Made in the U.S.A.: The 10th Anniversary Edition

by Jack X. McCallum

  An icy sweat broke out on Al’s back and his stomach clenched. He hunkered down, slamming a foot on the brake pedal, pulling Carlos down with him.

  * * *

  Dicks tapped a button to the left of the brake pedal and snarled, “Eat lead, fuckfathe!” The button was the trigger for the twin GE Mini Guns that were now centered on the patrol car. He hit the gas and the trigger simultaneously, laughing over the metallic scream of the guns as the van moved ahead.

  * * *

  The slowing momentum of the sheriff’s patrol car stopped dead as if it had hit a brick wall, then pieces of the vehicle began spinning away as rounds from the van tore into it. “Jesus!” Al shouted. “It’s like being in the world’s biggest food processor!” He couldn’t hear himself over the battlefield roar, watching chunks and scraps of shredded Crown Vic fly overhead. A hole appeared in the roof and he was struck by a rain of red, white, and blue plastic.

  * * *

  “You lucky dongth,” Dicks said to the out of sight cop and the kid, watching most of the patrol car’s hood leap into the air and disintegrate. The Mini Guns were firing 7.62 NATO rounds at a rate of about four thousand a minute. Distantly, Dicks could hear the metallic song of the belts feeding ammo to the guns. He looked at Richards. “Thothe wienerth are hidden behind the engine block. I geth we’ll have to change our approach.”

  * * *

  The guns cut off abruptly. Ignoring the ringing in his ears, Al peeked over the dashboard. The patrol car was trashed. It looked like a tin can that had been set upon by a half-dozen boys with .22 rifles and time to kill. The van veered off the road to Al’s left. Al sat up a little more. The body panels were punctured and torn. The hood was gone and most of the roof was gone. Even the door handle and the mirror on Al’s door were missing. The van seemed to be circling around them, pulling off the road and moving fast over the uneven terrain. Al could see that the engine of the patrol car was a wreck. Anything made of plastic or rubber was torn apart, and under the roar of the accelerating van he could hear fluids dripping onto the road. Al knew that if it weren’t for the engine block they’d just be two stains on the road.

  Al and Carlos were lacerated by flying metal and plastic, their faces and arms showing dozens of small cuts and scratches.

  “Man,” Carlos said. “This shit keeps up, we’re gonna end up on a shirt.”

  Al knew Carlos was referring to memorial T-shirts kids were wearing in rough neighborhoods. The idea of little Mikey running around in a shirt bearing a photo of Al and an inscription like Hangin’ in Heaven–RIP didn’t sit well with him.

  * * *

  Dicks was bringing the widebody around, coming up on the cop from the side. Soon the fixed guns would have a juicy, red-blooded target in their sights. Richards looked irritated.

  “Slower,” he drawled. “Gonna break a leg you don’t slow down.”

  Dicks ignored his partner, bouncing in his seat as the balloon tires at the end of the spindly outstretched drive axles carried them along. Steering around a large depression like a pothole in the desert earth, Dicks cupped one hand over his mouth and in a passable imitation of whom he referred to as the Dark Lord of the Syph said, “I have you now!”

  * * *

  Al was already firing his weapon as he brought it to bear on the van. He knew the driver was trying to get a shot that was clear of the obstructing engine block, and he couldn’t let that happen. Little white stars appeared in the van’s windshield but the glass remained intact. Al cursed. He didn’t like the way things were going, until he saw the van lurch.

  * * *

  Dicks was watching the cop fire round after round at the van and laughing uproariously as white blotches appeared on the windshield before him, and he was also wondering if Richards was losing his mind. His partner was muttering, falling, balling, something like that, and covering his eyes with both hands.

  * * *

  Realizing that the van’s windshield was probably layers of glass and plastic in a bulletproof sandwich, Al fired four remaining rounds at it, hoping that at least one would break through and stop the driver.

