“How long’s this been going on?”
“About fifteen minutes or so. That’s the third truck that’s gone by the end of the street,” Nell said.
The gunfire sounded even louder if that were possible. Squealing tires on pavement, straining engines.
“The gunfire is new. The trucks have been going by though. Somebody’s at somebody,” Aaron said. “Maybe with those people we had the run in with.”
The sound of a crash came to their ears followed by what sounded almost exactly like machine gun fire, a steady, heavy crack, and that was followed by what sounded like another heavy crash; and then another powerful explosion that shook the earth. A fire ball lit up the sky towards lower State Street, possibly closer even than Conner had thought, just off the square. The sound of the explosion was deafening. The ground continued to shake.
“Okay!” Conner yelled to get his voice above the gunfire and screaming engines. Everyone had come outside in the last few minutes. He had no doubt they had both heard and felt the explosions inside the factory. “Get back inside. Everybody except James, Jake, Katie and Amy. You get the clip rifles, shotguns and the deer rifles too... and ammo.” He paused and looked around. No one had moved yet. “Nell, Sandy, start moving the trucks. We can't allow them to get down in here. Run these down and block the road.”
He began walking rapidly back towards the factory entrance as he spoke. Nell stayed with him, Sandy hesitated only briefly, and then sprinted to catch up with the two of them. “Wait until we have firepower to cover you. Drive those trucks about…” Conner stopped and his eyes shot rapidly up and down the road, gauging the distance. “About 200 feet down from the end… where that little cliff juts out,” he motioned with one hand. Katie came back and tossed him a clip rifle.
“Turn them sideways, block the road. Let’s go.” He sprinted towards the trucks with them, split off and wound up with Nell. Katie climbed into the other truck with Sandy. A few seconds later, both trucks were moving fast. Conner watched the roads and the cliffs as they went. It seemed as though the people who were fighting were too caught up with killing each other to worry about them. Fine. Let it be that way, but when they did remember them, the road would be blocked, and there would be no easy way for them to get to them.
Nell cut the truck hard left. Sandy, who had been watching, cut her own truck in and the two trucks nearly collided as they came to a stop, blocking the road completely side to side.
They jumped from the trucks and found that Jake and Aaron were less than a hundred feet away covering them. Conner and Katie put Nell and Sandy between them, covering them as they ran back towards the factory.
At the mouth of the factory, Conner took a second to gather his thoughts as everyone gathered around him. The sound of the fight on the square and lower State Street was louder than it had been. More gunfire, more explosions. Conner leaned towards the three men.
“If they turn down this road, open up on them. Don’t wait. Light them up!” he turned to Aaron. “We’re going up.”
“Up?”
Conner nodded. “Up to the parking lot above the factory. We can climb up quick enough from down here. There are some scrub trees, bushes… Should be good cover. We’ll watch from there. Stop them if they try to come at us that way. You got this. Nobody else, you.” He leveled his eyes on Aaron’s own. Aaron nodded. Conner looked around.
“Lilly… Dustin,” They were both standing near the entrance to the factory. “You two check on Allison and the two little ones.”
Another explosion rocked the ground. Rocks and loose gravel sprayed down from the cliffs and the parking lot above the factory. A pair of vehicles, chasing each other, went roaring past the end of the road heading for the damaged bridge and the north side of the city. They exchanged gunfire as they went. Just after they passed the mouth of the road, the sound of screaming tires came to them and the sound of one of the vehicles as it crashed.
Conner turned back to Dustin and Lilly, “Then come back here. Katie and I are climbing to the top. You’re covering us as we go. Make sure no one gets in back of us, sneaks up on us.” He looked at them. “You can do that?”
“Yeah, I can,” Lilly told him. She seemed so calm it spooked Conner. Dustin echoed the same sentiment, and then both of them turned away and raced inside of the factory.
