Mike followed Kate through the overgrown trees down to the old road bed.”You going to stick up here?” Kate asked.
Mike nodded. “I think we ought to for right now. Who knows what’s next. Send Ronnie up if you can spare him.”
Tom came into view down below and Mike raised a hand to him. The two women looked drained, numb, probably still in shock, Mike told himself. Kate leaned into him and kissed him. “I’ll send Ronnie,” she told him. “I love you.”
“I love you too. Be careful, and let me know what those two have to say.”
“You know it,” Kate said. She turned, and with the two women in front of her, she made her way down through the trees to where Tom waited.
Mike stepped closer to the edge of the trees and stared out at the square. There were spaces where the buildings had collapsed, a huge area that had been undeveloped for years. Most of the square was in sight from this end of the parking lot.
His eyes moved across the jumbled and leaning buildings, the vehicles that burned where they had crashed. The square looked like a battleground. Greasy, billowing smoke hung in the air like a black cloud descending on the downtown area. He heard Ronnie coming up through the trees. He turned away from the square and waited for him to top the rise, and then the two of them walked back towards the opposite end of the parking lot where they could watch the entrance to State Street, most of that end of the square and both the edge of Factory Street and Mill Street as it began its run across the damaged bridge to the north side of the river.
“What’s going on? Can you see anything?” Ronnie asked.
“Some. You’ll see in a few minutes. What happened with the car?”
“Dead. Got three more clip rifles though.”
“So they were down with Sin and Death?”
“Looks like it to me. Same rifles, anyway.”
Mike was nodding. “I guess I knew it.”
Tim and Lilly stepped out of the shadows and nodded as Mike and Ronnie walked up.
“Quiet,” Lilly said. Tim nodded.
Mike handed one of the Machine pistols to Ronnie.
“Nice… Illegal, but nice,” he said.
“Takes standard Nine Millimeter ammo.” Ronnie started to hand it back. Mike shook his head. “Hang on to it,” he looked around at the parking lot. “I’m convinced they’ll be back.”
Ronnie nodded. “Four up here?” he asked.
“Five. They killed one of the women trying to escape.” Tim and Lilly had dragged her back into the woods while he’d been gone. He had seen the vague shape off in the thicker woods as he and Ronnie had walked up. “How many in the car?”
“At least five,” Ronnie said.
“Jesus… This is so stupid.” Mike said. Ronnie nodded and then went back to watching the greasy smoke rise up into the air.
Mike walked over to the edge of the tree cover and looked down over the cliff. The road looked deserted. He knew it wasn’t, but it looked that way. The four of them all had the machine pistols now, he, Ronnie, Lilly and Tim. They were better than the weapons they’d had. He wished they had found some of their own. He whistled long and low, waited a few seconds and then whistled once more. Bob stepped out of the shadows behind one of the trucks and looked up. Mike motioned him over and one by one he passed down the weapons they had brought up with them.
“Whoever needs them, Bob.” Bob nodded, and a second later he was gone. Mike walked back through the stunted trees towards the rear of the parking lot and began to wait for whatever might come next.
~
Kate had Tom run up two of the radios an hour later. Mike berated himself; he had never even thought of it. A short time after that Janet Dove sent up food in the form of energy bars and cold, tinned beef. A package of stale cookies made a
meal for the four of them, along with some bottled water. It was quiet, so Tom stayed to talk for a few minutes before he headed back down.
“Those two women are okay,” he said. “The one has a scratched up face, but Sandy says they’re okay. They talked to Kate and Patty... Sandy… Janet as well,” he added. “Those guys were trying to recapture them. Kidnap them I guess.”
Mike nodded. “That much I guessed.”
“They didn’t say anything else?” Ronnie asked.
“Yeah, they did. They asked me to leave though. I guess it was really bad,” he surmised.
Ronnie and Mike both nodded. “I imagine it was,” Ronnie said quietly.