  * * *

  Dicks’ mind deciphered what Richards was saying a split-second too late. A miniscule piece of glass shaped like a dinner plate was already spalling away from the inside of the damaged windshield. It hit Dicks’ left eye and burned like a cinder. He let out a holler and involuntarily closed both eyes.

  * * *

  Al wasn’t sure what disabled the van. A deep rut or furrow in the ground, perhaps. He did know that the driver didn’t steer around some deep obstacle. The left front wheel sank out of sight even as the driver kept bearing down on the accelerator and driving the vehicle forward. The axle buckled and sheared off under the van’s momentum. The other three wheels crossed the obstructing hole in the earth and the van rolled on, tilting to the left now that the support of that wheel was gone. The broken axle, which was now just a rotating metal rod, dug into the earth as the van leaned forward onto its disabled side. The van stopped with a jerk. The heads of the driver and his passenger lurched forward and rapped against the reinforced windshield. Carlos gave a dazed moan, huddled on his side. Al slapped a new magazine into his automatic and unlocked the Winchester shotgun from its metal clutch to his right.

  * * *

  Dicks looked down. Through watering eyes he saw the broken end of the left forward axle buried in the earth like a javelin. A look ahead made his sphincter clench. The big cop was shaking off the wreckage of his patrol car and coming toward them. Dicks heard a door creak and saw Richards step out of the van. It was a big step. The van was canted on Dicks’ side. The semi-stoned Richards dropped five feet like a sack of laundry, rolled a few yards away and lay still, face down in the dirt. Dicks moved his foot onto the floor trigger again releasing a short burst from the guns. The high velocity slugs from the left barrel churned a hole in the earth. The shells from the right barrel passed over the ground at a height of a foot or so, missing the cop and the patrol car by about fifty feet.

  * * *

  Al rolled and came up again when he realized that the van was stuck in one position, the rapid fire from the guns passing to one side. He began trotting in a wide circle, coming around to the driver’s side of the van. When he was ten feet from the driver’s rolled up window, he raised the Winchester and fired.

  * * *

  Dicks was leaning against the window because of the van’s angle, and his left ear was against the glass. When the explosion of shot from the cop’s scattergun hit the bulletproof layered glass he literally shit his pants. He looked at the window and saw it was covered with little white starbursts where the layered glass had been gouged but not penetrated. Feeling horribly filthy and horribly enraged, his left ear cut by more spalling glass, Dicks slammed a foot onto the accelerator and the floor trigger. The rear wheels tossed loose dirt and stones into the air and the guns fired uselessly . . . but Dicks noticed a little movement. He kept his foot down, turned the steering wheel a little, and realized that, yes, the ass-end of the van was slowly inching in one direction while the guns, aided by the pivot of the broken axle, were turning toward the patrol car and the cop.

  * * *

  Will crossed the cracked asphalt to the bridge. He didn’t need to look at the photo in his pocket to know that the man he was approaching was John Godson. The closer Will came to Godson, the more he remembered about the man. It was Godson who had been blocking the road with his white T-Bird yesterday after Will’s first encounter with Richards and Dicks. And it was Godson who accosted Will in the showers at a Manhattan gym over a year ago, trying to . . . what? Rape him? Dominate him? He was sure there was more to Godson than met the eye.

  * * *

  Al saw the van slowly turning toward him and stepped further out of the range of the big guns, triggering another blast into the driver’s side window and making the shadow-shape driver jump. Al looked back at the patrol car and realized what he’d forgotten. Carlos was still in there, and at
this angle he would not be hidden by the bulk of the engine block. When the shells coming from the van hit the patrol car they’d obliterate the body panels and turn Carlos into ground round. Al fired another blast, the window now so heavily scarred it was almost opaque. He saw Carlos’ head slowly rise up and he shouted, “Get out of the car! Get clear!”

