by Mark Tufo
Shaking his head, the cop said, “We’ve got nobody in there. We barely have enough uniforms to keep traffic from driving in.”
“Why?”
“Big riots over by the rail yards,” said the cop, “been going nonstop since the night before last. We’ve got the national guard in there now trying to help.” The cop sighed and seemed to deflate beneath an unseen pressure. “We can’t even get all of them we need. Everybody in the state’s got the same problems we do.” The cop turned and looked at the columns of smoke. “It’s enough to make a man want to get his family and just go. Maybe find a ranch where the owners died from the flu and ride it all out.”
“I hear ya,” said the bounty hunter. “Anything going on down by the Astrodome that you know of?”
“Nothing significant on the south side since last Friday.” The cop was still looking at the smoke. “We’ve got plenty of uniforms deployed down there to keep the processing center secure.” The cop turned away from looking at the smoky sky, bent over, and leaned in for a look at me. “Young.”
“I don’t make the rules,” said the bounty hunter. “I just bring ‘em in.”
“Just as well,” said the cop. “We’re going to need all the able bodies we can get to keep industry running if we’re going to get through this. What’d the kid do?”
“Assault with a deadly weapon.”
A pencil? I resisted the urge to laugh.
“Gang-related?” the cop asked.
“I don’t have that information in the file,” said the bounty hunter.
The cop nodded and stepped back. He took another look at the smoke rising from down south of us. “You best find another way around.”
Chapter 172
After turning around and driving five blocks back the way we’d come, the bounty hunter turned right, drove a few more blocks down, and pulled into the parking lot of a shuttered convenience store. “You sit tight back there.”
“What are we doing?” I asked.
He took up his phone again and concentrated on the screen. “Trying to find a way through.”
“The map doesn’t show the way?” I asked.
“Don’t be a smartass.”
“I’m serious,” I told him.
The bounty hunter pointed roughly west. “There’s been rioting in the neighborhoods over that way, on and off, for a couple of weeks. Most of the roads are blocked by burned-out cars and whatnot. Well, not most of them, but too many of them. It’s like a maze trying to get through there. We might get in and not find our way out for hours. These roads going south were all clear until this damn riot.”
He swung his door open and got out of the car. He didn’t go anywhere, he stood by the open driver’s side door, looking at his phone, then looking south. “If we go east, it’s the same story. The only safe way to avoid all this is to backtrack and then look for a way around out west of town.” He shook his head. “But the further you get out of town these days, the crazier shit gets. Know what I mean?”
“No,” I answered.
“You don’t know a lot, do you, boy?”
“I spend all my time trying to keep my family alive,” I told him.
He opened his mouth to retort but cut himself short, I guess realizing the danger he’d brought on my parents by taking me away from home.
“I don’t have a lot of time to keep up with the local news,” I said, pushing the point. “I work lots of jobs around the neighborhood to earn enough to buy food to cover what the rations don’t.”
He ignored me, still looking west. “In some of the suburbs out there, the police departments don’t exist anymore. The sheriff doesn’t have the manpower to cover the whole county. Some places are lawless. I try to avoid those kinds of places.”
“You could take me back home and drop me off.”
Not even pretending to hear me, he pointed south. “Judging by the smoke, it looks like maybe not everything down that way is in the riot zone. I’m going to drive east down this road and find a southbound street I can follow that’s not blocked by the cops, and work my way down between the fires.”
I shook my head. I didn’t know much about how bad the riots were, but I’d seen enough on TV to think this was a bad plan. “You think we’ll be safe?”
He nodded. “Seems that once those degenerate types get it in their head to riot, they usually act like they’ve got somewhere to go. They tend to bunch up and start heading in one direction or another—nobody knows where, I don’t think they know either. They just go. My bet is that a bunch of them maybe started over there,” he pointed roughly south and left, “where it’s clear, and moved off over in the other direction where most of the fires are.” He pointed right before bending over and looking through the window at me. “We’ll be fine.”
“No, we won’t.” I’d seen enough of the violence around the neighborhood to guess what it looked like on a large scale, and in the chaos that was a riot, survival was a matter of chance and little else.
Chapter 173
Like many bad ideas do, this one started out going well. The bounty hunter found a winding street through a neighborhood of modest houses. He paused at nearly every intersection, checked street names, and compared them to the map on his phone. We missed turns, retraced our path, and seemed to be moving south. Tall trees on both sides of the road blocked my view of the sky so I couldn’t see the smoke from the riots. We might have been getting closer or farther away.
I asked, “How long have you been doing this?”
“Not that long.”
“What did you do before?”
“Other stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?” I asked.
“Why do you need to know?”
“I’m curious.”
“Do you think if you befriend me I’ll let you go?”
“No,” I answered. “But I can hope.”
“Put your hopes on something else. This is how I make my living.”
“Where did you work?” I asked.
“My job went away.”
“Why?”
