Conner nodded. “That much I guessed.”
“They didn’t say anything else?” Aaron asked.
“Yeah, they did. They asked me to leave though. I guess it was really bad,” he surmised.
Aaron and Conner both nodded. “I imagine it was,” Aaron said quietly.
“Guess I better go back,” Jake said. He started to turn. “Oh,” he remembered, “Here,” He reached into his pants pockets and pulled out two boxes of Nine Millimeter shells. “I almost forgot. Katie would be mad.”
“Thank you, Jake,” Conner said.
“Alright,” Aaron told him as he turned to walk away.
An hour later the second gunfight began.
On Again
The first noise came from the north side.
“Trucks coming,” the radio squawked. It sounded like James.
“From the north?” Aaron asked.
“Yeah,” Amy's voice answered. “Sounds like at least three, coming from deep over on the north side, like somewhere past the bridge, but coming fast,” she finished. The radio spat choppy static.
Conner moved back through the trees to see if he would be able to get much of a view toward the North side, but the river cliffs, trees and brush that lined both sides of the Old River Road blocked his view.
He walked back to where Aaron stood waiting just inside the trees watching the parking lot quietly.
Aaron looked up as Conner made his way to the edge of the trees, and the view of the parking lot.
“I was hoping for a better view, but it’s no good,” Conner explained.
Aaron nodded. He pressed the radio’s send button. “Let us know,” He said.
“Coming now,” Amy said, “Coming fast.”
The sounds of the vehicles came clearly to Conner and Aaron on top of the cliffs.
“Four,” Amy said, “Just blew by us heading for the square… They’re all small cars,” She finished.
“Got you,” Aaron told her.
A split second later they heard the cars gearing down to slow as they entered the square, but instead of entering the square, they braked hard, drifted right, tires screaming, and blew into the parking lot.
“Fuck,” Aaron muttered.
“Fuck is right,” Conner agreed under his breath.
“They’re up here,” Conner said into the radio. “We’ll get back to you.”
All four cars sped into the parking lot and spread out; taking up what looked to be predetermined positions. It was obvious that none of them realized that the four of them were inside the tree line watching them. One small, black Toyota screeched to a halt no more than thirty feet away from where Lilly and Dustin were. Conner and Aaron were just beyond that. Lilly and Dustin both raised their machine pistols and trained them on the car.
The car was a four door model, four men inside of it, one driving, the other three hanging partway out of the windows, machine pistols in their hands, looking hard at the parking lot.
“Let’s move into the tree line a little deeper,” Conner mouthed as Lilly looked over at him. He motioned with his hands to make his point. Lilly nodded and Conner saw her bend and whisper into Dustin’s ear. A moment later they both began to fade back into the tree line. Conner and Aaron faded back about ten feet themselves, hoping to disappear completely into the tree line.
A radio crackled inside the car and a voice spoke. The driver reached down, came back with a hand held radio unit and began to speak.
Conner thumbed a small switch on his own radio, switching between the two channels his radio received and transmitted on. No voices came through on either channel. Almost too late Conner remembered to cut the volume on his own radio. Aaron followed suit. A bare second after that James’s voice came through the speaker. Aaron pressed his radio tightly to his ear and listened carefully, nodding as he did.
He turned to Conner. “They’re picking them up on a C.B. in one of the trucks. They were talking as they were on their way over, still are,” Aaron said in a whisper. He spoke softly into his radio as Conner finally remembered to put his own radio to his ear.
“No. Don’t send Jake. They’re here, right here in the parking lot.” He turned to Conner. “They were going to send Jake with a hand held C.B.” he whispered.
Conner heard the acknowledgment on his own radio.
“Seems like a bad idea with them so close,” Aaron whispered.
Conner nodded in agreement. “I wonder why the other side isn’t using radios,” Conner whispered.
“Maybe they are,” Aaron said. He left the balance unsaid. The pair Conner and Aaron were using were F.M. This group was using C.B. What else was there, Conner wondered? If they were listening, they could be picking up on one or both of the radio systems. Conner watched the same thoughts go through Aaron’s mind. They both shrugged and focused their attention back on the parking lot and the cars that sat idling.
The sun was close to sinking in the North East, behind them as they faced the parking lot, putting any visual advantage in their favor. No bright sunlight in their eyes.
At the edge of the square through a gap in the buildings, Conner thought he saw a shadow move. He pointed, directing Aaron’s attention to it. He turned to alert Dustin, but his eyes were already locked on the same place. Conner turned his eyes back to where he had seen the movement. A second or so later, a man slipped slowly around the edge of the building and looked sidelong into the parking lot. He was still deep in shadow, probably hard for the men in the cars at ground level to see, but easy for Conner and the others to see. The car closest to them would have their view blocked by the buildings. The man moved quickly from his shadowy hiding place, surveyed the parking lot in its entirety once more and then faded back into the shadows again.
In the dark area of shadow, it was nearly impossible to see the man. The sun glinted off something in his hand. One of the men in the black car caught the glint of sunlight nearly at the same time that Conner and Aaron did and opened up. The second gunfight began, and the man in the darkened alleyway who had seemed to have hidden himself so well, became the first casualty.