Conner leaned back against the cliff face and watched the end of the road. Their four remaining trucks were now parked down the road, closing it off. James, Nell, Amy and Sandy crouched behind the trucks, using them for cover. Another vehicle went flying past the end of the road heading into the square. A small car of some sort, Conner saw as it flew past. The sound of the car locking up its brakes came to his ears no more than a split second after it passed the end of the road. The transmission whined and the cars engine screamed. A second later the car flew back past the end of the road in reverse, locked up the tires again, and turned onto the river road, two young men hanging out of the back windows. What looked like wire stock machine pistols in their hands.
Before the car had rolled more than ten feet onto the River Road, Amy and James were up and firing. Jake came up next; Katie lifted a clip rifle to her shoulder and opened up. Conner raised his own rifle, but the car was disintegrating before his eyes before he ever pulled the trigger.
The windshield starred and then blew inward. The two young men who had been hanging out the side windows of the car preparing to shoot never got the chance. The car suddenly veered left, accelerated hard and smashed into the cliff face. Everybody ducked low below the trucks. Conner, Katie, Dustin and Lilly threw themselves to the ground. Flames shot up the cliff face. A second after that the gas tank blew.
The car lifted completely off the ground. The concussion from the explosion took Conner's hearing for the next two or three minutes. The car crashed back down, burying its nose in the dirt at the base of the cliffs. A body flew from the interior and lay burning on the ground. The car jumped back up as something else beneath it exploded, came back down, skittered to the left and landed on the burning body, snuffing the flames out. One of the rear tires blew with a loud wham, then another one went, and the car dropped closer to the ground at the rear.
Dustin grabbed his sleeve from behind, startling Conner momentarily.
He and Lilly stood, one holding a deer rifle, the other holding a Forty Five caliber pistol. Katie headed for the wall. Conner glanced over at Aaron so he would know they were going.
Two minutes of easy climbing, and they were in the scrub brush at the back of the parking lot.
From the square side of the parking lot it probably looked as though there were nothing at all at the back of the parking lot. Fine, Conner thought. He only hoped none of them knew what was below the parking lot, but he didn’t believe it. Anyone who grew up here knew what was at the edge of this parking lot. Anyone here now knew they were in the factory down on the Old River Road. Conner believed it was only a matter of time before they came for them. When they did, he and the others would be here waiting.
Before the thoughts were completely formed in his head, three people came running straight toward them where they stood within the scrub brush. Four heavily armed men were pursuing them. Firing as they ran. The three runners appeared to be unarmed. Conner stepped from the screening scrub. He had given it no thought at all. He stepped nearly into the path of the lead runner. Her mouth flew open in surprise; a small spatter of blood tattooed one of her cheeks. Conner stepped easily around her, took aim at the first of the four chasers and shot him just as he was slowing down to bring his own rifle up. To his side Katie crouched and began popping off at the other three as they continued running, perfectly aimed shots. She took out two. Lilly dropped the last one. The lead man's momentum carried him forward another fifteen feet before he realized he was dead and fell end over end onto the blacktop.
One of the remaining chasers managed to fire off one last shot before he went down. The last runner collapsed in a heap. It was over in less than a
second. Five people lay dead. The lead runner looked around in wonder, saw the last runner laying dead and began to cry hard, her chest hitching as she tried to hold the tears back. Katie stepped forward and grabbed her as she stumbled. Lilly helped Conner grab the last woman. They faded back into the brush not knowing if anyone else might be close by or not.
“It’s okay,” Katie said. “It’s really okay.” She pulled the one woman close to her and held her as she shook. Lilly held the other one. They were both breathing heavy, sobbing. The one Katie held, struggled to catch her breath. She turned to Conner.
“You,” she managed. “You’re from the factory?” She turned to include Katie in her statement. Turning in her arms. Too beaten to struggle free if the answer should be no, trusting that Katie would not hurt her.
