by Sweet, W. G.
“He's right, I think,” Beth said, “I don't want to die any more than any of us do. Sitting here isn't going to help us at all, going back before they have a chance to regroup might.”
“Only thing to do,” Delbert sighed from the back seat, “if I gotta die, I'd rather die fighting than get trapped and slaughtered like an animal... There's just no place we can go down here.”
“So?” Billy asked.
“We go back,” Peggy said decisively. John grunted a short “Yeah” which they could all tell he was not enthusiastic about.
Billy dropped the Suburban back into drive and they began to move down the dirt road, gaining momentum as they neared the highway. Billy slowed to turn onto the highway after looking in both directions and seeing nothing. Ahead, approximately where the Bronco had wrecked, they could see greasy black smoke billowing into the hot still air.
“Could be some of 'em there too,” Delbert said, as he stared toward the greasy smoke in the distance. “If so, I'll be ready for 'em.” Billy nodded his head, and brought the truck up to speed slowly to hide the whine of the motor, which would hopefully allow them to take the road block, or whoever might be at the Bronco, by surprise.
As they neared the burning Bronco Billy could see one of the patrol cars off to the side of the road, along with the red pickup that Delbert had pointed out to them. "Looks like it," Billy said calmly, as he leaned back into the seat to give Beth a clear shot through the driver’s side window.
The young blonde haired kid from the Bronco was lifeless on the side of the road along with two other crumpled forms that Billy assumed must have also been in the truck. A small group of three men stood over the bodies. They heard the approaching truck and suddenly jumped for cover as Billy roared by. Beth's pistol chattered briefly, directly in front of his face, and the tires of the red pickup exploded with a loud popping noise. Billy pressed the gas pedal as close to the floor as it would go as they passed, and almost simultaneously heard the sound of breaking glass from the rear of the truck, along with a steady, plunk, plunk, plunk, as bullets slammed into the rear of the fleeing Suburban. A sudden cry of pain came from the rear a split second later, as several small crystals of glass flew forward striking the dashboard, and the back of Billy's head.
“What happened?” he shouted. “You guy's okay?”
“Got John,” Delbert shouted back, “it don't look good, Billy.”
“Shit,” Billy muttered, as he tried to press the gas pedal further into the floorboard. “Shit.”
The intersection, where the road block had been, appeared in front of them a few seconds later. Whatever had gone by them on the highway had not been the second patrol car. It still sat across the road, blocking the right hand lane. The left hand lane was blocked by four men, who were not armed with shotguns, Billy noticed as they neared, but some sort of machine pistols similar to the ones they themselves carried. He was just about to slam on the brakes and try to turn around once more, when a quick glance in the mirror showed the other patrol car coming up behind them. Its blue bubble light pulsing as it came. What the hell, Billy thought these guy's must think they're playing some sort of fucking game with us. Aloud he said. “We're screwed they're in front of us and behind us... To hell with it, we're going through. Hold on.”
Peggy pushed John aside, and took his place at the rear passenger side window. She leaned out facing back, and began firing at the closing patrol car, as Beth leaned out and began to fire at the four men blocking the left hand side of the road. Delbert was aiming at the four men as well from his side of the truck. Two of the four dropped immediately, but the other two were returning fire even as they ran for the cover of the patrol car, and Billy could feel, as well as hear, the bullets slamming into the Suburban, both front and rear.
The patrol car behind them suddenly swerved and then flipped, and Peggy let out a scream of triumph as she turned back to the front, knelt on the rear seat, and began to fire over Beth's head at the other patrol car. The side of the car began to take on a chewed-appearance within seconds, as all three machine pistols were trained on it. Still, the men behind it returned fire.
They were now less than a hundred feet from the car, Billy saw.
“Sit down!” he suddenly yelled into the truck, “Now!” As he yelled he swung the Suburban toward the cruiser, just close enough so that he could clip the front end of it as they went past. The two men behind the cruiser realized what he intended to do too late.
