by Nick Petrie
“I’m losing visibility,” Albert called through the sliding rear window.
Judah Lee didn’t seem to hear. He was laughing, long and loud. “They can’t touch us, brother.” He thumped on the top of the cab with his meaty fists. “Faster,” he roared. “Come on, faster. Catch up and we’ll take them down.”
Albert wasn’t sure they’d ever catch up to that fancy car. Why it wasn’t already farther ahead, he had no idea.
The viewing slots were smaller than Albert had wanted. He’d known he was going to be the driver, he should have been the one to make the decision. He’d let Judah Lee’s louder voice shout him down. Now it was harder to see than ever.
Only one of too many mistakes, Albert was starting to see.
That heavy armor worked both directions. What had seemed like a way to keep the family farm had become something else.
Something he was both trapped inside and part of. And responsible for.
Judah Lee’s murder spree.
Sweet Jesus.
Then Judah’s enormous head was at the rear window. “What the fuck’re you doing? We need to catch up. Put the hammer down.”
“I can’t barely see.” Albert had to shout over the noise of the engine and wind.
“You ain’t runnin this show. Just do what you’re told.”
Maybe there was another way, Albert thought. He’d given up too many decisions. He’d just gone along with Judah.
But the pickup wasn’t registered to Albert. Judah Lee had gotten it from somewhere, the same as that old Country Squire. If Albert could get rid of them, get both vehicles clean of any sign he’d been in them, he might keep his life. Might somehow find a way through this mess. Make some kind of amends.
He could still see forward. He could see the right rearview through the viewing port. There was no telling what his brother would do, no matter that they might all die in the doing of it.
Maybe that was all that remained of Judah Lee’s plan. His own last explosion of rage, taking as many other people with him as he could.
Albert didn’t want to be one of them. No, he thought, the only way out was through.
So he leaned forward to find the black car through the narrow viewing port, then stepped hard on the gas.
Ninety miles an hour on the long bridge across the river. Ninety-five as they passed the rest stop on the Arkansas side, Albert sweating like a pig in the hot pickup. Then the Mercedes was slowing for an exit, Martin Luther King Jr. Drive into West Memphis, Arkansas.
Albert followed. Cars were bunched up at the bottom.
On the cab roof, the big machine gun began its deafening thump thump thump again.
* * *
• • •
The light was red at the bottom of the ramp, but the dark Mercedes swerved around the waiting vehicles and made a wide left through moving traffic, a half-dozen truckers blasting air horns loud and angry behind it. Judah’s gun punched holes through cars and semi-trailers, tracers chasing the black car and catching it low on the side with glowing red splashes that faded in the bright-lit intersection.
Albert took the same path behind his quarry, using the stunned stillness of the other cars to speed his route, barely slowing as his armored fender caught the front corner of some tiny car and slammed it away.
Under the freeway, Albert saw the black car’s brake lights flash, then it turned again, this time onto some kind of service road. Albert was a hundred yards back and cornered hard. Felt the top-heavy pickup lurch to the side, not quite on two wheels but close.
Through the open back window, he heard a curse and the clatter of metal sliding across the bare cargo bed. Albert glanced at the center rearview and saw Judah braced in the corner with both hands, pointed teeth bared, his skull tattoo glowing blue under the pale, unearthly glow of the streetlights.
Albert peered out the front viewing slot again.
They were in truck-stop land, with tall signs and high flat covers over lines of diesel pumps and rows of rigs parked in giant lots for an easy exit. The service road curved around in a long loop, but it was empty ahead of them.
The black car’s taillights were gone.
58
Here.” Peter pointed.
Lewis slung the Mercedes over a low curb to avoid a wide-turning Mayflower moving van, then coasted at speed down the wide aisle through the Wingfoot Truck Care Center, lights out, foot off the brake.
Peter turned in his seat to look behind them. The SUV was tiny compared to the rows of parked tractor-trailers, but still visible from the service road under the bright sodium lamps. He couldn’t tell whether the red pickup had passed them. He didn’t see any movement or headlights on their tail.