“Guess I better go back,” Tom said. He started to turn. “Oh,” he remembered, “Here,” He reached into his pants pockets and pulled out two boxes of Nine Millimeter shells. “I almost forgot. Kate would be mad.”
“Thank you, Tom,” Mike said.
“Alright,” Ronnie told him as he turned to walk away. An hour later the second gunfight began.
~ On Again ~
The first noise came from the north side.
“Trucks coming,” the radio squawked. It sounded like Bob.
“From the north?” Ronnie asked.
“Yeah,” Pattie's voice answered. “Sounds like at least three, coming from deep over on the north side, like somewhere past the bridge, but coming fast,” she finished. The radio spat choppy static.
Mike moved back through the trees to see if he would be able to get much of a view towards the North side, but the river cliffs and the trees and brush that lined both sides of the Old River Road blocked his view.
He walked back to where Ronnie stood waiting just inside the trees watching the parking lot quietly.
Ronnie looked up as Mike made his way to the edge of the trees and the view of the parking lot.
“I was hoping for a better view, but it’s no good,” Mike explained.
Ronnie nodded. He pressed the radio’s send button. “Let us know,” He said.
“Coming now,” Patty said, “Coming fast.”
The sounds of the vehicles came clearly to Mike and Ronnie on top of the cliffs.
“Four,” Patty said, “Just blew by us heading for the square… They’re all small cars,” She finished.
“Got you,” Ronnie told her.
A split second later they heard the cars gearing down to slow
as they entered the square. But instead of entering the square, they braked hard, drifted right, tires screaming, and blew into the parking lot.
“Fuck,” Ronnie muttered.
“Fuck is right,” Mike agreed under his breath.
“They’re up here,” Mike said into the radio. “We’ll get back to you.”
All four cars sped into the parking lot and spread out; taking up what looked to be predetermined positions. It was obvious that none of the four realized that the four of them were inside the tree line watching them. One small, black Toyota screeched to a halt no more than thirty feet away from where Lilly and Tim were. Mike and Ronnie were just beyond that. Lilly and Tim both raised their machine pistols and trained them on the car.
The car was a four door model, four men inside of it, one driving, the other three hanging partway out of the windows, machine pistols in their hands, looking hard at the parking lot.
“Let’s move into the tree line a little deeper,” Mike mouthed as Lilly looked over at him. He motioned with his hands to make his point. Lilly nodded and Mike saw her bend and whisper into Tim’s ear. A moment later they both began to fade back into the tree line. Mike and Ronnie faded back about ten feet themselves, hoping to disappear into the tree line.
A radio crackled inside the car and a voice spoke. The driver reached down, came back with a hand held radio unit and began to speak.
Mike thumbed a small switch on his own radio, switching between the two channels his radio received and transmitted on. No voices came through on either channel. Almost too late Mike remembered to cut the volume on his own radio. Ronnie followed suit. A bare second after that Bob’s voice came through the speaker. Ronnie pressed his radio tightly to his ear and listened carefully, nodding as he did.
He t
urned to Mike. “They’re picking them up on a C.B. in one of the trucks. They were talking as they were on their way over, still are,” Ronnie said in a whisper. He spoke softly into his radio as Mike finally remembered to put his own radio to his ear.
“No. Don’t send Tom. They’re here, right here in the parking lot.” He turned to Mike. “They were going to send Tom with a hand held C.B.” he whispered.
Mike heard the acknowledgment on his own radio.
“Seems like a bad idea with them so close,” Ronnie whispered. Mike nodded in agreement.
“I wonder why the other side isn’t using radios,” Mike whispered.
“Maybe they are,” Ronnie said. He left the balance unsaid. The pair Mike and Ronnie were using were F.M. This group was using C.B. What else was there, Mike wondered? If they were listening, they could be picking up on one or both of the radio systems. Mike watched the same thoughts go through Ronnie’s mind. They both shrugged and focused their attention back on the parking lot and the cars that sat idling.
