by Tom Abrahams
“Double,” Frederick said without hesitating.
“Same,” said Archibald. “At least until we have a firm grasp on how all of these facets fit together.”
Louis pushed his chair back from the table. Its rollers squeaked on the marble floor, and he stood. He tugged at the tail of his purple shirt, pulling it beneath the cinched waistband of his pants. Then he leaned onto the table with his fists. He banged on the glass with each sentence, punctuating his obvious lack of patience for the topic.
“We’ve known for years the Badlanders have aided and abetted the Tic. This is not news. It’s not intelligence. It’s two lieutenants in league with one another to broaden their own power and consolidate valuable resources in their direction.”
He leveled his gaze across the table at Frederick, held it, then aimed his stare at Archibald to his right. Chairs creaked in the uncomfortable silence. A strong gust of wind pushed at the large window.
Red-faced, Louis straightened and wiped the front of his blouse. He exhaled loudly, and his tight expression eased. He lowered himself back to his chair. The red diffused to pink. “I think I’ve said my piece.”
“I think you have,” said Guilfoyle. “And I appreciate your passion, your conviction on this matter. I also appreciate the potential threat from this undercurrent of disobedience, be it random, organized, or both.”
Guilfoyle thought his nephew might vomit right there at the table. He’d seen Louis puke before. The man wasn’t known for his self-control. He was a glutton and a drunk. However, there was a brilliant man underneath the clear self-loathing. His mother had taught him well, and his masterful control over water, the Overseers’ most valuable commodity, mitigated his petulance. There was a method to his madness Guilfoyle did not question.
He was honestly surprised that Louis was as good a lieutenant as he’d become. Guilfoyle knew his sister had never much cared for him. She didn’t want to be a mother in the first place. The protectorate was her child first and foremost. Louis was an afterthought.
Guilfoyle raised a hand in anticipation of Louis’s response. “Now, Louis, before you go off all half-cocked again, understand that this is exploratory in nature,” he said. “It’s a temporary expenditure.”
Catherine nodded. “Temporary,” she said. “I can assure you it will not affect the administration of any other lieutenant’s responsibilities.”
Louis reddened again, but he held his tongue.
Guilfoyle let his nephew seethe. There was no harm in that. For all the bluster and commotion Louis might employ to prove a point, none of it meant anything.
Guilfoyle was the one who flew above it all and saw the big picture from high above everyone else. He was the one who sheltered the protectorate underneath his broad wings. He was the one in control of what did or did not happen. His nephew knew that. His council knew it. And anyone who dared challenge him would find out the hard way just how tight a grip he held.
Chapter Nine
Arms of dust rose like brown smoke to the left of the highway ahead. The dust moved, expanded, like it was pouring from a locomotive. Zeke tightened his grip on the wheel. It was the first sign of life he’d seen in the hours they’d been caravanning across the broad expanse of lifeless terrain.
“See that?” he asked Uriel. “Somebody’s coming.”
She sat up in her seat, thumbing the harness from her shoulders. She looked through the windshield, past the truck in front, and toward the plumes of dust. “Badlanders,” she said. “We must have reached the Badlands. This will get nasty. Those sons of futher muckers don’t play. They shoot first and never ask questions.”
Zeke stole a sideways glance at her. He hadn’t heard the last half of her reply. “Reached the Badlands? I thought that’s where we were.”
“That is where we are,” she said. “We’re in the Badlands. If we’re going to get to the city, we need to get past these pains in my expertly sculpted ass.”
“Seriously,” said Zeke. “Where were we?”
Zeke only left the city on his bootlegging runs. There were prescribed routes. He ran them again and again. So much of what lie beyond the city’s walls was foreign to him.
Uriel ran her hands along the sides of her head and then checked her ponytail. She pulled down the visor in front of her and checked the clipped, aftermarket mirror. She puckered her lips, stretched her eyes wide. Was she…primping?
“When?” she asked.
“Before we were here,” said Zeke, exhaling with frustration. “Before we were in the Badlands, where was that?”
