Abby and Lilly pump rounds into the side of the cars. The back most sedan turns and revs; the tires squeal and send up more smoke, burning black tracks in the old road and maneuvers around the other two cars, which aren’t moving.
This is unfortunate for Bruce, because he doesn’t move out of the way fast enough. He tries, but it’s pretty much pointless. Even over the sounds of the gunshots and the growling engines, I can hear the snap of his leg shattering, then the crunch of his torso as the car gallops over him. He lies like roadkill, a flattened possum that crossed at the wrong time.
In my head, I’m going, Oh man, but there’s not much time to linger on this horror. I can’t feel bad for Bruce anymore; he would’ve died anyway. If Abby or Lilly didn’t put a slug in his head, the Black Knights would have for letting us get the drop on them.
The car that gets away sharply turns right and takes out a row of trash cans and recycle bins. Nothing comes out of them. I think they’ve already been picked clean, or maybe whatever contents they once possessed have rotted away with the years.
Lilly sends a few shots at the car’s tail end. There’s a rip-roaring screech as the car drifts to the right, speeding up, then a sonic boom as it crashes into a nearby brick wall.
“Got ‘em,” Abby says approvingly.
Nice.
Lilly and I concentrate our fire on the two other cars still in the road. More glass shatters. A taillight busts. A tire pops, but the car doesn’t even lurch forward. They don’t seem to be in much of a hurry.
I squeeze the trigger until the gun clicks empty, then pull out another magazine and jam it in. Cock it. Abby sends out her last round, too. Lilly is fumbling with her own ammunition.
I pop back up and I see the car doors hanging open. Empty.
The Black Knights have escaped.
“They’re gone,” I say.
“Shit,” Abby says. “We gotta run now. We lost our chance.”
“We should’ve never been in this situation in the first place!” Lilly yells.
“Not the time to fight. Shoulda, woulda, coulda—it happened. Time to regroup,” I say, pointing toward the garage’s exit. “Come on!”
We run out and down the slope. Go around and around for two levels before we’re greeted with a barrage of gunshots.
The bullets whine off the concrete, and thud into a service door at our backs. We dive out of the way. My heart stops because I could feel the hot air around the bullets, they were that close.
“Abby Cage!” a voice says. “Jack Jupiter!”
Abby’s baring her teeth. She recognizes the voice. I don’t know who it is—don’t care, either.
Abby is way ahead of me, though. She dives out from behind the concrete pillar, clutching the rifle in her good hand and balancing the barrel on her bared stump. She executes a somersault. The movement is smooth, she looks like an action movie star. To say I’m jealous would be an understatement.
I peer out from behind the pillar now, trying to pinpoint where the shots have come from. My left hand is back, resting on Lilly’s shoulder, holding her steady.
Abby has posted up behind the opposite pillar. She has a better view. She sticks her head out and around, looking at the long-forgotten, dusty cars parked on this level. As she does, three shots punch holes in the concrete near her head, sending chunks spraying. The shots were close, much too close, but Abby is okay. If anything, this just pisses her off. I stick my own head out just as the last shot’s echo dies.
I see the man ducking behind a blue Ford Taurus. He’s got a helmet on, and streaks of black face-paint under each eye and down the bridge of his nose. He’s an ugly son of a bitch, but most of these hired guns in the District are. Hell, the world is an ugly place.
It’s funny. Seeing this guy with his Army helmet, flak jacket, and war paint, you can tell he takes his job seriously. Too seriously. This guy woke up and smeared crap on his face, got all gussied up for a day of hunting and killing with his Black Knights, just so he could end up getting killed by yours truly.
I don’t have the clearest of shots, and I know if I lean out too far, he’ll put a bullet in my head, so I take what I got—which is not much—and go for it. That’s what Norm would do, hoping the shrapnel from the shot car will take him down.
I pull the trigger of my rifle, feel the rounds spray out. It’s a good feeling, a powerful feeling, but it’s nothing compared to the feeling that comes over me when I hear Warpaint scream.
