by Dixon, Chuck
With the highway wall empty of shooters and silent, Jim Kim swung his view beneath the overpass. Smash was nowhere to be seen. He’d made it through into the deeper woods on the other side. A crowd of greased-up gomers gathered at the cut in the fence. The travois was firmly lodged, keeping them from following Smash.
A fresh round of fire opened up from the opposite direction. Lead peppered the blocks. Jim Kim threw himself to the floor of the shack. The fire was furious and insistent, automatic fire from somewhere out on the front lot. The inside of the shack was a haze of brick dust. Heavy-caliber rounds were pulverizing the walls. A spent round struck him like a hammer in the side. He curled up, waiting for the storm to pass.
The fire died away a bit, coming down to short bursts and potshots. Through the ringing in his ears, Jim Kin heard a new sound under the sporadic gunfire.
The throaty growl of a big machine. On the move.
For the front of Tool Town.
67
Smash was blown out.
His heart was racing from fear and the exertion of his high-stepping sprint through the snow. He ran with the cop’s Glock in his fist, the gunbelt slung over his shoulder, along with Caz’s shotgun. He tried to follow Caz’s and Mercy’s path, but it had been blown over by the wind. He lost the trail, and jogged left and right, trying to find it again.
Above and behind him, he heard the pop of gunshots. He turned to look back at the overpass. No one on the guard walls. No gomers were on his back trail. A shadow fell from the opposite side of the span to drop out of sight into the trees.
He dropped to his knees on a slope and threw up a wormy mess of Ramen noodles and root beer. His chest heaved, his head pounded, and his heart felt like it was hammering against his ribs trying to get out. His breathing was quick and shallow.
Smash raised his head in time to see a dark shape moving against the snow. Before he could raise the Glock, Wendy was on him. The dog’s wet tongue lapped his face, and his nose snuffled his hair.
Caz charged up the hill to his side. “Where’s Jim?” Caz said.
Smash’s mouth moved but he couldn’t make words, his tongue thick and heavy. Mercy joined them. She gathered a handful of snow and slapped Smash hard across the face with it. The impact and cold stung him back to his senses.
“He’s at Tool Town. On the roof,” Smash gasped out after they brought him upright.
“Why didn’t he leave?” Caz said.
“Covering me. These guys brought gomers. Trained ones, like attack dogs,” Smash said, nodding at Mercy.
“They’re faster, right?” Mercy said.
Smash nodded, sucking air into aching lungs.
More gunfire reached them through the trees. Long strings of fire echoed from the other side of Tool Town.
“That’s automatic fire,” Caz said, standing. He trotted up the hill with Mercy and Wendy behind him.
“Where are you going?” Smash called after them.
“We’re not leaving him behind,” Caz shouted back.
“What do I do?” Smash said.
“Fight or flight,” Mercy yelled before disappearing over the crest of the slope.
Jim Kim pitched himself out of the lookout shack and onto the roof. Behind him, the shack was being dismantled by a stream of fire from somewhere out in the dark. The withering barrage was punctuated by a loud booming noise. With each boom, a hole the size of a beer coaster was punched through the block. Someone out there had one of those .50 caliber sniper rifles he used in Mount Doom II: Hour of Judgment. He couldn’t remember the name of it. A stitch was burning in his side where the spent round had struck him. A new streak of pain ran from his hip to his underarm with every movement. He bit down hard and kept moving on all fours for cover.
Shooters on the overpass worked their nerve up once more. They were taking shots at him. He rolled against the back curtain wall. He could hear that motor sound grinding louder. Something big was rolling toward the storefront, big enough to break down the barricaded doors. He knew he needed to be gone before that happened.
Snow mixed with gravel kicked up around him as Jim Kim threw himself toward the roof hatch. He yanked the hatch open and was met with a thick pall of black smoke rushing up at him.
Smash had gone through with this scorched-earth idea. Tool Town was burning.
