“Ah, I see,” I said. In truth I wasn't really paying much attention. I was focused on driving through the fog, but the sound of his voice was comforting.
“Well, you start out by a hut where this old gypsy woman gives you some clues about where to start your quest to defeat the evil ruler of the desert land,” he said. “As you go, you fight monsters and gain levels, making your characters more powerful until you finally throw down the ruler, who is the ancient undead mummy of the last pharaoh or something. Along the way have to answer a sphinx’s riddle, rescue some people and explore the catacombs beneath a temple.”
“Sounds exciting,” I replied. “What was the name of the game?”
“Damned if I remember.”
“So it was more of an RPG-style game?” Indigo asked. “Most of the games you talk about are fighting games or shooters. I didn't know you liked role-playing games.”
“I'm an equal opportunity gamer,” Luke responded with a smile. “About the only games I actively avoid are dancing games.”
“Why? You’d be great at ‘Dance Off Evolution,’” Indigo said with a smile of her own.
I couldn't tell if she was teasing him or not, but their playful banter suddenly made me even tenser than I was. Was I actually jealous of Luke because Indigo was teasing him and not me?
“You’ve obviously never seen me try to dance,” Luke said. “Anyway, that’s about all there was to the game. It wasn’t very layered, so it didn't take me long to beat it, just a couple of days of playing over spring break a couple of years ago.”
“I think this is Park Avenue coming up,” Indigo said, thankfully changing the topic. “The one crossing this street at an angle. Get ready to make a sharp right turn.”
“I see it,” I replied, peering through the soupy mist, seeing the vague outline of an intersection.
I stepped harder on the gas and the truck lurched forward as we rounded the corner. It was then Indigo sucked in a sharp breath. I slammed on the brakes, and the truck screeched to a halt.
Blocking the way ahead was an abandoned truck, and in the remaining lane, two deliberately placed motorcycles.
“Shit,” said Luke under his breath.
An instant later, the staccato stutter of a submachine gun erupted to our left.
4
We instinctively ducked down as my window shattered and bullets began peppering my door with loud pings. While a few stray bullets made their way into the cab, the paper reinforcement in the door seemed to hold up and we rode out the storm of bullets until they slowed and then finally ceased.
I risked a quick peek and saw two Tigers I didn’t recognize walking towards us as they reloaded what looked to my untrained eye like machine pistols. We only had seconds before they began firing again.
“Light me one of those bombs, quick,” I said to Luke.
He did as I asked with no questions and as soon as it was in my hand I hurled it out through the driver’s window. It clattered to a hissing and sputtering stop a few feet in front of the gunmen. They both stared down at it in surprise for a split second before the furthest away of the two turned and ran. His buddy was not so quick, perhaps still deciding what it was, when it went off.
The explosion was much louder than I expected and he dropped to his knees screaming and holding his face. I hit the gas and we sped off even as his buddy rushed over to him and began to help him to his feet. I drove straight at the bikes, the truck rolling over them with a lurching crunch of twisting metal and breaking glass.
I sped off down the street, driving way too fast considering the low visibility conditions, and just hoped there was nothing in our way. We heard the faint rattle of machine gunfire behind us but I don’t think they even hit us this time.
“Well done, dude!” Luke said. “Is everyone okay?”
“Yeah, I’m not hit,” said Indigo.
“I’m good,” I said, then almost on cue, we heard the dull roar of motorcycles over the rush of wind through my windows.
“Dammit!” yelled Indigo.
Adrenalin was still coursing through my veins from our recent encounter and, from the way Luke and Indigo gripped the dashboard as I sped up, I knew they felt it too. The next few minutes were crucial. There would be no negotiating with the Tigers if they managed to disable the truck.
“They’re behind us,” Luke said unnecessarily, looking into his side mirror, the only one we had left.
“How many of them?”
“Ah, crap,” Indigo said, leaning toward Luke’s side to see for herself, then back at me. “All of them.”