The Suburban hit the front of the cruiser harder than Billy expected, so hard in fact that it sent it spinning into the ditch like a toy. The collision ripped the front fender from the truck, along with most of the passenger door. The heavy bumper of the truck, torn half off in the collision, let go with a shower of sparks and the Suburban bounced over it leaving it behind in the road. Billy kept the gas pedal jammed to the floor boards, even though steam was beginning to pour from the front of the truck, and the motor was starting to wheeze ominously. A heavy vibration ran through the truck, and as the Suburban gained more speed the vibration became a heavy shuddering, that threatened to shake the truck to pieces. Two miles down the road he spotted a Dodge dealership and slid the dying truck to a stop in the wide asphalt parking lot.
“Out!” he shouted, as he quickly jumped from the truck. The others piled out behind him, and Billy dropped back to help Delbert who was struggling to drag John along. Beth and Peggy reached the glass doors of the showroom, and quickly held them open to allow them to hurry inside with John.
Billy stared back out at the wide parking lot expecting to see the remaining patrol car come screaming in, he did not know that Peggy had taken care of that problem.
“The ammo,” Billy said turning toward the doors, “no way should we leave it in the truck, that other car will be along any minute.”
“I don't think so,” Peggy replied icily, “it flipped. I blew out the front tires, and I'm pretty damn sure the driver was dead at that point.”
“Okay,” Billy said, he didn't question what she said at all, “Dell, let’s go get the ammo. Beth, can you and Peggy see what you can do for John?” Beth nodded her head, as Billy turned and ran back out of the showroom toward the Suburban, with Delbert right behind him.
The truck was totaled Billy saw.
The plastic grill-work was gone along with the bumper, and he could see now why Beth had jumped through the window when they stopped, instead of opening the door. The door was crushed shut. Along with that both of the front tires were rapidly going flat. Probably from running over the bumper, he thought, a bullet would have blown them out immediately. A huge puddle of oil was spreading from under the truck, and green anti-freeze dripped from what was left of the radiator.
Billy opened up the rear of the truck, and Delbert held out his arms as Billy piled the first three boxes on them, and then managed to take the remaining three himself. They trotted back to the showroom and Billy mentally wished he had thought to pull the truck out of sight. The wrecked Suburban, with steam still rising in the air from the hood area, would almost serve as a beacon if there were others behind them. There were, he knew, remembering the sound of a vehicle screaming by on the highway when they had been hiding on the dirt road.
He reached the relative safety of the showroom just behind Delbert, the glass door whooshed shut behind them as they entered and set down the boxes. Beth stood and slowly shook her head as he approached her. She and Peggy had been kneeling beside John on the floor. “He's gone, Billy,” she said.
He could see she was close to tears, and Peggy was more than close, she was openly weeping. Delbert walked over to John's body and covered it with a carpet runner he had taken from near the front door. The old man seemed close to tears himself, Billy realized. Billy said a quick mental prayer to God, before he spoke.
“Listen, I don't want to sound hard, or as if I don't care, but we can't fall apart now,” he struggled to keep his voice calm as he spoke. “Right now, unless we want to just give up and die
, we need to get ourselves in gear. If it wasn't one of the patrol cars that blew by us while we were on that dirt road, and we also know it wasn't that red pickup... someone is still out there, and once they get their shit together they'll come back for us. I for one don't want to be here, and if we intend to be gone I need help. Crying isn't going to bring John back...”
“What do you need me to do, Billy?” Delbert asked.
Billy looked around the showroom. “We need another truck, Dell, and I don't see any here, which means we're going to have to go back outside to find one. Which means,” he looked at Beth and Peggy, “I need you both to keep watch in front. We're going out the back.” He walked over to a small plywood board to one side of the double doors, and began to search through the key-tags that hung from it. “Dell, take a quick look out front and tell me whether you see a light green Durango out there, a new one,” he continued to search through the keys as Delbert looked.
“Yeah, out next to the road,” he replied.
“How about a two-tone red and white one?”
“Nope, not out here anyhow.”
