by Dick Denny
She smiled, but a sad one. “I couldn’t go with him.”
“I know.” I reached up and brushed some of her hair back behind her ear. She leaned her cheek into my fingers. “But you know I had to fucking try.”
“I know.” I watched her mouth as she spoke. I could think of worse people to spend the last few hours of the world with. “So what now?”
I took her hand and we started walking to the car. “We could stop by, talk to a few cops, see if anything odd’s on their radar. You feel like putting a call into the Sisters in Shadow? See if they have any fucking idea?”
“Not really,” she admitted. “But if that’s where we’re at I’ll suck it up.”
We walked back across the parking lot toward the back of the building where we parked the Ferrari. That wasn’t a security thing but more a the fuck I want my door dinged by a Chevy Impala or Jeep Grand Cherokee? concern. That said we still scanned around the corners before taking them. Three-ish hours till the end of the world was no time to drop our guard, and Gretchen never questioned it.
Like I’d always said, “Paranoia: you only gotta be right once for it all to be worthwhile.”
A back door opened, and Gretchen threw her long jacket open to get her hands on the grips of her pistols. My hand was under my jacket with the speed of lightning reflex to get my hand on the familiar wooden grips of my OD green Springfield 1911.
A skinny white dude came out the back door. Even wearing long sleeves you could tell he had full-sleeve tattoos. He carried two large, black trash bags over to a dumpster. He set one down and pushed open the sliding hatch on the dumpster’s side and slung in the first bag.
So Gretchen and I had probably overreacted. Then again the day we were having, that kind of response was Pavlovian.
We laughed and to each other's hand and started walking again.
God, I was tired; I knew it and knew I probably looked it. Gretchen on the other hand looked as rested and chipper as I had ever seen her. There wasn’t a lot to get annoyed about in regards to Gretchen, but that was definitely on the very, very short list.
“Are you even tired?” I asked her, the curiosity getting the better of me.
“Exhausted, how about you?” How could she answer that with a smile?
“I feel like I’ve been fucking beaten by baseball bats and bags of cats.”
“Bags of cats?” she asked with obvious confusion.
I shook my head. “I’m so fucking tired that my simile well is drier than a thing that should be wet but is really, really dry at the moment.”
“Coffee would help.” She giggled, knowing my thoughts on coffee.
“Hot whore taint water.” I chuckled and squeezed her hand.
“We’re probably going to die today right?” she asked offhandedly.
“It’s looking like it.” I didn’t see a point to lie, fib, obfuscate, or any other way to shade or aim the truth somewhere else. Didn’t help that she could see through me like a recently cleaned window on a clear day.
“Well,” she asked with a laugh, “if you die can I have the Ferrari?”
I shot her an incredulous look. “You can’t fucking drive.”
“What’s that matter?” She smiled mischievously. “I could always sell it, then I’d be able to afford Ubers for life.”
“Sure,” I shook my head. “I die, you can have all my shit.”
“Why, thank you.” She smiled demurely. “A fancy car and what, twenty-three whole dollars?”
Sometimes an idea gnaws on you. Sometimes an idea brains you over the noggin like a baseball bat. This turned out to be the Pangalactic Gargle Blaster of ideas.
“Holy fucking shit!” I stopped in my tracks and my jaw fell.
“What?” Gretchen asked, scanning around us for danger before looking at me in confusion.
My eyes met hers. “I think I might know how to save the fuckin’ world.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Archangels Drive Ducatis Apparently,
and The Heaven’s Hotdogs are Still Obviously Douchebags
Any song from the Car Chase Mix
We were sitting at the edge of the parking lot, poised to pull out on the road when we saw her. Red hair cascading down around her shoulders, pale skin, dark sunglasses that gave her an oddly insect-like look, red leather jacket, black very tight leather pants, and biker boots sitting atop a motorcycle. Apparently, archangels drove motorcycles.
“You see her?” Gretchen asked as she started scanning around us for other threats.