Jim Kim cursed a stream of Korean obscenities that would have shocked his grandmother in Seoul. He jumped to his feet and ran full out for the cover of the central air units. He left the hatch open behind him. Smoke gushed out of it, driven by the inferno from inside. The gunfire waxed and waned as the black haze covered the roof in a thick, choking fog. His way down was cut off but the smoke was offering him cover, freedom of movement.
He was squeezing his way between two of the big condenser boxes when his earbud came to life.
“Jimmy, you hear me?” It was Caz.
He pulled his scarf up over his nose and mouth. “Where are you?” he said.
“We’re coming around the back of Best Buy. Give you some covering fire.”
“No! You need to get away from here!” Jim Kim shouted into the two-way.
“Did they start a fire?”
“That asshole Smash started it! I can’t get down! Leave me!”
“Not doing that. Will let you know when we’re in position.”
The earbud went dead.
Jim Kim dropped to the gravel and crawled as low as he could under the cloud of swirling smoke. He was making his way to the front of the store when he heard an ugly metallic impact. The roof shuddered under him.
68
Caz and Mercy climbed a snowdrift piled against the sagging fence behind Best Buy. They dropped over the other side. Wendy followed, only to stop at the crest of the drift, paws splayed, searching for a way down from the eight-foot height. Caz motioned for the dog to stay put. Wendy settled down on his haunches with a whimper, eyes locked on Caz and Mercy trotting away.
Snow was drifted high against the back of Best Buy, allowing Caz to just reach the bottom rung of an access ladder. He swung it down and held his weight on it for Mercy to climb up. He went up after her. Free of the weight, the swing ladder rose back in place. The roof of the store offered a view of the lot and an oblique view of the face of Tool Town. A monster earthmover with eight-foot tires was driven against the front of the building, a big road-grading machine with a driver seated high in a box cabin. It was just backing up for another run at one of the fortified entrances.
On the lot was a collection of fat-tire war rides, pumped up technicals with heavy guns mounted in the backs. A man stood in the bed of one with a Barrett .50 resting atop the cab. He was sighting on the roofline of Tool Town, taking potshots into the rising smoke. It smelled like a fuel fire, hot and greasy. Once it got to the lumber or paint department, the whole place would reach flashpoint.
Men stood straddling dirt bikes and watching the action, waiting for the big machine to bust into the store. They were at greater-than-platoon strength, with more on the way. Some raised rifles to send streams of tracers buzzing at the roofline, more to break the tedium than to suppress return fire. Caz sensed a party atmosphere. These guys were already in the locker room celebrating the win. It was all over but the looting for them.
Caz took a position against the low façade at the front of the store and sighted on the man behind the Barrett. He pointed behind him for Mercy to cover his six. She crouched, the shotgun trained on the cage at the head of the ladder where they’d reached the rooftop.
“We’re in position, Jimmy. You reading me?” Caz said, settling the butt of the M4 against his shoulder.
“I’m here.”
“Where?”
“On the roof.”
“Then get your ass off the roof,” Caz said and squeezed the trigger.
The Barrett shooter’s head jerked to one side. His body went limp, and he slid off the roof of the cab and fell into the truck bed. Caz shifted to his right and brought down a bike rider with
a double-tap through center mass. He was bringing the sights onto a third man when the crowd below twigged that they were taking fire from a new angle. Caz dropped his third man and was able to tag two more rovers before rounds starting buzzing over his head. Tracers arced up to strike all along the brick façade and sprang off the steel of the big sideways V of the Best Buy logo. Caz rolled away. Mercy had dropped flat.
He moved along the roof to where the façade rose higher at an angle behind the Best Buy sign. He stood up, the sign offering cover up to his chest. A series of three-round bursts brought down three men in a loose group who were moving at a run to the corner of the building. Four or more made it to the cover at the side of the store.
“We need to move,” he said and was up and pushing Mercy for the ladder cage.
She scrambled down the ladder. Caz walked the rear edge of the roof, rifle trained down. Four figures moved around the corner at the far end of the back of the store. The first folded in half and dropped to the snow with a three-round burst through the gut. Another spun, wheeling as he was winged. Caz lost the other two among cargo containers ranked in a row behind the store. He let loose suppression, striking sparks off the shell of the Conex boxes until he saw Mercy was at the bottom of the ladder and clear.
