America Falls (Book 1): Hell Week

by Medbury, Scott

  Ben looked at the table in disbelief for a few seconds before holding out his hand.

  “Good game,” he said, looking like he had sucked a lemon as Luke shook his hand.

  “So, did you guys find anything interesting in the office building?” I asked him.

  “Not really, but I daresay we got what Sonny sent us there to get,” he said. “Why he’d want all those toner cartridges is beyond me.”

  “Toner cartridges? Like from photocopiers?”

  “Yes,” Ben said. “Plus several reams of printer paper, and as many rolls of tape as we could find.”

  “Why would he want those?” I asked.

  “Beats the hell out of me,” Luke said, and rubbed his hands together. “I love a good mystery though. Hey, maybe he’s starting a newspaper? The Post-Apocalyptic Times!”

  “Hardy har har,” I said. “I’m sure he has his reasons, so we’ll find out soon enough.”

  “Are you going to take the rifle with you this afternoon?” Luke asked.

  I felt a short stab of remorse as I remembered what had happened the last time I held the rifle. I knew the gang member I shot had deserved it, but emotionally I wasn’t quite ready to take responsibility for ending another human life so brutally.

  “I don’t know. I was thinking about just sticking with a handgun on this one,” I said, looking down at the chessboard.

  I wondered if Luke felt the same way about the Tiger he had killed with the crossbow. In the time since, I’ve found the killing gets easier, but the twinges of regret or guilt never really go away. The circumstances don’t matter really. It doesn’t matter how bad the other person was, I always ask myself if maybe I could have done something different.

  And I always remember.

  “Do you want to play?” I asked.

  “Naw, I already had my fun,” Luke replied. “Maybe Ben wants to play and redeem himself.”

  “What do you say?” I asked Ben.

  “Sure, I’m always up for another game,” he said, reaching for the pieces to reset the board.

  The sky clouded over during the day. This had the benefit of warming the night slightly, but at a cost. It had gotten darker earlier and there was no moonlight to see by.

  Sonny, Arthur, Luke, and I cautiously made our way back to the parking garage, hugging the buildings and keeping to the alleyways and side streets as much as possible.

  The Chinese Army was on all of our minds, but Sonny thought it was the Red Tigers we really needed to watch for. He was right.

  The parking garage was well inside their territory, and they were bound to be angry about losing two members the previous day. Sonny seemed to know a lot about them, but I didn’t think much of it at the time.

  Thinking about the Tigers made me realize it was less than 24 hours since I killed another human being. I’m pretty sure he was the first; the looter I had shot in front of the Fosters’ home had already looked sick. Maybe the leg wound had sped up his demise, but I’m certain it wasn’t fatal.

  The thought of coming across one of the friends of the Tiger I had killed chilled me in a way the cold night couldn’t, and I was worried the others might suffer as a consequence of my actions.

  We walked through the darkness in near silence, moving carefully, and by a circuitous route. It took us nearly an hour to reach the parking garage. As we arrived, the first flakes of a fresh snowfall began drifting down from the now completely dark sky.

  The plan called for Arthur and me to stay near the parking garage entrance, out of sight from the street but where we could keep an eye on things. Sonny and Luke would continue to the truck, make sure everything was okay and disable the GPS using Huian’s instructions before picking Arthur and I up on the way out.

  Sonny and Arthur were dressed in their black clothes, while Luke and I wore normal clothes and parkas. Nodding farewell to Luke and Sonny, I found a car to crouch behind, which afforded me a good view of the entrance. Arthur followed the others as far as the stairwell leading to the other levels and faded into the shadows. I realize, of course, that he was not a real Ninja, but he sure did a good impression of one.

  Five minutes passed with agonizing slowness. While I knew it must have been at least a little warmer inside the parking garage, I honestly didn’t feel it. I was as cold as I’d been since we left my hometown. My fingers were like ice and I placed my pistol on the concrete floor and rubbed my hands together for warmth.

  It had seemed dark outside, but now that I was crouched in the darkness of the parking garage looking toward the opening to the street, I understood just how much darker it was in there when I plainly saw four silhouettes appear in the entrance. My heart skipped a beat before starting to race.

  Tigers. That much was clear – one of them was holding a spiked baseball bat.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  They were speaking but I was too far away to hear what they were saying. After a time, one pointed in my direction, and then towards the stairwell Arthur had disappeared into. Two of the figures split off and headed deeper into the garage – toward me, while the guy giving the orders and the fourth headed for the stairwell.

  I tensed and, moving as slowly and quietly as I could, picked up the .38. I was comforted only a little by the cold, heavy weight of it in my hand.

  The Tigers, including the one holding the nail-studded baseball bat, came directly towards my hiding position. As he got closer, I saw from his shape that it was the one Luke had christened ‘Bat-boy’ after our earlier skirmish.

  With him was a taller, younger Asian teenager. Both of them had automatic pistols shoved in their waistbands. As they approached I slowly scooted around the vehicle, keeping it between us. The last thing I wanted to do was use my revolver. I knew any shots would bring their other two friends running and, if they were armed with guns too, I didn’t like my chances in a four on one shootout … or even four on two if Arthur came to back me up.

