Free State Of Dodge

by Javan Bonds

  Before cranking his car, he looked to his left and saw nothing on the highway in that direction. Then he looked to his right, past the tall cement crosswalk, completely encased in a chain-link fence, that led from the high school, over the highway, to a path on the other side that led to the football field, up the hill toward the Texaco, to see and hear nothing coming from that direction either. It was almost sad that few people could afford to travel anymore, and Redstone was just glad his gas money didn’t come out of his pocket. Well, I guess I’ll pick up a Mountain Dew while I’m up that way. It’ll make Bobbi Jo even happier and less likely to bother me for the rest of the day if I actually go into the gas station while them fellas are in there. Redstone took his time pulling out onto the highway, and he didn’t bother to signal when he turned and headed up the gradual hill. He went slowly enough when he passed the town hall to make sure Bobbi Jo would see his car through the window—he knew she was looking out. When he reached the red light and eyed the beat-up old pickup and the motorcycles parked at the south corner of the gas station, he remembered reports from the talk radio station he listened to between naps about motorcycle gangs holding up gas stations and hijacking gas tankers, and he realized Bobbi Jo might have made a good call for once.

  He turned left onto Polecat Road and then immediately turned right to pull in behind the parked vehicles. He may have just run a red light, but he was a cop, so he figured he could do it.

  “Where’s the fuckin beer?” The man who had been the passenger in the truck asked loudly, not looking in Lacey’s direction but obviously aiming the question at her. He reached for a bag of chips from the rack closest to him and nonchalantly opened it to begin eating handfuls of Doritos.

  Lacey tried to stand stiff but was sure they could hear the intimidation in her voice. “This is a dry county, although some of the cities are wet, such as Maryton and—”

  “Then that’ll be the next place we hit,” the man standing closest to her said. He was casually leaning against a rack while the other three men ransacked the store. Obviously the leader of this little group, he was a large man with long, unkempt hair, and he was wearing a black skullcap and too much leather, which identified him as one of the bikers. Looking over his shoulder with a malicious grin, he yelled at the other three, “Right, boys?”

  A grunt of agreement and “hell yeah, Larry!” came from the back of the store between the opening and shutting of the cooler doors and the ripping noises of packages of food being opened.

  Larry, who had not moved other than to stand upright and turn his head, took one step forward and propelled himself to the counter, and it, seemed to Lacey that he had jumped from his earlier position to stand in front of her. His left hand slammed down against the counter, making a loud pop that made her physically recoil, while his right hand moved toward his hip, where she could see the outline of a pistol through his ridiculously tight jeans. Well, at least his pants ain’t leather, just his chaps, she thought, and that SNL skit started to replay in her mind as she almost forgot she was about to be robbed and probably killed.

  Larry’s tapping on the butt of his monster revolver brought her crashing back into the real world, and she stared into his eyes. In the brief stare, she could see all of the violent things he wanted to do to her and everyone else he got his hands on. And as she dropped her head to look away, he unapologetically said, “You are gonna give us everything in the register, and then you are gonna open them gas pumps for us, and while they are out there filling the gas cans up, maybe you and me can have a little fun.” He ended the last part of his demand almost as a question, but Lacey knew he would do whatever he wanted, and she was powerless to stop him unless she could get to her purse with the.22 pistol inside. Her dad had told her when she got this job that she would need to carry something to defend herself if it ever came to it, but she never thought it would do anything more than sit in the bottom of her purse. She knew Larry was watching her too closely for her to go for it, and if only he was distracted would she have enough time to get to her purse.

  Without a word she looked down at the register to open it. Larry turned his head but kept his eyes on her and shouted, “Hey, Bud, come up here and get a bag to put this cash in!” Turning his head back to her, he waited for her eyes to return to his and spoke in a low, evil tone. “Then you gonna unlock them pumps, and they gonna leave us alone.”