Using the drifts for cover, Mercy kept her shotgun pointed at the shadows among the containers while Caz slid down the ladder. He tapped her shoulder and pointed for her to head back to the fence line while he walked backward, sending controlled fire out to discourage pursuit.
They rushed into the gray shadows along the fence. Wendy stood waiting for them, panting, fur matted with blood. His tail wagged while Caz quickly ran his hands over him, looking for a wound. It was Mercy who spotted the still figure lying face-down near a dumpster in a puddle of red snow.
“We need to go,” Caz said and, hand in Wendy’s collar, moved along the fence with Mercy jogging after.
The man driving the grader wore some kind of steel goalie mask. He was ten feet off the snow, working levers, drawing the big machine back for another run. Tool Town’s steel doors came away. The glass shattered. Wisps of the insulation blew away on the wind.
Jim Kim sighted through eyes stinging from smoke. The fire below was raging, getting hotter. The snow on the roof was evaporating into vapor and rising with the column of black smoke.
Squinted hard, Jim Kim focused through hot tears on the driver and put a round through the glass of the cab. The shot struck sparks off the driver’s mask. The impact whirled him against the back of the cab. His hands leapt off the gear handles.
Jim Kim chambered a fresh round to put a second shot into the masked man’s chest. The driver leaned on the shifters for support, flooring the pedal as he did so. The huge blade of the machine slammed into the front wall of the store with enough force to lift Jim Kim bodily off the surface of the roof.
The point of the blade drove through the blocks and collapsed the barricade wall behind the doors. The machine continued on, embedding its snout into the entryway until its progress was stopped by the cab slamming into the building. The glass exploded from the cabin and the metal-faced driver tumbled out. He fell limp between the turning wheels of the grader.
Rovers charged forward over the lot, eager to get inside the store. They were climbing around the machine when fresh oxygen rushed into the gap created by the grading machine, creating a backwash of flame that raced out on a scorching wind. The lead rovers were engulfed by the super-heated gust. The rest retreated to roll smoking in the snow.
Jim Kim fled from the sudden updraft of furnace heat. It was time to do what Caz had ordered him to do. Time to get his ass off the roof.
69
Wendy strained at his collar, pulling Caz at a stumbling run after him. The dog was leaping up on his hind legs, snout high and twitching. A long keening squeal came from between his clenched teeth. They reached a copse of trees separating the Best Buy loading area from Tool Town’s. Caz got an arm around Wendy’s heaving chest, holding the dog back from charging ahead. Smoke was pouring over the high fence around the garden center to create a blinding fog. Wendy struggled in Caz’s grip, the dog’s nose cutting through the stink of the fuel fire to find something that was pissing him off.
“Get a grip on his collar,” Caz said, struggling to hold the squirming shape in his arms.
Before Mercy could do that, the big shepherd kicked back, catching Caz in the groin, the big paw like a fist. Caz’s hold slipped and Wendy was off, streaking into the wall of smoke.
The raised rows of sunroof panels cracked then shattered. Orange flame licked skyward inside a dense tower of noxious smoke. A galaxy of sparks flew upward on the hurricane of super-heated air, suddenly free.
Jim Kim was stumbling through slush. The snow had melted to make the roof a filthy swamp. He could feel the heat through the soles of his boots. He came to the edge of the roof and could no longer see the loading dock below. The roof of the RV parked close against the building seemed to float on a roiling sea of black dust.
He tossed the rifle down to land atop the RV and hung off the roof, legs dangling over a ten-foot drop. A sudden backdraft of blue fire roared upward to lance into the dark cloud hovering low over Tool Town. The concussive rush tore his hands from atop the curtain wall, and he fell hard onto the metal roof. He slid on icy slush to the edge and over. A half-second of weightlessness, and he crashed to the hard surface of the rear drive.