“Yeah, there are at least six,” Luke said, racking the slide of the crossbow, a weapon that in current circumstances seemed woefully inadequate. “And that's just the ones close enough to see through the fog.”
He swung around so that he was kneeling in the seat facing backwards and leaned out through his window. He tried to brace himself and aim the crossbow at our pursuers but gave up after a few seconds.
“I never realized how hard it was to shoot backwards from a moving vehicle. I’ll just waste arrows if I try and fire on them,” he said, pulling back inside.
“We could throw some more bombs behind us,” Indigo suggested.
“Worth a shot,” Luke said, grabbing one of the ink bombs from under the seat and pulling his lighter back out of his pocket. “How long do you think I should cook it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But don’t let it go off in here or we’re screwed. It’s hard enough to see as it is.”
“I’ll do my best.” He lit the fuse and waited until it had half burned down and then tossed it through the window.
“Damn it,” he said, after a few seconds. “They were past it by the time it blew.”
“Try again,” Indigo encouraged. She already had another ink bomb out and ready for him. “I know you’ll get it right this time.”
It came again, that jealous twinge. She wasn’t teasing him, just encouraging him, but it still made me knot up a little.
Really, you’re doing this now, Isaac? I thought. Get over yourself.
“How close are they?” I yelled over the noise of the wind rushing through the cabin.
“About a truck length back,” Luke replied.
“Maybe let it burn down to a quarter of an inch this time?” I said, thinking about how much time it had taken to blow with a half-inch of fuse left when I’d thrown it at the gunmen.
“Yeah, drop it out your window,” said Indigo. “Let them come to it.”
“Okay,” he said, as he lit the second fuse.
He let it burn down almost all the way before dropping it and putting his head out to watch the results. This time, the bang was loud enough to hear in the truck and was accompanied by the sound of screeching tires and scraping metal.
“Oh, yeah!” he roared, pulling back inside, positively beaming ear to ear. “One of the bikes went into a slide and two others hit it. The rest slowed down and fell back into the fog.”
I kept the gas pedal down as far as I dared, only having to swerve once to avoid a car in the middle of the road, barely missing it as it appeared unexpectedly out of the fog. We could still hear the motorcycles following us, but they remained hidden in the roiling white emptiness behind the truck.
“How far is it to the freeway?” I asked Indigo.
“About two miles… oh my… you’re bleeding, Isaac,” she said.
“What?”
“You’re bleeding, from your cheek,” she watched as I reached up to my cheek and felt nothing.
“Your other cheek.”
I reached over to my other cheek. I felt a cold crust under my fingers and I realized the wind whipping through my broken window must have frozen the blood on my face.
I felt a ragged line above the frozen blood and almost instantly my cheek started aching. The adrenalin had let me forge ahead without even realizing I was hurt but, now that I knew, I sure as hell felt it.
“I hope it’s not too bad,” I said.<
br />
“It looks like some flying glass cut you. Probably when the window was shot in,” Indigo said. “I’ll look it over for you when we get a chance to stop for a while.”
“You could end up with a bad ass scar there, Chief,” Luke said, looking across the cab at my wound. He almost sounded envious.
“I don’t really want a scar on my face, bad ass or otherwise,” I said.
“Man, I am kind of surprised to hear you say that. I thought you’d be into the scarred hero type look.”
“Don’t worry, Isaac. I think scars are sexy,” Indigo said, and I felt my cheeks burn hot enough to melt the frozen blood of my wound. Maybe having a scar on my face wouldn’t be so bad after all? “Now slow down, we’re almost to the freeway on-ramp.”
5
We had not been on the freeway long when the fog began to thin out and before we knew it, we were driving through a crystal clear and frigid New England day. Luke reported that the motorcycles were still following us but had dropped back quite a ways.
“I hope those persistent bastards don’t chase us all the way to the safe haven,” Luke said, his eyes locked on the mirror.
“We definitely won’t lead them there,” I replied. “Hopefully, they give up before we have to do anything drastic.”