The sun was close to sinking in the North East, behind them as they faced the parking lot, putting any visual advantage in their favor. No bright sunlight in their eyes.
At the edge of the square through a gap in the buildings, Mike thought he saw a shadow move. He pointed, directing Ronnie’s attention to it. He turned to alert Tim, but his eyes were already locked on the same place. Mike turned his eyes back to where he had seen the movement. A second or so later, a man slipped slowly around the edge of the building and looked sidelong into the parking lot. He was still deep in shadow, probably hard for the men in the cars at ground level to see, but easy for Mike and the others to see. The car closest to them would have their view blocked by the buildings. The man moved quickly from his shadowy hiding place, surveyed the parking lot in its entirety once more and then faded back into the shadows again.
In the dark area of shadow, it was nearly impossible to see the man. The sun glinted off something in his hand. One of the men in the black car caught the glint of sunlight nearly at the same time that Mike and Ronnie did and opened up. The second gunfight began, and the man in the darkened alleyway who had hidden himself so well, became the first casualty.
Within seconds fighters appeared in and around the Square. One running figure stopped, lit the rag that hung from the neck of the bottle in his hand, and then tossed it at one of the cars on the far side of the parking lot. The bottle hit the roof line, shattered, and flaming gasoline splashed onto both men hanging from the rear windows. Within seconds everything inside the car was burning. The driver accelerated, maybe thinking he could somehow outrun the flames, but the speed turned the flames into a blow torch. The car continued to
accelerate, flaming like a torch. It jumped the curbing, plowed into a tilted section of sidewalk and became airborne. It crashed nose first into one of the plate glass windows of the porn shop that graced the shadowy west end of the parking lot, and the whole lower floor became an inferno.
The car closest to them began to open up on the bottle tosser with everything they had. They had delayed, frozen as the car followed its flaming destiny into the porn shop. Now they were firing on anything that moved in or around the square.
In the distance, they could hear the sound of engines coming closer, big V8 engines, not the small insect whine of the cars the men from the north side were driving.
One of the cars backed up and then took a running start at a wide sidewalk that cut up to the square. The undercarriage scraped across the concrete as the car flew over the curbing and slammed down onto the concrete sidewalk, showering the walkway with sparks. The car raced up the wide sidewalk toward the square, careening from side to side as it went. The occupants hung from the windows spraying automatic gunfire into the surrounding buildings as they went.
One of the other cars began to chase after the car heading for the square when a group in one of the buildings on the square side of the parking lot opened up on it. They heard a steady plink, plink, plink as the bullets found their way into the cars thin body, then a heavier coughing bark a split second later as a bigger gun found it.
The car spun around in a circle as the driver was hit. One of the guys leaning out of the back window was thrown forward under the spinning wheels and then run over. The driver straightened and gained control of the car for a split second only to lose it once more as he was hit once again. His foot pressed hard into the floor board.
The front end of the car was aimed slightly off center of the parking lot which would take it a few hundred feet down past where Mike and the others were hidden in the trees. It would probably miss the overgrown woods, crash over the edge of the cliff and down onto the Old River Road. Mike keyed the hand held and called to Bob.
“Bob! Listen,” he said, “We got a car coming over the cliff at you. Get out of the way… Now!” About the same time he finished speaking the Toyota jumped the curb and became air born. It sailed into the low, winter dead shrubs and brush at the end of the wooded area. The front end caught and began to tip downward as the shrubs and the trees snatched at it. The back of the car lifted up over the trees, engine still racing as it began to tumble, and then plunged down toward the Old River Road. The noise of the crash from the roadway was deafening and seemed to go on forever. Kate came over the radio. “Missed us… Hit the other truck,” static for a second “Those guys are wasted. They’re done,” she finished.
The two remaining cars were nowhere to be seen when Mike and Ronnie turned back to the parking lot. The one had disappeared up the sidewalk into a hail of gunfire, the other had simply disappeared.