A gale-force gust driven by the rush of heat thinned the black smoke to a dusky gray. Jim Kim recovered, rising to his knees, to see reaching hands emerging from the surrounding gloom.
He fell under the weight of the gomers. They clawed at his thick winter clothing, looking for open flesh. Jim Kim kicked and punched, ignoring the agony in his side and a new agony in his neck, struggling wildly to free himself. He felt teeth clamp on his arms and legs, unable to chew through the layers of Gore-Tex and firehose canvas. He shrieked in fear and pain. They were going to eat him alive, tear him to pieces like a roasted chicken. He kicked harder, and struck out with his fists. He could feel himself weakening.
Through the eerie silence of his attackers and the pounding of his own heart, he heard a feral snarl. A pair of hands released their grip on his hood, and weight came off his hips. It was enough relief to allow him to turn his body and piston a boot out. He felt bone snap under his heel. He rolled from under the scattering mob and got to his feet, bicycling away.
In a ragged circle of gomers, Wendy was whirling and snapping. His eyes were wild with rage, snout pulled back to reveal fangs and gums. He leapt at one and another of the closing ring, trying to break free. Wendy caught the free-swinging genitals of one of the gomers and tore them loose with a twist of his jaws. The gomer kept on, ignoring what would have been a crippling blow to a living man.
Jim Kim slammed his back into the wall of the RV. He looked around, frantic to find something—anything that would serve as a weapon.
The rifle lay in the slush, where it must have come off the roof of the Coachman with him. He snatched it up by the barrel and rushed the closest gomer. The Rynex butt of the rifle collided with the gomer’s skull, exploding it like a grisly piñata.
Half the gomers turned from Wendy to lunge for Jim Kim. He backed against the side of the RV and drove the butt of the rifle into the face of a gomer. The blow smeared the nose across the face, collapsed the cheekbones to send an eye flying from its socket on a spurt of viscous fluid.
These dead were different. Faster. More alert. It was like they had been altered, amped up. It was only a matter of seconds before they brought him down.
He swung again and clipped a gomer in the neck with the edge of the stock. Another got a grip on his arm to pull him closer, jaws wide for a killing bite.
A tight series of cracks. Dead were struck, and staggered as rounds came out of the dark smoke to tear through them. Only one was a headshot, dropping one of the gomers closing on Wendy.
The gomer with an iron grip on
Jim Kim stumbled, his hands slipping. Jim Kim felt a hammer blow to his leg. It collapsed under him, and he fell away from the clutches of his attacker. The gomer fell as well, entrails spilling from a split across his abdomen. Stinking ropes of organs tangled in the dead man’s legs.
“I’m coming, man! Hold on, Jimmy!” It was Smash, shouting to him from the dark.
“You shot me, you dick!” Jim Kim called back. He clamped a hand on the pain in his leg, feeling warm blood welling between his fingers.
“Sorry!”
Gomers rushed in, the smell of fresh blood and decaying guts making them mad with hunger. They came on, jaws working, eyes surging with an insatiable lust for living tissue.
A gomer was lifted from his feet and flung away. A second collapsed, head gone from the chin up. Another had a leg swept from under him, torn off at the hip.
Mercy stepped into the slaughter from the whirling smoke, jacking a new round into the pump gun. She blasted a gomer point-blank, severing his spine with a pumpkin ball.
Caz came out of the dark behind her, M4 to his shoulder, walking up to deliver single headshots from a range inside three feet. Mercy stood astride Jim Kim and reloaded the shotgun with shells from her coat pockets.
Jim Kim’s vision swam. He felt a wave of icy chill wash over him. The smoke was closing in on him, filling his head with an eddying fog. Through the fog, he could hear Caz calling for his dog, Mercy warning him to stay still and Smash calling out again and again and again.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
70
Jim Kim came around and was sorry he did.
His body was a catalog of pain, from a stiffening neck to the burning agony in his side and the pulsing torture of his leg. The leg was the worst of the three, and made worse every second by the jouncing movement of the stretcher he lay on.