Without Law 3

by Eric Vall

  “Looks like someone set up defenses,” a long haired biker yelled.

  “Dumbasses didn’t stick around to use them though,” a second biker laughed.

  The horde started to build up behind the couple scouts.

  “What’s the hold up?” one of the gang yelled out. “We good to go?”

  “Yeah, let’s roll,” the long haired biker scout said as he climbed back on his bike. Then he waved the gang forward and then started to speed off across the bridge.

  I tensed as they got close to the bottleneck and the spike strip. It was time to see if our camouflage was good enough.

  The lead group funneled into the small gap and didn’t slow down as they approached the spike strip at the far end.

  The first set of bikers hit the strip, blew out their tires, and veered off the road. Three of them tumbled over the side and into the water while the rest wiped out on the far side of the bridge.

  “Spike strip!” someone yelled out to halt the advance.

  A couple guys got off their bikes and ran forward to try to remove the obstacle.

  That’s when I opened fire.

  The sharp crack of my rifle filled the air, and one of the guys trying to move the spike strip went down in a spray of red. I went to line up a shot on the second guy, but he went down as the girls on the other side of the road opened fire.

  “Shit, they’re in the trees!” one of the bikers screamed as he dove for cover behind one of the cars.

  “Get that spike strip moved,” someone at the back of the bridge yelled.

  Some of the bikers got off their bikes and moved up onto the bridge. Half a dozen of them took cover behind the cars while four of them moved up to try to remove the spikes.

  The guys in cover popped up at random to let loose a rain of bullets into the trees.

  I ducked for cover as a stray bullet whizzed past me and caused a deluge of leaves to shower down, and then I bent over lower as I heard another shot come close. A moment later, the bullets were gone, so I knew that they really had no idea where to shoot, and were just spraying and praying.

  The sound of Tara’s gun boomed behind me as she let off three shots, and I peeked up over my cover to watch one of the men trying to clear the way go down. The bodies would help clog the way and make getting through on the bikes more complicated.

  I popped back up and started to open fire. With the help of the girls I tore apart all of the small group that was trying to remove the strip.

  The group on the far side lined up along their edge and started to pour fire in our general direction. The air grew thick with bullets, and I heard several whizz past me.

  Our guns fell silent, and I hoped it was because the girls had taken cover like I had. When I looked across the road, I couldn’t see any of them despite knowing where they should be. They were too well hidden, so I just had to trust that they were okay.

  When I looked back over my cover, I saw that the bikers had sent another group to try to remove the obstacle. Two guys dragged the bodies out of the road, leaving large red streaks across the pavement, and two more were busy trying to fold up the spike strip.

  “Shit,” I hissed before I got back up and fired off a few shots. I caught one of the body carriers in the chest, and the other three ducked back behind cover.

  Their buddies sprayed more bullets into the trees, but this time I didn’t duck back into safety. Instead I kept my sights trained on the gap and waited for them to try again.

  My girls started to open fire again as well. Bullets tore at the cars the bridge goons used as cover, and a couple guys on the far side tumbled down the hill towards the water as bullets blew through their chests.

  One of the bikers came out from behind cover using one of his dead buddies as a shield and made his way towards the spike strip. As he did his friends provided covering fire. Though without knowing exactly where we were, they didn’t do much but thin the trees.

  I focused on the man using the human shield and tried to bring him down. I unloaded bullet after bullet into the dead body, but the man beneath kept going.

  A second biker pushed his way out of cover using another corpse shield, but he immediately started to come under fire from my team on the opposite side.

  I took my time and blocked out all of the chaos around me as I focused on the first corpse bearer. I put three rounds through the body and the man stumbled. He didn’t go down though, and he grabbed one end of the strip and started to pull it out of the way.

  Then I was showered with splinters as a stray bullet found the tree beside me, and I had to take cover.

  “The roads clear!” I heard someone shout.

  The men on the bridge fell back towards their bikes and two of them were picked off by my team. The sound of gunfire lessened as the gang got back onto their bikes and started out across the bridge.

  As they started to funnel through the gap the girls and I poured bullets into them. It was a target rich environment, and they fell easily to our combined firepower.

  They didn’t stop, but as soon as they began to push past the funnel bright streaks of light erupted from the trees to my right as Bailey aimed at the first propane tank. Screams and shouts filled the air as a moment later the closest bikers were caught in the resulting explosion.

  That forced the advancing members of the gang back behind the vehicles for cover as they tried to regroup.

  “They’re in the fucking trees!” one of the enemy shouted.

  “Yeah, halfway up the hill, left side,” another added.

  “Fuck em up!” a third yelled.

  This was the problem with tracer rounds. They had their uses, but they also came with the distinct disadvantage or showing the enemy exactly where you were shooting from. However, we didn’t have a choice. We couldn’t get the propane tanks to explode with regular rounds.

  I emptied my magazine into the bikers as they shifted to focus fire on my girls on the opposite slope. Three of them dropped, but it didn’t pull their attention away from Anna’s group.