She flipped up the visor, unbuckled her harness, and cranked down her window. She said something to him, but the blowing wind drowned out her voice, swirling dust into the cabin. Her pompadour of hair waved wildly atop her head, and the ponytail whipped over her shoulder.
She stretched her body and pushed her torso through the open window, craning around the front of the car to get a better look at the coming storm. Zeke caught a glimpse of the flaming sword and sun tattoo rising from her hip.
She sank back into her seat and then leaned into Zeke, using his shoulder to maneuver her head and arms to the back seat. She rummaged around, unzipping and zipping, grunting, and hauling herself back into the front passenger seat. She returned holding a large black rifle. She pulled out the curving magazine, checked it, and slapped it back into the bottom of the weapon.
“What are you doing?” Zeke asked above the roar of the wind, his attention mostly on the road.
“Don’t slow down,” she answered. “Maintain your speed.”
He pulled the bandana up over his nose and mouth to keep out the thickening dust cloud that had filled the Superbird’s interior. A Badlander vehicle approached through the dust. Armed people filled its bed. More vehicles filled in behind the truck, obscured by the endless dust. They were all headed straight for one another.
Zeke held the distance behind Phil’s F-150. He was sweating now, his breath hot underneath the black cotton covering half his face. He blinked past the dust and powered the Superbird forward, as he had so many times before.
Another truck turned onto the highway and sped toward them. There were at least four of them now. Zeke guessed they were less than two miles away and closing. At this speed, they’d meet in less than a minute.
Uriel aimed the rifle out the window, her hair whipping into her face. “When I tell you,” she said, straining to talk above the wind and road noise, “pull to the right and then move even with Phil and Gabe.”
“I’ll be off the road,” Zeke said.
“I know what I’m asking, just do it.”
Zeke eyed the rabbit’s foot swinging from the ignition and nodded. He could do it.
“When Phil stops,” she said, “you stop.”
Zeke leaned forward, his body pressed against the harness, and stepped on the gas to keep pace with Phil.
They were close enough now to the approaching Badlander caravan, but he couldn’t make them out. There was too much dust, too much noise, too much everything to focus on anything other than the impending command from Uriel and the control of his car.
He did know these weren’t the same people, or things, who had chased him to Pedro’s Cantina at the start of this journey. They didn’t look the same. They didn’t move with the same grave intensity.
Uriel leaned out the window again, wrapping one of the harness straps around a leg, and looked back to Zeke, yelling something at him. He couldn’t hear her. It wasn’t necessary.
He accelerated, pressing the gas. The Superbird responded instantly, jolting forward with a roar as Zeke eased the wheel to the right. The beast jolted, bouncing, as it exited the blacktop for the dirt.
The rear tires drifted and Zeke steered into the skid then straightened the wheel. The F-150 was ahead and to his left now. He applied more pressure to the accelerator. The sensation of acceleration forced him back into his seat. The Superbird effortlessly surged forward. Its engine hummed, sending a low vibration thr
ough the car’s body that Zeke felt in his own.
The car was even with the truck now. Zeke held his speed. His heart raced, the adrenaline coursing through him like jolts of electricity. His hat bounced on his head, nearly flying off.
Uriel was perched on the window, her legs and feet inside the car, the upper half of her body outside. She had the rifle pressed to her shoulder. Her eye lowered to its scope.
From the corner of Zeke’s eye, he saw a muzzle flash. Another. Then a third.
Uriel slid back into the car. The harness tangled around her.
The second she dropped into her seat, a flash of movement caught Zeke’s attention from the driver’s side mirror.
He held his attention there, watching a Badlander truck tumbling over itself, rotating in the air. Bodies flew from the bed, some of them crushed, blood exploding from them like popped zits. A second vehicle skidded sideways, a blown tire flopping against the blacktop before it too tumbled over itself.
Zeke winced.
“Keep going,” Uriel said, waving him on with her right hand. “Speed up.”
The car surged again, acknowledging the push. He cleared the F-150 and saw Gabe in the passenger’s seat, holding a rifle similar to Uriel’s.
“What now?” Zeke asked.
