by Stu Jones
From her height in the tree, she could just see the red and blue lights flashing and coming down a side street to her right. There the screeching sound was again, rubber tires sliding on asphalt. Molly winced as the sirens and lights came closer and the screeching continued.
The police were chasing someone. Molly squinted her eyes to see her father, who was steadily approaching. She waved at him to get his attention, and he returned a wave out the window. The fleeing car ran the stop sign at a high speed and slammed into the station wagon, flipping it over and grinding it across the neighbor’s yard.
Molly couldn’t breathe. “Da…Daddy,” she slurred as she scrambled down out of the great tree.
She hit the ground and was running. Running as fast as her little legs would take her to her daddy. As she ran, the man in the other car got out and began running. Then the police were running and shouting as they chased him down the street. Molly was hardly aware of this as she ran to the upside-down station wagon that her father was now crawling from.
“Daddy!” she cried in desperation, falling to her knees next to him.
“My darling girl,” he whispered.
Her father had a faraway look in his eyes as the blood poured in buckets through Molly’s hands and across her flower-print shirt. The neighbors were coming from their houses, her grandmother screaming hysterically behind her.
“Just….Just…I didn’t see,” her father stammered as he clenched his bloody hands.
“Daddy, you’re bleeding,” Molly sobbed as she watched her father squirm in pain.
With a sudden clarity that made her gasp, her father lunged upward, grasping her arm with his hand, his eyes wide.
“Molly! Are you ready for your great adventure? Just like the ones you dream about?”
Molly continued to cry, her shuddering breaths sucking the tears from her face as her father spoke.
“Listen, trust, and obey. When He calls to you, you must answer Him. You must answer…”
Molly’s father released her and gave a final shuddering sigh as the paramedics descended upon the dying man. Her grandmother scooped her up and clutched her close to her chest, her breasts heaving against the child with each sob.
Time slowed as the frenzy of emergency workers swarmed around her father, trying to sustain his waning life. But they could not, and the blood flowed, seeping into the sidewalk cracks and spilling into the street.
The great adventure had begun.
DAY 38
SOUTHEAST OF SPARTANBURG, SOUTH CAROLINA
Molly awoke with a start. The dream was the same. It was always the same. A cold reminder that she was still alone in this world and that even now, some unknown purpose still awaited her. Her white-knuckled grip held the blanket around her with a strong remembrance of unpleasant fading memories.
The dimness of the morning poured through the cracked windows of the van in shades of dark blue and gray. Kane was gone. For a moment she panicked, believing that she had once again alone. Throwing the blanket back, she clamored out of the rusted van. In a quiet frenzy, she scanned back and forth and located Kane crouched at the edge of the overpass. She closed her eyes and pulled her hands to her chest, taking deep breaths as she tried to slow the pounding of her heart. He hadn’t left her.
Picking up her damp jacket, she shrugged into it, making an uncomfortable face as the cold, wet material slid over her skin. She looked toward Kane again. In the gloominess of the grey morning, she could see him tilting his head and listening to something. Molly approached, and Kane motioned her in with an open palm to be quiet.
Molly approached as Kane cupped his ear and then pointed up. Molly heard them now, several angry voices talking just above them on the overpass.
“This is where the track stops, and by questioning me you’re calling me incompetent,” a male voice said.
“You are incompetent.”
“I’m telling you, they are around here somewhere, I’ve been tracking for longer than you’ve been alive, you sonofabitch!”
“You’re a…”
“Shut your mouth, Leach, and do something productive for once in your miserable life,” a third and more commanding voice broke in. “If you weren’t such a valuable fighter, I’d have killed you weeks ago. But that doesn’t mean I won’t cut out your tongue from your throat if I hear so much as one more word spill from your filthy sewer.”
“Yes, Ashteroth.”
“Now, tell me what you’ve found, Drake,” Ashteroth said.
“See,” Drake said, “when I kick up this black crusty stuff you can see the motorcycle track right there as it veers toward the exit ramp.”
