Boom Time

by Michelle E Lowe

  “Where’s the other?” the tallest of the group demanded, his accent thick, but he spoke English well enough.

  Brody tutted. “Looks as if he fell out, eh?”

  The dark road had prevented the pirates from seeing what had happened to Chaplin, who most likely had been thrown from the vehicle. He could be anywhere, lying about with many broken bones. The Brit had put up a good fight, Brody had to give him that, but it was still a crying shame if it turned out that Brody had spent his last day with the likes of him.

  “You gave us quite a chase,” the same pirate remarked with a smirk that Brody wanted to bash off of him.

  “Aye. Only wish I was able to take out more of you sods.”

  A hammer clicked behind him. Brody sucked in a breath. His heart pounded in his ears and his bladder felt as if it would burst. It took great restraint to keep from pissing himself in front of his executioners.

  “Aye, right. Get it over with, will ya? I got a Maker to meet.”

  Brody was so frightened; he wasn’t sure if he had uttered that or only imagined he had. Everything in that critical cusp between life and death seemed illusory, as though none of it was actually happening. Not even the voice he heard next.

  “Give him your weapon, cocker,” Chaplin commanded from behind. “Do it or you’ll lose your fuckin’ head.”

  Brody turned his head, his hands still in the air. Chaplin was apparently holding a gun on the pirate who was about to shoot him.

  He remembered when Chaplin dropped the pistol during the struggle. How had he gotten it out of the truck?

  The pirate lowered his gun.

  “Take it,” Chaplin ordered Brody.

  The Irishman didn’t need to be told twice. He snatched the revolver. It was still cocked.

  “The rest of you . . .” Chaplin said to the other two, “. . . drop your weapons or . . .”

  Brody didn’t allow him to finish before he opened fire on the pirates. He got them both and then turned and shot the last pirate square in the chest.

  “Christ!” Chaplin yelled, leaping away from the man and letting him fall dead on the icy pavement. He ran a shaky hand through his hair. “I didn’t see that coming.”

  Brody snorted. “Neither did they.”

  Brody noticed that Chaplin held no gun, only a piece of lead piping. A risky move, especially if the pirates had realized the ruse. He refused to let himself get caught up in what had just happened. There was cleanup work to do.

  “C’mon, Chaplin, help me stash these assholes in their truck. Don’t want a crime scene too close to Mr. Quinn’s warehouse.”

  Brody holstered the pistol in the gun holster under his jacket and bent over to grab the ankles of the last pirate he’d bumped off. “I’ll take the bodies away and you go ahead and drive our truck to the warehouse.”

  Chaplin gave him an apprehensive look. “Um. I can’t drive.”

  Brody dropped the dead man’s feet and stared at him. He didn’t know whether to believe him or not . . . although why would he lie about something like that?

  “You can’t drive?”

  The Englishman huffed. “Never sat behind a wheel before, all right?”

  No, it wasn’t all right, and if Chaplin hadn’t just saved his life, he’d have told him so.

  “Never? Are you serious?”

  “Yes, I’m bloody well serious,” he snapped, tossing the lead pipe away.

  Brody refrained from laughing at the poor muppet and instead said, “Fine. I’ll drive the bodies off someplace. You stay here and guard our truck till I return. Got it?”

  They lifted the departed sods and carried them to the back of the pirate’s Nucoa Reo Speedwagon. Chaplin struggled in doing so. He leaned to one side and grunted curses under his breath. No doubt the bugger had been injured. Other than his low swearing, he complained little about it. Finally, they loaded the corpses in and off Brody went.

  He turned onto another street that led farther away from the warehouse and went deeper into the guts of the old Meatpacking District.

  Once Brody found a suitable place, he parked in the middle of the road. He jumped out into the near pitch-blackness of the lightless street and went around to the rear.

  The pirates had everything they needed to do this job good and proper. A can of gasoline, rags, and Coca-Cola bottles. Brody made his own Coke bottle bomb and lit the rag hanging from its mouth. He threw it inside the bed of the work truck, letting it shatter and explode in a spray of glass shards and fire. He shut the doors and left the bodies to burn.