We rode in silence for a few minutes, our light mood at the temporary reprieve from our pursuers suddenly dampened by what we were witnessing. The freeway was clear of vehicles, but not through any stroke of luck. There must have been an almighty gridlock at one point as people tried to escape the city, but now the vehicles were piled and heaped to the sides of the road, as though a petulant child had swept his toy cars off a track in a fit of rage.
That wasn’t the worst. There were bodies, too. Some hanging out of cars, some half-buried in the snowdrifts that were building on the wrecks. I glanced at Indigo and saw tears in her eyes as she took in the horrible sight. Bitter tears stung my own eyes. I didn’t try to comfort her – we would probably see plenty worse than this before we reached the safe haven.
The Chinese had cleared the freeway and one had to assume they were doing the same to all the major roads between cities, to ease their takeover and repopulation of the conquered continent. It only made sense. Luke looked into his mirror.
“They’re still stalking us. I’m just glad their little convoy of motorbikes hasn’t brought the Chinese down on us,” he said.
“Yet,” I said pointedly.
“Yeah, yet. That reminds me, I haven’t heard… oh crap.”
I glanced at him and then down at the CB radio on the dashboard and my stomach did a flip-flop. One of the bullets that had come through my window had torn through the side of it. “We’ve been driving deaf for at least a half-hour now. The whole damn Chinese Army could be waiting around the next bend for all we know.”
“Oh, well,” said Luke. “It’s not like we have anybody who speaks Chinese up here anyway. Brooke is in back...”
Indigo gave him a look.
“Hey, now... sorry. I didn’t mean... I wasn’t complaining.”
He looked mortified that she might think he was taking a swipe at her and I found myself taking a perverse enjoyment out of his discomfort.
“I hope the others are okay,” Indigo said, and I remembered the sound of the nine-millimeter bullets slapping into the side of the cargo area.
“We can’t stop to check on them as long as the Tigers are stalking us,” I said. “Luke, grab your atlas. See if there is a way we can lose them up ahead.”
“Will do,” he said, no doubt happy the awkward moment had passed.
He reached under his seat, where he seemed to have stored everything but a kitchen sink. A few seconds later, he was opening his atlas to Massachusetts.
“Indigo, we got on here, right?” he asked, pointing to a spot on the map.
“Yeah, that’s the place,” she said.
“I think I see a way,” Luke said. “Take the next exit and turn left off the end of the ramp. That should put us on highway 12 and we can follow that up to the 140 and then take the 140 back to I-190.”
“I’ve been that way before,” Indigo said. “It won’t take us too far out of the way.”
“Alright then, maybe we can lose them on the way.”
I saw the exit coming up and slowed to take it and, as I did, the motorbikes closed some of the distance between us.
Glancing back over my shoulder, I saw about eight bikes, some of them with two Tigers on. We were still well outnumbered as ten or twelve Chinese gangbangers were not something we were equipped to fight it out with, not even if everybody in the back was in good shape and ready to rumble. We just didn’t have the firepower. The Tigers would easily outgun us. My attention snapped back onto the ramp ahead of me and I pulled us off of the freeway.
The off ramp was forested on either side, but almost as soon as we turned onto highway 12, we passed an Ace Hardware and a grocery store. I would have liked to have stopped and looked for more supplies in both places, but with the Tigers on our asses, it wasn’t an option. Continuing up the highway, we passed a CVS pharmacy and after that a couple of strip malls and an RV dealership as we left the outskirts of town.
Worcester was finally in our rear-view mirror but unfortunately, so were the Tigers.
With the fog lifted I could open it up a little more, but I didn’t get above 50 or so. That seemed to be the speed at which the truck began to protest by shaking and whining. I knew there was no way that a rental truck was going to outrun the Tigers’ motorcycles, not for long, anyway.
“We need to get far enough ahead so we can find a place where there’s a corner to hide the truck. Hopefully, they’ll zoom on by and we can go the other way,” I said.