“And?”
“Well, I’d just bet,” Drake scraped with his boot again at some of the dried black, crusty ground cover left by the rain. “If this stuff was falling from the sky, they took shelter somewhere close.”
“Fan out in groups of three and search the area. If they’re close, we’ll find them,” Ashteroth said. “If you find them, bring them to me.”
Kane grabbed Molly’s arm and stood her up.
“Get on the bike!” he said in a forced whisper, pulling her away from the edge of the overpass. Molly made a move for their things, but Kane pulled her back.
“No time!” he hissed. “Leave them and get on the bike, now!” Kane grabbed the sawed-off shotgun and the box of shells, sticking the gun in his waistband and dumping the shells in the left cargo pocket of his pants. He moved over to the cruiser and handed the Springfield .45 handgun to Molly.
“You know how to use this?” he asked.
Molly shook her head.
“Okay, I’m driving, and you’re keeping them off of us, understand?” He cocked the hammer back and clicked the safety on. “This is the safety. Click it down like this and point and shoot,” Kane demonstrated, then brought out two magazines filled to capacity with seven rounds each. “Fresh magazines with seven bullets each, okay? Eject the magazine with this button here and slap a new one in, facing this direction, and hit this slide catch. Understand?”
Engines roared to life above them, the sound of angry tires squealing against the pavement.
Molly shook her head, her face a portrait of sheer anxiety.
“You can do it,” Kane said straddling the bike and pulling the choke all the way out. “Action is faster than reaction. We are going to get the jump on them, but they’ll be right on top of us. Wait to shoot until they are close, and hold on tight.” Molly straddled the bike and grabbed onto his jacket, fingers pinched white.
Kane started the bike and dropped it into first gear, goosing the throttle as he popped the clutch. The motorcycle jolted so hard that for a second, Kane thought they would both be thrown off. The hardened black substance crinkled and shattered like brittle plastic in the wake of the bike as it shot from under the bridge.
From the top of the overpass, Ashteroth was screaming, “Over there! That’s them! Get ‘em! Go!”
Vaulting onto the back of the rusted dune buggy, the tattooed man grabbed hold of the roll bar as the dune buggy began squealing away down the off ramp.
Kane maintained a death grip on the handlebars as the bike half slid across the crunchy black film at just under fifty miles per hour. He teased the throttle but was afraid of losing stability on a surface that slid like ice beneath the tires of the bike. Clinching his jaw, he looked in the left side mirror, only to see that the motley entourage was pursuing them at a high rate of speed. He guessed them to be about twenty to twenty-five men strong with about eight vehicles. He could make out a few bikes, some beat-up cars and trucks, an ambulance with its rotators flashing, and a rusted dune buggy. The rusted dune buggy.
Kane focused back on the road. He should have known it was the same gang, and like any organized gang, they wanted revenge for what had happened to their boys. He could have kicked himself for not thinking to take a different path to the radio control station. He had even known that they had the map that was in his bag.
The ba
ck tire slipped again, and the bike wobbled as Kane and Molly shifted their weight together through the slight turns. Another glance in the mirror showed the vehicles behind them fishtailing. That was good; at least they weren’t gaining on them. The barren hills rose up around them as they began their descent into a small canyon. In an instant, the black film ended, and the motorcycle grabbed the road with a bark. Kane torqued the throttle back, sending the 1100cc Honda screaming down the winding county road. He could feel Molly’s fingernails digging into the flesh of his ribs through his jacket as she clung to him.
“Hang on, Molly!” he yelled over the wind and the thump of the motorcycle.
The vehicles behind them hit the paved road with a multitude of barking tires burning against the pavement. Ashteroth jumped into the main cab of the dune buggy and pulled his upper body up through the roof.
“Get up there!” He swung his arm at the two motorcycles in front of him. “Get up there and take them down!”