“I owned a waffle shop.” He seemed sad when he said it. “Nobody goes to waffle shops anymore. Nobody wants to worry about whether a degenerate waiter is spewing snot-virus into their runny eggs. The restaurant industry is dead. People are scared.”
“Do you get paid a lot to pick up people like me?”
“With the ration card and what I get paid, I keep my kids fed.”
“How many kids do you have?”
“We’re not talking about me anymore.” He slowed the car to a lazy roll and examined the map on his phone. “You’re a kid. I’m an adult. I’m not falling into your trap. Save that shit for your seventh-grade friends.”
“I’m too old for seventh grade.”
He ignored me and made a turn, nodded emphatically as part of a conversation in his head, and gunned the engine. Smiling and glancing back at me, he said, “We can get through up here.”
He was happier about it than I was.
A few moments later he rounded the corner onto a major thoroughfare running north and south. Welding shops, roofers, sign companies, and oilfield support outfits had signs posted on aging metal buildings down both sides of the road. Many were protected by fences topped with barbed wire that had been there since long before the virus came to American shores.
Now most of the fences were thick with weeds growing through them. The cars and trucks parked in front wore layers of dirt that told a prescient truth about the economy. The cars hadn’t moved in two years. The economy was shuddering to a dead stall.
The sky was starting to darken with the setting sun.
The bounty hunter wagged a finger down the road in front of us. “See, clear all the way down to Loop 610.”
For about three more seconds, he was right.
A sound like nothing I’d ever heard raised the hair on the back of my neck.
The bounty hunter heard it, too. He took his foot off the accelerator as he looked aroun
d.
A flood of shouting people poured out of a boulevard just ahead, running and shoving. Some carried pieces of wood and metal, swinging them like clubs. Others wielded stones and bricks. Many had nothing but their fists. The mob poured over abandoned cars, beating them with their weapons. They flowed into the parking lot of a ceramic supply company, shattering the windows, and knocking down the door.
They were bent on destruction.
“Christ!” The bounty hunter hit the brakes, and the car skidded to a stop.
He jammed the car into reverse and squealed the tires as he looked out through the rear window.
I looked over my shoulder, saw no dangers, and then looked back toward the windshield. Hundreds—no—thousands of rioting degenerates were coming up the street toward us.
“Shit!” The bounty hunter hit the brakes again.
I looked out the rear window and saw a relative trickle of crazed people coming out of a street behind us.
The bounty hunter stopped the car, put it back in drive, and raced toward a side street up ahead on the left.
The rioters in front, seeing us coming toward them, turned frantic in their efforts to reach us.
The car’s tiny Asian engine whined as the bounty hunter pulled out of it all the acceleration it could muster. He swung the car into a sideways skid as we approached our turn.
We hit a rioter broadside with the passenger side door, and he went down. Another attacked the back door window and broke it with her face as she collided with the car.
The wheels were spinning again, and the car was gaining traction to get up the side street.
Degenerates were scattered in the road ahead. Most weren’t doing anything but looking in the direction of the coming mob. Some were caught up in the excitement of the howls billowing between the houses. They were frantic with excitement, running and searching for a way to vent. More were coming into the street. The bounty hunter weaved between them as he tried to hold his speed.
We blasted past a stop sign without slowing down and dodged degenerates through another few blocks as they swarmed thicker.
We slowed.
Some kicked at the car as we passed. Others punched at the windows. They threw things.
The sound of the mob several blocks back kept us pushing forward.
We slowed to power our way through several dozen degenerates clumped in the road, unwilling to move.
Flashes of yellow burst from a house on the left side of the street. The sound of gunfire cut through the riot rumble.
Debilitated people in front of and around us fell.
The bounty hunter shouted something I didn’t understand. The car’s little engine whined as he depressed the clutch and shoved the car into reverse without coming to a stop.
The car lurched. It shuddered as the wheels chirped and bounced. The engine banged loudly enough to ring my ears. White smoke spewed from under the hood. We jerked to a stop.
The bounty hunter’s curses filled the air. He pounded the steering wheel with his palms as he looked frantically around.
I fought to get my wrists free of the plastic cuffs. Things were going to shit.
The bounty hunter stopped beating the steering wheel and dug in his jacket for a moment before twisting in his seat to look at me. He tossed a folding knife into the backseat beside me and he pulled out the big pistol he’d threatened me with earlier.
The unbroken back door window beside me inexplicably fractured.
The bounty hunter glanced at the glass for the briefest of moments as he pointed at the knife on the seat and said, “Cut your—” One side of his head erupted in a gush of blood as the window beside him shattered.
Gunfire echoed between the houses again.
I sank low in the seat, though I didn’t think the car door’s thin sheet metal would protect me from the bullets in the air.
Chapter 174
People screamed and yelled unintelligible things. Men and women ran past, beating the car with whatever object they were using for a weapon. More gunshots cracked. Feet by the hundred pounded the asphalt.
The bulk of the mob was closing in.