  Lacey was almost crying as a grin stretched across his sinister face. Bud, a skinny, bald man wearing a dirty cutoff T-shirt and equally dirty jeans, walked behind the counter to grab a plastic bag.

  Then a booming voice came from outside, in the direction of the gang members’ vehicles. “Dude with the shitty truck, your taillight is busted!”

  Larry, being directly in line with the door, ran quickly from the counter to take cover behind a rack, quickly followed by Bud, while Lacey backed away from the counter and slid down to the floor with her back pressed against the wall.

  Redstone clicked off the PA button on the radio receiver, dropped it to let it hang inches from the floor of his car by the cord, and then rolled his head out of the open driver’s door to crouch where he was standing and look through the window of the passenger door.

  He saw no movement inside the store and decided to try the PA again. “Come out here, so I can give you a ticket!” He almost threw in, “Or you can just pay me the cash up front,” but he knew that joke might be a bad idea since Bobbi Jo was probably watching from across the road and might even have a window open. Redstone stood straight, unlocked his pistol in its holster, and was about to walk to the door when glass began to shatter and fly as a bullet cracked from inside the store.

  “Shit, shit, shit! What the hell was that for?” he hollered in the gaping door, not really expecting an answer but wanting to yell anyway. He wasn’t even sure if the bullet had been fired to hit him or just to get rid of the glass that would hinder future shots, because he hadn’t seen the bullet impact anywhere near him. He crouched behind the front left tire, his back against the car, and desperately wished he were wearing a shoulder radio so he wouldn’t have to move into his car to call for backup. He knew Bobbi Jo was watching but would be too busy watching a real-life shootout to even bother calling for assistance. The fat bitch might as well be eating popcorn, he thought as he tried to make himself smaller and avoid being visible.

  “What the hell was that for?” Bud shouted over the ringing in his ears, referring to the gunshot that had blown the glass from the door between them and the cop outside.

  “Now I got a clear shot at him,” Larry replied in what resembled a whisper, all the while scanning the building for an alternative escape route. He sighed with relief when he found the back door at the end of a short corridor between the coolers, and he instantly envisioned a way not only to get out of there but also to take the stuff they had come for with them. He smirked and yelled a little louder for all three men to hear, “He’s gonna be busy watchin’ this door. Y’all sneak out the backdoor. Come up on him from behind.”

  He gestured to the back door and signaled that he would stay there, and the others tried to keep low as they trekked to the exit. Larry glanced over to the last place he had seen Lacey and realized she had not made a move to escape or call for help. Not daring to step into the open space by the counter, he simply whistled and waited for a response. When there was none, he returned his attention to the shootout and waited for the impending ambush his boys were about to give this annoying cop.

  As the doors shut behind his companions, he pushed back against the wall, kept his gun ready so he could rush out when the time came, and grumbled to himself, “If them damn fools had kept their fuckin’ voices down, we would have heard him comin’, and this wouldn’t be a big deal.” He was hoping they wouldn’t kill the cop until he got a few good blows in.

  About the time he was thinking about whether to take the clerk with him or just do her there, he heard the sound of four distinct shots from a single rifle, but he was pre
tty sure none of his buddies was carrying a rifle, and the distance seemed off. So he popped his head around the corner just to look. The cop was standing, mostly hidden by his car, and looking in shock to his left, the direction from which the ambush should have been coming.

  The four semiautomatically fired nine-millimeter hollow-point bullets were fired in rapid succession, with the first pocking the asphalt a few feet in front of the first man in the line. The second and third missiles struck the same man in his right kneecap and bicep, causing him to drop his pistol and fall from the crouching position onto his left side, screaming and clutching at his knee. The final bullet grazed the third man’s shoulder blades and thumped into the truck that was covering them from Redstone, sending him crashing to the ground on his face with his arms lying useless at his sides, temporarily paralyzed by the glancing blow.

