by Nick Petrie
A choked laugh forced its way out of Peter. “Sorry. I just—” he said. “I want to do something.”
“You are,” Lewis said. “We are, we’re doing this. Ebony and ivory, brother.” He gave his long, low, bubbling chuckle. “’Course, you know ivory’s illegal because elephants are endangered, right?”
“That’s very inspirational.”
“I’m gonna get a talk show.”
* * *
• • •
Lewis stayed a steady quarter mile behind the pickup. They followed it from I-55 to the 240 bypass, then to 385. Traffic faded as they got farther outside the city.
They’d seen no new bombs for almost ten minutes.
“How the fuck are we going to do this?” asked Peter.
“Outlast ’em,” said Lewis. “We wait long enough, they’ll run out of gas, or their engine will overheat, or the police will show up.”
“He’s got to be thinking the same thing,” said Peter. “He’s not going to wait.”
“No.”
“Why haven’t we seen the police? With a running gun battle and bombs on the freeway, you’d think we’d have their attention.”
Lewis leaned over to peer at the night sky. “I don’t see any air support,” he said. “We went from Tennessee to Arkansas, then back to Tennessee on a different highway, now we’re almost to Mississippi. My guess is we’ve outrun the cops. Anyway, it’s better without them.” He made a face. “Less chance of getting shot by mistake.”
Ahead of them, the head and shoulders popped up again, dim in the advancing headlights. They couldn’t see what Burkitts was doing until they heard the heavy thump thump thump and saw the electric pink tracers flying toward them.
“That goddamn 240 again,” said Peter. “You had to talk about getting shot by mistake.”
Lewis hit the brake and dropped back, skating from side to side, but the rounds still found them, skipping off the hood and windshield. The good road had improved the gunner’s aim.
Then the tracers started skipping off the pavement.
“He’s going for the tires,” said Peter. “That Kevlar didn’t mind the bombs, but it might not like a direct hit from one of those big rounds.”
“Wish he hadn’t thought of that.”
“I’m glad he didn’t think of it sooner. There’d be a lot more dead bodies behind us.”
The tracers flew beneath them. They felt a thunk like running over a stone in the road and heard a polite Teutonic chime.
The car veered left. Lewis pulled it back and peered at the dash. “Low-pressure sensor. He got one. Now who’s bad luck, motherfucker?”
The tracers sprayed across the roadside. Another thunk, a second chime, and the car stopped pulling left.
“Uh-oh,” said Lewis. “Steering’s gotten a little sloppy.”
“That’d be the run-flats,” said Peter. “Specs say fifty-mile range at fifty miles an hour before the rubber shreds completely and we’re down to the composite insert, which means we’ll be fucked.”
“What about driving a hundred?”
“Now who’s the one with a death wish?”
Lewis eased his foot off the gas and the car began to slow. Burkitts must have guessed what had happened, because he concentrated his fire on the windshield.
It was weird, seeing the tracers lodge in the glass before them, glowing like pink fireflies. Knowing how much power was behind the tip of each round.
The white-splashed sections of damaged glass spread until Lewis and Peter were leaned over at odd angles to peer through the few remaining clear sections.
There was an odd whistling noise inside the previously near-silent Mercedes.
Maybe the wind against the compromised glass.
The heavy firing stopped.
Peter heard a brief, faint clatter through that odd whistling sound.
Then something bounced hard up the hood and crashed into their windshield.
The big machine gun stuck firmly in the glass. The pistol grip had punched all the way through. Only the sticky anti-spall film on the inside of the windshield saved their faces from a thousand splintered shards.
“Shit.” Lewis turned off his headlights, hit the brake hard, and eased the Mercedes down into the ditch. “You all right?”
“I’m fine. We should get out of this car. They’ll want to come back and finish us off.”
“At least they’re out of rounds for the 240.”
“Your glass is always half-full, isn’t it?”
Neither of them had forgotten about the M16s.
They scooped up weapons and ammunition and slipped over the low cable barrier into a hay field, where they ran along the edge of the scrub to put some distance between them and the Mercedes.
The highway was long and straight and flat as a board. They could see headlights for miles. Hunkered down with their weapons, sweating in the evening heat, they watched and waited for the red pickup to return.
60
Albert heard Judah Lee’s elbows thump into the sliding glass window between the pickup’s cab and bed. “I got ’em,” he crowed. “Slow up and take the next turnaround, we’ll go back and get what they took. If they put it somewhere else, we’ll beat that out of ’em.”
Albert didn’t turn to look at his brother. He was hunched forward, trying to see the dark road ahead through the narrow slot cut in the armor. Sweat streamed down his face. The air conditioner might as well be broken. The temperature gauge told him that the engine was at the edge of overheating. His right side burned, his shirt sticking to the skin in a way he didn’t like to think about.
Something had made it through the slot on the passenger side. Punched through the side window and showered the cab with glass, then went through the windshield, bounced off the inside of that armor, and came back through the glass again to hit him low in the rib cage.
