Highway To Armageddon

by Bloemer, Harold

  A horrifying thought enters my mind.

  Maybe a nuclear holocaust wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen.

  Maybe the world deserves to burn.

  Chapter Thirteen: Lance

  I don’t know how long I’ve sat on this fountain bench with my head in my hands, struggling to keep vomit from gushing up my throat, but it must have been a while because Krystal pops up on my goggles and shouts, “Are you okay? Do Dorothy and I need to open up a can of whoop ass on some Neo-Nazi scumbags?”

  Dorothy pops up next to Krystal, cocking a gun. “You can count on us, Lance! We know what we’re doing!”

  As sickened as I am at what I just saw, I do have to laugh when Dorothy inadvertently points her gun in Krystal’s face.

  Krystal backs away and hollers, “Don’t point that thing at me!”

  “Oops, sorry!” Dorothy says sheepishly, yanking the gun out of sight.

  I nod my head. “We’re fine, guys. We just… uh… got held up. We’re going to go get Machete shortly.”

  “Alright,” Krystal says, still glaring at Dorothy over the top of her shades. “Give us a holler if you need anything.”

  Krystal and Dorothy fizzle out of view. I adjust my lopsided hood and stand up from the stone bench encircling the fountain.

  Boom Boom is on the other side with her hooded head in between her knees. Tool-bag is beside her, rubbing her back.

  I glance over at the gallows. The prisoners are still dangling from their nooses. What are the Neo-Nazis going to do, leave them there all night? Sick bastards.

  The faces of the executed will haunt my dreams for years to come, especially the woman and kid. I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive myself for not intervening.

  Thankfully the massive crowd has started to disperse. We can’t very well break into Auschwitz with thousands of onlookers hanging around.

  I make my way over to Boom Boom. Speaking quietly so no passing Klansmen can hear me, I say, “So what do we do now?”

  Boom Boom finally lifts her head. In a weary, defeated voice she says, “Machete is undoubtedly being held in Auschwitz. I’m going to bet the fence is electrified, so we can’t climb over it. There is a guard shack over on the side, though.

  “So we take out the guard and use his keys to break in?” Arrow asks.

  “Not exactly,” Boom Boom says, stretching her back and neck. Spending several nights on the cold forest floor has left us all with aches and pains. “I’ve been doing a little research on Dresden while we’ve been sitting here.”

  And here I thought Boom Boom was over here grieving. In reality she was figuring out a plan to save Machete. She never ceases to amaze me.

  “Apparently the entire town gets trashed on ‘Racial Purity Night’,” Boom Boom says. “Pretty soon everyone will be holed up in bars and parties. We should be able to break into Auschwitz with no problem.”

  “What about the guards?” I ask.

  “From what I read, Auschwitz doesn’t have a lot of guards. The prisoners are too weak and fatigued from forced labor to fight back.”

  Boom Boom’s being a little too hopeful. We always have problems, even for things that we think are going to be a piece of cake.

  The three of us walk around town, doing our best not to come across as suspicious. About an hour later the streets are pretty much deserted. Everyone is crammed into Dresden’s many bars. Shortly after 1:00am we make our way over to Auschwitz.

  Boom Boom marches up to the guard and knocks on his bulletproof glass booth. She must frighten him because he spills his beer and jumps out of his chair.

  “What the blazes are you doing here?” he shouts, stepping out of the booth and swinging his gun at us.

  Boom Boom raises her hands. “Sorry to disturb you, we just wanted to take a tour of the camp.”

  The guard blinks several times as his beer-flooded brain tries to figure out what Boom Boom’s saying. He finally says, “There are no tours for Auschwitz at this hour, you crazy drunks!”

  Talk about the sky calling the ocean blue.

  “We weren’t asking for a tour,” Arrow says. “We’re telling you we want one.”

  The guard jabs his gun in Arrow’s face. “Ah, tough guy, huh? We’ll see how tough you are when—ARRGH!”

  Arrow swats the gun out of the guard’s hand and kicks him in the gut. He then grabs the guard’s head and slams it against the bullet-proof glass. The guard slumps to the ground.