He felt the pop of rocks and low brush under the tires. The suspension responded, but the ride had become increasingly rough. His jaw chattering, he adjusted his grip on the steering wheel.
Uriel braced herself. Her right elbow was on the bottom of the window opening, her hand gripping the outside of the top of the door. The rifle was in her lap. Her left hand held it in place. Her body bounced with the car’s momentum.
“Stay on the dirt,” she said. “Punch it, Zeke. Show me what you got.”
Zeke planted his bootheel and pressed the pedal to the floor. The RPM gauge slammed to the right, and the Superbird zipped. The ride roughened on the uneven terrain. Zeke was sure he would break a tooth.
To his left zoomed the caravan of Badlanders. Three, four, five trucks in various states of repair rumbled in the opposite direction.
“Let the guys handle them,” said Uriel. “We have bigger fish to fry.”
He didn’t know what she meant. Straight ahead was a clear road, a clean shot to the city as far as he could tell. Then he saw it.
Through the haze of dust that obscured the road ahead like a brown fog was a roadblock. Two jacked-up, oversized SUVs were parked perpendicular to the road. One blocked each lane. He couldn’t see if there were people there from so far.
“Go around them,” Uriel directed.
Zeke scanned the road ahead. It didn’t seem like much of a roadblock if he drove around it. That wouldn’t make sense.
As he drew closer, he saw the roadblock was staged on a bridge. If he didn’t make his way back onto the road and fast, he’d bury the car in a ten-foot-wide dry gulch. It stretched as far as he saw in either direction. There was no going around it.
He looked to the SUVs again. There was nobody standing outside them or perched on the roofs, ready to take aim with high-powered weapons. He saw only one lone driver in each vehicle, sitting behind the wheels.
He checked his mirrors. A smile crept onto his face.
Without saying anything to Uriel, Zeke jerked the wheel to the left, his body straining against the right side of the harness. Uriel hurled a string of guttural curses at him as she braced herself against the space between the door and her seat. Her leg was still tangled in the harness.
The car leapt onto the blacktop. It bounced as the rear suspension compressed and expanded. Zeke leaned right, turning the wheel into the drift to straighten the car. Then he punched the gas.
Rubber squealed, then bit the road. They were roughly one hundred and fifty yards from the blockade and closing.
“What are you doing?” Uriel asked.
“Trust me,” said Zeke. “Strap in.”
Seventy-five yards.
While Uriel fumbled with the harness and untangled her leg from it, Zeke drilled his gaze onto the driver of the Badlander SUV to the right. The man was staring back.
Uriel snapped her harness in place. “You’re going to slam into him. There’s no—”
Zeke checked his mirrors. “I said trust me.”
Thirty yards.
Zeke grinned maniacally. He stepped on the gas, leaned into the wheel. He was headed straight for the center of the SUV on the right.
The driver cranked the SUV into gear and lurched forward, but there wasn’t enough time to avoid a collision.
Twenty feet from impact, Zeke took his foot off the gas and downshifted. The Superbird jerked, throwing them forward against their harnesses, and the engine whined as the RPMs slowed to match the lower gear. A blur zipped past them on their left and straight into the would-be roadblock.
Phil’s F-150, with its reinforced cattle catcher stretched across its grille, exploded past the center line and into the idling SUVs. The deafening sound of metal on metal crashed above the rumble of the Superbird’s engine. The SUVs gave way. The one on the right spun off the road and tumbled down into the dry bed.
Zeke accelerated and shifted, his car regaining momentum as they blew past the remains of the SUVs.
“I peed a little,” said Uriel. “I hate you.”
Zeke chuckled and shifted into fourth gear. They’d cleared the roadblock, but there were several Badlander vehicles chasing them. Raf and Barach’s Impala was behind him now, the F-150 twenty yards ahead.
“You’re funny,” he said.
In his rearview, Zeke saw a flash of orange light. One of the SUVs was in flames, thick black pillows of smoke pouring from the burning vehicle. Its previous occupant fled.
Uriel punched his shoulder, refocusing him. He winced and grabbed his arm.
