The two men stepped out into the morning sun, the dew reflecting off the grass. John inhaled deeply and turned to the man next to him, who was still regaining the color in his face after whatever Talia had told him.
“What’d she say?”
Linus blanched again.
“Told you not to tell me, didn’t she?”
He nodded.
“You know, I could make you tell me if I wanted to.”
Linus shook his head emphatically. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but your wife scares me a lot more than you do, John.”
“Fair enough,” John said, walking toward the gates with a slight grin on his face.
They walked in silence for a few minutes, both men scanning the surrounding areas wearily. It was still early enough to be quiet…the kind of quiet that doesn’t exist in a city as big as this one.
After several minutes, John broke the silence.
“So we’re going to do what the note says. No heroics on your part, Linus. When they send Juliana out for the exchange, you take her back to her mother. Understood?”
Linus hesitated, his brow furrowed as if he were wrestling with something inside. Eventually he nodded in agreement.
“If anything happens to me, Linus, I want you to take Talia and Juliana to a farm near the center of the state. Talia will know what you’re talking about if you mention it. Don’t tell anyone else.”
Once again, a long pause was followed by a nod in the affirmative.
The two men approached the home of Linus’ dealer, arms raised. They paused in the center of the street, on an X that was spray painted on the asphalt, per the instructions in the note, and they waited. And waited.
The door to the home behind them opened. It wasn’t what John was expecting, and a strong, gruff voice spoke.
“Keep your right hands in the air with your backs to me. Keep your weapons slung behind your backs where we can see them. Using your left hand, slide the sling off and lower your weapon to the ground. Take two steps forward and continue facing forward with both hands held high. Failure to comply with these simple directions will be taken as resistance, and you will be summarily executed where you stand. Nod your heads if you understand.”
Both men nodded.
“All right, then. Lower your weapons and step forward.”
John and Linus complied, lowering their AR-15s to the pavement and taking two giant steps forward with hands raised.
“Where’s my daughter?”
“She’s fine. Once we have what we need, we’ll bring her out safe and sound.”
“You’ll get nothing until I see her.”
“Fair enough. Reggie, bring out the kid.”
The men looked straight ahead at the house in front of them. A second-story door leading to a porch overlooking the street opened, and a large man carried a chair out to the landing. Juliana still wore a dark cloth sack over her head, but John knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was his girl.
“Jules, Daddy’s coming, baby. I’m going to get you home safe and sound.”
The man next to her took the cloth off of her head and removed her gag.
“Daddy!” she cried, tear stains streaking her face.
John’s heart broke for her then.
“All right. How do we do this? The note said Linus delivers me, Juliana’s released. What’s after that?”
“After that,” the voice said, “we talk about the caches you’ve hidden throughout the city and outside of city limits. The end result of this situation rests with how cooperative you are, Officer Willis.”
Something clicked in John’s head just then. He wasn’t sure if it was the exact combination of words, the tone they were spoken in, or some combination of the two, but he knew this man.
Gregory Tobben.
He’d been personally responsible for Greg’s arrest after a human trafficking sting had struck pay dirt. The scumbag was supposed to be behind bars for another handful of years. He must have gotten out early on good behavior. He was also John’s old partner. Greg had opted into a deep cover mission infiltrating a gang, and the temptations of that lifestyle had gotten the better of him. He’d actually taken over leadership by the time John’s taskforce realized he’d gone native.
John’s eyes glanced down at the X they were standing near and noticed the pavement was pocked where something had struck it at high speed. Bullets.
Everything clicked then.
This wasn’t about the supplies, or the hidden caches of food and ammunition. This was personal.
His eyes flashed up to his daughter, her eyes filled with terror as she looked across the street at the house behind her father.
Juliana let out a blood-curdling scream. “Daddy!”
Something slammed into John, knocking him over. His hip erupted in pain. The pavement exploded around them, bullets sending chunks of asphalt speeding into exposed skin.
Something was tugging at him. He registered that Linus was climbing off of him, trying to drag him to a car across the street for cover.
John was up a moment later with the help of Linus, limping toward cover when something caught his foot. The sling of one of the ARs. With a flick of his foot that sent a major twinge of pain through his hip, he kicked the gun over to the car.
Another shot rang out, and the two men tumbled to the ground on the opposite side of the car. John shouldered the rifle and fired three quick shots at the man standing next to his daughter. Two of the three found their mark, and the man tumbled over the railing like something out of a B-list action movie.
More shots pinged against the metal of the car, and bullets punched through the doors to bury themselves into the dirt of the front yard.
John pulled a concealed pistol, some sort of polymer build chambered in .45, from the small of his back and handed it to Linus.
“We need to get into the house. I’m hearing two different guns, which makes it a little tricky. Greg knows what he’s doing, so it’s likely they won’t run out of ammo at the same time. I’m going to draw their fire off of you. Get into the house and get my daughter inside. I’ll catch up. Ready?”