The charred, dirty motorcycles chugged ahead, leaving trails of black smoke, their cloaked riders’ dark garments flapping behind them. The brown El Camino and the old rusted GMC truck, loaded with painted freaks followed.
The curvy nature of the road and the breakneck pace was keeping the majority of the group off of them, but the two black motorcycles were gaining, their dark riders like angels of death. Molly slapped Kane on the shoulder three times in rapid succession.
“I see them. Get ready!” Kane yelled.
The thumping of the Honda was joined by a cacophony of growling exhaust pipes approaching from the rear. Molly squirmed on the seat behind him. They were getting close. Kane swerved to the left and shot down the centerline between two rusted, disabled vehicles. The black riders followed suit, merging single file to thread the needle. The two bikes then separated again and began to flank Kane and Molly.
Out of the corner of his eye, Kane could see the rider creeping up on his left, aiming some sort of revolver across his chest at them. A bullet zinged past his head. Kane instinctively ducked, steadied the throttle with his right hand, and drew the sawed off shotgun with his left as he looked over his shoulder at the man.
The rider’s wild masked grin of satisfaction faded to a look of shock just an instant before Kane fired both barrels of the weapon simultaneously at the rider’s front wheel. The tire disintegrated with the sound of metal distorting, the front forks folding under the bike as it began to tumble. The rider’s head struck the asphalt and exploded like a water balloon dropped against the pavement, the red mist lingering in the air behind them. The .45 was bucking in Molly’s right hand as Kane hit the shotgun’s breach break with his left thumb and ejected the spent shells over his shoulder. Weaving left and right, the second rider backed off to avoid Molly’s fire. Kane pinned the open shotgun under his leg and brought his left hand back to the handle bar as he accelerated again. Molly was waving the Springfield over his shoulder, its slide locked back to the rear.
“Good! Reload like I showed you!” Kane yelled.
The truck plowed through the partial barricade and sent the disabled vehicles spinning off the road. The engine groaned as the old truck made gains on the bikes ahead.
Kane slowed and decelerated into a sharp turn, noticing the ravine that dropped away sharply on the right side of the road. Accelerating again, something cracked against the rear of the cruiser, the sound like the snap of a bullwhip. He shot a glance in the side mirror only to see the black rider and a full-size truck gaining on them. Muzzle flashes burst from the over the cab of the truck. Molly was going to get shot in the back. Kane cranked the throttle back, and the bike’s speed increased to eighty miles per hour on the curvy road.
Dodging quickly left and right, Kane zoomed around and between the dead cars and scattered junk in the road. Leaning quickly to the right and hard back to the left around a long gradual turn, Kane avoided a burned out sedan in the left lane. Gaining speed around the turn, the truck slammed straight into the blackened sedan, throwing some of its occupants into the roadway. The truck pinwheeled off the wreckage and spun to the right, folding the remaining biker under it as it careened into the ravine and came to pieces in a fireball against the dead trees.
Kane glanced for only a moment, holding his breath as he again turned his attention back to the road. Behind him, Molly was pinching her legs tight against the frame so she could use her hands to reload the Springfield. Without warning, the bike crested a small rise and left the ground. As it landed hard back on the road, Molly lost her grip as she grabbed at Kane in a spasm of fear. The Springfield and extra magazine bumped off her leg and hit the asphalt, sliding into the ravine. Molly moaned at the loss.
“It’s okay. Just let it go,” Kane yelled over his shoulder. “Let it go.” Molly was clutching at him again, leaning close and squinting her eyes as her short blonde hair whipped about her face. Kane retrieved two shotgun rounds, dropped them into the open shotgun under his leg, pulled it free, and snapped the weapon closed with a flick of his wrist.
The painted driver of the dune buggy began to slow around the corner of the wreckage, seeing the gang’s injured men in the road. Ashteroth slapped him hard in the side of the head.
“Run those bastards down like the dogs they are!”