“Yeah, I got her,” I said quietly, my eyes locked on Uriel.
Her wrist flexed and her bike revved. I didn’t take my eyes off the archangel as I asked.,“Anything else?” I could hear other motorcycles, deeper and more guttural than the street bike the ginger terror sat atop of.
“Four guys on cruisers coming from the right,” Gretchen said with her usual nonplused calm. “They’re Heaven’s Hotdogs.”
I chuckled. “Think they’re mad about what happened to the local chapter?”
Gretchen smiled. “Probably not pleased.” She leaned forward and shrugged off her jacket then arched her back to get her pistols off her hips. I figured that was probably a good idea and pulled the 1911 from under my arm. Then I drug my two spare mags and set them under my right thigh so I could pull them quick.
I looked at Gretchen and smiled. Here we were again like we were back at the beginning even though this time we knew we were at the end. I stuck my 1911 under my left thigh and put my hand on the gear shift. Gretchen reached over and interlaced her fingers with mine on the knob. I rolled down our windows then put the car in gear.
“Shall we?” I asked with a smile fueled by the happiness of insane, desperate situations, and exhaustion.
Her smile was brighter than the Big Bang. “No time like the present.”
I dropped the shifter into first and gave her some gas. There was no squeal of the tires as we rocketed out onto the road. Spinning the wheel left putting the bikers to our back. The engine roared with a fine-tuned precision as I glided the shifter through the standard H of first, second, third. I held it in third as I cut a turn wide, pulling us to the right and heading north on a non-median four-lane road.
Gretchen laughed. “You have the blues?”
“Huh?” I whipped us past a Volkswagen Jetta.
Gretchen motioned to a street sign with the barrel of her pistol as we tore past it. I barely made it out. It had read Hill Street.
“We got bikers parallel a block to the right,” Gretchen calmly informed me.
I glanced as we tore through an intersection. “Uriel’s a block to the left.” I glanced at her. “Let’s try to not fuck this car up like the Miata.”
She laughed but nodded her agreement all the same.
“We got to get out of town but these guys can’t follow us.” I felt the anger start bubbling in my guts. The thought of these guys following us where we had to go, things they would try to do to people I care about. Goddamned these shit heads for putting me in this kind of situation.
I down geared and fishtailed us around a corner pulling to the right. I reached down and pulled up my 1911 into my left hand and held it out the window. Taking my eyes off the road as we roared through the intersection. We passed behind the group of four bikers who had been paralleling us.
I got one good shot off, but it was focused by the Wrath. The .45 ACP glided under the back of the biker’s helmet and punched into the base of his skull. It traveled with a slight upward angle blowing out the bridge of the man’s nose and causing his left eye to explode in its socket. Gretchen was sitting up on the door sill aiming up over the roof of the car. She fanned off four quick shots with her revolver. I don’t know what happened to the other three, but at least one punched a biker in the shoulder causing him to slump over his handlebars. That knocked them askew at an angle that wasn’t quite conducive to the forward momentum and caused the bike to tumble, crushing and skidding the shot rider with it.
I got my hand back inside and we lost sight of the rest of them as we were through the intersection. I heard Gretchen slowly cook off her last two shots, aiming behind us, before she slid back into her seat and started reloading her custom six-shooter.
I glanced in the mirror and saw a chunk blown off of Uriel’s small Plexiglass screen.
“Fuck beans, she’s closing fast,” I muttered.
Gretchen leaned so she could look out the properly adjusted side mirror on her side. “That’s a Ducati 1199 Panigale R.”
“Okay?”I managed to eek the car between a Fort Taurus and a Kia Sorento without touching either.
“Well,” she smiled as she tossed a handful of empty brass out the window, “at twelve-hundred cubic-centimeters and packing a hundred and ninety-five horsepower, that thing, I think, is the fastest production bike in the world.”
“How fucking lovely,” I grumbled, glancing back in the mirror. “How the fuck do you know that?”
