by JJ Zep
“Chris, you okay? Jesus man, you were screaming like a fucking Katyusha!”
“Ruby?”
“What?
“Where’s Ruby?” I demanded.
“She’s over there. On the bed, and phew, I think she’s got a diaper needs changing.”
I got to me feet as slowly as a fighter after an eight count. Ruby was lying on the bed kicking her feet, a sour expression on her face.
Joe shoved a bag of pampers into my midriff, “Over to you, dad,” he said.
Later when Ruby had been changed and fed, I told Joe about the dream. “Man that’s some nightmare, no wonder you were screaming the place down.”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” I said, embarrassed.
“Don’t be,” he said. “You scared the shit outa me, that’s all. I snuck down to your place to pick up some provisions for the baby. I was halfway down the passage when I heard you yelling. Thought some of those things got in here and bushwacked you.”
I figured it was a good time to change the subject. “So what’s the deal with the power?” I asked. “I thought it was down. “
“It is. I got a couple of solar panels on the roof, some gas canisters and some green bio-fuel a buddy of mine at MIT ships me. I tell you, this stuff could solve half our energy problems within the next few years. Problem is, too many people making too much money from good ol’ fossil fuels.”
He was rustling up some breakfast as he spoke. “So what are you?” I asked. “Some kind of survivalist?”
He laughed at that, “Hell no, just a guy getting by. I was a boy scout though.”
“Seriously though, are you really an actor?”
“Oh yeah. Eggs over easy good for you?”
“Sure. So would I have seen you in anything?”
“That depends. You up to speed on eighties TV shows.”
“Not really, no.”
“You want to pour some coffee. There’s some OJ in the fridge too if you want.”
When I returned with the coffee and orange juice, Joe said. “Well, General Hospital you already know about? You ever heard of a show called TJ Hooker?”
“You were in that?”
“Two episodes. In the one I played the part of Thug number 3, in the other I was a hot dog stand guy. I even had a line in that one. – that’s the guy, officer.”
Joe dished up some eggs and a couple of links and we sat down to eat.
“After that” he continued, “I did a horror movie called “Dead City” about, get this, a zombie apocalypse on Staten Island. Then, a Vietnam movie, “Bad Marine.”
“I never heard of that one.”
“You and everyone in America outside the cast and crew. Did okay though, straight to video. Which is probably why they made Bad Marine two through five.”
“That where you learnt how to shoot?”
“No, that came later.”
We ate in silence for a while then Joe said, “We got us enough fuel for a week or so, food for longer, but we really need to get out of here. Today if possible.”
“Why? Surely, we’re safe here. Can’t we just wait it out until…”
“Until what? The cavalry ain’t coming, Chris.”
“You know this how?”
“I know cause I know.”
“Bad Marine, right?
“Actually, that was from Dead City.”
“So you want to let me in on what it is you….”
“You think this is an accident?” He said suddenly. “You think this is some fluke of nature, some mystery virus turning people into homicidal maniacs? This is no accident my friend?”
“What are you saying?”
“You can only fuck with mother nature so many times before the old bitch turns round and knees you in the balls. We been messing with shit that should have been left well alone.”
“You saying this was man-made?”
“Oh yeah, isn’t it always?”
“At the risk of repeating myself, you know this how?”
“Let’s just say I have some low friends in low places?”
“Hollywood?”
He laughed then, a bitter laugh, “Yeah, there too.”
Joe fell silent, but I wasn’t letting him off the hook again.
“So what’s the deal, Joe? Who are you exactly?”
He looked at me as though trying to decide if he could trust me, then he said, “If this was a movie, I’d probably say I was a contractor or a facilitator or some bullshit. Truth is, I’m a hitman.”
For a brief moment, I thought he was shitting with me, but the look in his face told me he wasn’t.
I exhaled loudly and that got him laughing again. “A bit much to take in, isn’t it?”
“How the hell do you go from being an actor to being a …hitman?” It sounded so Hollywood, that I felt embarrassed saying it.
“For me it was pretty much a natural career progression. By the time I finished Bad Marine 5, I was pretty much fed up with playing bad roles in crappy movies. A couple of weeks before I had been doing some research on a weapon I needed to use. I was reading this military magazine when I came across this ad for security staff in Sierra Leone. The money was good, more than I was making doing Z-movies, so I figured, why not. I applied and basically bullshitted my way in.
“When we got to Africa, I quickly figured out this was no security job, this was helping one despot overthrow another using maximum force. I’d never even fired a real weapon up to that point, but let me tell you, you learn real quick when you’ve got 10 year olds shooting at you with AK 47’s. Somehow I managed to survive, don’t ask me how, and in time I realized I had a real knack for the work. You want some more coffee?”
“I’m good.”
Joe poured himself a cup, took a sip. “Shit, cold.” he said. Where was I?”
“Sierra Leone,” I said.
“Right, Sierra Leone, and after that, Liberia, some time protecting pipe lines in Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Somalia. Man, you think it’s bad out there you want to try Mogadishu on a Saturday night.”