Within seconds fighters appeared in and around the Square. One running figure stopped, lit the rag that hung from the neck of the bottle in his hand, and then tossed it at one of the cars on the far side of the parking lot. The bottle hit the roof line, shattered, and flaming gasoline splashed onto both men hanging from the rear windows. Within seconds everything inside the car was burning. The driver accelerated, maybe thinking he could somehow outrun the flames, but the speed turned the flames into a blow torch, Conner saw. The car continued to accelerate, flaming like a torch. It jumped the curbing, plowed into a tilted section of sidewalk and became airborne. It crashed nose first into one of the plate glass windows of the porn shop that graced the shadowy west end of the parking lot, and the whole lower floor became an inferno.
The car closest to them began to open up on the bottle tosser with everything they had. They had delayed, frozen as the car followed its flaming destiny into the porn shop. Now they were firing on anything that moved in or around the square.
In the distance, they could hear the sound of engines coming closer, big V8 engines, not the small insect whine of the cars the men from the north side were driving.
One of the cars backed up and then took a running start at a wide sidewalk that cut up to the square. The undercarriage scraped across the concrete as the car flew over the curbing and slammed down onto the concrete sidewalk, showering the walkway with sparks. The car raced up the wide sidewalk toward the square, careening from side to side: The occupants hung from the windows spraying automatic gunfire into the surrounding buildings as they went.
One of the other cars began to chase after the first car heading for the square when a group in one of the buildings on the square side of the parking lot opened up on it. They heard a steady plink, plink, plink as the bullets found their way into the cars thin body, then a heavier coughing bark a split second later as a bigger gun fo
und it.
The car spun around in a circle as the driver was hit. One of the guys leaning out of the back window was thrown forward under the spinning wheels and then run over. The driver straightened and gained control of the car for a split second only to lose it once more as he was hit once again. His foot pressed hard into the floor board.
The front end of the car was aimed slightly off center of the parking lot which would take it a few hundred feet down past where Conner and the others were hidden in the trees. It would probably miss the overgrown woods, crash over the edge of the cliff and down onto the Old River Road. Conner keyed the hand held and called to James.
“James! Listen,” he said, “We got a car coming over the cliff at you. Get out of the way… Now!” About the same time he finished speaking the Toyota jumped the curb and became air born. It sailed into the low, winter dead shrubs and brush at the end of the wooded area. The front end caught and began to tip downward as the shrubs and the trees snatched at it. The back of the car lifted up over the trees, engine still racing as it began to tumble, and then plunged down toward the Old River Road. The noise of the crash from the roadway was deafening and seemed to go on forever. Katie came over the radio. “Missed us… Hit the other truck,” static for a second “Those guys are wasted. They’re done,” she finished.
The two remaining cars were nowhere to be seen when Conner and Aaron turned back to the parking lot. The one had disappeared up the sidewalk into a hail of gunfire, the other had simply disappeared.
“Out the end of the lot… Maybe headed back to the north,” Dustin said anticipating his question.
“One just blew by the end of the road heading back over the bridge,” Amy said from the radio, confirming what Dustin had told them.
“That’s got to be the other one. Good job, Dustin,” Conner said.
A second later, the engines they had heard coming entered the square from lower State Street and Factory Street.
Two vehicles that had probably not so long ago been ordinary pickup trucks but were now lifted and wildly modified, screamed around the edge of the square from lower State Street, nearly going up on two wheels, and headed for the bridge. The cabs each held four men, machine pistols gripped tightly in their hands as they rode out the curve of the square. Once on the straightaway to the bridge, the men were leaning out the windows and firing wildly at the fleeing cars.
The last truck careened off Factory street, a half dozen men riding in the open bed, holding onto the roll bar, and fell in behind the other two trucks. Conner listened as they accelerated and headed for the north side.
“Trucks coming at you,” Aaron was saying as Conner watched the trucks roar past the edge of the square and drop down the short hill that lead to the bridge.
“Hear them,” Amy came back, and a few seconds later, “Got them. They just passed the end of the road headed for the north side.” The radio went back to static.
A fourth truck roared down Factory Street and slewed around, nearly tipping over as it tried to make the turn down the little hill to the bridge. Up on the square, the car that had shot up the sidewalk to the square, came back around the edge of the square and opened up on the truck.
The truck was caught off guard. The nose came up as the driver floored the gas pedal in an effort to get away, and then bounced back down on the asphalt as the engine died. The small car screeched to a stop and opened up on the truck, the occupants in the truck kept up a steady fire back at the car.
As Conner watched, Aaron nudged him and pointed out a building in back of the small car. A young woman appeared at the edge of the roof line, a gas filled bottle in her hands. She lit the rag and tossed it down at the small car. The bomb hit the roof of the car and liquid fire spread from end to end, dripping down onto the shooters. For a second there was nothing, and then the interior of the car bloomed into flame. The car accelerated across the space between itself and the truck. Conner could hear men screaming inside the burning car from where he stood watching the events unfold.