  As I ejected the spent magazine I could hear the constant bang of Tara’s rifle ring out behind me. Since our enemies were focused on the opposite group, it gave Tara and I the chance to fire freely, and I saw three of them go down with her well-aimed shots.

  I loaded my tracer magazine into the rifle and took aim at the second tank set up on the bridge. With no one shooting at me I was able to take my time and line up a clean shot. I pulled the trigger, and my first tracer round tore through the thin metal of the green propane tank, but it didn’t burst.

  “Come on,” I muttered as I quickly lined up another shot.

  The second tracer round hit the same target less than five seconds after the first, and the burning bullet lit up the leaking gas. The resulting explosion was much smaller than the first one, but it still filled the air full of shrapnel. More than that, it alerted them to my presence.

  “Shit, they're on the right side too!” a biker exclaimed.

  The assaulting force split their attention again, and this time the bullets were much closer.

  “Move across the bridge,” someone commanded.

  Another wave of bikes rolled across the bridge as a dozen men pinned us down in the forest. They got past the bottleneck, spread out, sped up, and ran right into rope we had strung across the end of the bridge. The men landed hard on the pavement as their bikes crashed into the woods without them.

  The fallen men were quickly shot dead as my girls opened fire again.

  Then we brought our full might to bear on the crossing gang and drove them back behind the cover.

  “You mother fuckers can’t hide forever!” one of the enemies yelled out.

  I chuckled as I swapped to a fresh magazine. They were taunting us yet they couldn’t even get across the bridge. Though they were right about one thing, we couldn’t stay here forever. We had made a dent in their numbers, but there were still too many of them to hold here if they really decided to push.

 
; Some of the bikers got off their rides and headed down the hill to try to cross the stream. I kept an eye on the stream while the girls popped off the occasional shot to keep the bikers tied down.

  As I watched a biker stepped out in front of the others and appeared to rally the crowd. The balding, shotgun toting biker who addressed the gang didn’t look anything like the leader I had seen. In fact, I hadn’t seen their leader at all yet.

  I couldn’t hear what he was saying but the balding guy seemed to be doing a pretty good job of getting the bikers excited. The gang started to rev their engines, held their guns up, and cheered.

  Then a perfectly placed shot tore through the back of the hype man’s skull and showered those closest to him in fragments of bone and splatters of blood. The act seemed to whip the mangy horde into a sort of frenzy, and they surged forward. They fired wildly in our general direction as they tore off down the road and started across the bridge.

  I started to shoot once they filled the gap and watched a biker fall with every trigger pull. Though this time they didn’t stop. Instead they pushed past their dead and wounded as they headed for the other side.

  I set down my rifle and grabbed a molotov from the box beside me. Then I pulled the beat up silver zippo from my vest, lit the cloth shoved into the bottle, stood up, and tossed it at the bridge. As it flew through the air I grabbed and lit a second one.

  The first molotov hit and erupted into a wall of flame blocking the end of the bridge. A moment later the second molotov hit the ground and added to the roaring flame.

  A few of the bikers couldn’t stop in time and flew through the flames, hit the rope, and fell screaming to the road.

  The rest turned their guns on my position. It wasn’t too hard to figure out where the flaming bottles of alcohol had originated from.

  I hit the dirt as bullets whizzed and popped through the air around me. For a moment I just stayed there with my chest pressed into the dirt, but as the intensity of the gunfire lessened, I grabbed my rifle and peeked back out towards the road.

  Just then a trio of waterlogged bikers started to push their way past one of our side barricades. I went for my rifle to gun them down, but Tara got to them first. Two of them lurched, thumped against the truck, and fell to the ground, and the other one retreated back down the hill.

  Anna, Paige, and Bailey kept pouring shots into the group on the bridge.

  “Fall back you idiots!” one of the bikers yelled.

  Once again the group of guys on the bridge fell back. They scattered into the trees to take cover and started to return fire.

  I sighed and looked down at my supplies. I had three molotovs left, one and a half loaded magazines, and a backpack of loose rounds. I didn’t know how much ammo the girls had left, but I could assume they were not doing any better. We couldn’t repel that many more assaults before the bikers broke through, and if they did that while we were still here, it could be a problem.

  As I looked out at the bridge, it was clear we had done well so far. Over twenty bikers lay either dead or dying on and around the bridge, and just as many bikes had been trashed in the assault. That wasn’t counting the guys or vehicles that had gone over the edge of the bridge.

  “Tara,” I hissed into the forest behind me. “Get ready to go.”

  “Got it,” she replied.

  I stowed my rifle, lit two more molotovs and added them to the blaze. It seemed that even these lunatics didn’t want to drive through fire, and the longer it was going the more time we would have to get into position back in town.

  The sky was growing darker with each passing second which made it harder to see what the enemy was doing now. The occasional muzzle flash would light up the far side, but not for long enough to matter.

  “Fall back!” I shouted

  It would be better to move before it became completely dark, and once we were set up at the second point, we could take a second to check for injuries and reload our magazines. Plus each time they pushed they got a better idea of where we were located, and we couldn’t risk taking a stray bullet.