  Arrow and Boom Boom tear off their Ku Klux Klan disguises, as do I. Boom Boom places her dagger against the guard’s neck.

  “Now listen, you Neo-Nazi scum-bucket. You’re going to deactivate this fence and help us find a prisoner. If you try anything funny, like call for backup, we will kill you. Do you understand?”

  The guard feverishly nods his head.

  We help the guard to his feet and carry him back to the booth. The guard types away on his holographic computer. I watch the screen to make sure he doesn’t try and call for help. I breathe a sigh of relief when he pulls up an image of the fence and presses the ‘deactivate’ button. The guard leads us over to the gate, trembling in fear as Boom Boom continues to prod him with her dagger.

  “Open it up,” Boom Boom barks.

  The guard grabs the gate door and swings it open. Boom Boom shoves him through and we follow after him.

  The four of us hurry past dark warehouses where the prisoners are forced to work. One of the warehouses appears to be used to build windmills and solar panels. Another one is a flying car assembly plant.

  We head over to the prison in the center of the camp. There’s one guard in a booth watching TV. When he sees us he runs out and flashes a gun. Arrow hits him in the neck with one of his poisoned arrows.

  We rush past the dead guard and enter the prison’s front door. There’s another guard sitting behind a desk. Arrow shoots this guy in the chest. Boom Boom grumbles under her breath, but she doesn’t seem as upset about Arrow killing Neo-Nazis as she did before they killed those prisoners.

  We huddle behind the desk and pull up a holographic map of the prison. The faces of the prisoners pop up. We quickly find Machete’s cell, way up on the third floor.

  Arrow leads us to an elevator at the end of the hall. We cram inside, including the guard, and shoot up to the third floor.

  When the elevator door slides open, we come across another guard. Arrow’s about to shoot this one like he did the others, but Boom Boom says, “I got this.”

  Boom Boom charges toward the guard as he fumbles with his gun. She delivers a dropkick into his chest and sends him flying into the solid steel bars of a jail cell. She then delivers two stiff kicks to his head, knocking him out cold.

  “Showoff,” Arrow says.

  “I can’t let you have all the fun.” Boom Boom grabs the unconscious guard’s gun and places it in her utility belt. We can never have enough weapons.

  I glance inside several of the cells as we walk down the aisle, and I’m appalled at what I see. There are all kinds of non-Aryan prisoners, including Hispanics, Muslims, African Americans, Native Americans, Jews (with their yellow stars on their shirts), homosexuals (they have pink triangles), gypsies, and other dark-skinned races. The Neo-Nazis have spared no one. There are men, women, and children. Each cell has nothing but a concrete bed sticking out of the wall, a bucket to use as a toilet, and a water spigot that hangs over a drain.

  Arrow points at a shaggy man in one of the cells. “Why do you have Russians?”

  At first I wonder how Arrow even knows the guy is Russian, but then I see the Purple Dragon tattoo on his arm.

  The guard stares at Arrow like he just asked the dumbest question in the world.

  “Because Russia inflicted heavy casualties against the Nazis during World War 2,” he replies. ‘We hate Russians more than almost any other race or ethnicity, save for maybe the Jews.”

  “Unbelievable,” Boom Boom grumbles. “You Neo-Nazis are so consumed by hate that you continue carrying out vendett
as against enemies you had over 200 years ago. Un-freaking-believable.”

  I’m not a big history buff, so none of this makes much sense to me. I follow Arrow to the last cell. Inside we find Machete.

  “Mom!” Arrow calls out.

  Machete looks up from her concrete bed and gasps. Her face looks a little bruised, and there are a few cuts running up and down her cheeks, but it doesn’t look like the Neo-Nazis roughed her up too badly.

  I expected her to be over-joyed we came to bust her out, so I’m a little surprised when she snarls, “You fools, why did you come for me? Go after Mikhail!”

  “Nice to see you, too, Mom,” Arrow grumbles.

  I shove the guard and demand, “Open the cell.”

  The guard hesitates, but after Boom Boom flashes her blade he presses his palm against a sensor near the cell door. There’s a series of beeps, and then the cell door swings open. Machete walks out and punches the guard in the gut. He groans and falls to his knees.