”Yeah,” Katie told her. “Yeah.” She pulled her close, holding her as the woman began to sag towards the ground. The panic and fear left her face.
“Thank God,” she breathed. She turned around, still allowing Katie to hold her, looking back through the trees into the parking lot. “We… We were trying to get here… To here… You…” her voice faded as she saw the other woman’s body crumpled on the ground. “Fuck,” she breathed. “Fuckers,” she screamed.
Katie pulled her closer and held her as she cried, whispering to her, calming her, pulling her farther into the scrub brush.
Conner and Dustin both scanned the area. There was gunfire, but it was from farther away, the other side of the square, hidden by the toppled and crumbling buildings. Conner looked out at the machine pistols and ammo the four men had been carrying.
“Hey,” Conner said. Dustin looked over at him, his eyes round and hard. He's too young for this, Conner thought. Too young. “Cover me? I’m going to get that ammo. Those machine pistols.”
Dustin looked out over the parking lot. His eyes trying to take in everything. He looked back at Conner and nodded. The forty five in his hand came back up and he turned back to scan the parking lot as Conner ran out on to the pavement. He was back in just over a minute with all four Machine Pistols. Ammo belts looped over his shoulders, looking like some strange refugee of war, he supposed. The self image made him laugh, but he choked it off before it could become much more than a ghost of a smile on his lips. He tossed two of the guns to Dustin and then faded back into the scrub brush where Katie and Lilly waited with the two women.
Sudden Quiet
The first skirmish lasted the better part of an hour, and then, as quickly as it had started, the gunfire fell off. Cars and trucks both raced by on the Old River Road heading back across the bridge there to the north side of the city, a bridge, Conner thought, that was about to fall into the river, or so it seemed from looking at it. Crumbling supports, buckled decking, but they were running back and forth across it like it was as good as the day it was built.
Other vehicles raced back up State Street. Several burned out vehicles continued to spew dirty, black smoke into the air. There were too many burning wrecks to count scattered around the Public Square and the streets that led away from it.
Amy and James scouted down to the still burning car that had turned onto the road, a Nissan it turned out, and picked up the two machine pistols that lay close by it.
Aaron and Jake moved two of their own trucks back to the bare area in front of the factory as Nell drove the truck they had appropriated the night before down to within a hundred feet of the burning Nissan, turned it sideways blocking the road and left it. Amy and James trotted along the side of the road, covering Nell as she parked the truck, and then came back with her until they reached the safety of the factory. The other trucks that had been moved were pulled back into a V that further blocked the road, but mainly provided a barrier to shoot from. It was where they had taken out the Nissan from.
Conner came to the back edge of the scrub brush and called down softly. Allison came from the shadows on the side of the factory and looked up expectantly. “Get Amy or Jake,” Conner told her. Allison nodded and was off before Conner could think to say anything else.
Amy and Jake both appeared a few moments later.
“Everything okay?” Conner asked.
Amy nodded along with Jake. “You?” she asked.
“I got two women up here. I’ll explain it later; in fact I really don’t know all of it except they were headed for us when we stepped into a mess up here… Or they did, or we both did…” He paused and rubbed the bridge of his nose for a second. “I’m going to send them down, okay?”
Amy nodded again. “Send them, Conner,” she said, but it ended up being easier to say than it turned out to do. Neither of the women wanted to attempt climbing down the cliff face. Of all the things they had collected or had in the factory, they had no rope.
Jake scouted further down the road, checking the cliff face. When he had been a kid, the Old River Road had been in daily use and was then connected to one of the bridges. He thought that he remembered another old road that came into Old River Road. It was an old blocked off road even then. The road had come down from the back of the parking lot, most probably long before it had been made into a parking lot. The road itself was gone, but the long, gradually sloping area that had once held the road was still there, overgrown yes, but an easily walked path down to the road from the parking lot if you knew where to find it. Jake smiled after finding the place. He followed it nearly to the top to make sure it was still passable, and then he turned around and went back down the road to where Conner was waiting for him.