Bullets were no longer tearing through the car, but my animal instinct told me to get the hell out and run.
I rolled around on the seat and got the bounty hunter’s knife in my hand and sawed at the plastic strap binding my wrists.
I poked myself with the blade, but didn’t relent. The strap had to go, and time was against me.
A degenerate woman punched her way through the shattered safety glass of the driver’s side window and started pawing at the body in the front seat.
The plastic strap around my wrists flexed and then separated at the weakened point as I yanked hard to pull my arms apart. I sat up straight and took a quick glance to assess the situation before getting out.
One of the back doors flung open.
I threw myself to the far end of the backseat and reached out with the knife, ready to stab.
Guns were still firing outside.
A fatherly man dressed in camouflage leaned through the open door. He was armed and anxious. He glanced at the dead bounty hunter lying across the front console. He grimaced and snapped his eyes back to me. “You hit? You okay?”
Still holding the knife up, I contorted to reach the door handle behind me to let myself out.
“Don’t,” he told me. “Come with me.”
I didn’t move.
“We need to hurry. Most of these degenerates won’t hurt you, but with that riled-up bunch coming down the street and the dipshits back there shooting everything, things are going to get bad out here.” Glancing at the dead bounty hunter, he said, “That was an accident. C’mon.”
Go, stay, run the other way. None of my options were good, and the worst of the mob was bearing down on us. I took one last hard look at the camouflaged man, trying to find something I could believe in for the next few minutes. I didn’t. Instead, I took a chance, and I said, “Okay.” I climbed halfway over the front seat and snatched the pistol out of the dead bounty hunter’s hand.
“C’mon,” urged the camo-clad man. “Hurry.”
With a pistol in one hand and an open lock-blade knife in the other, I got out of the car. The degenerate woman pawing her way into the front seat through the door window didn’t pay us any attention. Manic people were running in every direction but many of them toward the house from where guns still fired.
At least a dozen people were down all around us, degenerates bewildered with their bloody wounds, those overwhelmed with the pain of their torn flesh, screaming to heaven, and the dead, fallen with arms and legs at awkward angles.
“You coming?”
I looked up at my would-be rescuer a dozen steps ahead of me, slowing down for me to catch up. Without realizing it, without thinking about the coming mob, the sight of the butchery had stopped me cold. I looked away from the carnage and sprinted.
He pointed toward a gap between two houses, one of which was the source of the shooting. The windows of that house were boarded over with layers of plywood and two-by-fours. Long slits, like those in a deer blind, were cut at shoulder level through each boarded window. As we passed between the houses, a volley of fire erupted from the guns poking out through the slits on the front of the house.
Ahead of us, a degenerate was fumbling with the gate that led into the backyard. The camo-clad man ran up behind him and splintered the back of his skull with the butt of his rifle. The degenerate stumbled to his left and fell, smashing his face into the wall of the house next door.
I was astonished by the cavalier attitude these people had for dishing violence out to the degenerates, not to mention the bounty hunter they’d shot.
The camo-clad man opened the gate and waved me through.
I ran into the backyard. The house’s back windows were boarded over just like those in front. All the fences were down—no—disassembled. The fences that had separated ten back-to-back yards on the block had been taken
down and used to reinforce and heighten a perimeter fence now standing in the gaps between the houses, leaving a space the size of a football field where all of the decorative shrubs that had lined the fences had been cut away. The lower branches on all of the trees that hadn’t been sawed down to stumps had been pruned to let sunlight down to the gardens that filled the area.
But it wasn’t just a communal garden behind the houses on the block. It was a kill zone for anyone shooting out of the fortified house.
“Over here,” said a woman holding the fortified house’s back door open. “Get inside.”
I ran toward her, and the man who’d come to get me out of the car came along behind.
Once inside I looked around in a dim kitchen that smelled of cigarettes and sweat. Cigarettes? Those were rare these days. The woman who’d called me to come inside looked me over, her eyes settling mostly on the pistol in my hand. Two other men with rifles looked out through a slit in a window above the kitchen sink.
My rescuer came through the door and the woman slammed it shut and immediately went to work putting wooden braces in brackets mounted to the back of the door’s frame. She intended for it to stay closed when the mob arrived.
“Don’t,” the camo-clad man told her. “I’m leaving soon as I get my daughter.”
The gunfire intensified from the other rooms in the house.
The woman took on a derisive tone. “Don’t be an idiot, Jim.”
The camo-clad man—apparently Jim—spun on the woman. “Darlene, don’t. I told you that hothead Randy would get us all killed if you let him in here, and now he’s got everybody shooting and drawing every one of those degenerate bastards right to us because he can’t stop acting like Sylvester-Goddamn-Rambo. Half these dumbasses can’t shoot to save their lives. They killed this boy’s father while they were trying to shoot degenerates near the car.”
I said, “He wasn’t my dad.”
Jim paused and looked me up and down. His eyes stopped for a moment on the plastic straps still on each of my wrists.