  Machete squats in front of him and wags her finger in his face. “You’re lucky I didn’t use a knife.”

  “Angry much?” I say.

  Machete scowls. “Just getting some retribution.”

  “Alright, let’s get out of here,” Arrow says, rushing toward the door. Machete grabs the guard by his hair and drags him behind her.

  I notice Boom Boom staring longingly at the prisoners. By now most of them are wide awake and peering at us through their bars. The sight of the frightened children reaching out to me breaks my heart.

  “I feel the same way you do, but what are we supposed to do? We can’t bring them with us.”

  Boom Boom ponders for a moment, then says, “Well, there is that car factory. Everyone can steal a car and go their separate ways.”

  I grin at the thought of all the prisoners escaping in cars they helped build.

  “What are you two waiting for?” Machete hollers. “Let’s move!”

  I turn to find an adorable African American girl looking up at me through her bars. Her big brown eyes are filled with tears.

  “Mister, have you seen my brother?” she asks in a trembling voice. “The guards took him away just a little while ago. They didn’t hurt him, did they?”

  Boom Boom cries out and covers her mouth. I feel like I’m about to puke. The girl’s brother was the young teen boy we watched get executed.

  I shake my head. “You’re right, Boom Boom. This is all wrong. It was wrong to watch those three people get lynched, and it would be wrong to leave all these people behind. Let’s bust them out.”

  Boom Boom beams.

  “C’mon, you idiots!” Machete hollers. “You’re holding us up!”

  Boom Boom marches up to Machete and jabs her in the chest. Machete looks as shocked as I am.

  “First off, why don’t you show a little gratitude? You ditched us in the middle of the Canadian wilderness and we still risked our lives to save you.”

  Machete does something that stuns me to no end. She actually apologizes!

  “You’re right,” she grumbles, looking down at the ground. “We shouldn’t have ditched you. I was just tired of that cyborg and those ninjas coming after us.”

  I decide to add my two cents. “The fact is, you don’t like us, and we don’t exactly enjoy your company, either. But we need to count on each other if we’re to have any hope of nabbing Mikhail. No more backstabbing, no more ditching. We got a deal?”

  Machete sighs. “Yes! Now can we please go?”

  “Not so fast,” Boom Boom says. “Arrow, I want access to our database. What did you change the password to?”

  Arrow rubs the back of his head and sheepishly says, “Arrow ‘hearts’ Red.”

  Boom Boom tries to keep a straight face, but her quivering lips give away the fact she’s struggling to suppress a smirk.

  “Wow, Arrow, that’s almost sweet.”

  “No, it’s stupid,” I say.

  Boom Boom ignores me and logs onto our database through her goggles. A few seconds later she says, “All done. I changed the password back to the old one, with one notable exception. Now there’s an undecipherable series of 20 numbers, letters, and symbols behind it.”

  Arrow lowers his shoulders in dejection. “I sure will miss looking over all those files.”

  “I’m glad we were all able to kiss and make up,” Machete says, tapping her foot impatiently. “Now can we please go?”

  “One last thing,” Boom Boom says, gesturing to the dozens of prisoners. “We’re freeing all the slaves.”

  Machete’s face turns fiery red. “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me,” Boom Boom says, puffing out her chest. She’s so cute when she acts tough. “We’re not going to leave all these people to be brutally murdered.”

  The prisoners murmur excitedly. We’re not exactly being quiet, so they can hear us plotting their escape.

  “Please take us with you!” a gypsy woman shouts, clutching her bars.

  “Yes, please don’t forsake us!” begs one of the men wearing the pink triangles.

  The hallway soon becomes flooded with the pleas of desperate prisoners. Even someone as cold-hearted as Machete can’t stay stone-faced in the face of such an emotional appeal for mercy. She finally throws up her hands in defeat.

  “Oh alright. But how do we get them out of Dresden?”

  “We already got that figured out,” Boom Boom says excitedly. I have to admit, I’m kind of excited about sticking it to the Nazis, too.