“There’s a place farther down the lot, the end of the lot. You’ll see where the slope down to the River Road becomes more gradual... There used to be a road. The road itself is gone, but it’s easily walked. You can send them down that way, or I can come up,” Jake said.
Conner followed Katie through the overgrown trees down to the old road bed.”You going to stick up here?” Katie asked.
Conner nodded. “I think I ought to for right now, who knows what’s next. Send Aaron up if you can spare him.”
Jake came into view down below and Conner raised a hand to him. The two women looked drained, numb, probably still in shock, Conner told himself. Katie leaned into him and kissed him. “I’ll send Aaron,” she told him. “I love you.”
“I love you too. Be careful, and let me know what those two have to say.”
“You know it,” Katie said. She turned, and with the two women in front of her, she made her way down through the trees to where Jake waited.
Conner stepped closer to the edge of the trees and stared out at the square. There were spaces where the buildings had collapsed, a huge area that had been undeveloped for years. Most of the square was in sight from this end of the parking lot.
His eyes moved across the jumbled and leaning buildings, the vehicles that burned where they had crashed. The square looked like a battleground. Greasy, billowing smoke hung in the air like a black cloud descending on the downtown area. He heard Aaron coming up through the trees. He turned away from the square and waited for him to top the rise, and then the two of them walked back towards the opposite end of the parking lot where they could watch the entrance to State Street, most of that end of the square and both the edge of Factory Street and Mill Street as it began its run across the damaged bridge to the north side of the river.
“What’s going on? Can you see anything?” Aaron asked.
“Some. You’ll see in a few minutes. What happened with the car?”
“Dead. Got three more clip rifles though.”
“So they were down with Sin and Death?”
“Looks like it to me. Same rifles, anyway.”
Conner was nodding. “I guess I knew it.”
Dustin and Lilly stepped out of the shadows and nodded as Conner and Aaron walked up.
“Quiet,” Lilly said. Dustin nodded.
Conner handed one of the Machine pistols to Aaron.
“Nice… Illegal, but nice,” he said.
“Takes standard Nine Milli
meter ammo.” Aaron started to hand it back. Conner shook his head. “Hang on to it,” he looked around at the parking lot. “I’m convinced they’ll be back.”
Aaron nodded. “Four up here?” he asked.
“Five. They killed one of the women trying to escape.” Dustin and Lilly had dragged her back into the woods while he’d been gone. He had seen the vague shape off in the thicker woods as he and Aaron had walked up. “How many in the car?”
“At least five,” Aaron said.
“Jesus… This is so stupid.” Conner said. Aaron nodded and then went back to watching the greasy smoke rise up into the air.
Conner walked over to the edge of the tree cover and looked down over the cliff. The road looked deserted. He knew it wasn’t, but it looked that way. The four of them all had the machine pistols now, he, Aaron, Lilly and Dustin. They were better than the weapons they’d had. He wished they had found some of their own. He whistled long and low, waited a few seconds and then whistled once more. James stepped out of the shadows behind one of the trucks and looked up. Conner motioned him over and one by one he passed down the weapons they had brought up with them.
“Whoever needs them, James.” James nodded, and a second later he was gone. Conner walked back through the stunted trees towards the rear of the parking lot and began to wait for whatever might come next.
~
Katie had Jake run up two of the radios an hour later. Conner berated himself; he had never even thought of it. A short time after that Janna Adams sent up food in the form of energy bars and cold, tinned beef. A package of stale cookies made a meal for the four of them, along with some bottled water. It was quiet, so Jake stayed to talk for a few minutes before he headed back down.
“Those two women are okay,” he said. “The one has a scratched up face, but Sandy says they’re okay. They talked to Katie and Amy... Sandy… Janna as well,” he added. “Those guys were trying to recapture them. Kidnap them.”
Earth's Survivors: box set Page 43