  Daring to cast a quick glance in that direction, I saw the other two Tigers must have already entered the other stairwell. I took the relative silence from that direction as a positive sign they had not stumbled over Arthur, so I quickly switched my focus back to the other two. They had stopped no more than 10 feet away from where I crouched.

  “Are you sure it was them?” the taller one asked Bat-Boy. “The bastards who killed Sammy and Jack?”

  “At least one of them,” Bat-boy said. “I recognized the jacket of the kid with the crossbow.”

  “Come on, let’s keep going ... and keep an eye out. Chen doesn’t want them to slip past us and get out if they hear him and Hammer on the stairs,” he said. “We better not slip up. I’ve never seen him as mad as when you told him Jack was dead. I feel sorry for the poor son of a bitch who was stupid enough to kill his kid brother ...”

  “Yeah, that little shit better hope he dies from a bullet, because if we capture his ass...” he slapped the nail-free part of his bat into the palm of his hand. I jerked at the loud slap and almost overbalanced.

  Chen’s brother? The way they were talking, Chen was obviously the leader. And it turns out I had killed his brother. No wonder they were so pissed.

  The two Tigers started walking again and were soon far enough beyond where I crouched for me to relax a little.

  That feeling was short-lived, however, when it dawned on me that Luke and Sonny were in real danger. I had no way of getting past the Tigers, either of the pairs, to give warning. Even if they finished with the truck and got it up and running before the Tigers got to their level, they would have to drive right by at least two of the armed thugs to get out.

  I hoped Arthur had managed to get down the stairwell to warn Luke and Sonny before the two Tigers heading that direction had seen him. That would be something but getting out would still be a hell of a problem.

  Looking into the parking garage toward where the two Tigers had vanished in the darkness, I strained and could hear the faint sound of their footsteps getting further away. When I judged the
m to be distant enough, I broke cover from where I was crouched and furtively moved to the stairwell.

  I had been in the stairwell before, when we had left the garage after burning the first Chinese truck. The street level of the parking garage was the top floor; the other six floors were located underneath, so from here the stairs only went one direction – down into the darkness.

  The stairs were located at the back of a small alcove with an elevator door in one wall. The stairs wound around the elevator shaft’s column as they descended. There was a landing and an elevator door on each garage level.

  I paused at the entrance to the alcove, listening for the sounds of the Tigers on the stairs. I didn’t hear them, but I distinctly heard hurried footsteps coming towards me from behind.

  I spun around and found a middle-aged Chinese man sprinting at me from the street entrance – he pulled a long carving knife out of his belt as he came.

  Adrenaline kicked in, and, abandoning any notion of stealth, I brought up the revolver and squeezed the trigger twice. The booms echoed through the parking garage. The first shot missed; I’ve no idea where the bullet went. The second shot struck the onrushing man just above the sternum, about an inch to the left.

  I expected him to be knocked backwards by the force of the shot – after all, it always happens that way in movies – but he just jerked slightly and kept coming. I stepped back against the wall, watching in disbelief as he steamed straight for me. The thought he might be wearing a bulletproof vest crossed my mind and I was preparing to fire again when, two steps later, his legs gave out and he slammed face down onto the cold pavement in front of me.

  Hearing a noise in the alcove behind me, I spun again with my .38 raised in trembling hands. The elevator doors were being pried open. As they slowly parted, I saw the elevator car itself was stuck someplace between this floor and the one below. About a foot of the car could be seen along with its roof, and there crouched Arthur.

  “Hurry up and get in here,” he whispered fiercely. “Before every Tiger in the neighborhood shows up.”

  I heard running footsteps from the car park as I clambered up next to him and we worked to close the doors again.

  “What about Luke and Sonny?” I asked, puffing with exertion.

  “I already warned them. They should be hiding in the bottom of the shaft,” he whispered as the doors finally met. Darkness, absolute and impenetrable, cloaked the elevator shaft when the doors closed.

  “Keep your gun handy in case somebody tries to open those doors but try not to move around or talk too much. We don’t want to give them a reason to search here.”

  It didn’t take long before we could hear agitated voices talking loudly outside the elevator doors. Although we couldn’t make out exactly what they were saying, the man I’d shot had been found. Not exactly surprising, since I’d left him lying out in the open.

  Adrenaline was still coursing through me and I felt more than a little bit jittery, so much so, that when someone hammered on the door I pointed my gun in that direction and was about to squeeze the trigger. I felt Arthur’s hand touch my shoulder.

  “No,” he said, his whisper barely audible in my ear. “Shoot only if you see light from the sliding doors opening ... and make every shot count.”

  The voices outside the elevator died down and, after a while, stopped altogether. I thought they had left to continue their search through the parking garage, or perhaps went out to comb the streets, thinking we’d slipped out after shooting their rear guard, but I couldn’t be certain. For all we knew, there could be a Tiger standing in the alcove, waiting for somebody to stick their head out.

  “Should we try the door?” I whispered to Arthur.

  “No, too risky right now,” he said, producing a small flashlight from the pouch on his belt. He flicked it on. The cone of light played over the walls and floor of the shaft, and then he pointed it up.