“My eyes!” he yells. “My fuckin’ eyes!”
That’s real pain I hear in his voice. Real terror. You couldn’t fake this. So I come out from behind the pillar, much to Lilly’s displeasure. She grabs the back of my cloak, but I pull away.
Abby comes out, too. We stand there in the wide open with our weapons drawn, ready for another gunfight.
We don’t get one.
Warpaint rolls around on the concrete, body writhing, hands on his face. Between his fingers, blood seeps out. His own gun is out of reach.
“Jesus, Jack,” Abby whispers.
Warpaint moves his hands away from his eyes and I’m filled with a mixture of grim satisfaction and terror. My plan worked, and that’s great—I really didn’t think it would—but seeing what I’m seeing now, the pain this man is going through, makes me sick to my stomach.
I had shot the tail end of the car he was hiding behind with the intention of spraying enough shrapnel in his direction to drive him out, which is what happened, except the glass and the old, rusty metal hit him mostly in the face.
In the eyes.
“Sorry,” I say as I raise my rifle and point it at his head.
The guy stops screaming for a moment. His last moment. That ruined face looks back at me like some terrible beast from the depths of hell.
“Hail the Overlord,” the man says.
I pull the trigger.
The sound of the shot is monstrous in the confines of the parking deck. The guy’s head busts open, and his brains—pink and healthy—leak onto the concrete. He is dead-dead; he will not come back as a zombie. There’s some mercy in that, I think, probably more than he deserved.
“Lilly, come on!” I shout.
She does, grimacing at the dead man whose brains she must step around. We’ve got to get back to the truck and get the hell out of here. It’s what we should’ve done in the first place; Lilly was right, but now I fear it’s too late.
We turn the corner, come out on the ground level of the parking deck, and stop at the edge of the attendant’s booth. I lean out and look down the street. There’s Bruce’s mutilated body, and there’s one of the cars the Black Knights arrived in…but no Black Knights.
“Clear,” I say.
Of course, as soon as I say this, a pair of rough hands grab me.
Nineteen
“Don’t move,” a man’s voice says.
My gun is jerked out of my grip. A hand slips under my chin, squeezes so tight that I’m forced to cough, but the cough can’t even escape. My eyes bulge from my face, and I feel my cheeks growing hot with blood.
Abby, of course, doesn’t listen to this guy, and because she doesn’t, neither does Lilly. They both have their rifles trained on this faceless man who has captured me.
My mind whirls. I don’t know where he has come from; I could’ve sworn the coast was clear. In fact, I would’ve bet my life on it. I did bet my life on it, it would seem.
“Mason Storm,” Abby says. “I knew I smelled shit.”
“Drop your weapon, traitor,” Mason Storm says. “Drop it, and you’ll get a painless ride to the Overlord.”
“I know better than that,” Abby says.
Lilly’s lips are peeled back, her teeth bared like a dog that’s about to attack. I try nodding toward them. This doesn’t work, thanks to the death grip this man has me in, so I try talking. The words are wispy, barely audible.
“Listen to him,” I say.
Lilly and Abby hear me. Understand me.
“We killed
a few of your men,” Abby says.
“All’s fair in war,” Mason Storm responds. “I didn’t like them much anyway. Besides, I killed the old man who brought us here.”
“I didn’t like him much, either,” Abby says.
“Then we’re fine. All is well,” Storm says.
“No, it’s not,” Lilly replies. Her voice sounds so pained, so angry, that I almost don’t recognize it. She hates this man without knowing anything about him. Hates him because he is part of the District. Hates him because he has me in a headlock. Hates him because she knows he’ll take her captive. “We’re not going with you. Not alive.”
“I’m afraid my orders are to bring you back alive, ma’am, and I never stray from my orders. Not in my twenty-year military career, and not since I’ve been in the Overlord’s employment.”
“That’s a huge conflict of interest, then,” Lilly says.
I try shaking my head again. It’s not easy, and neither Abby or Lilly looks my way. They’re caught in a deathly staring contest with Mason Storm.