It ground against the bone every time he shifted on the seat.
He could use a handful of those pain pills.
He was so dang thirsty. His head was killing him.
He’d listened to the noise of those homemade bombs and that heavy gun for way too long.
* * *
• • •
He was glad he had no working rearview mirrors. He didn’t want to see what carnage his brother had wrought behind them. What Albert had helped him do. What Albert had done himself. The wrecked lives strewn across a hundred miles of highway.
He felt it anyway. A permanent stain, down deep. The bloody wound in his side was nothing in comparison.
Judah reached in to rap Albert on the skull with his knuckles like knocking on a door. “I said, slow up and turn around. We won, son. Aren’t you listening to me?”
“No,” Albert said. “I’m done. I’m going home.”
Judah pulled away from the sliding window, then came back with their daddy’s old .44 revolver in his hand. Albert heard the click as Judah Lee cocked the pistol with his big thumb. “You ain’t the boss. We got a job to finish. Do what you’re told, son.”
Albert felt something cool wash over him, just for a moment. “We’re going dang near a hundred miles an hour,” he said. “We’re overweight and top-heavy with all that steel plate. You want to shoot me, fine. But when I go, this truck will roll and tumble like nothing you’ve ever seen, if it don’t plain slam into something first. Either way, you’ll be nothing but strawberry Jell-O.”
“You do what I say,” Judah said, then pulled the trigger and fired their daddy’s .44 down into the center of the floor. The noise of it was deafening inside the small cab of the pickup.
Albert swerved hard into the next lane. Judah Lee slipped back and grabbed at the window frame with the three little fingers of his gun hand, trying to keep hold of both, but his own weight was too much for him. The force of the swerve took him sideways to bounc
e hard off the armored sidewall. The gun fell forward onto the passenger seat. Albert swept it onto the floor.
“Goddamn it,” Judah roared. Even with his ears ringing, Albert heard the clatter of the sliding M16s and Judah’s boots scrabbling for purchase on the bare metal pickup bed.
He did have a rearview mirror, Albert realized, still mounted on the windshield. Because of the high steel plate, it wouldn’t let him see the road behind him. But it would let him see inside the armored cargo bed.
Albert yanked the wheel the other way. Judah flew across the cargo bed again, swearing a blue streak.
The temperature gauge was running in the red.
61
Aside from the few lights of passing cars, it was very dark. Peter couldn’t see any lights from houses or farms anywhere. It began to rain. They sheltered under a wide, spreading oak, but still got soaked.
After fifteen minutes, Lewis said, “They’re not coming back.”
Peter nodded and patted his pockets. “We need a ride.” He’d lost Wanda’s phone somewhere along the way. Maybe it was still in the Mercedes, or maybe it had fallen somewhere on the highway during one of his moments of stupidity.
But he had his burner, and he knew June’s number.
“Hi, honey,” he said. “How’s your night going?”
“I got a news alert on my phone.” Her voice had an odd echo, like she was on speaker. He could hear tinny music playing behind her. She also sounded pissed. “Some asshole shooting and throwing bombs on the freeway.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Peter said. “We just had a little car trouble. Listen, can you ask Wanda for Dupree’s number? We could use a lift.”
“I’ll call him,” she said. “Where are you?”
He read her the GPS coordinates from his phone. “Tell him to top off his gas tank. And pick up a couple of cans of starter fluid and some road flares.”
* * *
• • •
But it wasn’t Dupree’s multicolored truck Peter saw twenty minutes later, pulling over to the side of the highway.
It was Wanda’s boxy blue Toyota Land Cruiser.
With June Cassidy behind the wheel, and all the windows rolled down. Ray Charles blared from the speakers. Hit the road, Jack, and don’t you come back no more.
He wondered if she’d picked the song deliberately.
Her freckled face glowed in the dashboard light. She looked Peter up and down, checking for injuries or maybe weak spots. “I am so gonna kick your ass.”
He didn’t like seeing her there. “You were supposed to stay in the hotel. You should have called Dupree.”
“I was already on the road.” She smiled sweetly. “Wanda’s phone has a tracking app.”
That explained how she’d gotten there so fast. “You’re spying on me?”
“You obviously need a fucking babysitter.” She turned to Lewis. “Hello, handsome.”
“Hey.” He leaned in to kiss her cheek. “I thought babysitting was my job.”
“Dude. You obviously suck at it.” She touched the bloody wrap over his roofing-nail puncture. “How bad?”
Lewis put on a plummy British accent. “A mere flesh wound.”
“Your boys discovered Monty Python?”
“The Holy Grail and pizza every Saturday night. Best part of my week.” He put his hand on her arm. “You really shouldn’t be here.”
“Fucking somebody had to be,” she said.
“Somebody else,” Peter said.
She stared right at him. “Well, I’m here now. You want me to leave?”
She was quite possibly the toughest person Peter had ever met. Sometimes that made her a colossal pain in the ass.
But she was also right, most of the time.
Peter hated it when she was both things at once.