She shrugged. “It’s not that weird a fact. Same as knowing the Hennessy Venom F5 has a claimed top speed of three hundred and one miles per hour. Rocking a seven-point-four-liter twin-turbo V8 rocking a cool sixteen-hundred horsepower making it the fastest production car in the world.”
“When did you become a damned car commercial?” I grumbled as I wove between the juxtaposition of an Audi and a garbage truck.
“You’re one to talk, Mister I Know Weird Shit.” She actually took the time to stick her tongue out.
“Well, Uriel’s keeping up.” I wasn’t happy about it but denying it wouldn’t fix it either.
“Well, at least she knows her shit,” Gretchen said sliding shells into her revolver’s cylinder with grudging respect.
“Oh, she just Googled it,” I offered with a smart-ass grin.
Gretchen kept loading, but the way she sucked her lips before smacking them gave away the fact that she was actually thinking about it. “Do you think archangels Google?”
“I dunno.” I glanced ahead and saw a bit of clear road. I checked the rearview and saw that at least two other bikers had joined her. “Take the wheel and keep her steady.”
I didn’t even wait on her to acknowledge. I leaned my upper torso out the window and aimed my 1911 behind us in my right hand. I took a second, focused the Wrath, and aimed. Eight-round magazine, seven rounds left. I pressed off two rounds for each of the bikers and then the remaining three at the archangel.
The first biker was bent low over his handlebars so for all I know the rounds went down his gob and out his ass; regardless he went over like a Jenga tower. The second biker found himself with a spreading red stain blooming on his white shirt under his vest, and he too went over, hard; adding insult to injury he slammed into the back of a van. Uriel, much to my annoyance, Darth Vader’d all three rounds into the palm of her hand with little more than a grimace.
I slid my arms and head back in the car, dropping the spent 1911 into my lap. Gretchen grabbed the pistol and one of my spare mags from under my right thigh and started reloading it for me.
“Gretchen, sweetie…” I glanced in the mirror before looking forward to dart, with squealing tires, around a delivery truck.
“Wait,” she asked as she dropped the spent mag and ramming the fresh one home before thumbing the slide release, “are you officially pet-naming me Sweetie, or is that a facetious thing?’
“Which would you prefer?” I tore through a red light and saw a Honda plow into an unknown parked car.
Gretchen slowly lowered the hammer then reached over pushing it between my legs and under my left thigh. “I’m good either way.”
“Well, either way, you mind reaching back and pulling out those HK UMP45s that are back there?’
“Crap, I forgot about those!” She sounded excited as she leaned back between the seats and opened the case. I flipped a left, taking us parallel along the interstate cutting over road. I remembered the valve clattering mess of my old Miata, and no matter how much I loved that car I appreciated the sheer works really well of the Ferrari that wasn’t on its last legs.
I dodged past the lady pushing the stroller close enough to flip her skirt up high enough to expose her very not-stereotypical mom panties. Gretchen was too busy ramming stick magazines into the submachine guns to notice.
Up ahead I saw five bikers pull onto the road, and instead of driving, they were pulling into blocking positions just beyond an exit ramp. I checked the mirror and saw Uriel coming up behind us on the traffic-weaving Ducati.
Gretchen flopped back in the seat and her eyes went wide. She grabbed her seat belt and tugged it over her lap as I reached over grabbing one of the UMP45s. I held it like a pistol as the folding stock was collapsed to the side. I took it in my left hand; we were about a hundred yards short of the bikers. Luckily they hadn’t started shooting yet seeing as they were armed with various pistols.
I rammed my foot down on the clutch and spun the wheel. The car squealed and skidded and rotated. I kept my right hand on the wheel and aimed the sub-machine gun out the window with a straight left arm.