Now Lewis slipped to the right, this time around the far side of the blue-and-white steel Wingfoot service building, cutting a wide curve to shed some velocity.
“We clear?”
Peter peered through the white-spalled windows, looking behind them for the rust-red beast and not seeing it. “I don’t know.”
Ahead of them stood a broad row of tractor-trailers seen from the ass end, their drivers filling up at a wide bank of gas pumps under a tall sheltering canopy with LOVE’S TRAVEL STOP written across it in large letters. Beside the pumps was yet another parking area filled with heavy trucks. Lewis rolled across a yellow-striped section of pavement between the pumps and the parking area, headed toward the far exit, but stopped short beside a cinder-block structure, sheltered from the return loop of the service road.
A classic speed-trap waiting spot.
But instead of radar guns, they had the other kind.
Lewis’s leather duffel sat wedged onto the transmission hump between the rear footwells. Peter reached into the bag and dug out boxes of ammunition, 10- and 12-gauge shells and rifle rounds for the HK.
“I’m gonna say fifteen seconds,” said Lewis.
“One,” said Peter. “Two.” He set the boxes in a row on the floor behind his feet, pulled out three shells, and thumbed them into Lewis’s shotgun.
As he said, “Thirteen,” the red pickup roared past them down the service road.
Lewis hit the gas and the Mercedes leaped forward to the road, then slewed in behind the pickup, coming to a halt on the passenger side as it idled at the intersection. Part of a blue face peered through the burnt-edged slit in the rusty armor plate. Peter opened his door and stepped onto the blacktop, raised the shotgun into the V formed by the open door and the windshield pillar, fitted the buttstock into his shoulder, and fired.
The blue face disappeared. Peter racked the slide and fired again. He saw the marks in the steel. The red truck lurched forward and turned to the right into traffic. Peter racked the slide and fired again, this time at the driver’s now-visible passenger-side viewing port. The side mirror blew forward on its mount and the pickup was away.
Peter dropped back inside, pulling his legs behind him, and Lewis had the hammer down before Peter was fully back in his seat. The acceleration closed the heavy armored door on its own. Peter saw the nose of a big FedEx semi getting larger and larger in Lewis’s side window. Then Lewis was through the corner and in pursuit.
“Get him?”
“No fucking idea. But the driver’s got no more side mirrors, so he’s pretty much blind behind.”
Ahead of them, the red pickup roared around a pair of fat sedans and across the overpass for a different highway, I-55, then blared through oncoming traffic toward the on-ramp, where it turned east. Headed back across the Mississippi toward Memphis.
The black Mercedes was right behind them.
Peter reloaded the 10-gauge.
59
The bombs started coming before they got to the river.
The highway was tight, two lanes on each side with a chest-high concrete divider between them. A hundred yards ahead, the red truck was swerving through t
raffic, occasionally jammed up behind a slower car until the other driver looked in the mirror and saw the rust-clad monster on its rear bumper and got out of the way as quickly as possible.
Peter had the map up on his phone again, thinking of the directions this might go, when he saw a pipe section with a sizzling red-tipped tail come over the top of the rusty pillbox, then bounce down the roadway toward them.
Lewis slid into the next lane and slowed down. The bomb took a side hop into their lane and went off with a half-round of orange-black flame maybe eight car-lengths ahead of them, followed quickly by a heavy BOOOM. The sound of it was deep and throaty, the roar of something ancient and terrible.
They felt the pressure wave buffet the car and heard the clatter of shrapnel against the armored glass and hardened steel as they drove through the blast. The car’s ventilation system carried the sulfury chemical smell of spent black powder and melted asphalt. Beside them, a white hatchback’s windshield turned to spiderwebs and its driver slammed on the brakes. Peter felt sick to his stomach. No armor on a Volkswagen.