“I’m sure it is,” Storm says, “for you. But for me, I don’t believe in such things. I believe in getting the job done by any means necessary. Even if that means—”
I see the Black Knights creeping out from the shadows of the abandoned buildings. I make a noise of warning, but it just sounds like a dry cough, so I point, but by the time I do this, a skinny woman with sunken eyes, and a man nearly seven feet tall jam their guns into Lilly and Abby’s backs.
“Well, even if that means I have to play dirty,” Storm finishes.
Abby looks over her shoulder. For a split second, I feel like she’s about to do something stupid, like fight back, but that passes as soon as she drops her rifle. Lilly does, too, though I can tell it takes a lot of willpower to do so.
“Good, good,” Mason Storm says. “The Overlord wasn’t lying, was he? You are all certainly smarter than you look.”
Twenty
We are thrown into the back of an SUV, but it is not roomy. Our hands are bound together with duct tape. Our captors stand outside the vehicle.
“How many are left?” Mason Storm asks. His voice drifts in through an open back window.
The seven-footer answers. “Just us, boss.”
“They got Charlie up in the parking deck, and Freeman and Granger were cut down in the initial attack,” the woman says. She has a voice like a pirate. Or a lifelong smoker. “Grimes hit the wall over there. Broke his neck.”
Abby smirks.
Mason Storm says, “Well, they’ll pay for this.”
“I know, boss,” the seven-footer says. “I know.”
The door opens. It’s the woman that crawls into the back seat. She looks at us like we’re some sort of roadkill as she points her rifle in our faces. The seven-footer sits in the front. Mason Storm drives.
I wonder if this woman really has to watch us. I mean, what could we do? We’re tied up, weaponless. Not even our words could cause harm.
I can also tell this woman wants us dead. We killed her friends, her teammates, and she wants nothing more than to put a bullet straight through our heads.
The SUV lurches forward, going over the pothole-filled roads with ease, gently rocking us back and forth. I lean my head on Abby’s shoulder. She gives me a mean look out of the corner of her eye, but I ignore it. It’s been a while since I’ve had a good sleep; I figure now’s as good a time as any.
So, with the SUV gently rocking back and forth, and a crazy woman from the District pointing a gun in our faces, I close my eyes and drift off into unconsciousness.
It is much needed. It is good.
What wakes me up is the crackle of a voice over the speakers of a shortwave radio, coming from the front of the SUV. I open my eyes, and the world all around us is dark. Pitch black. The headlights don’t do much to cut through this darkness. In the ended world, there is no electricity. No street lamps. No traffic lights. In all this blackness, not even the stars and moon have much to say.
The voice on the other end of the radio does, however.
It takes me a moment to decipher the words, but I do. A man is telling the seven-footer that they need to divert toward Indianapolis, Overlord’s orders, a pit stop in the name of a city I don’t recognize because the District has renamed it.
We’re to meet with the Overlord there.
My stomach bottoms out, feels packed with slithering snakes. The Overlord. This will be my chance.
I turn toward Abby. Her eyes are wide; she knows, she understands the significance of the voice on the radio, she understands the stakes.
The radio crackles again, turns off.
“He must have some really messed up stuff planned for them,” the seven-footer says.
“He always does,” Mason answers.
“How do you do it?” I ask, breaking my silence.
I see Mason’s eyes flash in the rearview mirror. They’re illuminated green by the lights on the dashboard. It makes him look like an alien in a low-budget sci-fi movie.
“Do what?” the seven-footer asks.
“Len,” Mason says quietly. I hear the strain in his voice, even over the rumble of the engine.
The woman in front of me snarls, shoves the gun in my face. I don’t fold. Metal bites into my cheek. I know she’s one bad bump on the road from blowing another hole in my face, but it’s the furthest thing from my mind. The number one thing is getting Lilly, Abby, and myself out of here. Alive.
Abby gives me a warning mumble, one I choose to ignore.
“How do you call him ‘the Overlord’ with a straight face?” I say.