  The guard shakes his head. “Absolutely not! I refuse to release all these prisoners! They will tear me limb from limb!”

  “Maybe,” Machete says, grabbing the guard by his neck and slamming him up against the wall. “But if you don’t do what we say, I’ll definitely tear you apart.”

  “I’ll make sure none of the prisoners hurt you,” Boom Boom says. “But don’t open the cells yet. I need to talk to everyone first.”

  Boom Boom makes her way to the center of the prison floor and shouts, “Can I have everyone’s attention, please?”

  All the chatter dies down.

  “We’re going to let everyone out, but in order for this to work everyone needs to keep quiet.” Boom Boom points to Arrow. “Follow the guy with the bow, he’ll lead you outside. My friends and I are going to go free the prisoners on the other floors. Once everyone is out, we’re going to the car factory. All you adults need to make sure you take some of the kids with you. I don’t want anyone left behind. There are two sanctuaries within a 500-mile radius of this camp, Sanctuary 17 and 19. Use the GPS systems on your cars to go to one of those two sanctuaries. You won’t be able to go inside since I doubt any of you have much money, but you can easily sell your cars and use those funds to eke out a living in the surrounding slums. It won’t be an easy life, but it’ll be a hell of a lot better than living here. Everyone understand?”

  All the prisoners nod their heads.

  “Good.” Boom Boom pulls out her gun and aims it at the guard. “Open the cells, now.”

  The guard gulps and places his palm on the main sensor. After a series of beeps all the cell doors swing open. The prisoners rush out and glance at each other in disbelief. I’m sure most of them think it’s a dream.

  The young black girl comes up to me and asks, “My brother, have you seen him?”

  The question is like a kick to my gut. I open my mouth to talk, but nothing comes out. My tongue is so dry it feels like sandpaper. How do I tell a young girl her beloved older brother was murdered because of the color of his skin?

  A young Hispanic woman rushes over and gives the girl a hug. The girl starts to tear up. I think she knows her brother is gone.

  The woman glances at me and says, “They took my sister, too.”

  I nod. Her sister was the Hispanic woman who was killed along with the boy and the Jewish man. I see the resemblance in her face.

  “I will take care of the girl. I will treat her as if she’s my own daughter,” the woman says, scooping t
he girl into her arms.

  “Thank you,” I say. It’s as if a heavy weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I’d hate for the girl to have to fend for herself.

  Boom Boom grabs the guard by his shirt and shoves him through the crowd of prisoners. He trembles as the prisoners close in on him.

  “Keep your emotions in check, guys,” Boom Boom says. ‘I know this scumbag put you all through hell, but we need him to free the others.”

  The prisoners reluctantly step back and allow the guard to pass through unscathed. The have more willpower than I do.

  Arrow leads all the prisoners outside while Boom Boom, Machete, the guard and I go free the prisoners on the second and first floor. We then head outside and run over to the factory. On our way I see cars already taking off into the night sky. By the time we reach Arrow, most of the prisoners from the first floor are gone.

  As we wait for the other prisoners to escape, I glance around the darkened camp. Next to the renewable energy factory is an armory full of weapons and explosives. If we have time we can scrounge around for weapons.

  “This is actually easier than I thought it’d be,” Boom Boom says, waving to the Hispanic woman and African American girl as they fly off in a car with a Jewish man and a gypsy.

  “I know,” I say. “It’s a little too easy if you ask---”

  I’m interrupted by a blaring siren. Spotlights materialize in the sky and spin around in circles.

  “What the hell?” Machete shouts. I can barely hear her over the siren.

  We all turn to find the guard leaning against the factory wall, his hand gripping an alarm handle. In all the excitement of the jail break we forgot to keep an eye on him.

  “You fools,” the guard cackles. “Now you will pay for your betrayal of the Aryan ra—ARGH!”

  We never hear what the guard was going to say because Arrow sends a poisoned arrow hurtling into his heart.

  “Damn, I only have two arrows left,” Arrow grumbles.

  “We can stop for weapons in Alaska,” Boom Boom says, ushering the last few prisoners into the last vehicle.

  “Doesn’t look like there are any cars left for us,” Machete observes.