He didn’t even want to think about all those big semis behind them, too heavy to slow in time. At best it would be a huge traffic jam. At worst a massacre. His fault. He should have found them sooner, gotten to their farm a day earlier, or stayed there, waiting.
Kept all this violence far away from innocent people.
The white static roared in his head.
“Step on it. We need to end this.”
Lewis hit the gas and the Mercedes surged forward. Ninety, a hundred.
A blue tattooed face popped up above the rusty steel plate.
Two objects in one meaty fist, some kind of windproof lighter in the other.
Two sizzling red tips soared toward them, then danced randomly on the asphalt.
Lewis slalomed past. BOOOM BOOOM, the bombs blew in their wake. “How do we fight this?”
“Get closer.”
At twenty yards, they could see the pointed teeth in the grinning blue face now, standing at the rear holding three pipes in one hand, thumb clicking the windproof lighter in the other. “That’s definitely him,” said Lewis. “Judah Lee Burkitts. Same ugly face as that prison picture.”
“Get me up there.” Peter was on his knees on the seat, wishing he was right-handed. “The shotgun or the HK?”
“What, you’re going to surf the roof? Don’t be stupid.” Lewis eased away. “We need to wait until the traffic thins out. There are too many people.”
“He doesn’t care about that,” Peter said. “Better to stop him fast. Get me close and I’ll put some rounds inside that pillbox.”
Three bright tips flared, but didn’t fly. Burkitts stared at the flames. The red flickering was captivating.
“He’s timing the fuses.” Lewis took his foot off the gas.
“Hopefully he forgets he’s holding them.” It was one of the odd things about war, that the pyrotechnics could be beautiful, even magnificent. It could lull you into a trance, if you weren’t careful.
Then Burkitts let one bomb drop, watching with the curiosity of a child.
Lewis stood on the brakes. The bomb went off four car-lengths ahead of them, BOOOOM, the loudest one yet. The flame and pressure wave and shrapnel were more intense.
“Incoming.” The other two bombs soared toward them in a long high arc. “Punch it.”
Lewis put the pedal down again, no longer any reason to hide the speed and acceleration of the armored Mercedes. Peter heard thumps as the metal bounced off the roof, then the hard double punch of the blasts right behind them. BABOOOOM.
Behind was better than ahead. Behind, their speed reduced the relative power of the pressure wave and the speed of the shrapnel. Blowing ahead of them, their speed magnified that power.
Behind, though, were other cars without armor. Cars full of citizens who hadn’t asked for this fight, or any fight. Folks who just wanted to get home to see their kids, get something to eat, relax in front of the TV.
They reached the long bridge over the Mississippi. Angular steel trusses, less elegant than the curves of the M-shaped bridge, flying past overhead. A pair of rusty railroad bridges barely visible on the left. “What’s coming up?” Lewis asked.
Peter took his phone from the center console. “City streets straight ahead or a right-lane curve to stay on the highway.”
“I’m betting on the highway.” Lewis dropped back to give them room to react.
Then they were off the bridge, traffic slowing. The curve right was a single lane. Ahead of them, the red pickup swerved hard into the breakdown lane and passed the line of merging cars at eighty or better, bouncing on the rough roadway.
Lewis followed the pickup down the curve, maintaining speed and distance. Nowhere to hide now, both of them waiting for the next bomb. The bucketing car was too rough for Peter to make any kind of move. He felt the urgency for action deep in his bones, a magnetic pull.
Lewis said, “You think this car can take a direct hit?”
“Probably,” said Peter, still kneeling on the seat but braced between the ceiling and the oh-shit handle. “But if we take one on the windshield, we’ll be blind.”
They were both glad when the curve merged into three lanes of good pavement and the pickup sped up again. Eighty, ninety. Room to move.
“Come on, get up there.” Peter took up the HK and pulled the charging lever to put a round into the chamber.