  Thirteen

  Searching

  Pierce waited nervously by the truck. He had figured out how to douse the headlights but had kept the vehicle parked diagonally across the road where it had stopped. No other driver came along, which gave him some comfort. Not that he was worried another band of bloody land pirates would show up, but the thought of a patrolling police officer crossed his mind more than once. If they did come, he’d have no choice but to hightail it out of there. He imagined Kelly being furious about losing all those gallons of booze, but that hardly concerned Pierce. This wasn’t going to be his lifelong occupation. Although he owed Kelly for not killing him, Pierce knew his sort. Kelly was using him to build his little enterprise, but Pierce didn’t mind that . . . at the moment. After all, he still needed a job and a roof over his head—at least until the Trickster returned him to his own time.

  Other than the coppers, Pierce didn’t fret too much. Pierce concentrated more on the nasty fall he’d taken. It had agitated his wounded ribs. Luckily, he had hit a patch of snow piled on the edge of the road. His injuries had nearly prevented him from saving that head-up-his-own-arse, Brody. If he hadn’t found the lead pipe among the rest of the rubbish lying about in this forgotten area of New York, he might not have pulled it off. He already hated this bloody job.

  “Did you have to shut the lights off?” Brody complained.

  It took a few ticks for Pierce to spot a moving shadow coming toward the truck. “Chaplin, you still here?”

  Pierce had been standing at the mouth of a nearby alleyway. He’d wanted to stay in the truck but had decided it was best not to risk being spotted by the bull, should they suddenly appear.

  “Aye, I’m here,” he said, emerging from the alley. “And I bloody well shut out the lights to keep from drawing any more attention.”

  Brody stepped onto the walkway to join him and lit a cigarette. “Then ya should’ve also tried moving the truck to the edge of the road. That doesn’t take a lot of skill even for a bogger like you.”

  Pierce let the insult go. He was too worn out to start an argument. “Where’s the other truck?”

  Only the glowing end of the man’s cigarette was visible, but Pierce could imagine him grinning wickedly when he confessed, “I set fire to it.”

  Brody then turned on his heel and headed for the vehicle.

  “Oi, you did what?” Pierce shouted. “We might need it in case this rubbish on wheels doesn’t crank up.”

  Brody got behind the wheel and sure enough, a grinding noise came from the engine when he twisted the key still in the ignition.

  “C’mon, start, you gammy shite!” the Irishman seethed.

  Pierce closed his eyes. “Bugger.”

  If the damn truck wouldn’t crank, he had no idea what they’d do next.

  Takeo watched from down the road as one of the bootleggers tried to crank up the engine. A throbbing burn in his right arm and leg from where he’d fallen out of the truck gnawed at him viciously. The bastards had fought harder than he expected they would. It took a while for his tears to dry, brought on by his broken nose. His brain felt as though thin pieces of it had been sliced off. The agonizing pounding throughout his entire body, especially his head, had nearly prevented him from following the glow of the headlights. By the time he’d gotten close enough, he saw his fellow pirates had all been shot dead.

  He’d witnessed it, their blood dispersing in a red mist against the pale headli
ghts. He’d had no chance to save them, not in his condition. He watched as the bodies of his comrades were loaded up and driven away while the other, the one Takeo had fought with, had remained behind. He had switched off the lights and vanished somewhere. He hadn’t stayed in the truck, which would have made it easy for Takeo to sneak up on him, kill him, and take the booze to Romano. Takeo had lost his knife in the fall, but he had a second. Instead, the bootlegger had hidden, and if Takeo had approached, he might’ve gotten himself shot. So, he’d waited and thought up another plan, an opportunity to gain a bigger score, which in turn would earn him plenty of money from the Italian.

  When the other bootlegger returned, it was a matter of whether or not he could get the truck started. At last, after several minutes, the vehicle coughed to life, a plume of exhaust puffing out of the muffler.

  “Thank you, Jaysus!” the driver yelled. “Chaplin, get in.”