  The man in the middle, unharmed and confused, backpedaled, unsure where to go but knowing anywhere was better than there. He tripped over his fallen comrade after a couple of steps, which sent his sawed-off shotgun to the pavement. Righting himself but not taking the time to retrieve the weapon, he bolted around the front of the truck, still in a crouch, and realized too late that he was now in the cop’s line of sight. He felt it was better to be pinned down by a policeman than killed by a passerby with a gun, so he placed his hands up against his truck while looking back toward the cop, who had already pointed his pistol in his direction and the new shooter’s direction, and yelled, “I ain’t got shit, man!”

  From a distance of at least two hundred yards, it took Redstone a few seconds to recognize the faded-green antique pickup, and as he realized it was Jackson, he let out a whooping yell and moved his pistol and his gaze back to the raider at the door.

  Once Jackson felt Redstone no longer saw him as a hostile, he drove his truck down the road past Redstone, made an illegal U-turn in the highway, and came to rest bumper to bumper with Redstone’s squad car, immediately slinging the door open and rolling out into a crouch with his rifle in both hands.

  Looking at Redstone, he didn’t even have time to speak before being scolded. “You were speeding, that was an illegal U-turn on a state right-of-way, and you were endangering the life of a police officer by shooting in my direction.” Redstone listed Jackson’s offenses with complete calm, but Jackson couldn’t really hear him anyway, and he spoke when he saw Redstone was through talking.

  “I just shot out of my truck. I can’t hear a damn thing you said!”

  Redstone suppressed a smile, trying to remain straight faced as he spoke a little louder and added that to the list of offenses. “Shooting out of your vehicle—that’s illegal also. I can give you several tickets.”

  Jackson’s hearing was returning, and he picked up that Redstone was threatening to charge him for his actions of the last few minutes. Even though there was a guy trying to murder them, Redstone, as he always did when wearing the uniform, was acting as a dutiful police officer who did not let even his friends get by with any offenses, regardless of the circumstances. Though he knew he would not get a ticket, and he was acting as if life were a scripted movie, Jackson would always ask as if you were offended and tried to talk his way out of trouble.

  “I saved your ass, bastard! Damn guys were gonna sneak up on you, and they would have if it wasn’t for me!”

  Redstone still had his gun pointed at the open door, occasionally glancing to the man by the raiders’ truck. He casually remarked, “Well, appreciate it, civilian. How long had you been watching?”

  Jackson grinned and snorted laughter at the label his friend always used to refer to anyone while he was on duty and responded, “Long enough to figure somebody is probably still in there.” With a nod from Redstone, he gestured to the broken door and said with a pained smile, “Then it would probably be a good idea if we stopped chatting and focused on the guy who wants to kill us.”

  Redstone guffawed at this obvious statement, and they both pointed their firearms in the direction of the gunman, waiting for him to make some kind of move. After a few long seconds of waiting, Redstone hollered to the man, “How do you wanna do this, Paco?”

  After a moment of silence, the unseen man came back. “I wanna leave, but you ain’t gonna let me, are you?”

  Redstone didn’t skip a beat and instantly replied, “Hell no, dumbass! Throw your gun out, and come out with your hands up and all that shit you’ve seen the movies!”

  The man’s reply came as a gunshot from his pistol, sending Jackson and Redstone prone to the ground. The police truck was situated farther behind the raiders, so the bullet struck almost directly in the center of Jackson’s passenger door, because his vehicle was positioned in line with the door.

  Angrily jumping up upon hearing the bullet slam into his beloved truck, Jackson pointed his weapon at the door and shouted, “I ain’t even the damn cop! Shoot his car!”

  After Jackson let out some more mumbled curses, the man slipped his pistol around the corner again and blindly fired two more shots that hit Jackson’s truck.

  “Son of a bitch!” Jackson screamed, ready to unload his twenty-round clip at the door and the man inside. He steadied his rifle on the hood of his pickup and began to take aim where the pistol had emerged moments before.