Linus nodded, and John took that as his cue to spring into action. Resting his rifle on the hood of the car, he fired a series of shots in the direction of his attackers, peppering the brick façade with bullets.
It was just a guessing game at this point since he wasn’t sure where they had been shooting from. Ducking down, the two gunmen returned fire. Thankfully, he’d bought Linus the time he’d needed to get into the house. John prayed that he wouldn’t meet any resistance inside.
Popping up again, he fired off a handful of rounds. This wasn’t working. He needed a better idea of where the shooters were stationed.
John reached a hand up and snapped the mirror from the car door, angling it for a view of the house across the street while he remained behind cover.
There. A brief flash of sunlight off of the glass of a scope. Second floor, first window to the left, just behind the billowing curtains. The barrel of a gun rested gently on the window sill.
He needed to move. The ambushers had set up the site of the battle for their own advantage. It was only a matter of time before he was flanked and gunned down. If he could cross the street to the brick column of the house next door to the gunmen, he’d be able to cut off their angle of attack and make them move.
John took a deep breath, shouldered his rifle, and began to run across the street, snapping off a few shots to keep his attackers off balance. At least he started to. As John rose from the cover behind the car, he felt something in his hip grind against bone. His back arched instinctively, pulling him just far enough out of cover to give his assailants a clear shot. A shot rang out, and then another. Both found their mark, and John Willis fell.
Chapter 5 – Escape
Herbie saw the Klan members gathered around and knew that if they got out of the car he wouldn’t live to see sunrise. This was a lynch mob. He’d seen one before, outside of his house as a child. His father was a good man and went outside to talk with them. They beat him nearly to death for his outspokenness.
The Westfalia’s engine didn’t pack a lot of power, but the little 4-cylinder couldn’t help but respond when Herbie’s foot floored the pedal.
“Hit the floor, Thom!” Herbie yelled as he ducked down below the dashboard. He felt the impact of the vehicle smashing through the burning cross and heard the gunshots as they thundered through the early morning air. There was a thump as the front and back tires rolled over something large, and he secretly hoped one of the spooks was now having a very bad day.
More gunshots sounded, and bullets tore through the interior of the van. After a few more moments of blind acceleration, Herbie dared to peek his head up, just in time to realize they were about to slam into one of several dead cars that hadn’t been rolled off of the road yet.
A sharp jerk of the steering wheel, and Thom rolled off of the sofa, his body landing on the floorboard with a resounding thud.
“What the hell, Herbie! I thought you had first watch!”
“Save it, Thom! Busy keeping us alive, here! Do me a favor and shoot back!”
Thom scrambled for one of the guns they’d acquired and shouldered the rifle. The glass of the rear windshield had been blown out, so he didn’t need to lean out of a window to shoot; he just crouched, leveled the rifle in the direction of the bad guys, and sent lead downrange.
The results were immediate, and satisfying. The ghosts hit the dirt and scattered, unprepared for their victims to fight back.
After a few more seconds of heart-pounding adrenaline, Thom and Herbie were in the clear, until they rounded the next bend. A large black pickup pulled out from a dirt road and started aggressively tailing them.
The truck had far more power, and it easily outpaced the little Volkswagen. Thom and Herbie realized they were in trouble.
“Shoot, Thom!”
Once again, Thom crouched and fired a shot. The first sent a shower of sparks off the hood of the truck, but their pursuers didn’t slow. Thom moved to eject the cartridge and it jammed, prompting a litany of four-letter words to flow from his mouth.
Herbie reached back and handed Thom his revolver with his right hand, steering with the left.
“Aim for the driver! You keep shooting to miss and you’re going to get us killed. These guys are going to kill us if they catch us. You have to be ready to kill them first. Now shoot them!”
Thom shook his head.
“I can’t do it. Herbie, I can’t!”
“Take the wheel!”
Thom complied, and Herbie took his revolver and held it steady, using the back of the sofa as a bench rest.
Herbie gently squeezed the trigger just as Thom hit a pothole, and the bullet tore through the windshield left of the driver.
“Hold it steady, Thom, drive straight!
Herbie aimed the revolver once again, squeezed gently, and fired.
The truck veered left, suddenly, smashing into one of the cars on the shoulder of the road, bringing the vehicle to a sudden stop. Steam poured from under the hood, and the horn blared endlessly.
The men shouted in joyful celebration as the truck disappeared into the distance of their rearview mirror.
Thom was the first to speak. “Herbie, can you drive please?”
Herbie noted that the color had drained from his friend’s face.
“Yeah, man. No problem. I’ve got this.”
The older man took the wheel, and Thom collapsed in the back. His hands shook, and he found himself breathing erratically.
“It’s the adrenaline dump. You’ll figure out how to ride it down the more it happens.”
Thom nodded. It wasn’t the fact that he’d been shot at, or that he’d shot back that had gotten him so riled up. It was the driving.