“Out the end of the lot… Maybe headed back to the north,” Tim said anticipating his question.
“One just blew by the end of the road heading back over the bridge,” Patty said from the radio, confirming what Tim had told them.
“That’s got to be the other one. Good job, Tim,” Mike said.
A second later, the engines they had heard coming entered the square from lower State Street and Factory Street.
Two vehicles that had probably not so long ago been ordinary pickup trucks but were now lifted and wildly modified, screamed around the edge of the square from lower State Street, nearly going up on two wheels, and headed for the bridge. The cabs each held four men, machine pistols gripped tightly in their hands as they rode out the curve of the square. Once on the straightaway to the bridge, the men were leaning out the windows and firing wildly at the fleeing cars.
The last truck careened off Factory street, a half dozen men riding in the open bed, holding onto the roll bar, and fell in behind the other two trucks. Mike listened as they accelerated and headed for the north side.
“Trucks coming at you,” Ronnie was saying as Mike watched the trucks roar past the edge of the square and drop down the short hill that lead to the bridge.
“Hear them,” Patty came back, and a few seconds later, “Got them. They just passed the end of the road headed for the north side.” The radio went back to static.
A fourth truck roared down Factory Street and slewed around, nearly tipping over as it tried to make the turn down the little hill to the bridge. Up on the square, the car that had shot up the sidewalk to the square, came back around the edge of the square and opened up on the truck.
The truck was caught off guard. The nose came up as the driver floored the gas pedal in an effort to get away, and then bounced back down on the asphalt as the engine died. The small car screeched to a stop and opened up on the truck, the occupants in the truck kept up a steady fire back at the car.
As Mike watched, Ronnie nudged him and pointed out a building in back of the small car. A young woman appeared at the edge of the roof line, a gas filled bottle in her hands. She lit the rag and tossed it down at the small car. The bomb hit the roof of the car and liquid fire spread from end to end, dripping down onto the shooters. For a second there was nothing, and then the interior of the car bloomed into flame. The car accelerated across the space betwe
en itself and the truck. Mike could hear men screaming inside the burning car from where he stood watching the events unfold.
The shooters in the truck opened up on the small car filling it full of lead, but the car never slowed. The car hit the truck broadside and both vehicles erupted in flames. Seconds later, the truck's gas tank blew. The rear end of the truck lifted from the pavement with a wham and then crashed back down, a twisted, flaming wreck. It landed partway onto the roof of the small car, crushing it inward, adding its own flames to that coming from the car. The cars gas tank went next, and the screaming stopped abruptly.
Flames shot up into the night sky. The only sounds the crackle of flames and the steady pop, pop, pop as bullets exploded inside the burning vehicles.
Ronnie keyed the hand held radio. “Two of them just blew up here. There’s a lot of people still on the ground though. Keep a watch out.”
Mike was watching the buildings. “They’re hiding in the buildings. Maybe they’re going to ground,” he told Ronnie. As he watched, he saw several shadows slipping between the buildings.
Bob came back on the radio. “Listen, we’ve got to get that car gone. It’s burning… Caught the truck it hit also. We’ve got to push it off into the river before it blows.”
“Do it,” Mike said. “Be careful.”
They heard the sound of one of their own trucks starting down on the Old River Road just seconds later and listened to the screaming and screeching of tires as the truck pushed the two burning vehicles over the edge of the cliffs and into the river. “Done,” It was Kate who called to tell them. Bob had gotten in the truck and done the pushing himself.
Thank God, Mike thought. “Got you,” he said aloud.
“Trucks are coming back,” She said next.
A few seconds later the sounds of the engines came to Ronnie and Mike.
The screaming engines reverberated off the river cliffs as they came. They crossed the bridge, blew past the burning wrecks and disappeared up State Street in a roar of engine noise and a flash of brake lights.
The Rising of the Dead Page 19