“I don’t know if that’s going to cut it,” Luke said, looking back. “These guys are hardcore and they’re not letting us out of their line of vision. I can’t believe that wasting a couple of them pissed them off enough to risk the Chinese.”
“Yeah, about that,” I said. “You remember the guy I killed in the alley, back when we saved Indigo?”
“Seriously, dude? You’re asking if I remember the guy you gunned down in front of me?”
“Yeah, well ... he was ...”
“What?” Luke and Indigo asked at the same time.
“The younger brother of Chen, the leader of the Tigers,” I said, not looking at them and keeping my eyes on the road.
“Really?” Luke asked.
“What’d I tell you?” I said. “If it wasn’t for bad luck...”
“Well, I don’t care who he was, I’m glad you did it. You guys are my knights in shining armor – even if your shining armor is a stained parka,” she said to me then to Luke, “And your sword, a crossbow.”
“So, are they going to hunt us to the ends of the earth now or what?” Luke asked.
“I hope not,” I replied. “But back at the parking garage I came face to face with him and he looked mad ... no, more than mad. He looked psycho. I’m pretty sure he will keep coming after us until one of us is dead. Either him or me. Since we turned off have we gained any ground?”
“No, in fact, they’ve started creeping closer again.”
The road swerved to the right and I could see we were coming up to a long bridge over a stretch of water.
“Just on the other side of this bridge, you want to turn left. It’ll take us back toward the freeway.”
“That’s a big lake,” I said when the trees to the side thinned out as we approached the bridge. I realized I could only see part of the lake as it stretched to my left. There were places where it bent around, forming large coves.
“That’s the Wachusett Reservoir,” Indigo said. “My uncle used to bring me and my cousin fishing here sometimes when we were little.”
There was a sign that proclaimed the bridge prone to ice in the winter, but I ignored it and kept up my speed as we hit it. I could hear the motorcycles again and the roar of their engines were getting louder. It occurre
d to me they meant to take us while we were crossing the lake. I got my revolver ready and lay it on my lap in case any of them pulled alongside, and saw Luke was likewise preparing his crossbow for action.
“They’re coming,” Luke said, looking in his mirror. I nodded grimly. The roar of bikes told me that they were getting very close now.
“Oh, no!” moaned Indigo as we crested the bridge and started descending to the other side.
In front of us was our worst nightmare... a roadblock manned by Chinese soldiers at the other end of the bridge.
6
Wooden barricades were placed across the end of the bridge and an armored vehicle, topped by a wicked looking cannon, and four Humvees were parked behind them. Standing at the barrier, watching us come toward them, were at least eight Chinese soldiers and I could see more behind the vehicles.
We were trapped between the Tigers and the Chinese Army... with no way out.
“You gotta be shitting me,” Luke said.
“Figures, doesn’t it?” I said, through gritted teeth.
“What are we going to do?” Indigo asked.
“Die, probably,” I said, unable to hide the despair in my voice. “I’m not stopping. They’ll have to kill us ... that’s the only way they’re stopping this truck.”
“Yep. This reminds me of that old country song about the convoy,” Luke said.
I had no idea what he was talking about and wondered how, just seconds from death, Luke could be spouting crap about songs probably written before either of us was born. Maybe it was a coping mechanism?
Mine was anger. I stomped the gas pedal hard into the floor.
“You guys might want to get down as low as possible,” I said. “The engine block should give you some protection.”
The Chinese soldiers in front of us suddenly realized they were in imminent danger and began scrambling to ready their weapons and take cover behind their vehicles.
We were maybe a hundred yards from the barricades when the Tigers opened up with submachine guns and pistols behind us. I heard a few hit the truck, but most seemed to be missing, probably because shooting and riding a motorcycle at the same time isn’t easy. The effect on the Chinese, though, was amazing; they seemed to think the Tigers were shooting at them and responded accordingly.
The America Falls Series: Books 1-3 : America Falls Box Set 1 Page 19