It seemed to happen a lot with June.
Peter was starting to get used to it.
* * *
• • •
They climbed into the back seat with the guns and the wet duffel of ammunition.
Peter had wanted to drive, but June shook her head. When he reached for her door handle, she’d taken her foot off the brake and coasted forward a few feet. “Don’t fuck with me, Marine.”
She drove them the quarter mile to the black Mercedes, where they recovered the rest of their gear, including Wanda’s phone, which had slipped between the passenger seat and the center console.
The Mercedes was not in showroom condition. It was dimpled and dented and cracked, with a large machine gun embedded in its crushed windshield.
June’s lips got thin. “If I was seeing that thing in daylight, I’d really be pissed.”
“It was a good ride,” said Lewis. “Took care of us as best it could.”
There was something they were carefully not talking about. The running fight on the freeway, the damage they’d caused just by being there. Collateral damage was a shitty term, designed to hide the wartime reality of civilian casualties, but Peter knew well what it meant. He felt it. There was no getting around it. The undeserving dead.
He told himself that he hadn’t started it. He hadn’t stolen the guns or made the bombs.
He hadn’t started killing strangers on the fucking freeway.
No. Peter was just trying to clean up the mess. Even if he might have to live it again in his dreams.
He pulled the 240 free, flipped open the cover to see if the gun was clear, then checked to make sure the ammo bag was truly empty before he tossed the gun onto the front seat. He opened the rest of the car doors and sprayed the interior with the starter fluid, then stepped back, sparked the road flares, and tossed them inside. The Mercedes went up with a satisfying whomp.
“What is it with you and burning cars?” asked June. “I know, you’re getting rid of DNA and fingerprints. But why do you have to set them on fire?”
“It’s fast and easy and it works.” Peter climbed back inside the Toyota. “Plus it’s a good send-off for a trusty steed. Like a Viking funeral.”
She shook her head. “There is something seriously wrong with you people.”
“Hey.” Peter leaned across the seatback and put his lips to the back of her neck. The burning car flared bright as the synthetic materials caught. “Thanks for coming. I mean it.”
She shivered and twined her fingers in his hair. “I’m still fucking pissed.”
“I know,” he said. “It didn’t seem like we had a choice.”
“Clock’s ticking,” said Lewis. “We’re twenty minutes out. If you lovebirds want to get naked back here, I can drive. But I’m gonna have to turn up the music real loud.”
“Really, Lewis,” June said. “Have you no sense of decency?” She grinned at Peter in the rearview. “I’m going to need a helluva lot more than twenty minutes.”
She threw the Toyota into gear and hit the gas.
62
June pulled into the church parking lot, a half mile from the slaughterhouse. It was well after midnight. They were less than an hour behind the Burkitts brothers.
Peter and Lewis still hadn’t taken off their armored vests. The blacktop radiated the heat of the day. Peter could feel it through the soles of his boots. They drank the water June had brought and double-checked their equipment while she watched from the driver’s seat of the Toyota.
“Don’t wait here,” Peter told her. “Turn back and park behind that Citgo we passed a few miles back. Stay out of sight from the road, they probably know what this car looks like. We’ll call or we’ll meet you there.”
“Is this what it’s always going to be like, with you? Me just waiting to see if you come home? Wondering what kind of shape you’ll be in when you get there?”
“That’s what it is right now,” Peter said. “Unless you want us to leave those guys out there to make m
ore bombs and work out their next move.”
“No,” she said. “I just don’t like waiting. Or worrying.”
“Me neither.” He leaned in, gently brushed his lips against hers, then stood and thumped the roof of the car with the flat of his hand. “Go on. I’ll see you soon.”
She nodded and faced forward and drove away.
* * *
• • •
Flanked by dense scrub forest, they trotted wordlessly down the road, Peter on one side, Lewis on the other. Their boots scuffed softly on the rough asphalt, their gear locked down and quiet. Clouds thick and low. Not a light to be seen.
The vests were heavy, loaded with spare magazines for their weapons. Despite that weight, despite pistols strapped to their sides and long guns held one-handed and balanced, the two men ran easily, as if they could run forever. The way marauding night-fighters had run for millennia, with bone clubs or fire-hardened spears or long swords or flintlocks or Kalashnikovs in the vast and varied wastes of the world. Peter knew what he’d been training for all winter in the little teardrop-shaped valley. To be right here, right now, with Lewis.
To be of use. To attack and defend. To do whatever needed to be done.
Regardless of the cost.
The road turned to gravel as the trees fell away and the land opened up. It was different on foot, at night, than it had been in the car that afternoon. The wind rose, warm and thick and carrying the smell of wet soil and wild, verdant things. As they ran, the night felt measureless around them, immense beyond any reckoning.
The steel-sided slaughterhouse stood dark, the gravel lot empty of cars. Past it, the long driveway disappeared into the ancient woods.
Lewis sniffed. “You smell that?”
Peter nodded. Something was burning, or had burned. Something vaguely chemical.