He sipped from his coffee, grimaced. “I spent nine years in Africa all told, took a piece of shrapnel in my leg and a machete in my right shoulder. I could have stayed on too, but I’d had enough, so I came back stateside.
“I was at a loose end, trying to figure my next move when a feller I knew, kind of a recruiter, got in touch and asked if I was interested in some work. This low-life drug dealer had gotten this senator’s 15-year-old daughter hooked on coke and had her turning tricks for his friends to pay for her habit. They wanted the guy disappeared. That was my in. I’ve had steady work ever since.”
I exhaled hard again, and Joe took my meaning, “Some story, huh.”
I agreed that it was, “So what about you, Chris Collins? How’d you become a boxer?
I ignored the question. “You said something earlier about messing with things that were best left alone? What did you mean by that?”
Joe sat silent for a moment, staring into his coffee mug, then he said. “Couple of months ago, a contract goes out on this runaway biologist. Pretty much a midnight run, the guy’s not cut out to be a fugitive, he’s making calls to his mother and his kids, and even using his own credit cards.
“They could have given the gig to some street thug, but they don’t, they give it to Marvin and Coburn. And not just one or the other, both of them.”
“Who are Marvin and Coburn?”
“No one really knows. These are just names they go by in the industry, but the point is these guys are big hitters, they don’t fuck around with runaway geeks. Heads of State, military dictators, Columbian drug lords, that’s more their speed.”
“So Marvin and Coburn kill the scientist.”
“Oh yeah, the guy meets with a nasty accident in the bathtub and that should be the end of it. But here’s the thing, turns out the biologist was working on some top secret government project, and when his co-workers get wind of his untimely demise, four of them also make trac
ks. So the call goes out… ”
“They called you?”
“Not me. But I know some of the fellers who got called.”
“What about Marvin and Coburn?”
“Dead.”
“What am I missing here?”
“Maybe nothing. But here’s what I’m thinking. Four scientists on the run from a secret government facility, four scientists who know they’re as dead as their former colleague. What’s to stop them taking something out of that lab with them, some kind of insurance policy? And what’s to stop their little insurance policy from turning out to be more of a death benefit?”
Joe had been keeping an eye on the CCTV screens as we spoke, while I had my back to them. Now his eyes widened and he half rose from his chair.
“Holy shit!” he said.
“What is it?”
“Your friend Chavez just rolled into the street on top of an Abrams tank.”
I swung round in my chair and looked up at the TV screens. There was Chavez, in his long leather coat and shades, standing atop the monstrous machine. He had his one hand hooked around a machine gun mounted on the turret and in the other he held a bullhorn, which he now lifted to his lips.
“He starts letting loose with that thing, we better be ready to roll,” Joe said, already on the move.
I stood watching the TV screen, where Chavez still had the megaphone to his lips, obviously making some pronouncement to the remaining citizens of James Street. Now he was pointing the megaphone downward as though speaking to someone inside the tank.
The turret started to rotate and fixed on the building on the opposite side of the road. Chavez placed the bullhorn carefully down and grasped the handgrips of the machine gun. Suddenly, the windows on the other side started to shatter.
“He’s firing!” I shouted to Joe, and he came back at a run. He was wearing a double shoulder holster and was carrying some kind of military rucksack.
“Long as he’s using the 50 mil we’re okay for now. We better hope they can’t operate the main gun or we are in deep shit. Pack up Ruby and be ready in five.”
I made a dash for it and had almost made it across the room when there was an almighty explosion. The building seemed almost to tilt and I was thrown to the floor. Thick dust poured in through the doorway, and I took in a mouthful of it. It felt like the back of my throat had been flash fried and I started hacking like a two packs a day smoker.
There was a ringing in my ears as I crawled forward painfully. It seemed too light in there, and I soon discovered why, the tank shell had blown a gaping hole in the side of the building. Through the dust I could see daylight, could see the top floors of the houses on the other side of the road.
And now I could hear Chavez, talking into his bullhorn again, “Chris Collins. I know you’re in there. I’m calling you out, motherfucker. Calling you out to take your punishment like a man.”
I could hear the grumbling of the of the tank engine and the electrical whine as the turret was swung once again, then the explosion as another round was fired, this time at the buildings over the road.
I staggered to my feet and lurched towards the bed, dreading what I might find.
Ruby wasn’t there!
Frantically, I searched the floor, under the bed. Nothing. I could hear Joe calling out, shouting that we had to move. Outside the tank was revving up, sounding like a Boeing 747. I heard the sound of the turret being swung again, heard Chavez call me out as a coward and a chicken-shit.
Joe was in the doorway shouting, and then it suddenly came to me. I’d made up a cot for Ruby in my room and moved her there after her last diaper change. I made a run for the door, almost bowling Joe over as the next shell struck. This time the building definitely listed as the tank shell plowed into it.
I reached my room and scooped up Ruby in the coverlet. Joe was waiting in the passage and led us through the smothering dust. He had opened one of the shutters and now pointed me out onto the fire escape, as yet another tank shell slammed into the building.
“Move it!” Joe shouted and I started to descend, as quickly as I dared. The building was starting to disintegrate. I could see deep cracks running through the brickwork.