  The building that the parking garage was located under was a four-story office building which had held mostly law offices and accounting firms, if the sign at the front was any indication. The shaft continued up into the building above although Arthur’s torchlight didn’t reach that high. It did, however, illuminate the elevator doors of the two stories above us.

  “Do you think that they’ll be searching for us in the office building itself?” I asked.

  “I doubt it – not yet, anyway. The only door from the parking garage into the building lobby is closed off with a chain and a padlock. I found that out when Sonny had me scout this place when we were looking for places to dump the first truck we took. As long as the chain’s in place on that door, they won’t think we went in there and the stairs only lead down further into the parking garage.”

  “Do you think we can get up there?”

  “I don’t know,” Arthur said. “I was hoping that there would be some sort of maintenance ladder or something, but there isn’t. I don’t think climbing the cables would be that easy and, even if we did, I’m not sure how we could get the doors open while clinging to them.”

  “I see what you mean,” I said. “Although, the doors have rails they slide on ... maybe we could stand on the rails to one side of the door and push them open.”

  “Yeah, maybe...” Arthur said, not sounding convinced. “Another option would be to hide in the elevator car itself. There’s an access hatch over there,” he shone the light over to illuminate a trapdoor a few feet from where I crouched. “With the narrowness of the hatch, I don’t think any Tigers checking the elevator shaft from above would look for us in there.”

  “Yeah, but if they did climb down and find us inside ... well, it would be like shooting fish in a barrel. Not sure I want to be a fish.”

  Arthur switched his light off and we squatted there in silence for a few moments. In my mind, it seemed the question was mostly theoretical, as we seemed to be safe where we were for the time being. The adrenaline was beginning to wear off and a vague sense of exhaustion was replacing the jittery excitement that I had been feeling.

  “How long do you think we should wait before we do something?” I asked him.

  “Let’s give it another few minutes.”

  “Sounds good to me,” I answered.

  We waited silently, my brain working overtime as it cycled through the different ways this could end. Most of them bad.

  Finally, Arthur whispered, “Okay, let’s give it a hundred count.”

  “Okay.”

  I began to count upwards from one in my head. I took my time, carefully regulating my count speed with a Mississippi between each number. It was a long hundred seconds. We didn’t hear a sound outside but that didn’t ease the tension and fear I felt at the prospect of leaving our little sanctuary.

  Arthur finished counting before I did, switching his flashlight on while I was still in the low nineties. Holding the light in his mouth, he stepped up to the door and began to pull it open. The inner door opened easily, but the outer door required more work and I began to appreciate just how difficult it had been for him to get in here, and then to allow me in later.

  We got the outer door open a crack and I put my eye to it. I couldn’t see anyone waiting to ambush us, so I gave Arthur a nod. We grabbed one door each and slid them open enough to allow us to get out. He hopped out first and I followed.

  The stairwell alcove was empty, but the body of the man I shot had been pulled to one side.

  “They’ll still be around here someplace,” Arthur said quietly. “The Tigers aren’t known for giving up.”

  “That’s not gonna help their mood either,” I said, nodding my head toward the dead man regretfully. Now that we were back out of the pitch darkness of the elevator, I had to ask him something I was curious about.

  “How did you know?” I asked. “How did you know I was going to shoot my gun in there? There’s no way you could possibly have seen me in the dark.”

  “You stopped breathing,” Arthur said. “Sonny taught me holding one’s breath is often
a sign that violent or stressful action is about to be undertaken.”

  “You must have super hearing,” I said, pondering that a moment. “I wonder how he and Luke are doing.”

  “Well we haven’t heard gunfire, so I guess they’re okay for the moment. We can’t think too much about it though, they’ll have to handle it themselves. We have to decide what we’re going to do.”

  “Yeah, what are you thinking?”

  “As I see it, we have three options. We can try and make our way down to the truck and the others, we can bail and go back to the academy, or we can stay here and basically do nothing.”

  “Option two is out,” I said. “I’m not going back while they’re still in danger.”

  “If we stick to Sonny’s plan, we should stay here, and wait for them,” Arthur said.

  “Luke likes to say that no plan survives first contact with the enemy,” I said. “I think we’ll need some revisions to Sonny’s plan.” I looked at the stairwell, and then toward the parking garage. “I think we should head down, but instead of the stairs we should go down the ramps. If we try the stairwell, there’s always the chance we’ll miss Luke and Sonny leaving in the truck. If we walk down the parking ramps and they happen to be on the way out, we can just jump in.”

  “Fine, if that’s what you want to do, let’s do it,” Arthur said. He sounded a little peeved that I was taking control and tried to wrest it back. “We are going to move quick and quiet, stay low, and keep a good lookout. And, for God’s sake, don’t shoot anybody.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.

  Creeping along the inner wall of the parking garage, we moved as swiftly as we could while still being stealthy. I knew I didn’t want to be taken unawares by a couple of gangbangers and I was sure that Arthur felt the same way. Mom, my real mom, used to say if wishes were fishes, we’d walk on the sea, as a way of telling me that I wasn’t always going to be able to get everything I wanted. Back then, when I was just a kid, I never understood what she meant. I do now.