA’s front bumper and then pressed the gas pedal to the floor. The tires squealed at first, but then the KIA began to relent as it was pushed backwards into other cars that were trying to follow them along the shoulder.
“That’s enough, Tom,” said Donna. “She’s clear. Oh my god!”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Interstate 95
Richmond, Virginia
Hayden winced and forced herself against the driver’s side door as her attacker released a guttural scream. Another blow of the baseball bat caused the passenger glass to explode inward, forcing her to cover her face with her arm and protect herself. The next thing she heard was Prowler.
“Rrrreeeeer!”
With lightning quickness, Prowler leapt from the backseat onto the console as the attacker stuck his head through the window to reach for Hayden. The large house cat became a vicious animal, drawing upon his instincts to protect Hayden.
First, Prowler clawed at the man’s hand to force him to withdraw from Hayden’s arm. This caused the man to fall forward slightly so that he was half in and half out of the Range Rover. This was a fatal mistake that resulted in a brutal beatdown that only could be imagined in a horror movie.
With a continuous roar of earsplitting screeches, Prowler ripped into the man’s face. The first couple of blows pulled the bandana-style mask away, exposing his skin. The next several clawing motions came so fast that Hayden, whose body remained pressed against the driver’s door, couldn’t attempt to count. She’d never seen Prowler act like this before.
Scratch after scratch, he clawed at the man’s face, ripping into his skin until pieces of flesh began to fly about the truck. The attacker was screaming in agony as Prowler’s last blow found the man’s eyelid, ripping it away from his eyeball. It was a gruesome sight, sickening to anyone who might’ve witnessed the scene.
But not to Prowler. It was the beginning of the end for his mommy’s attacker. He growled again, a deep guttural sound that caused the hair to stand up on the back of Hayden’s neck. While all around her, motorists were being terrorized by people dressed in black, smashing their weapons against windshields and car hoods, her cat was viciously mauling one of their comrades.
Hayden readied her weapon, prepared to shoot the poor, hapless marauder who had become limp from Prowler’s ruthless and barbaric mutilation of the man’s face. She raised her weapon, but the man’s body weight finally pulled him backwards onto the highway.
Prowler jumped up onto the window opening, disregarding the bits of broken glass under his feet. Hayden feared he’d jump out after the man, who was likely unconscious from the beatdown the Maine coon had put on him.
“No! Prowler, stay!” She gave him orders as she would a dog. Prowler was trained that way and understood. He stood alert but didn’t chase after the attacker. He continued, however, to bitch about it, emitting a series of growls and yowls to express how pissed off he was.
Hayden had to stay alert. The assault was not over. She glanced to her left and saw two men with spray-paint cans drawing the black rose symbol on the hood of an SUV while a woman pounded on the driver’s window with a tire iron.
“Prowler, we’re getting out of here!”
Hayden looked to her right and got the attention of an older couple who’d fortunately been spared from the onrush of rioters. She took a chance and rolled down her rear passenger window. She waved at the driver to get his attention.
The driver, an older man wearing a white sweater and a baseball cap with a U.S. Navy insignia, checked around his car and rolled down his window.
“Are you okay?” he yelled to her amidst the screams and shouts of the attackers.
“Yes!” replied Hayden. “Can you scoot back so I can get in front of you? We can make it by the wreckage.”
The man looked forward and pointed. “There are more coming!”
“I’ve got them. Please make room for me so I can get out.”
The man hung his arm out the window and gave her a thumbs-up. He was driving a GMC Yukon that was more than strong enough to force the red Kia parked against his rear bumper out of the way. The Kia driver slammed on his high-pitched horn, but it was no match for the brutish, three-ton Yukon.
The driver squealed the tires, shoving the offended Kia out of the way to make room for Hayden to get in front of the Yukon. As she did, the attacker was awakened by her right rear tire running over his arm, snapping it in several places.
“Sorry, jerkoff!” shouted Hayden, who wheeled her truck onto the emergency lane, only to be met by half a dozen screaming banshees racing toward her, carrying buckets of paint and bricks.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Interstate 95
Richmond, Virginia
“Really?” asked Hayden as she gritted her teeth and set her jaw. “What is their problem?” She inched forward so that the front end of her smashed-up truck was able to get around the wrecked vehicles blocking the road. She periodically glanced in her rearview mirror to make sure the Yukon was behind her.
Hayden had learned to shoot as a young girl on her family farm. Although most of her practice was with long guns, primarily while hunting, she’d taken the time to learn how to use a sidearm by practicing extensively with her father. She was naturally right-handed, but she’d learn to throw darts left-handed and had transferred her ambidextrous skills to shooting as well.
Hayden rolled down her window and glanced over at Prowler, who was still loaded for bear. “Hold on, buddy, and watch your ears.” The fur on the tip of the Maine coon’s distinctive ears wiggled slightly as he hunkered down in the passenger seat.
Hayden eased her way onto the shoulder so that the truck would barely fit between the guardrail and the wrecked vehicle. The Yukon was wider than her Range Rover and would experience a tighter squeeze, but should be able to clear the narrow opening.
She hung her left arm out the window. The fresh set of assailants was upon her when she fired the first warning shots over their heads. Two rounds exploded out of her weapon, causing the group to scatter and jump for cover. This also had the effect of attracting the attention of the first group, who immediately stopped their assaults on other motorists and looked in Hayden’s direction. She was now the focus of the entire group’s ire.
They began hurling expletives in her direction, together with anything at their disposal. Rocks bounced off the rear hatch of her truck, and a quart-sized can of paint sailed over her roof, nailing the Yukon on the hood and exploding in a spray of red. The driver immediately turned on his windshield washers and smeared the red paint until it began to dissolve.
Hayden had cleared the opening but didn’t immediately take off, opting instead to ensure the driver of the Yukon could make his way through the opening. She could hear the high-pitched, squeaking sound of metal on metal as the Yukon bulled its way past the wreckage.
Another can of paint pelted her truck, soaking the hood in blood-red stain. A man jumped from behind the wreckage and raced toward her door. Although Hayden didn’t want to shoot anyone unless she absolutely had to, she took aim at the aluminum bat he was wielding and quickly fired three rounds until she found the barrel.
The sting the man experienced from the bullet ricocheting off the hard aluminum
caused him to yell in pain, and he dropped the bat. Once again, the attackers sought cover, giving Hayden the time necessary to accelerate down the shoulder of the road. Because traffic had been stopped by the attack, all of the southbound lanes had opened up and she was able to speed away.
Hayden managed a smile as she noticed the driver of the Yukon was behind her, with nothing more than a poorly painted red hood to go with the gold factory paint of his truck. She slowed to pull over and assess the damage to her truck. The Yukon pulled alongside and an older woman shouted to Hayden, “Thank you! Godspeed!”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Interstate 95
Richmond, Virginia
Tom reacted to Donna’s outburst by gripping the wheel and jamming on the brakes. It wasn’t her intention to startle or warn him, but it was a genuine expression of astonishment.
“What?” he asked.
“That woman ran over the guy,” she replied.
“Good,” said Tom as he focused his attention and followed the Range Rover forward. They made slow progress through the gap between a wrecked vehicle and the guardrail, scraping the side of the Yukon with a high-pitched squeal.
Suddenly, a can of paint struck the hood and emptied a splash of gooey red paint all over the truck. The windshield was also covered in red, so Tom turned on his windshield wipers in an attempt to wash it away.
That was when gunshots could be heard. “Get down, Donna. Now!”
Donna slumped down and crammed herself between the seat and the glove box. Tom also slid down in his seat to lower his profile. He felt this would protect him from gunfire and more debris being thrown off the overpass.