We slid and skidded past the exit ramp and started coming to a stop thirty yards short of the biker makeshift barricade. Behind me, I heard Gretchen cooking off clean three-round bursts from the UMP45. I grabbed the Wrath and let it steady me. I knew the HK had a twenty-five round stick mag. We were still spinning to a skidded stop as I got aim on the first and opened fire with the fully auto option. I could never have done it without the Wrath. But I took down all five bikers with the cyclic magazine. Cordite smoke rose from the end of the barrel as I scanned to make sure I didn’t need to come up with the 1911 to finish anyone off.
“Now, you can show ’em your badge!” I yelled, remembering the line from the movie.
Gretchen laughed.
I looked across to her and out her window as I pulled my arm back inside. Gretchen’s gunfire had caused the archangel to angle off onto another block and out of our line of sight.
I dropped the sub-machine gun on my lap and got us in gear. I fishtailed the car as I pulled us up the wrong way of the exit ramp. We were going almost seventy by the time we got to the top and I slammed the clutch and brakes, spinning the wheel. We twirled twice before I got us straightened out and heading the right way down the interstate.
Gretchen grabbed the sub-machine gun off my lap and started reloading it with a spare magazine from the box in the back. Then she reloaded her own as I checked the mirror making sure we were clear.
“I told you you were more Mike Lowery than you thought.” She smiled as she put both safeties on.
“I still say I’m not cool enough to be Will Smith.” So far we were clear behind.
“Probably not,” she agreed. She sat the reloaded HK back in my lap, barrel facing out. “But you’ll do.”
I glanced at her and batted my eyelashes like a blushing debutante. She laughed; that made it worth it.
With the sub-machine guns out Gretchen arched her back again and put her six-shooters in her holsters. I figured it was a good idea and slid my 1911 back into my underarm rig. I put my one spare magazine away then reached over to the glove compartment and pulled out a freshly loaded one, putting that under my right arm as well. So even if we had to run from the car I was combat-loaded.
Gretchen took a box of .357 rounds from the glove compartment and started pushing shells into the empty slots on her pistol belt.
I checked the mirrors and hazarded a glance as we sped down the interstate. So far we were still clear.
“Dang it,” Gretchen sighed as she put everything away in the glove compartment and shut it.
“What?” I asked, glancing around trying to see whatever it was she’d have noticed.
The disappointment was palpable in her voice that bordered on anguished. “We forgot to turn on the Car Chase Mix.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
…FOR THE WIN!
“Supercharger Heaven” White Zombie
It should have take
n at least an hour to get out there. But in a Ferrari that you know is never going to get pulled over by the cops I cut that time in half. As we pulled out of town we got the windows up because the helicopter noise of the windows down as we flew down the road was annoying. I stuck the HK UMP in between the door and the seat and it wasn’t a discomfort.
Things were getting worse.
It wasn’t just the exhaustion trying to drag my eyelids shut or the subtle throbbing behind my forehead. I would feel the Wrath roiling in my guts. Gretchen sat half-backward in her seat staring behind us. I glanced back in the mirror, risking it even at the breakneck speed I was hurling us down the interstate. I couldn’t see if Uriel was following, but I knew she was there. I don’t know how I knew but I knew.
“What do you think it is?” Gretchen asked quietly. She was usually pretty unflappable but not now. She was worried and I couldn’t blame her. Things were starting to snowball even if I didn’t know exactly what was going on. The sky was clear, but that didn’t stop what looked like lightning ground strikes from flashing throughout the city behind us.
“I got a guess but it’s nothing reassuring.” That was as close as I got to reassuring. A handful of hours before the final battle and vague had become the closest thing to comfort I could provide. I reached up and rubbed the bridge of my nose and the corners of my eyes. I was damned tired. I could remember when I’d woken, but for the life of me, my brain had stopped functioning at a point where I could process the math to calculate how long ago that was.
“That’s them gathering?” she asked.
I nodded and edged around a semi-truck. The driver had no idea that the odds that his cargo would ever get to where it was going was slim to shit. “I’m guessing so.”