  Takeo took a chance and ran. His broken body groaned, but the cold helped numb most of the pain at this point. He closed in on the rear of the truck and leaped on, using the outer lock as a handhold. The night was freezing, but at least the truck shielded him from the wind. That didn’t stop the cold from cutting him to the core. He almost believed he was about to black out when the vehicle finally stopped in front of a building.

  Takeo stayed latched to the truck—mostly due to his fingers being frozen to the outside lock. The door on the passenger side opened and then shut. Takeo managed to pry his stiff fingers away and slowly stepped down. He peered around the right corner. The one called Chaplin had unlocked a pair of doors and pushed one inward. He did so with a slight limp. If Takeo were given the chance, he would plunge his blade into the back of the bastard’s neck and let him choke to death on the metal. Takeo could respect a fighter, but this fighter had cost him plenty.

  A shudder raced up Takeo’s spine when a sudden flash of rolling tires crossed his field of vision. When he had fallen off the truck earlier and hit the ground, he had tumbled as the trucks flew by him, the wheels inches from his head. It only lasted seconds, but it was the most frightening moment of his entire life. He shook it off and refocused.

  Chaplin opened the building’s door on the other side and stayed put, giving Takeo the chance he needed to sneak alongside the automobile on the right side as it slowly rolled forward into the dark building. The second he crossed the threshold, he broke away and hobbled in the dark until he found what felt like a crate. He quickly hid behind it. The doors closed, leaving only the headlights of the truck and the red brake lights glowing. Chaplin found the switch and the lights overhead blazed on with loud clicks in a clockwork wave, brightening the entire place to a smoky tint.

  The place was the size of any warehouse, with crates stacked up in various places. There were several items on display such as old western-style bars, taken from saloons, canvas sacks with the words “salt” and “flour” painted in black, and Tiffany lamp-shades sitting on barrels near bombshells and other unfinished WWI equipment. A car was stationed some ways down, and the truck had been parked behind it. Takeo was unsure just how much alcohol was stored inside the warehouse, but he was damn certain that the location of Kelly Quinn’s secret storage hub would be worth plenty to his rivals.

  Kayden’s search hadn’t taken her far at first, for the last time the pathetic little mare who gave people nightmares had seen Pierce Landcross, he was in Plymouth. From there, the boy was taken by the law—along with the albino man who was arrested with him. Together, they were put out to sea in a very large vessel. After that, the hunt became interesting.

  She stood on the deck of the prison ship that she had discovered. The vessel had been run aground some distance from shore and left there. The ship had once ferried prisoners until the crew was attacked, leaving it heavily damaged. The evidence was all around her. The mizzen sail had been cleaved in half. It then had crashed over the helm. Large holes from cannon fire riddled the stern on the starboard side. Bloodstains marked the various places the occupants had fallen, some thicker in some areas than in others—such as the kitchen, where the humans had been butchered for food. The strong scent of carnage remained in the air.

  The wild elf discovered what happened simply by asking the ship itself. Objects retained the stories of the people who were once involved in their existence, even if they had only come in brief contact with them. It didn’t make them living things, per se, just things on which these stories had imprinted themselves, like blank paper, but it required a special eye to read the hidden words.

  Kayden stood at the helm by the wheel, her hand wrapped around a weatherworn handle. She could feel the vessel rotting, slowly being eaten by the sea after a year of abandonment. In no time at all, a storm would bring strong enough waves that the ocean would claim the prison hulk and drag it down into its cold abyss.

  “What happened?” she asked it softly.

  Everything shifted backward to a different time. The quiet deck was soon filled with animated humans, crew and prisoners alike. The deafening sound of cannon fire blasted from the stern. Splinters flew everywhere when a cannonball shot through the mizzenmast, breaking it. The sound of crackling and collapsing wood followed. Kayden saw it as it fell and landed where it rested now, right beside her. The captain had nearly been crushed. Shortly after, another ship sailed alongside them, and dark-skinned individuals from the last remaining wild lands to the east used large, bulky rifles to fire grappling hooks over and then launched themselves onto the ship.