“I’m not kidding,” she said. “I seriously wet my pants.”
“I’m sorry,” Zeke apologized. “There are napkins in the glove box.”
“Napkins?” She snorted. “Really?”
Zeke shrugged and checked his mirrors. He reached up with one hand to adjust the brim of his hat and realized it wasn’t on his head.
“It’s in the back,” Uriel said. “I should have sat on it.”
They were fast approaching the jagged, scarred face of a sheer wall of rock that stretched into the sky as the face of a large bluff. Cut into the wall was a wide tunnel that swallowed the highway in its black mouth.
“The city’s on the other side of the tunnel,” said Uriel. She shifted around in her seat, tugging at her crotch. “Stay with Phil.”
Zeke glanced at her and arched an eyebrow. “You really pissed yourself?”
Uriel glared at him. The scowl on her face, the one that told him another punch was building in her fist, answered his question.
Behind him, a pair of Jeeps pulled alongside the Impala, sandwiching it between them. Then one of the Jeeps zipped ahead and jerked right, putting itself between the Impala and the tunnel; at the same time a third vehicle took its place on the Impala’s driver’s side.
Zeke’s car was close to the tunnel now. In a few seconds, they’d dip into the darkness underneath the granite bluff and be that much closer to the city.
In the rearview, the Jeep shrank in size, slipping farther behind. It was slowing down to trap the Impala.
Ahead, the F-150 vanished into the tunnel so that only its taillights were visible. And then they weren’t.
Zeke downshifted, applied the emergency brake, and swung the wheel. The car spun, its tires squealing against the highway. White smoke spilled from the wheels, and the smell of burning rubber filled the cabin.
“What the—?” Uriel braced herself against the doorframe.
Zeke straightened the wheel and the tires caught. He engaged the clutch and sped up. He sped back toward the Impala and the Badlanders chasing it.
“Not a good idea,” said Uriel, catching on to Zeke’s plan. “They can take care of themselves.”
Th
e Jeep stopped. Armed Badlanders draped in black exited the vehicle, taking aim at the Impala and forcing it to turn back into the path of the other vehicle.“I’m telling you,” said Uriel, “don’t do this. Raf and Barach know what they’re doing. They’ve done this sort of thing before. Trust them. Trust me.”
Zeke gulped against the sting of bile in his throat. “There’s no way they’ll escape all of them. It’s suicide. Both of them will die.”
Zeke’s vision blurred from the gloss of welling tears. He wiped his brow with the back of his sleeve. The car engine rumbled around him. He felt it in his chest.
Uriel punched him again in the shoulder. She hit the same spot, knuckle on bone, and the bruise refreshed its ache.
“Focus,” she said.
Zeke rubbed the soreness in his arm and stared at Uriel. He studied the sour look on her face, not understanding what she meant. He gestured towards the disaster.
“But they—”
“Turn around,” she said. “Let’s go before the Badlanders lose interest in them and circle back to catch us.”
Zeke bit his lip, drew a long breath, then finally threw the car into reverse. He spun the wheel and shifted into gear. He accelerated toward the tunnel again.
It’s their choice, he told himself. This is on them.
The echoing rattle of gunfire behind them caused his stomach to roil. He shifted, eased off the clutch, and the car lurched into another gear. The engine rumbled. His throat seized and he coughed.
“You have a lot to learn,” Uriel remarked.
She seemed unfazed, sitting back in her seat, settling her shoulders between the bolsters that cocooned her body. She really was tough to read. No emotion played on her face. It was as if their lives, or their deaths, didn’t matter. He’d seen enough death in his time as a bootlegger and beyond the city walls to maintain his composure, but he’d never seen anyone so hard in the face of who he thought were her friends dying.
The tunnel grew larger as they approached, and he turned on the headlights when they crossed the threshold. Uriel’s window was down. The sound of the engine reverberated off the rock walls that arched in a canopy over the highway. The air in the cabin chilled. The V-shaped spray of the headlights revealed little beyond their reach. It was as if they’d sped into oblivion.