“You know, Thom…you’re going to have to start shooting to hit if we’re going to stay alive.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. You were shooting in their direction, but you weren’t aiming to hit anyone. Those guys were ready to kill us, but they were cowards, so your tactic worked at first. If you keep doing that, you’re going to get one or both of us killed. If you shoulder a weapon, you need to be ready to use it to take a life. If you’re not, don’t even pick one up. Do you understand me?”
Thom nodded, feeling ashamed.
“I’m sorry, Herbie. I didn’t mean to put us in danger. I thought I could just scare them off.”
Herbie kept his eyes on the road, but nodded.
“I understand, Thom. It’s no easy thing, taking a life. It changes a man. Even a good one like yourself. It’s something you live with every day.”
“I’ve seen enough death, Herbie.”
The old man nodded again.
“I have too, Thom. But we’re going to see more of it before we’re done. Let’s just do our best to make sure it’s not our own.”
The men drove on in silence for the next couple of hours, until the engine of the van started to knock. They pulled to a stop just as they passed a sign welcoming them to Columbia.
“What’s going on, Herbie?”
“Not sure. Guessing one of those rounds did a little more damage than we thought. We’ll have to hoof it from here.”
Thom sighed.
So close to Anna. He’d see her this afternoon.
Chapter 6 – Battleground
Linus watched as John fell. He’d managed to bury Juliana’s face into his chest before the shots rang out, so she hadn’t seen. He raised the pistol John had handed him, aimed, and fired at the shadow behind the curtain. He heard the scream and knew his shot had found its mark. That felt good.
Picking up the girl, Linus whisked her inside and placed her in a closet.
“Stay here, Juliana. I’ll be right back. Don’t come out until I tell you to, okay?”
The little girl nodded, tears streaming down her face.
Linus reached out and wiped them away with his sleeve. “We’ll get through this, little one. Your momma and little brother are waiting at home for you.”
She nodded and closed the closet door.
Linus stood and headed downstairs.
Greg’s voice shouted out from across the street. “Rick! No need for all of this. You did your part. You brought John here. You lower your weapon, and you’re free to go. Take the girl with you if you want, I don’t care.”
One good thing about being a liar and a cheat; it gave you a pretty good idea of when someone was trying to pull one over on you. Greg’s voice dripped with it.
“It’s Linus now, Greg, and that’s all right. We both know I crossed a line that can’t be uncrossed. I chose my side, and it’s not yours.”
Greg was walking out of the house now, a gun in his hand. He walked over to where John lay. He’d been trying to crawl toward the house, to his daughter. Linus watched as John’s hand twitched. He was still alive. Linus’ heart felt hope.
“You’re right, of course, Rick. I should have known you’d see through that line. You always were good at cutting through the crap. So here’s the new deal.” Greg raised his pistol, aiming at John point-blank. “You come out and go back to whatever hole you slithered out of, let John and I settle this.”
“What if I’d rather kill you?”
Greg smirked.
“My, you’ve grown a pair since the world ended. Good for you. If that’s the case, I’ll shoot you in the stomach and disarm you so that you’ll live long enough to see the girl and her daddy die.”
>
Linus nodded. This was how it would end.
“I’m coming out to give myself up. Don’t shoot.”
He stepped outside, hands in the air. Once he reached the curb, he set the pistol down and kicked it over to the enemy. It skittered a little to his left, but that didn’t matter to Greg.
Linus stepped forward, one slow step at a time.
“Greg, you don’t have to do this, you know. I’ll get out of your hair and whatever business you have with this guy, you can settle and we’re good. Right?”
Another step closer.
Greg raised his rifle and took aim at Linus, and gunshots barked out.
Greg wore a confused look on his face as he dropped the rifle. He reached down, placing his hand on his chest, staring at the red stains blossoming on his white shirt. Looking down, he stared into the eyes of the man he’d gunned down, a man who held a pistol in his hand.
“Not dead yet, you son of a bitch.”
Another shot, and Greg hit the ground, lifeless.
Linus ran to him them, examining John’s wounds. He had no medical knowledge beyond basic CPR, but he had a feeling that this was bad. The shots had hit John high in the side, in an area where his vest had limited coverage. Blood was starting to trickle from the corner of his mouth, and his breathing was labored and erratic.
“I’m going to go get Talia, John. We’re going to get you put back together.”
John shook his head. “No, Linus.”
“No? What do you mean? We’re just a few blocks away, we can get help. You’re not done here. We need you. The community needs you.
“No, Linus. I was an EMT a lifetime ago. I know I’m hit bad. Talia won’t be able to do anything for me.”
He coughed, and blood speckled Linus’ shirt.
“Don’t want her last memory of me to be dying on her table. She’d never forgive herself.”
Something dripped onto John’s shirt, and Linus realized he was crying.
“John, there’s something I have to tell you. My name isn’t Linus, it’s—”
Breakdown: Season One Page 16