“Good,” Billy said, as he dropped the remaining keys in a heap by the board. He had kept two sets apparently there were two two-tone, red and white, Durango's out back somewhere. “Okay Dell, let’s go find it,” he said, as he turned and walked down a hallway in the direction of the back of the building, he turned back. “Beth?” he asked.
“Go, we'll be fine,” she told him.
He nodded, turned, and Delbert followed him down the hallway through a set of double steel doors and into a large garage area. Billy searched the garage quickly with his eyes, but no red and white, two-tone Durango's resided in the shadowy interior. They walked to a set of double steel doors set into the back of the garage, Billy pressed the bar handle, and they walked out into the back lot.
They found the first Durango directly behind the rear of the garage, Billy checked the stock numbers and after determining which set of keys went to it, he opened the door and got in. A low chiming greeted him as he opened the door. The Durango was one of the upper level models he saw, and it was also not four wheel drive. The tires were not much more than passenger tires, and when he turned on the ignition to check the gas gauge, the needle stopped just above empty.
“Let's see if we can find the other one,” Billy said, “this one isn't going to do us a hell-of-a-lot-of good, Dell.”
They found the other truck farther back in the lot. It was a low end model, built more with a hunter, or some other type of sportsman, in mind, and much better suited to their needs. Plain stark vinyl interior and the gas gauge leveled out at half when Billy checked it. Not great, he thought, but a lot better than the other truck, and he felt they didn't have the time to pick and choose.
“This is her, Dell,” Billy said, “let’s go.” Delbert climbed in as Billy started the truck and drove out of the back lot toward the front of the dealership.
Billy had been tensed, expecting to hear the chatter of machine pistols while they were out back, and when he drove by the glass encased showroom and saw Beth and Peggy crouched by the side of a car on the showroom floor, he breathed a sigh of relief. He just caught Beth's waving hands out of the corner of his eyes, before two men jumped out from behind one of the trucks in the front row and opened fire.
Too late, he thought, as he realized he had left the machine pistol lying on the front seat instead of keeping it in his right hand where it should have been. Delbert had held on to his though, and nearly kicked his side door open as he leaped from the truck and opened up on the two men. Billy could hear the sound of machine pistols behind him as well, as Beth and Peggy also opened up. He aimed the Durango at the two men, levered the door-handle and jumped from the truck, just as the windshield, hit by several of the rounds fired by the two men, was blown inward.
As the truck lumbered toward them, the two men opened up on it in an effort to stop it. Billy rolled, re-gained his feet, and opened up on the two men. They were both dead before the truck rolled over them, dragging one of the men with it, as it crossed the road and crashed into the ditch on the opposite side, a long red smear marked its trail across the road.
Billy turned to look back for Beth, but she was already stepping through the shattered front windows of the showroom and running toward him with Peggy close behind. He turned to look for Delbert. He had lost track of him after he had jumped from the truck. The old man was walking toward him, limping Billy saw, an alarming amount of blood seeping from one leg, staining that leg of his jeans nearly red. He became aware of a stinging sensation on the side of his cheek, and just as he raised his hand to touch his face, Beth raced up.
“Let me see,” she said, pushing his hand away from his face, “Damn, Billy, you got hit.”
He thought at first that it had been the flying glass from the windshield, but Beth quickly crushed that train of thought when she said. “Looks like one of the rounds that took out the windshield got you, Billy. It's gonna scar, but you'll live.” She sounded calm as she spoke, Billy was surprised when she suddenly burst into tears, and threw her arms around him as she spoke. “Billy, it could have killed you, j-just a-a l-l-little b-b-bit...” she broke down and couldn't continue. He held her as Delbert walked up.
He raised his eyebrows, and said, “Dell, you okay?”
“Took one in the leg, I think,” he replied.