  The woods behind me rustled as Tara made for her ATV, and I ran for where my bike had been hidden at the edge of the road. Across the way I heard the four wheelers rumble to life and smiled knowing that the girls were at least healthy enough to drive.

  I met Tara at my motorcycle. I got on, and she snuggled up behind me and wrapped her arms around my waist.

  “You alright?” I asked her.

  “Yeah, how about you?” she asked.

  “Unharmed,” I replied, “I hope the others are too.”

  “Same,” Tara agreed with a nod.

  “Let’s get outta here,” I said before I started the engine.

  As I pulled out onto the road to cross to the other side, I noticed a single figure lurking just behind the wall of flame about fifty yards away. The figure paced back and forth, and I could see his long braid bounce off of his leather jacket. A beard covered the bottom of his face, and as he turned to look at me, the figure grinned to reveal brilliant white teeth. It seemed their leader finally decided to show his face.

  “Nice bike!” he shouted. “It’s a shame you won’t get to keep it.”

  “Then come and get it!” I yelled and then I gunned the engine and roared off down the road a little ways before I dipped into the forest and took our path back to the town.

  “Either that biker was really dumb, or he knew something we didn’t,” Tara said as we rode on. “Why else would that guy taunt us like that.”

  “Well that was their leader,” I explained, “He has to pull that tough guy shit, especially with what we just did to him.”

  “Wait, really?” Tara asked.

  “Yeah,” I said with a nod.

  “I was expecting someone bigger,” she replied.

  “Yeah, but that’s because you've watched too many movies,” I teased.

  A couple minutes later, we emerged from the woods at the edge of town.

  Paige, Bailey, and Anna had their guns up, but relaxed the moment they saw it was us.

  “Thank god you guys are okay,” Bailey said as she rushed over and gave us each a hug.

  “We were starting to worry a little,” Anna said.

  “We weren’t that far behind you guys,” I said as I returned Bailey’s hug.

  “No, but we expected you to be right on our heels,” Paige said.

  “We got held up by their leader,” Tara said.

  “Shit, how did that go?” Anna asked.

  “The guys an idiot,” I said.

  “Yeah, he was all cocky and threatening,” Tara agreed.

  “He knows where we live,” I chuckled.

  “Weren't we counting on exactly that?” Bailey asked.

  “Pretty much,” I said. “We need to get set up quickly. They will be hot on our heels.”

  The girls nodded, and together we headed into town, dropped our vehicles off next to some of the houses we weren’t going to use, and then met in the street one last time before we dispersed.

  “What we did at the bridge was good,” I started, “but the night is just beginning. We didn’t plan to fight in the dark, but I trust you all can handle it. The most important thing is going to be to identify your targets before you pull the trigger. Anyone on a motorcycle will probably be fair game.”

  “I take it using our flashlights is out of the question?” Paige asked.

  “Correct,” I said with a nod. “Nothing will give away your position faster than using a light.”

  “This should be interesting,” Anna muttered.

  “You guys will do fine,” I assured them. “Just know that whatever happens tonight I am already so proud of you.”

  “Aw, thanks, Tav,” Tara said.

  “We couldn’t have done this without you, though,” Paige said.

  “Yeah, it hasn’t been easy, but knowing you were nearby helped me keep my cool,” Bailey said.

  “It’s true, you give us courage,” Anna said.r />
  “I didn’t give you anything you didn’t already have,” I said. “I’m just good at showing people how strong they really are.”

  “I dunno know if that’s true,” Tara said.

  “Regardless, I am glad you are around,” Paige said.

  “Same,” Bailey agreed.

  “Well, we’ve wasted enough time, but before we split up, I want to make sure everyone is okay,” I said.

  “Yeah, we’re all fine,” Anna said as she looked to Paige and Bailey. “Right guys?”

  “No injuries here,” Paige said.

  “I got grazed,” Bailey said quietly.

  “What!” Paige exclaimed as she spun on her friend. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “It’s not really a big deal,” Bailey shrugged.

  “That’s not for you to decide,” I said. “Tara, Anna, go grab a house while we take care of this.”

  The redhead and the platinum blonde nodded and sprinted off down the street. Each of them chose one of the named houses and disappeared inside.

  “Where’d you get hit?” I asked Bailey.

  “Right shoulder,” she said as she adjusted to reveal a rip in the sleeve of her black shirt.

  “Let’s get inside and take a look at it,” Paige said.

  “Good idea,” I said. “Follow me.” Then I led the girls down the street until I found a nice large house. The place was big enough that even if we all had to fight together here, there would be some flexibility and options.

  The interior of the house was dark, and we had to use our flashlights to find our way around. We pulled Bailey into the dining room, sat her down, and tore off her right sleeve where it joined the shirt.

  “Careful, it’s tender,” Bailey winced as Paige peeled the cloth free of the wound.

  “This could be a lot worse,” Paige said as she used her flashlight to inspect the jagged gash on Bailey’s arm. It was about three inches long, but very shallow. The blood dried to the blonde’s upper arm made the injury look far worse than it actually was.