  Carlos got out of the car, bracing his weakened body against the shell of the vehicle. Christ, Al thought, that kid’s gonna get it. He bellowed and ran at the van, driving the butt of the shotgun against the glass. It buckled. He stepped back a pace and slammed the wooden stock of the shotgun against the glass again.

  As the miniguns continued to fire and the disabled vehicle continued to turn toward the patrol car and Carlos, Al peered through the milky glass and saw that the driver of the van was grinning. This made him wonder what the fuck was going on. He took another step back and saw a second man who had gotten out of the van. Al recognized him as one of the pair flashing fake IDs on the shoulder of the road when he first got caught up in this shit. Damn, he thought, I forgot about that guy. Then Al clearly heard the voice of one of his instructors from his days at the Academy saying, This is a fatal error. He was going to die. The guy looked shaky and strung out but the hand holding his Glock automatic was quite steady. Al heard a shot, but it came from a distance, and the red haired man’s eyes widened above his exploded throat.

  Dicks couldn’t see worth a damn out the window to his left and he was completely focused on Carlos. He’d seen Richards getting up and drawing his gun. And he saw the Latino holding another gun and swaying on his feet. When he heard the shot he assumed the big cop was deader than shit, and any second now the little fucker by the patrol car was going to join him. “Yeah, oh yeah,” Dicks crooned, as light bloomed on the left side of his face.

  Something fell onto Al’s feet. It was the glass from the van window dropping out of its frame. Al looked over his shoulder and saw Carlos in front of the ruined patrol car. The kid’s body was weaving like he was on a two-day drunk, but the handgun he was holding up was steady. Carlos gave Al a shaky thumbs-up with his nearly useless left hand, completely unaware of the line of churning earth veering toward him.

  Al stepped forward again, pumping the shotgun with the barrel about a foot from the side of the van driver’s head.

  Dicks saw the shells from the miniguns stitch dark red holes across the wetback’s groin and gut and chest. He was about to cheer when a roar filled his ears.

  Al felt the shotgun buck and his lip curled in disgust as the van driver’s head vaporized, a red gummy mess coating the inside of the van.

  “Damn,” Al said, as the van’s guns cut off. “Not even Harvey Keitel could clean up this shit.” He looked over his shoulder to see if Carlos was okay and whispered, “Aww, no, kid,” before breaking into a run.

  * * *

  “Hey,” Will said, stopping a few feet from Godson.

  “We meet again.” There was a gleam in the dark man’s eyes.

  Betsy was frozen in Godson’s grip, her usual cockiness gone, at least for the moment.

  Will appeared relaxed, unthreatening, standing with his arms at his sides, the gun in one hand. “What’s your plan for the girl?”

  Jeannie got out of the car. She knew she shouldn’t go any closer to the bridge. Even though it was her Betsy with that man, there was something about Godson that kept her from moving closer. She heard Will’s voice with an unreal clarity, and tried to rein in her fear.

  Godson scowled. “My plan? My plan is taking form as we speak.”

  Will was wondering if Godson was stoned. The man was staring at a point over Will’s left shoulder. Will looked back. There was nothing there.

  John Godson was having visions.

  He hated visions! The fuzzy and disconnected images he saw from the future were even more confusing and frustrating than the strange memories of his many supposed past lives, and the visions always came to him at the worst possible times. He remembered being on Hill’s trail in early 1998, sitting in a bar across the street from a health club in New York and hoping he would cross paths with the man, when it was seer time and his mind was filled with sights and sounds of wind and water and ruined homes and people wailing in Spanish. Months later he saw many of those same images on television news programs covering hurricane damage in Central America.

  The prophetic visions were always difficult to decipher and he wondered why they came to him at all when he didn’t really give a shit about the human race. When Clinton was elected to his first term Godson suffered for weeks, seeing the same six second looped image play again and again every time he closed his eyes. The President’s face, slightly flushed, as he removed a cigar from his mouth, smacked his lips twice and said, “Now that’s full-bodied flavor.” Godson saw it again and again. Cigar out. smack-smack. Pause. “Now that’s full-bodied flavor.” It seemed to last a lifetime. Cigar out. smack-smack. Pause. “Now that’s full-bodied flavor.” And then the vision went away, just like that.