I heard the popping sound of pistol fire behind me and heard Joe curse. “They’re in the alleyway,” he shouted and then I saw them, lots of them, pouring through the gap between the apartment blocks.
At that moment the side of the building started to collapse. The steel fire escape come away from the wall and swung wildly across the alley. I hang on with my left hand and clung desperately to Ruby with my right. Joe was shouting to me hold on, but I could feel my hand slipping. It was ten feet to the alley floor, an easy drop, but still I clung on.
To my left the creatures were picking their way through the rubble. Joe kept firing, pinning them back, but there were just too many of them.
I felt my fingers slide across the last inch of metal and I was falling. I landed awkwardly on my ankle and fell backward, hitting the floor flat on my back, while clutching Ruby to my chest. In an instant two of the creatures were on me. Joe would later tell me that he didn’t have a shot and thought I was a goner.
But then Ruby started crying.
The creatures seemed momentarily confused and looked at each other in a way that was almost comical. Then Joe dropped into the alley and dispatched each of them with a single headshot.
In the street the tank was revving up again, and then there was another explosion as the final round battered the building. The side of my former home bulged out and then seemed to fold on itself. A deadly rain of bricks and steel and plaster crashed down on the creatures still in the alley.
Joe meanwhile had been working at lifting a manhole cover and I heard it grate open as the tank pushed its way into the rubble of the building.
Clutching Ruby to my chest, I clambered into the hole. At the last moment I came face to face with Bronson Chavez, his head protruding from the tank turret, shades pushed back into his greasy hair.
The look on his face was one of disbelief mixed in with impotent rage. Then his features softened and the rage became almost reverent. It was then I noticed that he was looking, not at me, but at Ruby.
A moment later we descended the steel-runged ladder into darkness.
Chapter Five: Black Friday
At the bottom of the ladder Joe produced a couple of flashlights and we set off straight away, putting some distance behind us. After a while Ruby began to feel about as heavy as a small wall safe and I called for a break.
Joe fashioned a kind of sling out of the coverlet that allowed me to carry Ruby on my back. “A little trick I picked up in Africa,” he explained. “This is how mothers carry their babies over there.”
Joe Thursday was nothing if not prepared. In his military rucksack he carried a pair of two way radios, some army ration packs, spare ammo, a compass, even some of Ruby’s special ground beef blend and some diapers. He’d also brought a R5 rifle with a folding stock. “Made in South Africa” he said, “based on the AK47 and the best damn assault rifle ever made.”
He pulled a handgun from the rucksack and handed it to me, “You ever fired one of these?” he asked. When I said that I hadn’t he gave me a quick demonstration.
“Safety’s here, push it back like so and she’s good to go. Just point and fire. Simple. The clip holds fifteen and here’s some extra,” he said, handing me two magazines.
Joe consulted his compass now, tapped it, looked again. “Shit,” he said.
“What’s up?”
“We must have done a loop around back there. We’re heading south. We’re going to have to backtrack.”
“But I thought south was what we wanted. The park?”
“Big fuckin’ negative on that one, Chris. You don’t want to go there. That’s the last place you wanna be. Right, let’s move.”
“Whoa, hold up. I gotta get to the base. Get some medicine for Ruby. I…”
“Have you been listening to
a thing I’ve told you Chris?”
His tone pissed me off. “What, about your brilliant acting career?” I asked.
Joe stared back at me, and even in the dim light I could see he was angry. For a brief moment I caught a glimpse of Joe Thursday the hitman, the mercenary, the killer.
“We gotta move,” he said suddenly.
“You go back if you want, “ I said. “I’m going this way.”
“Jeeesssuuusss!” he screamed. “Tell me you’re not that fucking stupid!”
“Bye Joe,” I said and started walking.
I’d taken a few paces when he said, “How’d you think this happened so quickly?”
I’d had enough of Joe’s paranoid bullshit and I wasn’t listening. I kept walking.
Behind me he kept shouting, “Why weren’t there more military on the streets? Where were the police? How do a bunch of deadhead zombies manage to overrun Manhattan in, what 24 hours? Less? Where’s the cavalry, Chris? Where were they when Rosie needed them?”
That stopped me. I turned and looked back into the darkness, where Joe stood in a pool of light thrown by the flashlight.
I felt anger bubbling up inside me. With everything that had happened in the last few days, I realized that I’d hardly thought of Rosie. Rosie my wife and the mother of my child, Rosie who’s body now lay among the ruins of our former home, Rosie who I’d shot.
“What did you say?” I demanded.
“Where were they when Rosie was dying? You called 911, where were they?”
I suddenly felt very tired, like the frontrunner in a race who realizes he doesn’t have the legs to see it through.
“I tried to call,” I said, more to myself than to him. “I couldn’t get through.”
“Exactly, “ Joe said. “Now granted, they probably had their hands full with people chowing down on each other, but what, no message, no please hold, no…”
“Joe…”
“…we’ll get right back to you and…”
“Joe…”
“…you gotta ask yourself…”
“Shut the fuck up!”