The shooters in the truck opened up on the small car filling it full of lead, but the car never slowed. It hit the truck broadside and both vehicles erupted in flames. Seconds later, the truck's gas tank blew. The rear end of the truck lifted from the pavement with a wham and then crashed back down, a twisted, flaming wreck. It landed partway onto the roof of the small car, crushing it inward, adding its own flames to that coming from the car. The cars gas tank went next, and the screaming stopped abruptly.
Flames shot up into the night sky. The only sounds the crackle of flames and the steady pop, pop, pop as bullets exploded inside the burning vehicles.
Aaron keyed the hand held radio. “Two of them just blew up here. There’s a lot of people still on the ground though. Keep a watch out.”
Conner was watching the buildings. “They’re hiding in the buildings. Maybe they’re going to ground,” he told Aaron. As he watched, he saw several shadows slipping between the buildings.
James came back on the radio. “Listen, we’ve got to get that car gone. It’s burning… Caught the truck it hit besides. We’ve got to push it off into the river before it blows.”
“Do it,” Conner said. “Be careful.”
They heard the sound of one of their own trucks starting down on the Old River Road just seconds later and listened to the screaming and screeching of tires as the truck pushed the two burning vehicles over the edge of the cliffs and into the river. “Done,” It was Katie who called to tell them. James had gotten in the truck and done the pushing himself.
Thank God, Conner thought. “Got you,” he said aloud.
“Trucks are coming back,” She said next.
A few seconds later the sounds of the engines came to Aaron and Conner.
The screaming engines reverberated off the river cliffs as they came. They crossed the bridge, blew past the burning wrecks and disappeared up State Street in a roar of engine noise and flashes of brake lights.
Evening came on in silence.
Runners In The Darkness
Two hours after sunset the fires were still burning, casting the parking lots in yellowed shadows. The thick, cloying smell of burned pork hung in the air, mixing with the smells of burning gasoline, rubber and hot metal.
The last gunfight came then, directed at them.
~
Aaron saw the first one coming and nudged Conner. The shadow of a runner broke from one crazily tilted building and ran toward the tree line where they were hidden.
As the runner grew closer, they could see one of the machine pistols clutched in his hands. As he jumped the curbing, heading for the tree line, Conner, Lilly, Dustin and Aaron all opened up on him. He spun off to one side, fingers squeezing convulsively on the trigger, and collapsed just past the curbing. His shots went wild into the air in a short burst, breaking the silence, stabs of bright white light stitching the yellowed shadows where the four hid in stark relief, painting their faces in washed out white.
The radio squawked, “What’s going on up there?” Katie called. In the brilliant stabs of bright white, all of them had seen the dozen or so men hiding in the shadows of the buildings. They knew for sure they were here now, and where they were.
“Send two up the road to back us up,” Conner called. “But don’t give up your positions down there. Keep your eyes peeled. We got about a dozen of them on us up here.”
He clicked off and turned his attention back to the parking lot. All the men he had seen were gone now, hidden once more by the shadows. The would be assassin lay crumpled partway onto the sidewalk, hanging over the edge of the curbing, his legs still in the parking lot. The machine pistol lay next to his open hand. Silent. Everything was silent, but the silence only held for a moment, and then the men they had seen in the shadows opened up on them.
They returned fire as they threw themselves into the dirt, but after a few short seconds, those hidden away on the other side of the parking lot stopped returning fire. They faded away, either deeper
into the buildings or out of them and off into the square somewhere. Conner suspected they hadn’t intended to run into them in the tree line, that they had assumed there would be nothing between them, and the cliff face down to the factory. They had sent only one man, after all, and he had run directly at them as though he seemed not to be aware that they were there.
Three or four men in one building at the edge of the parking lot began to suddenly return fire. For whatever reason, they decided not to retreat along with the others.
Conner, Dustin and Lilly shifted further to the right. Aaron moved off to the left, running hard for several feet then crashing to the ground and reloading, preparing to return fire.
Answering fire crashed into the tree line where they had been. The four held their own fire, waiting. When no return fire came, the gunmen rushed from the shadows, running the hundred yards or so towards the tree line.
Conner slammed a fresh clip home and took aim on the runners. Return fire came from Lilly and Dustin to his left, and Aaron off to his right. Now, because of the change in position, they were firing into the side of the running line of men. A second barrage of fire came from the far right. Most likely, Conner thought, whoever had been sent up to help them.
All four runners were cut down before they reached the tree line. Silence descended again, and the third and final gunfight of the day was over just that fast. Smoke hung over the parking lot from the gunfire, drifting into the tree line with the light breeze that was blowing through the empty, tilted buildings.
“Cover me,” Conner said. He ran quickly out onto the blacktop, using the drifting smoke as partial cover, and retrieved the machine pistols and clips. No gunfire came from anywhere. He collected the four weapons and hurried back into the tree line.
~
Two hours later, Conner sat sipping coffee, replaced up top with a two man guard that would immediately call on the radio for backup if anyone showed up, and before sunrise a fresh team would be sent up ready for a fight. Katie sat next to him. Jake, Aaron and Amy sat with them too. Sleeping on the far side of the factory were the two young women from the day before. Katie filled Conner in on their story.
Earth's Survivors: box set Page 44