  Movement caught the corner of Kayden’s eye. It was none other than her quarry, Pierce. She immediately knew it was him. Her own blood was tied to his, and she felt it even through this look back in time.

  Pretty boy. She thought, amused. Pretty little fox.

  He had prison chains clasped around his ankles, but he also held a rifle. Pierce aimed and fired, taking the captain down. Little fox then stepped through Kayden, taking the wheel and spinning it sharply, steering the ship away from the other. The act wasn’t to create distance between the two vessels, but to ruin the aim for the gunners below on the prison hulk. Having saved the invader’s vessel, Pierce rifled through the dead captain’s pockets until he found the keys to his shackles. Before he had the chance to free himself, a couple of invaders appeared at the helm. They spoke and a man who called himself Chief Sea Wind offered Pierce the opportunity to fight alongside them. An offer little fox wisely accepted.

  There were many casualties after the battle ended, including one mishap involving little fox accidentally shooting the chief’s wife in the rear.

  Kayden followed Pierce down into the brig, where he spoke angrily to the albino whose arm had been severely crushed by a fallen crate.

  “Go on, Landcross,” the albino dared from inside his cell. “Kill me.”

  “No,” Pierce said. “You stay onboard and suffer, you cunt. And by the by, I was the one who turned the ship that caused the crate to fall on your arm. Consider it repayment for your kind hospitality. Ta.”

  Pierce left the albino there, taking with him a young prisoner who was sick with an infection. Chief Sea Wind granted Pierce permission to board his ship, and that was all the prison hulk could tell her.

  Kayden left it there to rot and sought out another ship.

  The Ekta—as it was dubbed by the Apaches—took a day for her to find it. It was sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, heading for a land they called Mexico. Kayden stayed out of sight once she had located it. She was able to vanish and reappear anywhere she pleased, but she could not make herself invisible. No matter. Her quickness and skill at hiding kept her from being seen. Perhaps someone might catch a glimpse, but that was all they would ever see of her. It wasn’t until late in the night that Kayden was able to search the ship’s past.

  For a month, Pierce Landcross had sailed with these people who called themselves Sea Warriors. He was accepted by the crew well enough and liked by most, but not all. Waves of Strength, Chief Sea Wind’s wife, protested his presence. Insi
de her and her husband’s quarters, she stood by the table where her mate sat. She was telling him that she wanted Pierce tossed overboard. Clearly, she hadn’t forgiven him for shooting her. She even argued that he was just another white-skinned man pandering to them until they reached land and that he cared nothing about their cause, which was the rescuing of Africans from slavery. It was then that a young woman named Sees Beyond appeared as if sensing the argument. She was a very special person.

  “You are wrong to judge him, Waves of Strength,” she had told her as she approached the table. “He is not as you say. He is arrogant in many ways and flawed as all of us are, but he also carries with him hidden wisdom and understanding not yet acknowledged.”

  Waves of Strength gave her a hard stare but eventually lost her nerve and looked to the floor.

  Sees Beyond addressed the chief. “My spirits told me on the first day we met Pierce that he is worthy of our help and that one day he will prove it.” She added with great seriousness in her tone. “And nobody has ever disputed my messengers.”

  That seemed to be enough to persuade the chief, not that he really had any say in the boy’s life, for only the Fates truly controlled how long he lived. Only a few, like Kayden, and certain types of gods, had the ability to bypass their rules. For wild elves, it was difficult, but also possible. However, what Sees Beyond had stated about little fox being worthy caught her attention.

  Little fox had gained a good ally. In the weeks that followed, he and Sees Beyond became very close. The first time they were together intimately was on a hot summer’s night in the Atlantic. She had found him up in the crow’s nest, watching lightning flashes generated by the heat. They couldn’t ignore their attraction. Kayden watched as he lifted her against the mast and began taking her. They mated with passion and immeasurable desire for one another. After that night, they were together every moment they had a chance. Love had even begun to blossom between them, but it was Sees Beyond who saw their paths diverting.