“That’s his name,” Len, the giant, replies. “He don’t have another name that I know of, does he, Mason?”
Mason shakes his head. To me, he says, “You’d better keep your mouth shut, Jupiter. Or Helga is gonna make your trip a lot more uncomfortable.
I don’t think it’s possible for this trip to get any more uncomfortable.
I keep quiet for the rest of the ride. I lean my head back, my body all cramped, and close my eyes, knowing sleep won’t come as easily as before, not with the one-eyed man on my mind like he always is.
Twenty-One
Whatever it was—the lull of the wheels going over the rough terrain, the dark, the near deadly urge not to look Helga in the eyes—it worked, because I wake up a few hours later.
The sun shines. I have no idea what the date is, or even the month, really.
What wakes me up is the car door slamming. Mason has gotten out. He leans back, his fists pressing into his spine. Through the open door, I hear his bones crackle.
Len is out of the car, too. He’s holding the huge assault rifle with three fingers; it looks like a toy in his massive hands.
I look around. Helga hasn’t gotten out yet. She seems content with just staring at us with her weird lazy eye.
We seem to be in some sort of city. We’re surrounded by tall buildings, some withered and some outright obliterated, their burned metal shining in the sun. There’s a bridge behind us covered in sandbags and guard towers. The towers are populated by soldiers that look like specks from here as they mill about.
“Where are we?” I ask Abby.
She shakes her head. “They call it Viper,” she whispers. “The whole place is an arsenal.”
Through the front windshield, down a stretch of fractured blacktop, I see a gate supported by rusty poles. Two men are standing there with dazed looks on their faces. Blackness lies beyond the gates, and seeing that fills me with a sudden sense of dread, like looking into a bottomless pit you know you’re about to get thrown into.
Mason smiles and raises a hand to one of the guards. The guard raises a fist back. Some sort of sign? Maybe. Len busies himself with kicking a very old soda can around the street’s gutter. The clanking noise the aluminum makes as it scrapes against the fractured concrete is ear-grating. It sets my teeth on edge.
A few minutes pass as Mason and the guards chat it up. Heads n
od, rigid postures collapse in bouts of laughter, and the guard on the left even takes to slapping his thigh. Mason must be a funny fellow with lots of jokes to tell. I guess he saved them all for after our trip. I’m glad for that.
Abby seems a bit more alert now, her eyes aren’t as heavy with sleep. Lilly continues snoring away; we don’t wake her, figuring that any rest one can get with both eyes closed is good rest.
Mason whistles. Like an obedient dog, Helga turns her head and peers through the dusty windshield. She gets out, offers a lazy-eyed glare at Len, who’s still kicking around the soda can like it’s the World Cup, and comes around the back of the SUV.
“Prison,” Abby whispers. “This is a prison. I’ve never seen it, but I’ve heard about it. They call it ‘the Viper Pit’.”
“A prison? I thought they’d be past that,” I say.
“Part of their rebuilding of society.” Abby rolls her eyes. “We gotta get outta of here. It’s torture.”
“I’d imagine.”
The backdoor hisses as Helga pops it open. The smell of sewage and smoke hits my nostrils, as well as something else I can’t put my finger on, something that is sicker than usual.
Helga has her gun trained on us. Her gaze, for the first time, seems relaxed, the lazy eye even lazier. Something tells me she knows for a fact that we’re not stupid enough to try anything right now. We’re outnumbered and outgunned.
But what lazy-eyed Helga doesn’t realize is that ever since this dreadful event, the apocalypse, started, we’ve been outnumbered and outgunned. Abby and I—Lilly, too, only more recently—have had worse odds.
Just as I’m about to look over at Abby and give her the nod, the ‘let’s kill ‘em’ nod, she flies out of the back like a pissed off spider monkey.
Helga doesn’t see it coming.
She stumbles with the force of Abby’s hit, and I can’t really do much of anything besides sit there and stare. I wonder to myself, When is Abby going to stop surprising me? Just when you think you know a person, right?
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