Beth let go of Billy and tried to stop the tears as she turned to Delbert. Billy looked over Beth quickly with his eyes, and then moved on to Peggy, finally allowing his eyes to fall on Delbert's leg. Beth and Peggy appeared to have only a couple of minor cuts, probably caused by flying glass, Billy told his questioning mind. Delbert, however, was losing blood at an alarming rate. The entire right pant leg was shredded as well as being soaked with blood, and as Beth carefully pulled the material away from his leg to get a better look, Billy could see the torn flesh beneath. It doesn't look good, he thought. He had Delbert lean on him as they hurriedly headed back toward the showroom.
The one side, closest to the side lot, was untouched. They entered through the double doors, and Billy helped ease Delbert down onto the floor. He pulled out a small pocket knife, and quickly cut away the remainder of the pants leg.
The wound was bad, he could see, but thankfully it didn't look life threatening. With all the blood, he had been convinced he would find that one of the large arteries of the leg had been nicked, or even severed. That wasn't the case however, and the flow of blood was already beginning to slow. Beth folded the pant leg into a small square, and held it over the wound to further slow the bleeding. “Billy,” she said, “I need the first aid kit from the truck.”
“Going,” he said, as he trotted out the side doors and headed toward the wrecked Suburban. He kept his eyes searching as he went, but saw nothing, and the only sound was of the Durango, which was still running in the ditch across the road. He pulled the first aid kit from the back of the truck, and ran back into the showroom. He handed it to Peggy who was kneeling with Beth beside Delbert.
“Damn,” Delbert said, “makes a man wish he could get shot everyday so he could have two pretty women fussing over him,” a small smile appeared over the tight set of his teeth.
Billy smiled back, surprised that he could, but a glance over at the covered form of John's body quickly wiped away the smile. “I'm getting us another truck,” he stated, as he turned and walked over to the small pile of keys. And not from the back either, he told himself. He searched until he found the set of keys to the green Durango that Delbert had said was out in front, and then headed toward the front of the lot. He could still hear the other truck idling in the ditch, but all else was quiet and he saw no one at all.
This Durango was another stripped down model, with a bare interior, and aggressively tread tires. He thanked God mentally, got in, started it, and pulled over to the wrecked Suburban. Fifteen minutes later the contents of the Suburban were loaded into the rear of the Durango. The Durango was smaller
, but he managed to make it all fit, and when he was finished he pulled the truck up next to the side doors, glancing at the gas gauge as he shut it off, which was resting between half and full, at three quarters of a tank. “Thank you God,” he said aloud, as he exited the truck and walked back into the showroom.
Delbert was sitting up, resting against the bumper of one of the cars in the showroom. “How are you feeling?” Billy asked, as he looked over the bandaged leg.
“Not bad, and I'm about to feel a lot better,” he said, raising a small pint of whiskey, “Beth found this in one of the managers drawers. I think it'll do the trick just fine.”
Billy smiled, “Damn, Dell, I had no intention of getting you shot, I'm sorry, Dell, truly I am.”
“What the hell are you apologizing for?” Delbert asked, his voice serious. “That ain't no way to lead, Billy. You did the best you could, we're all damn lucky to be alive, so don't go beating yourself over the head about it. You ain't got nothin' to apologize for, far as I'm concerned.”
“Billy, I need to see your face,” Beth said walking up, “now hold still, this is gonna hurt.” He gritted his teeth as she first cleaned and then poured peroxide directly over the wound. When she was done with that, she taped it up as best she could, and kissed him. “Don't leave me, Billy,” she said.
“Wouldn't, and couldn't,” he replied, “and don't want to either.” He turned to Delbert and helped him to his feet as the four of them walked to the Durango. None of them spoke of leaving John behind. They didn't like it, but they all realized they had no choice.
Billy turned the truck around and eased up onto the roadway. It was clear in both directions, and his eyes swept over the drying smear of blood in the road, that was now drawing flies, as he turned right and headed out of Owensboro.
By the time they were under way again, it was late afternoon. The road ahead was clear, and after several miles of checking the rear-view mirror and seeing nothing, Billy began to relax a small amount. The mood in the truck, however, was somber, and no one seemed to be able to strike up any conversation and keep it going for more than a minute or two, before it fizzled.