  Redstone gestured to get his attention and whispered, “I’m gonna sneak my way up there, so just keep him busy.”

  Jackson looked at his friend with confusion. There wasn’t much he could do to occupy this guy besides let him shoot his truck some more.

  Before anymore shots could be fired, Redstone yelled at the door, “Gunfights near gasoline or other flammable liquids are not recommended!” He used a formal voice to imitate a news anchor, and Jackson dropped his head at the ridiculousness of Redstone making jokes in such a dire moment as this.

  When nothing had happened for a moment, Redstone ran while trying to keep as low as his wiry, six-foot frame would let him, moving around the front of his squad car and between a motorcycle and the raiders’ truck, stopping to cuff one of the raiders’ wrists to the handlebar of the nearest motorcycle, then compelling himself to hug the outside of the wall to make his way to the entrance. He didn’t know what he would do when he got there, but he knew he had to do something.

  Jackson almost laughed as he watched his friend slither along the wall, because even though Redstone had never been forced to use his gun while on duty, he was treating this gunfight as if it were an everyday occurrence and he knew exactly what he was doing. Throughout his entire life, Jackson had always been able to tell whether or not something bad was going to happen to him or someone close to him, and he knew they would both make it out of this just fine. So the whole scene seemed comical.

  When Redstone was only a few feet from the door, Jackson banged his rifle against his truck and shouted, “Faggot!” He dropped back down behind his pickup and knew Redstone had to be stifling a laugh. You said to keep him busy, and that’s what I’m doing, he thought as his insult had the intended effect. A bullet was fired, but thankfully, it missed Jackson’s truck.

  Redstone heard the man grumble, eject the cylinder, and let the spent casings fall to the floor. A revolver! Redstone rushed to the door and was close enough to hear the man shuffling through his pocket for more ammo as three light taps sounded from farther within the building. He launched himself through the broken door, gun drawn, at first aiming where the gunman was standing, then following his body as it fell lifelessly to the floor, then aiming at the new shooter.

  Redstone’s eyes were not adjusted fully when he had entered the gas station, and this new shooter was only a silhouette with a smaller build and obviously holding a pistol straight armed in front of it with both hands. As his vision sharpened, he realized it was Lacey Rice, the store clerk.

  The pistol was trembling in her hands, and she dropped it, pulling her hands back as if it were hot. Her face had a shocked look on it as she collapsed to the floor in a pile.

  Redstone moved to where she lay, p
ut his hand on her shoulder, and asked, “Are you all right?”

  Seconds later Jackson jumped through the door with his rifle up. He opened his mouth to shout something, but upon seeing Redstone crouched over a girl on the floor, he closed it, lowered his rifle, and moved in their direction. He turned his head to look at the destruction in the store, mentally comparing it to a tornado scene. Turning almost completely around and walking backward, he viewed the gunman who had shot his pickup. The man was obviously dead, lying on the floor in a growing pool of blood, a large chrome revolver beside his open hand and two or three bullet holes in his neck and upper back. The man had fallen forward, his face slammed into the wall and not visible.

  Jackson reached his friend and the wet-faced blond girl and took a knee by Redstone. In an instant Jackson realized this girl was Lacey Rice. She had graduated a couple of years after he and Redstone had; he had never known much about her other than that they had gone to the same high school and that she was working here at the Texaco. Redstone had gotten her to sit up against a display, and she sat wide eyed, straight faced, and looking off into nothing in shock. Neither of them knowing what to do, they stood simultaneously and turned in the opposite direction.

  Jackson said in a low whisper, “I thought you had to take some kind of course at the police academy on how to deal with traumatized bystanders.”

  His statement came out as a question, to which Redstone answered in his version of a whisper, “Well, if I did, I slept through it.” He chuckled at his own retort, which made Jackson smirk, making him feel a little guilty for finding it funny with a dead guy in front of them and a traumatized girl behind.