“Stay in the fucking car.” Lewis looked at him and kept the Mercedes well back. “If you’re hanging out that door when something goes off, you’re dead, either from the blast or the shrapnel. Or you just plain lose your grip and hit the road at ninety miles an hour with traffic coming up behind you. Or all of the above. Hell, if that door’s open, it might get me, too.”
Peter grinned, a wild heat blooming behind his eyes. “Then we better do this right.”
Ahead of them, the blue head and shoulders appeared. One thick hand filled with pipes, the other hand holding the lighter. Bright red spots sizzled and flared.
Peter didn’t stop to count how many.
Instead he popped open his door with his right knee on the armrest, his left knee on the seat, his right elbow over the top of the door. He balanced there in the ninety-mile-an-hour wind, strong legs holding the door open as he brought the compact assault rifle to his shoulder and fired short, steady bursts. He felt that familiar staccato punch as he watched the impact marks on the rusty steel and adjusted his aim accordingly.
God, he’d missed this. The feeling of righteous rage.
The blue head disappeared. The cluster of bombs all fell at once, the red tips spreading apart as the pipes bounced across all three lanes.
Peter fired until the magazine was empty.
Then he felt himself being hauled flailing back inside, Lewis’s hand hard on his belt, their speed slamming the door against the barrel of the HK still slung around Peter’s shoulder, holding the door partway ajar.
“Close that fucking door.” Lewis stepped hard on the accelerator and the car leaped forward toward the sizzling red lights. Peter pushed the door slightly to free the weapon, then pulled it shut.
Five bombs went off in quick succession, BABOOOBABABOOOOOOM.
Two to each side, slightly behind them, one directly in front of them.
The nose of the speeding Mercedes floated free on the pressure wave for a fraction of a second before the heavy car dropped back down.
Their side mirrors had vanished. The Kevlar run-flats seemed to be holding. Most of the windows had gone white from shrapnel impacts. Lewis held the wheel tight with both hands.
“What the fuck’s the matter with you? Do you have a fucking death wish?”
“I want to kill those assholes. Put them in the ground.”
Both men were shouting.
Lewis let the car drop bac
k until it was a quarter mile behind the red pickup, then kept it there, following the other vehicle in long sweeping arcs through thinning traffic at a hundred miles an hour.
“You didn’t want to kill those gangbangers,” Lewis said. “You said it yourself. You had multiple chances to kill each one of them and you didn’t. Even Charlene, who’d put an ice pick through your eyeball as soon as look at you. You didn’t want me to kill ’em, either. And I wanted to, bad.”
While he wove the heavy Mercedes effortlessly through slower cars, Lewis looked at Peter.
“So why’s this any different?”
Peter didn’t know.
He was angrier than he’d been in a long time. No kind of cool tactical calm, but a hot fury, barely at the edge of his control, or maybe outside of it now. The kind of reckless, blood-boiling battle rage that came in combat. Usually after the injury or death of a friend.
Breathe in, he told himself. Breathe out. He looked through the damaged windshield at the cars slipping past like they were standing still, at the vine-covered chain-link that kept the highway from the city. Breath by breath, he brought himself back.
“When you touched that gold,” Peter finally said, “you felt something. Something horrible. Nadine felt it, too. But I didn’t feel anything.”
Lewis gave him that small, tilted smile.
“Oh, you’re feeling something,” he said. “Guilty. After four hundred years of slavery, plus a hundred-fifty years of Jim Crow and lynchings and red-lining and endless fucking discrimination of all kinds, you come to darktown Memphis to do some good and you’re feeling guilty.”
“Yes,” said Peter. The landscape flying past them now, the city lit up on both sides of the highway. Suddenly conscious of Lewis in the seat beside him. “I guess I am.”
“Well, you don’t have to apologize to me, Jarhead. You’re not oppressing me or nothing. Shit, we’re friends, right?” Lewis reached out and slapped Peter on the back of the head, and not gently. “Just don’t get me killed being stupid, you dumb-ass white-bread mayonnaise-eating cracker motherfucker.”