  The last thing Godson needed now was the distraction of a vision. They played hell with his sight. He was looking at William Hill and between him and Hill, like a plate of glass holding a transparent reflection, was another image. It was Betsy, the girl struggling in his arms. She was alone, but there was something different about her. Godson blinked. The image flashed and changed, and his mind reeled as he tried to keep pace with the changes. He saw the big black cop. He saw the reporter. He saw Betsy’s mother, quite a few years older now. He did not see William Hill. And he did not see himself. He saw Betsy again and realized what was different about her. Her body was changing.

  That was why he had to have her. This angry, aimless girl was becoming more than Godson could ever be. She was substance. She was real. He was smoke and suggestion and tricks of the eye. And with her a part of him might become real too.

  Will snapped his fingers in Godson’s face. The man was holding Betsy very tight as he maintained his thousand-yard stare, so tight it looked like the kid was having a hard time drawing a breath. “Hey, J.G., snap out of it.”

  Godson’s eyes focused on Will and then Godson looked past him. Will turned and looked back. The reporter and his cameraman were huddled on a big rock, shooting the bridge.

  “This is intolerable,” Godson muttered. He raised an arm and said in a loud, clear voice, “Thou shalt walk in darkness for all the number of thy days!”

  * * *

  Brian wiggled the fingers of one hand in front of Ravi’s face. “This will protect us.”

  Ravi looked at Brian’s supposedly magic ring. He wanted to cover his eyes with his hands, certain they were going to start hurting again but resisted the urge, not wanting to look like an asshole in front of Brian.

  Godson shouted again, relaxing his grip on Betsy. “Thou shalt become as blind as the eyeless worm which dwelleth deep in the earth and the eyeless fish which dwelleth deep in the sea!”

  Brian patted Ravi’s shoulder, letting his ring touch them both. “Ignore him. Keep filming. Nothing he does will hurt us.”

  Ravi waited for the pain, for the darkness. Neither came. He didn’t believe Brian’s ring had any mystical power, but he was beginning to wonder if their faith in the ring was enough.

  * * *

  Godson waved a dismissive hand at the news team. “Feh!” He looked Will in the eye and said, “We’ve come to the end.”

  Will didn’t know what the hell Godson was talking about, but he was glad to see the man’s grip on Betsy easing. “Let the girl go.”

  “Of course,” Godson said, with a slightly stoned smile. “Away, little lamb,” he whispered, opening his arms.

  Betsy took a hesitant step backward. She looked from Will to the handsome man with the ponytail. She felt as if she were frozen.

  “Put down the gun, William.”

  Will felt as if he was drugged. He was light-headed and tired. He squatted and set the gun on the crumbling concrete at his feet. He remained in that position
for a bit, hunkered down and studying the gun like a little boy watching a particularly interesting bug.

  * * *

  “What the hell is Hill doing?” Brian asked.

  “He just put down his gun,” Ravi said, still peering into the camera’s eyepiece. “Man, this is just like what happened to us, that glass ceiling shit. Will looks stoned.”

  * * *

  With a little jump Betsy started running away from both men.

  “No!” Godson called, starting after her. “Not that way!”

  Will’s head began to clear. He retrieved his gun and stood up, wondering why he’d put it down in the first place. It seemed Godson was going to go after the girl. “Hold on, asshole.”

  Godson was getting angry. A moment ago everything had seemed clear. He would let the girl go just for a moment while he suggested that William Hill step off the bridge and into the gorge, and then he would reclaim Betsy and whisk her away. Yet now she was running blind, running over a ruined structure that could drop out from under her at any moment. He turned and faced Will. With all the force he could muster he said, “Toss the gun into the gorge.”