The driver pressed his foot to the floor, and the buggy whined as it increased its speed. The injured goons in the road were on their knees, waving their arms in desperation, when the buggy crashed into them, grinding them back into the road. Red life sprayed across the front of the buggy, and Ashteroth gave a whoop of psychotic pleasure as he wiped the blood spatter from his face.
The road began to level out, opening up into a long, straight stretch of highway. Gloomy, smoke-shrouded mountains rose up on either side as the highway entered the straightaway. The burnt, reddish dirt along the road gave the valley a desert like feel as a bitter, dusty wind bit at their faces and clawed at their eyes.
Kane could hear the psychotic screams from the vehicles behind them and gave a shudder. This stretch was where they were going to lose ground to the larger vehicles behind them. Sheer mass and horsepower would reign supreme in the straightaway. Flashes in his memory of the fight the day before echoed across the walls of his mind. If they were caught, he would be tortured and murdered, but Molly’s fate would be unspeakable.
Kane cranked the throttle wide open and watched the speedometer climb past 120 miles per hour. Life happened at a blur. Rusted vehicles, wreckage, and debris came at them at blistering speeds, allowing only microseconds to react as Kane dipped his weight left and right, soaring across the burning highway. Behind him the other vehicles, led by the dune buggy, approached at an unnerving speed.
“Get me up there!” Ashteroth yelled. “I’ve got something for them!”
With a look of madness in his tattooed face, the man stooped and opened a case, removing several twelve-inch cylindrical metal pipe bombs with fuses. He drew his oversized combat knife and cut the fuses down to one-inch stubs.
“Get me up there!”
The turbocharged dune buggy was approaching fast on the right; another vehicle, the El Camino, on the left. Kane tucked the sawed-off shotgun behind his back and yelled to Molly.
“Take it. Keep them off us!”
Molly took the weapon from him. Something clanged next to them, tumbling in the road as a deafening explosion detonated behind them. Molly cringed as the blast propelled them forward. The pursuing vehicles materializing through the smoke cloud as though jumping through a portal in time.
“Shoot, Molly, shoot!” Kane yelled.
Molly fired twice at the El Camino, the buckshot breaking the windows and deflecting off the body. The El Camino dropped back and crossed over the road behind the dune buggy. Molly reached forward and into Kane’s cargo pocket, retrieving two more shells, fumbling with them and dropping one. Her heart pounding in her chest, she broke the shotgun open, ejected the fired shells and inserted the one she had. She turned, pointing the gun at the dune
buggy, and saw the crazy-looking tattooed man cocking his arm back to throw something at them. Trying her best to aim through her swollen eye, she pointed the shotgun center mass on the shirtless, tattooed figure and pulled the trigger. The gun recoiled upward, and the tattooed man flinched and grabbed his side, dropping the object in his hand. Molly watched as the silver object fell through the wheel well and bounced on the ground behind the buggy before disappearing under the El Camino.
Molly winced and closed her eyes at the flash of light and the deafening concussion as the El Camino exploded into a rocketing ball of fire, skipping and thrashing its way across the ground, launching flaming bodies and debris high into the air. Kane gave a triumphant yell.
In a fractured instant, out of the corner of his eye, Kane noticed the tattooed man again. He was standing in the buggy with a terrible scowl of hatred on his face as his arm dropped to his side, the finishing of what looked like a baseball pitch. The force of the explosion pushed the bike sideways so forcefully that Kane felt as if he had made an involuntary ninety-degree left turn. They flew from the roadway, the bike skidding and jumping under them as it popped its way over the rough terrain.
Kane held on for dear life but realized that Molly was no longer with him. With a spine jarring conclusion, the bike was gone and all that remained was the ruddy turf sailing beneath him. His feet touched the ground first, and for a strange and surreal instant, he had the distinct feeling that he was going to be able to keep running. That was, until the rest of him slammed into the dirt, and everything went black.
DAY 38
EMERGENCY FEDERAL FUEL RESERVE SOUTH OF ATLANTA, GEORGIA